Iraq War Too Important to Be Left to Diplomats: Baker’s Bungling Argues For Cheney, Powell Lead

(Washington, D.C.): In the aftermath
of Secretary of State James Baker’s
latest diplomatic debacle — the recent unauthorized,
unapproved, uncoordinated and
unacceptable joint communique
with Soviet Foreign Minister Aleksandr
Bessmertnykh — the Center for
Security Policy urged President Bush to
direct that, henceforth, the conduct of
the war and the arrangements by which it
is terminated will be the responsibility
of his military team, Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs
of Staff Chairman Colin Powell.

The latters’ capacity for competent,
disciplined and effective execution of
the President’s orders stands in sharp
contrast to the fast-and-loose game
favored by Secretary Baker. Particularly
noteworthy is the difference between the
surgical precision and low collateral
damage of the Pentagon’s actions against
Iraq and the Secretary of State’s
ham-handed bungling of his account and
its often devastating, if unintended,
effects. Consider the following,
partial listing of Mr. Baker’s dubious
achievements in the run-up to and in the
course of the war:

• Secretary Baker was instrumental
  in the Bush Administration’s
  decision not to recalibrate U.S.
  policy toward Iraq following the
  conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war.
  A National Strategy Review
  conducted in the Spring of 1989
  and led by the State Department
  disastrously concluded that
  continued close ties with Baghdad
  — featuring taxpayer-guaranteed
  commodity credits and sales of
  militarily relevant technologies
  to Saddam Hussein — should
  remain a feature of U.S. policy
  in the Middle East.
• After this same Saddam Hussein
  invaded Kuwait, unnamed State
  Department officials put the word
  out that Mr. Baker actually
  had had second thoughts
  about the wisdom of coddling the
  Iraqi tyrant as far back as April
  1990. Unfortunately, so the story
  goes, the Secretary of State was
  too preoccupied with other
  matters at the time; he just forgot
  to direct a course correction.
• Insofar as the Baker management
  style allows only a tiny cadre of
  close associates authority to get
  anything done at the State
  Department, in the absence
  of Mr. Baker’s personal
  involvement, nobody else was
  able to change this transparently
  flawed U.S. policy.

• Worse yet, as evidence mounted
  that Baghdad was preparing to
  throw its weight around in the
  Gulf, senior State Department
  officials — notably U.S.
  Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie
  and Assistant Secretary of State
  for Near East Affairs John Kelly
  — were making statements
  consistent with Mr. Baker’s line:
  We had no interest in Arab-Arab
  territorial disputes and we had
  no obligation to come to the
  defense of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein
  not unreasonably interpreted
  these statements as signals that
  the United States so valued its
  relationship with Iraq that it
  would not oppose his annexation
  of Kuwait.
• When the invasion occurred (while
  Mr. Baker was fishing with
  then-Soviet Foreign Minister
  Eduard Shevardnadze), he also
  swallowed hook, line and sinker
  the Kremlin’s claim that Moscow
  knew nothing of the attack before
  it happened. This absurd
  proposition was subsequently
  refuted by the Soviets themselves
  when a spokesman acknowledged
  that they had been aware of the
  pending invasion but neglected to
  mention it because “they
  were preoccupied with improving
  U.S.-Soviet relations.”
• In the wake of Iraq’s invasion of
  Kuwait, Secretary Baker — of all
  the Bush Administration’s
  spokesmen — has found it most
  difficult to provide a
  strategically coherent and
  convincing explanation of the
  danger with which U.S.
  policy-makers were seized. (His
  contention that the centerpiece
  issue in the Gulf crisis was U.S.
  “jobs” is a case in
  point.)
• The likely reason: Identifying
  Saddam Hussein, his brutally
  repressive regime, ambitions and
  military capabilities as the
  underlying threat that must be
  redressed would have entailed at
  least an implicit admission of a
  serious policy failure on Mr.
  Baker’s part. It would
  also have substantially lessened
  the chances of arriving at a
  cosmetic “diplomatic
  solution” on the far
  narrower question of who held
  title to Kuwait.

• Instead, Mr. Baker was a
  principal exponent of the view
  that all would be forgiven if
  Saddam simply left Kuwait —
  blithely suggesting that an
  improbable NATO-style regional
  security arrangement and
  unspecified arms control
  agreements would be sufficient to
  contain Iraq’s enormous potential
  for future aggression.
• Fortunately for long-term U.S.
  and Western interests, the Iraqi
  despot declined to accept the
  array of inducements offered by
  Secretary Baker to withdraw from
  Kuwait. In fact — according to
  William Beecher, a respected
  journalist known for his
  excellent official sources — the
  Iraqis interpreted Mr. Baker’s
  virtually exclusive focus during
  his six-hour meeting with Tariq
  Aziz on the benefits
  that would accrue to Baghdad if
  it gave up its conquest (as
  opposed to the costs
  that would be incurred if it did
  not) as further evidence of a
  lack of American resolve.
  Ironically, if the Secretary
  of State had more competently
  executed his brief, the necessary
  war against Iraq might not have
  occurred at this relatively
  opportune juncture.

Against this backdrop, the sorry
story of Mr. Baker’s mismanagement of his
conversations with the Soviet Foreign
Minister, and the resulting joint
communique, should perhaps come as no
surprise. What is surprising is
that President Bush remains, presumably
on the basis of friendship, willing to
overlook a record of such major policy
gaffes.

The U.S.-Soviet communique is
nothing less than a tour de force
for Soviet diplomacy. Evidently
Mr. Bessmertnykh achieved it in part by
preying on Secretary Baker’s well-known
preoccupation with personal diplomacy; if
Mr. Baker wanted the sort of
“relationship” he had had with
the previous Soviet Foreign Minister, he
would have to pay for it.
Evidently the Soviets also took full
advantage of the importance the Bush
Administration continues to attach to
Moscow’s being “helpful” on the
Gulf to extract these concessions — as
well as an assurance that Washington
would remain tolerant of Moscow’s
domestic crackdown. The joint communique
pledged the United States to:

• a cease-fire with Iraq
  if Saddam Hussein makes an
  “unequivocal commitment to
  withdraw from Kuwait” and
  takes unspecified
  “immediate, concrete steps
  leading to full compliance”
  with U.N. Security Council
  resolutions;
• a “meaningful peace
  process” that is
  aimed at reconciling Israel, Arab
  states and the Palestinians; and
• a full and coequal role
  for the Soviet Union in
  brokering a “comprehensive
  settlement in the Middle
  East.”

In so doing, the communique
explicitly opens the door to various
initiatives aimed at preserving
Saddam Hussein in power —
clearly a Soviet objective but a
development entirely inconsistent with
U.S. and Western interests in the region.
Not the least, this flatly contradicts
President Bush’s repeated statement that
there will be “no pause for
negotiations.” Matters are made no
better by the Administration’s earnest,
if implausible, claims that this
represents no change in policy and
simultaneous Soviet trumpeting of the
communique as marking a major
breakthrough and departure from past U.S.
policy.

The communique also jeopardizes recent
progress made toward restoring
U.S.-Israeli relations to a footing of
mutual trust and support not in evidence
since the Bush Administration came to
office. Israel would be fully
justified — in light of this indication
that the United States stands ready to
compromise its interests at an
international peace conference once the
war is over — in reconsidering its
policy of restraint.

Moreover, the communique formally
discards decades-old American policy
aimed at thwarting the expansion of
Soviet influence in this region.
Incredibly, it does so at the very moment
that the Kremlin’s policies are
increasingly being dictated by the same
dangerous forces of the military, KGB and
Communist Party that previously caused
the United States to eschew Moscow’s
involvement in the Middle East and
elsewhere.

When one adds to the communique’s
significant substantive
shortcomings, the curious circumstances
under which such concessions were made to
the Soviet Union — no
interagency coordination, no
press conference (instead, the
Secretary’s office simply had it posted after-hours
in the press room) and, most amazing of
all, no opportunity for President
Bush to review it before it was released
— the whole affair reflects serious
discredit on the U.S. government.

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the Bush Administration
must make clear that it has no intention
of engaging in cease-fires, “pauses
for peace” or any other suspension
of the war unless and until
Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique are
removed from power, Iraq’s weapons of
mass destruction are destroyed and the
liberation of Kuwait and the security of
other U.S. friends and allies in the
region is assured.