Saddam’s Lessons In Arms Control

By Fred C. Ikl&eacute
Wall Street Journal, 04 March 1998

Let us admit fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times again. . . .
–Rudyard Kipling

Those who seek to promote international arms-control regimes have much to learn from the
continuing crisis in Iraq. The Iraqi lessons are more fundamental and more troubling than the
hoary “lesson of Munich” for which Neville Chamberlain continues to be blamed. Chamberlain
tried to avert or postpone a war with Nazi Germany for which England and France were ill
prepared, hoping perhaps that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union first, or that the West might
gain time to rearm and contain Germany. Whatever can be said with the benefit of hindsight,
Chamberlain’s thinking at Munich was not totally unreasonable. But much of today’s thinking on
international arms control is totally unreasonable–especially the legalistic American approach that
dominates world diplomacy. We can now say so based on abundant evidence, thanks to Saddam
Hussein’s many object lessons.

Lack of Penalties

That no violation goes punished under international arms-control regimes is a lesson that
Saddam
has patiently tried to teach us for a long time. In the 1980s, he used his chemical weapons in the
war that he had started against Iran. There was no lack of verification and there could be no
shadow of doubt that this act had violated one of the oldest arms-control treaties, to which Iraq
was also a party–the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which even Hitler did not violate. Instead of
imposing a severe penalty, the world “community” averted its gaze from the incontrovertible
evidence, those photographs of gruesomely injured Iranian soldiers. Despite this atrocity, the U.S.
even stepped up its technology transfers to Saddam.

Evidently, the world had not learned the lesson, so the great teacher Saddam patiently tried
again.
He used poison gas to rub human rights violations into the skin and eyes of Iraq’s own people, all
there in the open, for the international media to film and to smell. The great teacher thought this
would make it plain that the real problem with international arms treaties was not a lack of
verification but a total lack of penalties once violations have been detected.

To no avail. The world “community” chose not to learn the lesson. Instead, the arms-control
professionals did what they do best–they held a conference. In January 1989, after all the
photographs of gassed Iranian soldiers and Kurds had been filed in the chanceries of the
enlightened nations, the world’s diplomats gathered in Paris and resolutely resolved to negotiate
another treaty that would prohibit chemical weapons. Blithely they ignored the fact that the use of
chemical weapons had been prohibited since 1925, yet Iraq had just used them. Aye, but this
time
it will be different; our new treaty will set up an elaborate international verification system,
the
assembled could be heard to declare. Not a single one of the diplomats present had the courage to
stand up and shout: The emperor has no clothes! We have verified Iraq’s use of poison gas
and
don’t need more verification. We need to punish those violations.

After the Gulf War, the great teacher prepared an even more demonstrative lesson. He kept
asserting that Iraq no longer had any of the prohibited weapons until, one day, his son-in-law
defected and began to reveal facts to the contrary. Then suddenly, Saddam called the world
community’s bluff: He admitted he had lied, he let United Nations inspectors seize and destroy
some of his chemical weapons (having sworn before that he had kept none)–and he suffered no
penalty. The U.N. inspectors bravely continued looking for the prohibited weapons that Iraq again
maintained did not exist. Thus the great teacher had demonstrated once more that, verification or
not, no arms-control violation goes punished.

Knowing that repetition is the mother of learning, Saddam again tried to teach this lesson.
During
the past few months he has demonstrated that international weapons inspectors can be denied all
access for a long period of time and then–as a gesture of peacefulness–be readmitted in exchange
for a big reward. The reward Iraq now has been encouraged to expect is the lifting of the oil
export embargo, which was meant to force Iraq not only to give access to U.N. inspectors but
also to comply with other important provisions of the cease-fire agreement that ended the Gulf
War.

This lesson was meant to teach us how a violator can come out ahead by blocking
international
inspections he is treaty-bound to allow. Put simply, it is as if the violator stole a whole loaf, kept
us agonizing for a while, and then gave us back half a loaf provided we give him five new loaves.
Had we been attentive we could have learned about this gambit earlier, from North Korea.

In 1993 Pyongyang refused to allow international inspectors access to its nuclear waste sites,
in
clear violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it had signed. After some huffing and
puffing the Clinton administration agreed to deliver the five loaves in exchange for getting back
half a loaf. That is to say, it undertook to donate to North Korea two large plutonium-producing
reactors (pressuring Japan and South Korea to foot most of the bill) plus give Pyongyang half a
million tons of fuel oil each year. In exchange, North Korea agreed to stop running its smaller
reactor and promised to allow the previously blocked international inspections, but only at some
time in the future.

Saddam also taught us another important arms-control lesson: that “impartial” international
verification cannot work. International inspection schemes put cops and robbers on the same team
and often give them access to the same sensitive data. These arms-control schemes distinguish
between parties and nonparties, not between law-abiding countries and rogue countries. The
International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors compliance with the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, used to employ Iraqis in sensitive positions. According to the agreed
rules, citizens from all member states are supposed to act as international civil servants. Thus, an
Iraqi must not take instructions from Baghdad. Yet, after the Gulf War it was discovered that
these “international civil servants” misused what they had learned at the lAEA to teach their
fellow Iraqis how to outwit the lAEA inspections.

Any small-town detective would think it ridiculous that he should team up with a bunch of
narcotics dealers to ferret out illegal drug sales. Yet, astonishingly, this elementary wisdom has
not yet penetrated the American and European bureaucracies that keep churning out lengthy
international arms-control treaties. The nuclear test ban, which the Clinton administration wants
the Senate to ratify, is to be verified by such an “impartial” internationally staffed organization.
Iranian or Chinese seismologists working within it are supposed to be as objective and impartial
as, say, an Australian seismologist.

Rogues’ Tutor

President Clinton has also announced that he wants to “strengthen” the existing treaty
prohibiting
biological weapons “with an international inspection system to help detect and deter cheating.”
Anyone with any experience in these areas has to admit that biological weapons can be so easily
concealed that a dictatorship intent on hiding them could not be found out. However, the
international verification system will not only be incapable of catching determined violators, it will
also tutor the participating officials from rogue nations in how better to conceal their violations
and, as part of their international tour of duty, let them in on the latest ideas for making more
lethal biological weapons.

Thank you, Saddam Hussein, for you imparted to us no end of a lesson. It is cause for deep
sadness that we are incapable of learning what you so diligently taught us.

Mr. Iklé, undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is with the
Center for Strategic
and International Studies.