Target Saddam Hussein

By Robert Satloff
Washington Post, 02 December 1997

From Paris to Cairo, from Moscow to Riyadh, virtually all of America’s Gulf War allies have
refused to support the idea of military force to compel Saddam Hussein’s compliance with U.N.
resolutions. Is this because:

(a) They do not want to be associated with an adventure that may tarnish their ability to cash in
on the commercial appeal of Iraq’s vast oil resources?

(b) They know from experience that the Clinton administration is likely to opt for a limited strike
that might cause some marginal damage but won’t seriously threaten Saddam’s regime?

(c) They believe that acting against Saddam in the absence of progress in the Arab-Israeli peace
process would be morally inconsistent and politically costly?

If you chose (c), go directly to the White House. As President Clinton said the other day in
discussing the difficulties in building “a community of shared values” in confronting Saddam, “we
will never, ever do that until there is peace between Israel and her neighbors.” The absence of
peace, he said, “undermines our ability to seek a unified solution.”

Sadly, this line of thinking is wrong. Blaming the peace process impasse (diplo-speak for blaming
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu) for the weakening of the anti-Saddam coalition
sidesteps the crass greed that motivates some, such as the French and the Russians, while it avoids
facing up to America’s own inadequacies that have turned off many others in the Arab world. One
thing is certain — for both Western and Arab allies — the state of the peace process has almost
never been a determinant of their willingness to follow America’s lead vis-a-vis Iraq.

As far as the former are concerned, the French and Russians stopped being coalition members in
any meaningful sense at the very height of the Oslo process. It was in June 1993, three months
before the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, that the U.N.
Security Council last found Iraq in “material breach” of U.N. resolutions. Not once during the
halcyon days of the peace process — from September 1993 to the Rabin assassination two years
later — did the French or Russians support any stiffening of U.N. spine on Iraq.

The Arab coalition partners have also been straying for quite some time. Some examples:

• Soon after the Gulf War, the United States asked the Saudis to provide Jordan with oil at
  cut-rate prices to match Saddam’s offer and thereby free King Hussein to take a more active
  anti-Saddam posture. In spite of Jordan’s emerging peace with Israel, the Saudis refused
  because they wanted to punish King Hussein for his wartime sympathies with Iraq.
• In 1995, when Saddam’s son-in-law defected to Amman, U.S. officials toured Egypt and the
  gulf to seek support for an emboldened Iraqi opposition effort. Again, the Arab allies refused
  the U.S. request, largely because of inter-Arab jealousies and the fear that Washington’s
  muscle was not truly behind the idea.
• Just last year, shortly after Netanyahu’s election in Israel but before the Jerusalem tunnel
  episode — i.e., during his brief honeymoon period with peace partners Egypt and Jordan — the
  United States launched a cruise missile strike on Iraq in response to Saddam’s invasion of the
  Kurdish-held city of Irbil. Virtually all our old Gulf War allies criticized the attack.

Perhaps the best example of the lack of linkage between the peace process and the gulf dates
to the original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. At the time, there was no peace process, the
uncompromising Yitzhak Shamir was Israel’s prime minister, and no Israeli leader — Labor or
Likud — would even contemplate shaking hands with Yasser Arafat. Nevertheless, all but a few
Arab leaders supported the U.S.-led coalition.

If Washington is truly interested in building a coalition against Saddam, then it shouldn’t
obfuscate the central issue — the fate of Saddam Hussein — by mixing it with Arab-Israeli politics.
With the Europeans, America still has a chance to win the day. After all, these ever-pragmatic
allies may come to recognize the fact that Saddam himself is the main obstacle to exploiting the
riches of Iraq. But the Arab complaint against the administration’s diminishing resolve is more
serious.

When the president first took office, his senior aides routinely dismissed Saddam as irredeemable,
and the administration supported initiatives to indict Saddam as a war criminal, to back the Iraqi
opposition movement and to fund at least two covert operations (in Jordan and northern Iraq)
targeted against Saddam himself. All that is history. Today, the principal source of pressure
against Saddam is the sanctions regime and the related U.N. inspection system, both of which rely
on the lowest-common-denominator decision-making of international consensus.

Arab members of the Gulf War coalition — many of whom remain attractive targets for Saddam’s
ambitions — read the writing on the wail. With the United Nations as the only arrow in the
anti-Saddam quiver, no wonder that countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are covering their
bets by distancing themselves from U.S. policy.

For Arab leaders, the peace process stalemate is, at best, an excuse. The truth is that many aren’t
buying U.S. policy because it only treats the symptoms of the gulf crisis (the U.N. inspection
team, sanctions, the coalition) rather than the cause (Saddam Hussein himself). If the
administration decided to pursue a new policy using all available political, military, economic and
clandestine means to compel Saddam’s compliance or precipitate his demise — whichever came
first — most Arab leaders would fall in line and do their part.

But instead of rethinking policy, the administration is trying to shift the blame. In practice, this
throws the spotlight onto Netanyahu and the need for Israeli concessions as the key to
kickstarting a stalled negotiation with the Palestinians.

This is not to suggest that the president — who has rightly earned the title of the most
Israel-friendly chief executive in history — should relegate the peace process to the back burner. It
remains a vitally important issue, and America retains an intense interest in preventing its collapse.
But 20 years after Anwar Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem, one must remember that the peace
process takes time. Confronting Saddam Hussein — whose access to weapons of mass destruction
was characterized by President Clinton as posing a threat to “all the children of the world” — can’t
wait.

The writer is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.