The Mounting Price Of US Inaction In The Gulf: Grave Risks Attend Pandering To Israel’s Foes

The Bush Administration’s decision to initiate a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel is but the latest illustration of the serious dangers posed to U.S. interests by a protracted stalemate in the Persian Gulf.

Clearly, the consideration uppermost in the minds of Administration decision-makers following the latest explosive violence in the West Bank was not the security of a vital American ally. Evidently neither was the possibility that the United States, by leading a diplomatic attack on Israel, would simply encourage the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saddam Hussein and other radical elements to incite further strife.

Rather, the overarching impetus for the U.S. approach on this issue has been Washington’s felt need to maintain a united front with its Arab partners in the anti-Iraq coalition and Persian Gulf expeditionary force.

"The longer the present stalemate in the Gulf persists, the more certain it is that the Bush Administration’s ‘wait for the embargo to work’ strategy will be a lose-lose proposition for U.S. interests," Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said today. "On the one hand, Saddam Hussein remains as firmly entrenched in Kuwait as ever. Between the wholesale pillaging of his conquest, the repopulation of Kuwait with pro-Iraqi elements and the massive increase in Iraq’s military presence there, it is hard to maintain that the American policy of amassing international forces — but not using them — has measurably improved the chances for undoing Saddam’s aggression."

Gaffney added, "On the other hand, the more open-ended the American stay in the Gulf becomes, the higher will be the price demanded of the United States to maintain an Arab coloration to the multilateral force. The nature of that price is equally predictable: U.S. complicity in the international campaign to isolate Israel and to compel her to make dangerous territorial concessions to implacable foes."

In part, demands of this kind are the natural consequence of the standing agendas of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is inconceivable that the governments of these nations could long resist — even if they were inclined to do so — the temptation to translate new-found leverage on the United States into pressure on Israel.

In larger part, however, these demands are the product of a divide-and-conquer strategy originating in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein clearly has every incentive to inflame Arab-Israeli tensions and to drive wedges between the United States and its new-found partners in the anti-Iraq alliance. What the Bush Administration may not appreciate, however, is the ironic danger that — in its effort to maintain a united front against Iraq — the United States may be acquiescing in a policy shift entirely to Iraq’s liking, and utterly inconsistent with the long-term interests in the region of either the United States or Israel.

The Center renews its call for the Bush Administration to move forthwith to topple the government of Saddam Hussein and to neutralize the weapons of mass destruction and other, threatening military capabilities at Baghdad’s disposal. Such an approach is the only one that has any potential to undo the effects of past Iraqi aggression and prevent that nation from unleashing even greater violence in the future.

Only by moving resolutely and with dispatch against Iraq, moreover, can the United States minimize the prospect that its policy interests in the Middle East will be held hostage indefinitely to the ambitions of Arab nationalism — ambitions sure to be increasingly appealed to and exploited by Saddam Hussein.