[Peace-discuss] NPR Interview w/ Scott Ritter (part 2 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[continued from part 1]

CONAN: Let's go to our next caller, and that's Malik, who's on the line
with us from Chicago.

MALIK (Caller): Hi. The Windy City. Just a question principally about any
intelligence that exists about the true attitudes of Iraqi people. I know
the commentator sort of alluded to this earlier, but when--you know, of
course, Hussein probably stages a lot of the rallies that we see. But, you
know, one tends to wonder if our attempt to cause a--to topple this regime
might actually, you know, bolster or maybe even damage the Iraqi people's
ability to, you know--for self-determination.

Mr. DUELFER: I think you're hitting on a very important point, and I'm not
sure our government is dextrous enough for this task. But, you know, on
the one hand, I am convinced, just from my personal experience here, that
most Iraqis would much rather have a different set of managers. I mean,
there is no family or clan there which has not been in some way brutally
affected by this regime. I mean, that's why he has all these security
forces, that's why the secret police are all over the place. On the other
hand, if we proceed down a path which allows Saddam to argue that, 'Oh,
here come the Americans. They want to install a puppet regime that, you
know, kowtows to them,' you know, any normal Iraqi is going to say, you
know, 'The heck with that.' You know, we need to be dextrous enough where
we're not being proscriptive, but we're simply creating conditions
where...

MALIK: Right.

Mr. DUELFER: ...the Iraqi people can change their own government, where
they can make a patriotic decision which is in their interest, which is in
our interest, but which is not in Saddam's.

CONAN: Malik.

MALIK: That answers it. Thank you.

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call. You alluded, Charles Duelfer, a
moment ago to the fact that the Iraqi air force is in a bad condition. At
this point, are Iraq's conventional forces--its army, doesn't have much of
a navy left, but is its army at this point a threat to its neighbors?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, they are numerically. They've got, you know, 300,000
troops. But I don't--they're certainly much less than they were in 1991. I
don't think they could do anything serious against, you know, the Iranians
or the Turks, for example, but they could make mischief if they felt that
it was in their interest. And I think for the most part, they are deterred
from doing something, you know, at this point in time. But, you know,
whether that holds for the future when sanctions may be lifted and when
Iraq gains control of its own oil revenues again, difficult to say.

CONAN: Now we heard earlier from Scott Ritter, another former weapons
inspector, who said if we had a robust inspections regime we could be
assured that none of this was going on. Do you agree?

Mr. DUELFER: No, I don't, and for a couple of reasons. One, the intent of
the Security Council was that Iraq give up all this stuff permanently,
that inspectors be able to go anywhere they want forever. And I just don't
see that the international community can sustain that level of commitment
and that level of force forever.

We've tried this once before. At the end of World War I, the Versailles
Treaty required that Germany get rid of its forces, it get rid of, you
know, the equivalent of its, you know, weapons and so forth at that point
in time.

CONAN: Which included poison gas.

Mr. DUELFER: Which included poison gas. And they had an international set
of inspectors. They lasted for about six years. They accused the
inspectors of all the same things that UNSCOM was accused of. The
international community was divided, and ultimately they withdrew them and
they created a fig leaf where they said, 'Well, if Germany signs up to the
League of Nations, then the disarmament provisions of that will apply.'
And what we well know now is that Germany was hiding materials. They
moved--in fact, they built a poison gas factory in Russia. They had
aircraft training in Russia. The Krupt arms factory had hidden its ability
to produce things. All the same techniques which we experienced in Iraq
were done before, and frankly, I think that the Iraqis have studied that
case.

CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

We're speaking with Charles Duelfer, a former deputy chairman of the UN's
weapons inspection team in Iraq, and we'll be with him for a few more
minutes. After our next break, we're going to be joined by Walter Russell
Mead to discuss the idea of deterrence and why that might not work against
Iraq and why deterrence has worked in other cases and might not work in
others.

Charles Duelfer, the weapons inspectors were there four years ago. They
left in 1998, December 1998. What do we actually know about what has gone
on in the meantime, and is it right that we should project a worst-case
scenario?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, you know, knowing with certainty is always a problem.
You know, the pieces of information that we can get are, you know, from
satellites, from watching export/import, from defectors, you know, from
pictures of factories which are being rebuilt. But, you know, this is
evidence, but not necessarily proof. There have been some very credible
defectors coming out, and they've said that these programs are continuing.
But again, you know, it is not proof. But you have to look--if you're
going to bet the future of your country, to me it would be extraordinarily
risky to assume that Saddam Hussein has, in the light of his experience,
you know, all of a sudden decided, you know, 'Gee, you know, maybe I
better give this stuff up. In spite of the fact that I've had the smartest
people in my country working for two decades, spending on the order of 10
or $20 billion to develop a nuclear weapon, maybe I'll just set that
aside. I'll just, you know, take my place in the line of normal countries
around here and--oh, by the way, in Iran, which also has a program going
on, we'll let them proceed on its path.' I just--to me, it doesn't pass
the laugh test.

CONAN: You talk about the risk to our country. A lot of people find it
difficult to believe that Iraq could mount some sort of nuclear or
biological or chemical attack on the United States.

Mr. DUELFER: It's a question of an erosion of our interests. If Saddam had
a nuclear capability, would we be able to defend the interests of our
friends and allies in the region? Would we be able to assure the flow of
oil in the region? What would happen if all of a sudden he decided to
invade Kuwait again? Would we be willing to deploy 500,000 forces to the
region? If we get the case wrong here, if we say, 'Oh, well, let's assume
Saddam's actually had a change of heart'--if we get it wrong, are the
French going to bail us out?

The United States--we're accused of being arrogant, we're accused of
saying, 'Oh, we don't like this government. Let's get rid of him.'
Certainly there's an element of that, and we're very proscriptive about
how we go about business. But we also have a unique role. Because of our
strength, because we're the last superpower, if there is a big mess, we're
the ones that are going to have to fix it.

CONAN: The most critical area, of course, would be a nuclear weapon. How
close do you think Saddam Hussein is to acquiring nuclear weapons?

Mr. DUELFER: Well, you know, everything I've seen is he doesn't have one
yet. It's important to remember he has the intellectual capital. I mean,
all the people who are working on his weapons programs--they're still
there. We didn't lobotomize them. They're still there. They have the
technical expertise. The key problem is getting the enriched uranium. Now
if he has to make it himself and he has to do that in a way where it's
dispersed around the country and, therefore, doesn't have a visible
signature, that'll take awhile. If he's able to acquire this type of
material from, you know, the former Soviet Union in some fashion, then
it's a much nearer-term problem. The estimates range from a couple of
years to five or eight years. But, you know, bear in mind that, you know,
his commitment, his incentives remain the same. All other things being
equal, he will get there at some point.

CONAN: Charles Duelfer, thank you very much for being with us today.

Mr. DUELFER: Thank you for having me.

CONAN: Charles Duelfer, former deputy chairman of the United Nations
weapons inspection team in Iraq and now a guest scholar at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He joined us from
his office there.

We're talking about Iraq and its potential as a threat to the United
States. When we return, foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead joins us
to talk about why the Bush administration may be ready to give up on
containment and deterrence policies that the US has used in the past. You
can continue this conversation online if you'd like. Go to <npr.org>,
click on the discussion section and then scroll down to TALK OF THE
NATION. If you have a question on deterrence and Iraq, give us a call,
(800)-989-8255, (800) 989-TALK.

I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Announcements)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Tomorrow, hey, talk to a lot of commuters and they will say that
congestion on the highways should be a national priority. Is there a way
out of gridlock and traffic jams? That's tomorrow's TALK OF THE NATION.

Today, we're talking about Iraq as a threat to the United States. There's
a building debate over whether a preemptive attack is needed to change the
regime in Baghdad, but when did containment stop being an option? What do
you want to know about America's foreign policy perspective on deterrence
and Iraq? Join the conversation. Our phone number is (800) 989-TALK, and
our e-mail address, <totn at npr.org>.

And joining us now is Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow of US foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author most recently of
"Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the
World." Walter Russell Mead has been kind enough to speak with us on
several occasions over the past year, and now he's been nice enough to
interrupt his vacation on Pawleys Island in South Carolina to join us.

Thank you very much.

Mr. WALTER RUSSELL MEAD (Council on Foreign Relations): Well, thank you.
Good to be here.

CONAN: So the United States for 50 years faced a threat from the Soviet
Union, which had thousands of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles that
could deliver them to the United States in 30 minutes--a real, you know,
unquestionable threat to the United States. Deterrence was good enough to
keep the Soviet Union from ever using those weapons. Why would the United
States not rely on deterrence against Iraq?

Mr. MEAD: Well, I think in one sense it would work--deterrence would work
that Iraq is unlikely to attack the United States with nuclear weapons
even if it had them--attack us directly. But what we didn't succeed in
with the Soviet Union, for example, was keeping it from occupying Eastern
Europe. We were not able to keep the Soviet Union out of its neighbors.
You could argue the same thing might happen with Iraq and, say, Kuwait
again. If Iraq had nuclear weapons and invaded Kuwait, what would we do?
So it's a little bit of a difference, and because of the very strategic
nature of the neighborhood that Iraq is in, it looks like the US is less
willing to try containment again.

CONAN: And by strategic neighborhood, oil?

Mr. MEAD: Oil. Very much so. Lesser degree, Israel, but oil would be the
key.

CONAN: Talk about the Israelis aspect of it for a moment.

Mr. MEAD: Well, there would be a possibility that Iraq might threaten
Israel or that Israel in response to Iraqi movement toward getting nuclear
weapons would respond in a way that would be very destabilizing. Remember,
the Israelis destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in the past. But also,
containment is a very destabilizing option. To some degree, containment,
obviously, is what we're doing now with Iraq. It involves, for example, US
troops in Saudi Arabia. It was the presence of those US forces that was
the direct cause of Osama bin Laden breaking with the Saudi regime and
going on his terrorist course. Because of the significance of Saudi Arabia
in the Muslim world, having non-Muslim forces in that country is a very
destabilizing thing.

We also have the problem that the economic sanctions on Iraq, which are
part of the containment policy, have been widely criticized in the Middle
East and elsewhere. People talk about how American foreign policy is
starving and killing Iraqi children and so on. And I think a lot of that
is not, in fact, the case, but many people believe it is the case. So
containment is a very expensive option in terms of the Iraqi situation,
and it also isn't achieving that much if you think about it, that he
appears to be making some progress toward new weapons of mass destruction,
he is still in power. So containment is giving you a lot of political
costs, it's not getting you the kinds of results you're looking for, nor
is it likely to get you those results in the future. Fidel Castro--we've
had him under economic sanctions for 40 years and he's still in power. So
you can see why the Bush administration is moving away from the idea that
containment is a viable long-term policy for the US there.

CONAN: Our next caller is Alla, who join us from San Diego.

ALLA (Caller): Yeah. Hello?

CONAN: Hello. You're on the air.

ALLA: Yes, sir. How are you?

CONAN: Very well, thank you.

ALLA: Good. I'm an Iraqi. I'm in San Diego here. I'm an American citizen.
I've been here for 10 years. Now when I am calling, my family there--they
are scared maybe Saddam is going to use the chemical against his own
Shiite Muslims in south Iraq. Last week he said if anybody
...(unintelligible) from south Iraq help the American troops, he's going
to make that area as flat and same as what he did in Halabjah. So how can
we save Iraqi people? The situation is this: Iraqi people--they don't like
Saddam. Ninety-five percent of them, they are really scared of Saddam and
they need any help. I was one of the rebel. I fought Saddam in '91, and we
don't have somebody to lead us in '91. So the situation now is this: All
the Iraq people--they hate Saddam, except his own family, his own soldier,
maybe 5 percent of Iraq people. All of them, they need any help from
American troops to intervene, to go inside Iraq to help Iraq people to get
out Saddam. So in this situation how can we help Iraqi people to save them
from Saddam's chemical? Maybe he's going to use it against these people.

CONAN: Walter Russell Mead, certainly the United States or the
administration quick to cite the case of Halabjah, which the caller just
mentioned, where Iraq used chemical weapons against its own people, in
that case the Kurds. He was talking about the Shias in southern Iraq.

Mr. MEAD: That's right. And that is another sort of issue with
containment, is if you begi--if containment begins to succeed with Saddam
Hussein and suppose his hold on the country begins to weaken, you could
well see a kind of a worst-case scenario of attempted rebellions, unrest
mounting, Saddam Hussein moving toward more radical methods of trying to
control the uprisings. Conceivably you could see Iran trying to intervene
in the Shiite majority parts of Iraq. It's a real mess however you look at
it.

CONAN: Alla, thanks very much for the phone call.

ALLA: OK. Thank you, sir.

CONAN: Bye-bye.

Let's go to now to Ahmit(ph), and Ahmit is on the line with us from San
Francisco.

AHMIT (Caller): Hi. I have a quick question which says that I would like
to know the real interest of US reason. There are other countries like
India and Pakistan who are also nuclear-capable. So does that mean US will
go after them after Iraq?

Mr. MEAD: I think there are very special circumstances in the case of
Iraq, where Iraq is in violation of specific obligations it made to the
Security Council over permitting arms control, arms inspections. And the
reason Iraq had those agreements was Iraq had an unprovoked invasion of a
member state of the United Nations, that Saddam Hussein's track record as
a sort of open, blatant and flagrant violator of international law puts
him in a very different category from governments like the Indian and
Pakistani government, which whatever their quarrels, whatever the
disagreements over Kashmir, both of those countries have an international
record that is really very, very different from that of Saddam Hussein.

CONAN: Ahmit...

AHMIT: I agree, but at the same time, if you can see Pakistan's record
that they have military leader for years and years, I mean, it would be
nice to stop them right in the beginning other than waiting for 10 years
down the line which might create a bigger mess out there.

CONAN: Ahmit, that's a question for another program. I wanted to focus on
Iraq. But thank you very much for the call.

Walter Russell Mead, you mentioned violation of UN Security Council
resolutions, yet the United States doesn't seem to be getting an awful lot
of support on the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. MEAD: Well, I think the United States hasn't really yet begun to
concentrate on the Security Council. I think, you know, there's still a
debate in the administration obviously about what to do over Iraq. But
also, suppose they take the decision that, one way or another, they need
to move toward military action. Do they then go back to the Security
Council and get another resolution or do they take the position that the
Iraqi violation of the older cease-fires gives the US the right to
intervene without a new resolution? I think probably technically that's
correct, but politically, in my view, and my guess is ultimately in the
administration's view, the wiser course is to go back to the Security
Council. When they do that and when they present their case, I think it's
more than likely that they will get a solid majority on the Security
Council and no vetoes. But they haven't really yet begun to do that yet,
and I think it's going to be important in terms of preparing US domestic
and international opinion for a more active policy vis-a-vis Iraq.

CONAN: Walter Russell Mead, again, thanks very much for interrupting your
vacation. I hope the weather's better in South Carolina than it is here in
Washington.

Mr. MEAD: It's wonderful.

CONAN: Well, Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow of US foreign policy at
the Council on Foreign Relations, the author of "Special Providence:
American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World." He was with us from
Pawleys Island in South Carolina.

You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

The possibility of a US strike on Iraq has become an issue in the German
election campaign. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been saying all
along that he opposes a US strike against Iraq. His conservative opponent,
Edmund Stoiber, has been of the opposite view until today. Just today
Stoiber's conservative party reversed his position on Iraq. Joining us now
from Berlin is NPR's correspondent in Germany, Guy Raz.

Guy, good to have you back on the show.

GUY RAZ (NPR Reporter): Hi, Neal.

CONAN: Explain to us a little bit about Mr. Stoiber's decision.

RAZ: Well, it was very interesting. Edmund Stoiber, for the past several
weeks, has had what we would call a pro-American position on the Iraqi
question. He even called the chancellor's position irresponsible because
Chancellor Schroeder has already ruled out any possible military option.
Now over the weekend, there was a debate between the two major candidates,
and a very interesting thing about the debate was there was a
minute-by-minute public opinion survey that was taken. And that survey
showed that when Chancellor Schroeder discussed Iraq and reiterated his
policy--that is, being opposed to any military intervention--his support
shot through the roof, and what happened was Stoiber's declined when he
showed his support for the US policy. So today he made a statement, really
sort of a very strong statement, against the US policy in Iraq, against
the vice president's speech this week. So Mr. Stoiber's obviously trying
to get some mileage out of it.

CONAN: Now why has this been such a big deal in the German election
campaign?

RAZ: Well, it's very, very interesting. It's really suddenly dominated the
campaign here. I mean, Chancellor Schroeder faces a very grim economic
situation. You've got 10 percent unemployment and very, very slow growth.
So he's really needed to move the campaign away from the economy and shift
the discussion toward Iraq. I mean, the polls in Germany show that 75
percent of the public opposes the US position on Iraq. So he's--Chancellor
Schroeder's sort of taken up the European mantle against this possible
attack. He's even called it an adventure. And that prompted the US
ambassador here, Dan Coats, to reprimand the chancellor. And he even told
the newspaper here that Chancellor Schroeder's position was not helpful.
So Schroeder has really managed to make this issue a central theme in the
campaign, and again, he's really gotten a lot of political mileage out of
it. The polls have shown in the last couple days that his numbers are
rising very rapidly.

CONAN: Up until now, Stoiber, the challenger, the conservative, had been
ahead. Is it even now?

RAZ: It's getting pretty close. In some polls, the chancellor is within
the margin of error, but he does trail in almost all the polls. So what he
has tried to do is to use this issue to sort of deflect some of the
criticism away from his handling of the economy. It's been very, very
interesting.

CONAN: Germany has a parliamentary system and you don't necessarily vote
for a chancellor. You vote for a local candidate, who--then the party
elects--the party who has the most seats gets to appoint the chancellor.

RAZ: Right.

CONAN: Now does that play out into this?

RAZ: It does to a certain extent. And there have been some internal
discussions about the Iraq question in both of the major parties.
Obviously, the Social Democrats, Chancellor Schroeder's party, are--this
is the party that runs the government at the moment. And Germans, as you
mentioned, vote for parties, they don't vote for candidates. The
chancellor--Schroeder--he's really tried to turn this into a campaign of
personalities because his Social Democrats are very, very unpopular, but
he happens to be extremely popular. On a personal level, the Germans
really like him, they don't like Stoiber, but they don't like the Social
Democrats.

CONAN: So, quickly, Guy, at this point, no matter which party wins the
election in Germany, it looks as if Britain would remain as the only US
supporter on this question in Europe.

RAZ: So far it looks that way. I mean, we've seen French President Jacques
Chirac come out strongly against it, the leader of Belgium, leaders in the
European Union, and as you mentioned, Tony Blair is really the only one
who's sort of taken a position on this in support of the Bush
administration.

CONAN: Guy Raz, thanks very much for being with us.

RAZ: Thanks, Neal.

CONAN: Guy Raz, NPR's correspondent in Germany, and he spoke with us on
the line from Berlin.  In Washington, I'm Neal Conan, NPR News.

	---------------------------------------------