[Peace-discuss] Assume they find WMDs

[patton paul]

Here is a well reasoned article arguing that Saddam is eminently deterable
even if he has some remaining WMDs.  It appeared in 'Foreign Policy'
(and was referenced in a 'Moveon.org' mailing).  When reading this keep in
mind also the dangerous effect that the pre-emptive war doctrine is having
on North Korea.
-Paul P.

An Unnecessary War
In the full-court press for war with Iraq, the Bush administration deems
Saddam Hussein reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational. Such a man,
when mixed with nuclear weapons, is too unpredictable to be prevented from
threatening the United States, the hawks say. But scrutiny of his past
dealings with the world shows that Saddam, though cruel and calculating,
is eminently deterrable.

By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

Should the United States invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein? If the
United States is already at war with Iraq when this article is published,
the immediate cause is likely to be Saddams failure to comply with the new
U.N. inspections regime to the Bush administrations satisfaction. But this
failure is not the real reason Saddam and the United States have been on a
collision course over the past year.

The deeper root of the conflict is the U.S. position that Saddam must be
toppled because he cannot be deterred from using weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). Advocates of preventive war use numerous arguments to
make their case, but their trump card is the charge that Saddams past
behavior proves he is too reckless, relentless, and aggressive to be
allowed to possess WMD, especially nuclear weapons. They sometimes admit
that war against Iraq might be costly, might lead to a lengthy U.S.
occupation, and might complicate U.S. relations with other countries. But
these concerns are eclipsed by the belief that the combination of Saddam
plus nuclear weapons is too dangerous to accept. For that reason alone, he
has to go.

Even many opponents of preventive war seem to agree deterrence will not
work in Iraq. Instead of invading Iraq and overthrowing the regime,
however, these moderates favor using the threat of war to compel Saddam to
permit new weapons inspections. Their hope is that inspections will
eliminate any hidden WMD stockpiles and production facilities and ensure
Saddam cannot acquire any of these deadly weapons. Thus, both the
hard-line preventive-war advocates and the more moderate supporters of
inspections accept the same basic premise: Saddam Hussein is not
deterrable, and he cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear arsenal.

One problem with this argument: It is almost certainly wrong. The belief
that Saddams past behavior shows he cannot be contained rests on distorted
history and faulty logic. In fact, the historical record shows that the
United States can contain Iraq effectivelyeven if Saddam has nuclear
weaponsjust as it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Regardless of whether Iraq complies with U.N. inspections or what the
inspectors find, the campaign to wage war against Iraq rests on a flimsy
foundation.

Is Saddam a Serial Aggressor?
Those who call for preventive war begin by portraying Saddam as a serial
aggressor bent on dominating the Persian Gulf. The war party also contends
that Saddam is either irrational or prone to serious miscalculation, which
means he may not be deterred by even credible threats of retaliation.
Kenneth Pollack, former director for gulf affairs at the National Security
Council and a proponent of war with Iraq, goes so far as to argue that
Saddam is unintentionally suicidal.

The facts, however, tell a different story. Saddam has dominated Iraqi
politics for more than 30 years. During that period, he started two wars
against his neighborsIran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. Saddams record in
this regard is no worse than that of neighboring states such as Egypt or
Israel, each of which played a role in starting several wars since 1948.
Furthermore, a careful look at Saddams two wars shows his behavior was far
from reckless. Both times, he attacked because Iraq was vulnerable and
because he believed his targets were weak and isolated. In each case, his
goal was to rectify Iraqs strategic dilemma with a limited military
victory. Such reasoning does not excuse Saddams aggression, but his
willingness to use force on these occasions hardly demonstrates that he
cannot be deterred.

The Iran-Iraq War, 198088
Iran was the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf during the 1970s. Its
strength was partly due to its large population (roughly three times that
of Iraq) and its oil reserves, but it also stemmed from the strong support
the shah of Iran received from the United States. Relations between Iraq
and Iran were quite hostile throughout this period, but Iraq was in no
position to defy Irans regional dominance. Iran put constant pressure on
Saddams regime during the early 1970s, mostly by fomenting unrest among
Iraqs sizable Kurdish minority. Iraq finally persuaded the shah to stop
meddling with the Kurds in 1975, but only by agreeing to cede half of the
Shatt al-Arab waterway to Iran, a concession that underscored Iraqs
weakness.

It is thus not surprising that Saddam welcomed the shahs ouster in 1979.
Iraq went to considerable lengths to foster good relations with Irans
revolutionary leadership. Saddam did not exploit the turmoil in Iran to
gain strategic advantage over his neighbor and made no attempt to reverse
his earlier concessions, even though Iran did not fully comply with the
terms of the 1975 agreement. Ruhollah Khomeini, on the other hand, was
determined to extend his revolution across the Islamic world, starting
with Iraq. By late 1979, Tehran was pushing the Kurdish and Shiite
populations in Iraq to revolt and topple Saddam, and Iranian operatives
were trying to assassinate senior Iraqi officials. Border clashes became
increasingly frequent by April 1980, largely at Irans instigation.

Facing a grave threat to his regime, but aware that Irans military
readiness had been temporarily disrupted by the revolution, Saddam
launched a limited war against his bitter foe on September 22, 1980. His
principal aim was to capture a large slice of territory along the
Iraq-Iran border, not to conquer Iran or topple Khomeini. The war began,
as military analyst Efraim Karsh writes, because the weaker state, Iraq,
attempted to resist the hegemonic aspirations of its stronger neighbor,
Iran, to reshape the regional status quo according to its own image.

Iran and Iraq fought for eight years, and the war cost the two antagonists
more than 1 million casualties and at least $150 billion. Iraq received
considerable outside support from other countriesincluding the United
States, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Francelargely because these states were
determined to prevent the spread of Khomeinis Islamic revolution. Although
the war cost Iraq far more than Saddam expected, it also thwarted
Khomeinis attempt to topple him and dominate the region. War with Iran was
not a reckless adventure; it was an opportunistic response to a
significant threat.

The Gulf War, 199091
But what about Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in August 1990? Perhaps the
earlier war with Iran was essentially defensive, but surely this was not
true in the case of Kuwait. Doesnt Saddams decision to invade his tiny
neighbor prove he is too rash and aggressive to be trusted with the most
destructive weaponry? And doesnt his refusal to withdraw, even when
confronted by a superior coalition, demonstrate he is unintentionally
suicidal?

The answer is no. Once again, a careful look shows Saddam was neither
mindlessly aggressive nor particularly reckless. If anything, the evidence
supports the opposite conclusion.

Saddams decision to invade Kuwait was primarily an attempt to deal with
Iraqs continued vulnerability. Iraqs economy, badly damaged by its war
with Iran, continued to decline after that war ended. An important cause
of Iraqs difficulties was Kuwaits refusal both to loan Iraq $10 billion
and to write off debts Iraq had incurred during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam
believed Iraq was entitled to additional aid because the country helped
protect Kuwait and other Gulf states from Iranian expansionism. To make
matters worse, Kuwait was overproducing the quotas set by the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which drove down world oil prices and
reduced Iraqi oil profits. Saddam tried using diplomacy to solve the
problem, but Kuwait hardly budged. As Karsh and fellow Hussein biographer
Inari Rautsi note, the Kuwaitis suspected that some concessions might be
necessary, but were determined to reduce them to the barest minimum.
Saddam reportedly decided on war sometime in July 1990, but before sending
his army into Kuwait, he approached the United States to find out how it
would react. In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S.
Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, [W]e have no opinion on the
Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. The U.S.
State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had no special
defense or security commitments to Kuwait. The United States may not have
intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did.

Saddam invaded Kuwait in early August 1990. This act was an obvious
violation of international law, and the United States was justified in
opposing the invasion and organizing a coalition against it. But Saddams
decision to invade was hardly irrational or reckless. Deterrence did not
fail in this case; it was never tried.

But what about Saddams failure to leave Kuwait once the United States
demanded a return to the status quo ante? Wouldnt a prudent leader have
abandoned Kuwait before getting clobbered? With hindsight, the answer
seems obvious, but Saddam had good reasons to believe hanging tough might
work. It was not initially apparent that the United States would actually
fight, and most Western military experts predicted the Iraqi army would
mount a formidable defense. These forecasts seem foolish today, but many
people believed them before the war began.

Once the U.S. air campaign had seriously damaged Iraqs armed forces,
however, Saddam began searching for a diplomatic solution that would allow
him to retreat from Kuwait before a ground war began. Indeed, Saddam made
clear he was willing to pull out completely. Instead of allowing Iraq to
withdraw and fight another day, then U.S. President George H.W. Bush and
his administration wisely insisted the Iraqi army leave its equipment
behind as it withdrew. As the administration had hoped, Saddam could not
accept this kind of deal.

Saddam undoubtedly miscalculated when he attacked Kuwait, but the history
of warfare is full of cases where leaders have misjudged the prospects for
war. No evidence suggests Hussein did not weigh his options carefully,
however. He chose to use force because he was facing a serious challenge
and because he had good reasons to think his invasion would not provoke
serious opposition.

Nor should anyone forget that the Iraqi tyrant survived the Kuwait
debacle, just as he has survived other threats against his regime. He is
now beginning his fourth decade in power. If he is really unintentionally
suicidal, then his survival instincts appear to be even more finely honed.

History provides at least two more pieces of evidence that demonstrate
Saddam is deterrable. First, although he launched conventionally armed
Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel during the Gulf War, he did not
launch chemical or biological weapons at the coalition forces that were
decimating the Iraqi military. Moreover, senior Iraqi officialsincluding
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and the former head of military
intelligence, General Wafiq al-Samarraihave said that Iraq refrained from
using chemical weapons because the Bush Sr. administration made ambiguous
but unmistakable threats to retaliate if Iraq used WMD. Second, in 1994
Iraq mobilized the remnants of its army on the Kuwaiti border in an
apparent attempt to force a modification of the U.N. Special Commissions
(UNSCOM) weapons inspection regime. But when the United Nations issued a
new warning and the United States reinforced its troops in Kuwait, Iraq
backed down quickly. In both cases, the allegedly irrational Iraqi leader
was deterred.

Saddams Use of Chemical Weapons
Preventive-war advocates also use a second line of argument. They point
out that Saddam has used WMD against his own people (the Kurds) and
against Iran and that therefore he is likely to use them against the
United States. Thus, U.S. President George W. Bush recently warned in
Cincinnati that the Iraqi WMD threat against the United States is already
significant, and it only grows worse with time. The United States, in
other words, is in imminent danger.

Saddams record of chemical weapons use is deplorable, but none of his
victims had a similar arsenal and thus could not threaten to respond in
kind. Iraqs calculations would be entirely different when facing the
United States because Washington could retaliate with WMD if Iraq ever
decided to use these weapons first. Saddam thus has no incentive to use
chemical or nuclear weapons against the United States and its alliesunless
his survival is threatened. This simple logic explains why he did not use
WMD against U.S. forces during the Gulf War and has not fired chemical or
biological warheads at Israel.

Furthermore, if Saddam cannot be deterred, what is stopping him from using
WMD against U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, which have bombed Iraq
repeatedly over the past decade? The bottom line: Deterrence has worked
well against Saddam in the past, and there is no reason to think it cannot
work equally well in the future.

President Bushs repeated claim that the threat from Iraq is growing makes
little sense in light of Saddams past record, and these statements should
be viewed as transparent attempts to scare Americans into supporting a
war. CIA Director George Tenet flatly contradicted the president in an
October 2002 letter to Congress, explaining that Saddam was unlikely to
initiate a WMD attack against any U.S. target unless Washington provoked
him. Even if Iraq did acquire a larger WMD arsenal, the United States
would still retain a massive nuclear retaliatory capability. And if Saddam
would only use WMD if the United States threatened his regime, then one
wonders why advocates of war are trying to do just that.

Hawks do have a fallback position on this issue. Yes, the United States
can try to deter Saddam by threatening to retaliate with massive force.
But this strategy may not work because Iraqs past use of chemical weapons
against the Kurds and Iran shows that Saddam is a warped human being who
might use WMD without regard for the consequences.

Unfortunately for those who now favor war, this argument is difficult to
reconcile with the United States past support for Iraq, support that
coincided with some of the behavior now being invoked to portray him as an
irrational madman. The United States backed Iraq during the 1980swhen
Saddam was gassing Kurds and Iraniansand helped Iraq use chemical weapons
more effectively by providing it with satellite imagery of Iranian troop
positions. The Reagan administration also facilitated Iraqs efforts to
develop biological weapons by allowing Baghdad to import disease-producing
biological materials such as anthrax, West Nile virus, and botulinal
toxin. A central figure in the effort to court Iraq was none other than
current U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was then President
Ronald Reagans special envoy to the Middle East. He visited Baghdad and
met with Saddam in 1983, with the explicit aim of fostering better
relations between the United States and Iraq. In October 1989, about a
year after Saddam gassed the Kurds, President George H.W. Bush signed a
formal national security directive declaring, Normal relations between the
United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote
stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East.

If Saddams use of chemical weapons so clearly indicates he is a madman and
cannot be contained, why did the United States fail to see that in the
1980s? Why were Rumsfeld and former President Bush then so unconcerned
about his chemical and biological weapons? The most likely answer is that
U.S. policymakers correctly understood Saddam was unlikely to use those
weapons against the United States and its allies unless Washington
threatened him directly. The real puzzle is why they think it would be
impossible to deter him today.

Saddam With Nukes
The third strike against a policy of containment, according to those who
have called for war, is that such a policy is unlikely to stop Saddam from
getting nuclear weapons. Once he gets them, so the argument runs, a host
of really bad things will happen. For example, President Bush has warned
that Saddam intends to blackmail the world; likewise, National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice believes he would use nuclear weapons to
blackmail the entire international community. Others fear a nuclear
arsenal would enable Iraq to invade its neighbors and then deter the
United States from ousting the Iraqi army as it did in 1991. Even worse,
Saddam might surreptitiously slip a nuclear weapon to al Qaeda or some
like-minded terrorist organization, thereby making it possible for these
groups to attack the United States directly.

The administration and its supporters may be right in one sense:
Containment may not be enough to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear
weapons someday. Only the conquest and permanent occupation of Iraq could
guarantee that. Yet the United States can contain a nuclear Iraq, just as
it contained the Soviet Union. None of the nightmare scenarios invoked by
preventive-war advocates are likely to happen.

Consider the claim that Saddam would employ nuclear blackmail against his
adversaries. To force another state to make concessions, a blackmailer
must make clear that he would use nuclear weapons against the target state
if he does not get his way. But this strategy is feasible only if the
blackmailer has nuclear weapons but neither the target state nor its
allies do.

If the blackmailer and the target state both have nuclear weapons,
however, the blackmailers threat is an empty one because the blackmailer
cannot carry out the threat without triggering his own destruction. This
logic explains why the Soviet Union, which had a vast nuclear arsenal for
much of the Cold War, was never able to blackmail the United States or its
allies and did not even try.

But what if Saddam invaded Kuwait again and then said he would use nuclear
weapons if the United States attempted another Desert Storm? Again, this
threat is not credible. If Saddam initiated nuclear war against the United
States over Kuwait, he would bring U.S. nuclear warheads down on his own
head. Given the choice between withdrawing or dying, he would almost
certainly choose the former. Thus, the United States could wage Desert
Storm II against a nuclear-armed Saddam without precipitating nuclear war.

Ironically, some of the officials now advocating war used to recognize
that Saddam could not employ nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. In
the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, for example, National
Security Advisor Rice described how the United States should react if Iraq
acquired WMD. The first line of defense, she wrote, should be a clear and
classical statement of deterrenceif they do acquire WMD, their weapons
will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national
obliteration. If she believed Iraqs weapons would be unusable in 2000, why
does she now think Saddam must be toppled before he gets them? For that
matter, why does she now think a nuclear arsenal would enable Saddam to
blackmail the entire international community, when she did not even
mention this possibility in 2000?

What About Nuclear Handoff?
Of course, now the real nightmare scenario is that Saddam would give
nuclear weapons secretly to al Qaeda or some other terrorist group. Groups
like al Qaeda would almost certainly try to use those weapons against
Israel or the United States, and so these countries have a powerful
incentive to take all reasonable measures to keep these weapons out of
their hands.

However, the likelihood of clandestine transfer by Iraq is extremely
small. First of all, there is no credible evidence that Iraq had anything
to do with the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon or more generally that Iraq is collaborating with al Qaeda
against the United States. Hawks inside and outside the Bush
administration have gone to extraordinary lengths over the past months to
find a link, but they have come up empty-handed.

The lack of evidence of any genuine connection between Saddam and al Qaeda
is not surprising because relations between Saddam and al Qaeda have been
quite poor in the past. Osama bin Laden is a radical fundamentalist (like
Khomeini), and he detests secular leaders like Saddam. Similarly, Saddam
has consistently repressed fundamentalist movements within Iraq. Given
this history of enmity, the Iraqi dictator is unlikely to give al Qaeda
nuclear weapons, which it might use in ways he could not control.

Intense U.S. pressure, of course, might eventually force these unlikely
allies together, just as the United States and Communist Russia became
allies during World War II. Saddam would still be unlikely to share his
most valuable weaponry with al Qaeda, however, because he could not be
confident it would not be used in ways that place his own survival in
jeopardy. During the Cold War, the United States did not share all its WMD
expertise with its own allies, and the Soviet Union balked at giving
nuclear weapons to China despite their ideological sympathies and repeated
Chinese requests. No evidence suggests Saddam would act differently.

Second, Saddam could hardly be confident that the transfer would go
undetected. Since September 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and those of
its allies have been riveted on al Qaeda and Iraq, paying special
attention to finding links between them. If Iraq possessed nuclear
weapons, U.S. monitoring of those two adversaries would be further
intensified. To give nuclear materials to al Qaeda, Saddam wodld have to
bet he could elude the eyes and ears of numerous i_telligence services
determined to catch him if he tries a nuclear handoff. This bet would not
be a safe one.

But even if Saddam thought he could covertly smuggle nuclear weapons to
bin Laden, he would still be unlikely to do so. Saddam has been trying to
acquire these weapons for over 20 years, at great cost and risk. Is it
likely he would then turn around and give them away? Furthermore, giving
nuclear weapons to al Qaeda would be extremely risky for Saddameven if he
could do so without being detectedbecause he would lose all control over
when and where they would be used. And Saddam could never be sure the
United States would not incinerate him anyway if it merely suspected he
had made it possible for anyone to strike the United States with nuclear
weapons. The U.S. government and a clear majority of Americans are already
deeply suspicious of Iraq, and a nuclear attack against the United States
or its allies would raise that hostility to fever pitch. Saddam does not
have to be certain the United States would retaliate to be wary of giving
his nuclear weapons to al Qaeda; he merely has to suspect it might.

In sum, Saddam cannot afford to guess wrong on whether he would be
detected providing al Qaeda with nuclear weapons, nor can he afford to
guess wrong that Iraq would be spared if al Qaeda launched a nuclear
strike against the United States or its allies. And the threat of U.S.
retaliation is not as far-fetched as one might think. The United States
has enhanced its flexible nuclear options in recent years, and no one
knows just how vengeful Americans might feel if WMD were ever used against
the U.S. homeland. Indeed, nuclear terrorism is as dangerous for Saddam as
it is for Americans, and he has no more incentive to give al Qaeda nuclear
weapons than the United States doesunless, of course, the country makes
clear it is trying to overthrow him. Instead of attacking Iraq and giving
Saddam nothing to lose, the Bush administration should be signaling it
would hold him responsible if some terrorist group used WMD against the
United States, even if it cannot prove he is to blame.

Vigilant Containment
It is not surprising that those who favor war with Iraq portray Saddam as
an inveterate and only partly rational aggressor. They are in the business
of selling a preventive war, so they must try to make remaining at peace
seem unacceptably dangerous. And the best way to do that is to inflate the
threat, either by exaggerating Iraqs capabilities or by suggesting
horrible things will happen if the United States does not act soon. It is
equally unsurprising that advocates of war are willing to distort the
historical record to make their case. As former U.S. Secretary of State
Dean Acheson famously remarked, in politics, advocacy must be clearer than
truth.

In this case, however, the truth points the other way. Both logic and
historical evidence suggest a policy of vigilant containment would work,
both now and in the event Iraq acquires a nuclear arsenal. Why? Because
the United States and its regional allies are far stronger than Iraq. And
because it does not take a genius to figure out what would happen if Iraq
tried to use WMD to blackmail its neighbors, expand its territory, or
attack another state directly. It only takes a leader who wants to stay
alive and who wants to remain in power. Throughout his lengthy and brutal
career, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly shown that these two goals are
absolutely paramount. That is why deterrence and containment would work.

If the United States is, or soon will be, at war with Iraq, Americans
should understand that a compelling strategic rationale is absent. This
war would be one the Bush administration chose to fight but did not have
to fight. Even if such a war goes well and has positive long-range
consequences, it will still have been unnecessary. And if it goes
badlywhether in the form of high U.S. casualties, significant civilian
deaths, a heightened risk of terrorism, or increased hatred of the United
States in the Arab and Islamic worldthen its architects will have even
more to answer for.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service
professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he
codirects the Program in International Security Policy. He is the author
of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
Stephen M. Walt is the academic dean and the Robert and Renee Belfer
professor of international affairs at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of
Government. He is faculty chair of the International Security Program at
the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and is writing a
book on global responses to American primacy.