It is not easy for those of us who came of age politically during the Vietnam War to support any war, let alone one that does not respond to an imminent threat to our country. We know that war is horrible, even for the victors. And we distrust those who tell us that war is necessary, especially when we can see alternatives.
These are healthy instincts. They account for the opposition of many people to President Bush’s determination of go to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein. But even our best political instincts have to be checked against the truth of the situation we face. Unless Saddam changes direction and agrees to disarm, war is likely to be the best response to our situation.
What are the alternatives to war?
The first is deterrence. We can prevent Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction to pursue his aggressive designs against his neighbors by threatening once again to come to their aid if he attacks them.
Whether deterrence can work depends upon how we evaluate Saddam’s character and rule. Is Saddam a conventional dictator—a Somoza or a Brezhnev in the declining years of the Soviet Union—who is content to enjoy the perquisites of power over his own citizens? Or is Saddam something more akin to the tyrant Plato described in The Republic, a man driven by the restless pursuit of ever more power so as to attain territory, riches, and—most of all—distinction and glory?
The threat of retaliation might deter a conventional dictator—even one with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons—from attacking his neighbors. Conventional despots are conservative and risk averse. They prefer to die in bed. If Saddam is this kind of man, deterrence would work and we would have little to fear if he acquired weapons of mass destruction.
Tyrants, however, are willing to run great risks in pursuit of great historical achievement. And they would rather die a glorious death than give up their dreams. If Saddam is this kind of man, then his acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is one of the greatest threats we could face.
All the evidence before us suggests that Saddam is much more a tyrant driven to seek power and glory than a conventional dictator. He demands not just compliance with his rule but complete subjection. He terrorizes both the population of Iraq and his own subordinates, and not just by means of the random violence of his secret police agencies. He has also waged brutal war against his own citizens. The one party state of Iraq is dedicated to the glorification of Saddam. And his biographers tell us that he sees himself as the world-historical leader who will restore the Arab world to its former greatness.
Not only are Saddam’s ambitions great but his megalomania deafens him to the truth about his own capabilities. Thus, like other tyrants, he is prone to overestimate both his own strength and the weakness of his adversaries.
Twice Saddam has launched wars against his neighbors. Some writers blame those wars on border disputes with Iran and Kuwait or on the initial US acquiescence to Saddam’s actions, deliberately in the first case and by inadvertence in the second. But while a conventional dictator with limited aims might have started these two wars, only a tyrant would have fought them as Saddam did, using poison gas in his war against Iran and then thumbing his nose at the powerful military forces that eventually pushed him out of Kuwait. Moreover we know that Saddam launched his attack on Kuwait fully expecting to face US forces determined to expel him from the country.
If this history is not enough to make Saddam’s character apparent, we can look to the present circumstances. George W. Bush has made it abundantly clear that Saddam will be deposed by force if he does not give up his weapons of mass destruction. Faced with a threat that grows more serious with each shipment of men and materiel, Saddam refuses to retreat. He risks massive defeat and death, rather than give up his pursuit of glory. If Saddam is not willing to give up his weapons of mass destruction in order to avoid his destruction now, what hope can we have of deterring him once he acquires nuclear weapons?
If Saddam has nuclear weapons at his disposal, he is likely to invade his neighbors and then, if we challenge him, threaten to use his terrible weapons against Riyadh, Tel Aviv, or the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. This is a serious threat. An attack against the oil fields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the loss of Iraq’s own oil fields would reduce global oil production by over twenty percent, plunging the world into a severe depression. Or, even worse, Saddam could threaten our own cities by putting nuclear, chemical, or biological armaments in the hands of terrorists, whether his own agents or those of al Qaeda. It is not impossible for a nuclear device or a dirty, radiological bomb to be placed in a container ship, sailed into one of our harbors, and then detonated remotely.
We could deter Saddam’s use of nuclear weapons with threats to use our own weapons of mass destruction against him. But, aside from the dubious morality of such a threat, we would be placed in a terrible bind. Even to make such a threat while attacking his forces with conventional arms would encourage Saddam to use his terrible weapons against our allies or the oil fields or us in a last, desperate effort to win glory. Can we sensibly risk a world depression or the death of a million US citizens to protect Kuwait or Saudi Arabia? Saddam evidently thinks that we would not run any of these risks. That is precisely why he has been so determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
There is a second alternative to war: arms inspections. Can they stop Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons or destroy the stocks of biological or chemical weapons he already holds?
Somewhere in America there is a small terrorist cell, or perhaps a lone lunatic, who produced weaponized Anthrax, who sent it through the mail, who thereby killed a number of people, and who practically shut down the US Senate for a number of days. All the resources of the Federal government—including the military services and the FBI with all their technological means of investigation—together with the officers of a number of states, have not been able to find this person or persons. The laboratory at which this deadly weapon was created has not been found, even though the US government has extensive and up to date records of every place in this country where the Anthrax virus was located or could be produced or weaponized. Or so we thought.
Despite this failure, some people think that a handful of weapons inspectors—no more than 50 or 100 or even 500—backed by technological means of investigation will be able to scour a country the size of France and find the many, hidden laboratories at which Saddam has produced or tried to produce a variety of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. It is hardly plausible that arms inspectors could do this even if Saddam were not trying to frustrate their work. It is impossible for them to do so when Saddam is making every effort to thwart them and hide his weapons factories.
Can more coercive inspections force Saddam to cooperate? If we want Saddam to allow inspections to be effective we will, at some point, have to punish his lack of compliance by limited military action. Saddam, however, has shown that he is willing to take—or allow his citizens to take—terrible punishment. And, if we push Saddam far enough, then it is likely that he will start a war, if only to survive in power. However, a war of Saddam’s time and choosing is likely to be more dangerous both to us and the Iraqis than one on our own timetable.
If we do win some cooperation from a grudging Saddam, there is no guarantee that the inspectors will find all the facilities at which he is developing nuclear weapons before it is too late. Moreover, the world will eventually tire of US troops sitting on Saddam’s doorstep and occasionally attacking this or that laboratory or factory. Even if we wanted to (and could afford to) stay in the Persian Gulf indefinitely, our Arab allies will not let us do so. Remember that Osama Bin Laden’s first complaint is that we have stationed troops in Muslim lands. We have the support of Arab countries only because they expect Saddam soon to be either defanged or overthrown. Nor can we count on France, Russia, and China. Throughout the 1990s they opposed the use of force to back up inspections. Once the threat of war passes, France, Russia, and China are likely to push us once again to let Saddam off the hook. Then Saddam will once again order the arms inspectors out of Iraq.
There is, moreover, another problem with coercive arms inspections: In order to be effective they must be backed by an effective economic sanctions regime that funnels all Iraqi oil sales and imports through the UN. Otherwise, Saddam will continue to import the materiel he needs to make nuclear weapons. The trouble, however, is that Iraqi smuggling long ago made sanctions a joke. He has been able to export oil outside UN control and import a wide variety of goods without supervision. So long as Saddam can sell unlimited amounts of oil, it will be impossible to keep him from purchasing armaments. Yet we should not try to restrict his oil exports again. Saddam manipulated the oil for food program to such an extent that the revenues from his oil sales went more much to palaces and weapons than to food and medicine. Saddam’s regime grew stronger while his own people have suffered, with at least 200,000 Iraqis dying prematurely in the last ten years. Saddam is directly responsible for these deaths. But knowing how the Iraqi people will suffer as a result, we cannot in good conscience call for restrictions on Iraqi oil sales.
Coercive inspections and import regulations will also not solve a last problem. It will leave in place a regime that systematically tortures and kills its own citizens to survive in power. We do not have the resources or the responsibility to overthrow every oppressive regime in the world. But Saddam’s regime is among the worst. At some point, oppression becomes so tyrannical that the normal rules against intervention in foreign places no longer apply. Moreover, we bear some responsibility for the tens of thousands of his own citizens Saddam has tortured and killed in the last ten years. For it was our failure in 1991 to either finish the job ourselves or give support to the Iraqi opposition bent on overthrowing him that enabled Saddam to remain in power.
We do not know whether a US war against Saddam will lead to a more or less liberal democratic regime in that country. That would be a promising result, not just for Iraq but for the whole Arab world. Iraq has more potential to become a decent, liberal, and democratic state than probably any other country in the region. But creating such a regime will be difficult to achieve. Still, even if we leave Iraq in a difficult state, almost any post-Saddam Iraqi regime would be a much better place for its citizens.
A program of coercive arms inspections and import controls, then, would require a long term commitment on the part of the UN, our European allies, and the Arab countries to regulate their own trade with Iraq, to allow massive American forces to remain the region, and to use those forces in limited strikes each time Saddam frustrates our efforts. There is no reason to think that such commitment will be forthcoming. Moreover this program offers no guarantee that Saddam’s efforts to develop terrible weapons will fail. It will leave Saddam to exercise his tyranny over his own citizenry. And, if Saddam’s power does wane, he is likely to force war upon us at a time of his own choosing.
A program of coercive arms inspections and import controls, then, would require a long term commitment on the part of the UN, our European allies, and the Arab countries to regulate their own trade with Iraq, to allow massive American forces to remain the region, and to use those forces in limited strikes each time Saddam frustrates our efforts. Moreover this program offers no guarantee that Saddam’s efforts to develop terrible weapons will fail. It will leave Saddam to exercise his tyranny over his own citizenry. And, if Saddam’s power does wane, he is likely to force war upon us at a time of his own choosing.
I see little reason to expect either our European or Arab allies to agree or keep their agreements to impose a serious inspection and import regulation regime. Still, it might be advisable to try coercive inspections and import regulations before going ahead with a full scale invasion. Make no mistake, a program of coercive inspections and regulations is not a decision against war. It is a decision to use limited war and the threat of war to diminish Saddam’s control over Iraq. This choice has some advantages: It puts off the terrible decision to launch a full scale war that will kill thousands of people. Although this program does little for Iraqi citizens, if enforced vigorously, it might keep Saddam from developing nuclear weapons and eventually lead to his demise. And it might overcome the tensions between the America and our European allies both now and, if war becomes necessary, later.
Limited war makes sense however, only if we are prepared to go further. If it becomes evident that we cannot control Saddam’s imports or his arms developments, we must come back to the option of using force to remove Saddam from power. War will have terrible costs. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians died in the Persian Gulf War. Even though Saddam is weaker today, a similar number may well die in a new war. There are other dangers, too. A war against Saddam is likely to simulate some Islamic fundamentalist to become terrorists, although a striking defeat of Saddam may turn as many away from that path. (And, as we saw above, keeping a quarter of a million troops in the Persian Gulf indefinitely is itself an incentive to terrorism.)
It is terribly hard to recommend a path of action certain to bring death to thousands. Yet, the alternatives to war are sure to bring death to a much larger number of people. At best, to allow Saddam to stay in power is to condemn tens of thousands of his own citizens. At worst, Saddam will soon acquire nuclear weapons and then once again set out conquer one or more neighboring countries. Over a million people have already died in wars started by a Saddam without nuclear weapons. How many will die if he has such weapons?
To be a political leader is to take on the responsibility for looking to the future plainly, without wishful thinking. It is to be willing to make the difficult choices most of us would prefer to avoid. For all their many faults, the leaders of this country are carrying out their responsibility. George W. Bush can be criticized for moving too ineffectively to build the international support we need not so much to remove Saddam from power but to rebuild Iraq after the war. But he has been hampered by European allies who for over ten years have been striking poses of independence or working to insure their economic interests while leaving us to deal with the problem of Saddam. President Bush has also been hampered by people, here and abroad, who have failed to understand the seriousness of that problem. A war against Saddam might have been prevented if we were more steadfast and united. The divisions among us have only strengthened Saddam’s determination to resist disarming.
We should be wary and critical when the leaders of our government tell us that war is necessary. We should push them to seek international support for a war against Iraq. And we should insist that the US build a free, liberal, and democratic government in Iraq when the war is over. But we should not fail to follow them when they are in the right.