Getting It Backward on Iraq

F. Gregory Gause III

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999

Article preview: first 500 of 4,107 words total.

Summary:  The Clinton administration supports crippling economic sanctions that punish the Iraqi people but seems ready to live with the demise of international inspections to monitor Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. Washington has it exactly backward. It should offer Baghdad a blunt trade: lightened sanctions in return for renewed, intrusive arms inspections. The sweeping sanctions regime does nothing to advance U.S. interests, undermine Saddam, or contain Iraq. Leaving Saddam's arsenal unwatched is folly. Better to have arms inspections without sanctions than sanctions without arms inspections.

F. Gregory Gause III is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont and author of Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States.

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

The latest twist in the Clinton administration's Iraq policy is an attempt to ratchet up military and political pressure on Saddam Hussein. The brief but intensive air campaign of December 1998 -- Operation Desert Fox -- was followed by an expansion of the rules of engagement for American and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi provocations and subsequent allied reprisals against Iraqi military targets now occur almost daily.

The administration has also appointed a special coordinator for Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, to oversee implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act and help coordinate efforts by Iraqi opposition groups to overthrow Saddam. Both Ricciardone and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Martin Indyk have held public consultations with opposition figures, including representatives of the largest Iraqi Shiite organization, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) -- a group the administration had previously avoided because of its close connections to Iran. A serious debate is now underway between those who advocate a greater commitment of American force to topple Saddam and those who argue that containment of Iraq is the only feasible U.S. goal.

This new level of activity and debate, however, has obscured the immediate crisis that U.S. Iraq policy faces. On the ground in Iraq, there is currently no monitoring or inspection of Iraq's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The United Nations Special Commission for the disarmament of Iraq (UNSCOM) has effectively ceased to function; its inspectors have been withdrawn and its long-term monitoring systems abandoned.

The United States, meanwhile, continues to support crippling economic sanctions on Iraq that have neither weakened Saddam's hold on power nor prevented him from pursuing his WMD programs. They have, however, reduced the Iraqi people to penury. Iraqi society, once relatively prosperous and solidly middle class, is now mired in a daily struggle for survival. Most people live hand to mouth, relying on inadequate rations provided by the U.N. "oil for food" program. Iraq's medical and educational systems, once the envy of the Arab world, are in disarray. The social disintegration brought on by sanctions is not only a tragedy in its own right, but also diminishes the already slim chance that internal Iraqi discontent could be converted into sustained popular rebellion: people consumed with finding their next meal do not have time to overthrow dictators.

The Clinton administration is apparently content to live with the end of international monitoring and inspection and to manage the threat Saddam poses through a combination of the sanctions and the new, more aggressive military posture. They have it backward. The United States should instead formulate a "take it or leave it" proposal for Iraq, involving a substantial revision of the sanctions in exchange for the return of intrusive, on-the-ground inspections designed to keep Iraq's WMD programs under observation and control.

The proposed revision of the sanctions regime should include three elements. The first is a lifting of limits ...

End of preview: first 500 of 4,107 words total.