A UN Conference After Iraq's Withdrawal

By George W. Ball

In developing a negotiated settlement, we should, among other things, use the machinery of the UN to try to build a bridge on which a weakened Iraqi government could retire from its entrenched position. At the same time a settlement, once achieved, should be so designed and presented as to minimize any impression that Saddam Hussain had gained any advantage from his aggression.

Whether Hussain may be willing to accept such outcomes remains hard to say. He has been systematically looting Kuwait not merely of funds in its central bank but also of a vast amount of valuable and useful goods, ranging from computers to traffic lights and Islamic works of art. Some Saudis now speculate that he may have decided that he cannot forever hold out against consolidated world opinion and is planning to give back Kuwait, holding on to as much of the loot as he can, while retaining at least one of the two long-disputed islands that would provide Iraq with access to the Gulf.

As is well known, both Iraq and Kuwait have competing historical claims to bits and pieces of territory, and one course worth considering would be to request that the World Court at The Hague formally survey and redraw the official boundary between the two countries. Alternatively, that task might be entrusted to a special impartial commission established by the Security Council, as was done on Jan. 20, 1948, to draw a cease fire line between Pakistan and India, which in time became the permanent boundary.

Even without waiting for the results of a World Court decision, an agreement might be negotiated either for granting or leasing one or both of the Kuwaiti offshore islands to provide Iraq with a limited seacoast so that shipping could have access to Iraqi oil.

Although at the outset of the crisis the press interpreted President Bush's statements as implying that he included in America's essential aims the removal of Saddam Hussain as leader of Iraq, it soon became clear that no Security Council resolution calling for such an outcome could be framed, let alone passed. Thus President Bush has formulated America's war aims as the securing of compliance with all of the relevant Security Council resolutions so far adopted.

Even that limited statement has not been fully accepted in the Pentagon, if one can believe the words of General Dugan. Presumably not only he but many like-minded air force officers still want to carry out the press's interpretations of President Bush's original statement of war aims. The general told the press that the air force would, if unleashed, follow the advice of Israeli officials that "the best way to hurt Saddam" is "to target his family, his personal guard and his mistress"; because he is "a one-man show" he "ought to be at the focus of our efforts."

I hope that, for once, we will turn our back on Israel's advice. Unlike Israel, America is not surrounded by enemies.

Who can assure us that the death or removal of Saddam Hussain would neutralize the menace of an aggressive Iraq? Is it not likely that he would be succeeded by a leader with many of the same poisonous qualities?

Because many in the Middle East would understandably feel apprehensive if Saddam were to withdraw from Kuwait but still retain control of the Iraqi military, some provision must be made to allay those fears. After—but only after—Iraq has actually withdrawn its forces, we might arrange for a UN peace-keeping force to be installed in Kuwait. That force should consist of military elements from countries neutral in the present conflict.

A settlement should minimize any impression that Saddam has gained any advantage from his aggression.

America, it has been all too frequently said, often finds it easy to involve itself in overseas wars but has trouble finding a means of disengagement. When, as undersecretary of state three decades ago, I was vainly trying to halt America's Vietnam embroilment, I urged President Johnson that we should develop a doctrine of extrication. Such a doctrine, I contended, might not only provide us with an opportune exit from a deteriorating situation, but could furnish a useful guide to prevent our blundering into another bottomless swamp.

Although my advice of the Sixties should not be wholly disregarded today, we should recognize that mere extrication is an inadequate objective in the Gulf crisis. Thus, if we are to avoid later Middle East conflicts that might ensnare us, we should riot limit our objectives merely to halting Saddam Hussain but should also use the occasion to ameliorate—or if possible remove—festering situations that could erupt into further wars. I suggest that we work through the UN to put to rest the region's long-held feuds and rivalries and correct longstanding injustices.

We could, in my view, probably gain some negotiating advantage by firmly promising that, once the Gulf crisis were disposed of (and only then), the US would initiate an all-inclusive reconsideration of Middle East problems, expressly including the Palestinian issue.

The timing of such a comprehensive, fresh look at Middle East problems should not be explicitly related to the end of the current Gulf crisis but rather to the end of the cold war. Frequently in history the end of an epoch has been followed by comprehensive diplomacy to rearrange the political furniture.

Thus I suggest that we undertake to arrange a conference, this time directed specifically at resolving the problems of the Middle East. Such a conference should be called by the Security Council and should have a twofold objective: to assure both security and peace.

Such a conference should be called by the Security Council and should have a two-fold objective: to assure both security and peace.

In dealing with "security" the conference would undertake to reduce existing armaments in the region to rational levels. It would seek to eliminate all unconventional weapons and the facilities for producing them, as well as to arrange controls on the flow of both conventional and unconventional arms into the Mideast.

That would mean both requiring the abandonment of Iraq's potential nuclear arms production, and also scrapping Israel's existing production facilities and its nuclear arsenal. It also means eliminating Iraq's and Israel's biological and chemical weapons-production facilities, as well as those of Libya and other Arab countries. The agreements reached on these measures would have to be meticulously monitored by United Nations agencies, and the conference should provide for stern and effective measures to prevent violations to include other weapons as well.

Today the Middle East is made insecure by bitterly challenged borders—between, for example, Mauritania and Morocco, Morocco and Algeria, Libya and Chad, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

In addition, there is the well founded demand of the Palestinians for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied areas, in accordance with several UN resolutions, and for a guarantee of the right of Palestinians to build a nation of their own—to which, as I see it, they are fully entitled. A major conference is essential to resolve these deep-rooted arguments.

The conference would discuss the most pressing disputed issues now pending in the area and try to find compromise solutions.

To follow a sensible and ultimately productive course in the current Gulf crisis, the American people must reconcile themselves to a long waiting period. They must resist all temptations to interpret incidents of accidental carnage or political insult as excuses for war. To achieve such a rational state of mind will take firm leadership by the president and his colleagues, plus a strict resolve to abjure inflammatory attitudes and macho posturing no matter how seductive their political potential.

If we do stay the course with calmness and prudence we shall either win or at least gain experience for undertaking the longer-term project of helping to bring about a new structure in the Middle East. That, in my view, is an enterprise we dare not dismiss; we would be madly irresponsible were we to enter the new century with one of its most important regions metastasized with hatred and bigotry, and permanently on the brink of a war that could become increasingly destructive, and, as technology develops, uncontrollable.

This is abridged, with permission, from an article by former Undersecretary of State George W Ball in the Dec. 6, 1990 edition of the New York Review of Books.