Stick With the Economic Sanctions

By Robert V. Keeley

We don't need to go to war with Iraq to resolve the current crisis in the gulf. We should stick with President Bush's original game plan, which was to count on the economic sanctions imposed against Iraq to achieve our objectives of forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, restoring the legitimate government of Kuwait, liberating all hostages—all three goals embodied in UN Security Council resolutions—and creating new arrangements for the general security of the Gulf region.

Those who have been pressing the war option on the president are misguided and harbor not-so hidden agendas. These may have their merits, but they do not justify the costs they would entail in American, Iraqi and other lives, the vast expenditure of military materiel, the destruction of valuable infrastructure in the region, and the severe damage to America's relations with the countries of the Middle East for decades to come.

These other agendas include the overthrow of Saddam Hussain, the elimination of Iraq's aggressive war-making potential, especially its existing or potential weapons of mass destruction, and even the dismemberment of Iraq and a re-ordering of the balance of power in the region.

The first of these we should leave to the Iraqi people to deal with, the second can be accomplished by maintaining a strict embargo on military materiel indefinitely, and the last two are unworthy objectives that have more to do with revenge than with rational foreign policy.

Those advocating a military campaign against Iraq—and it would be a campaign; forget about the myth of a "surgical strike" or strikes—argue that economic boycotts have never worked. Those experts most familiar with Iraq and the area, however, overwhelmingly believe that the sanctions are already biting, and that given enough time they can accomplish their objective of forcing Iraq to retreat, either under the leadership of Saddam Hussain or of a successor.

The "failure" of the UN sanctions against Rhodesia is not a good analogy. Rhodesia had one very friendly neighbor—South Africa—which not only made a mockery of the sanctions but actively facilitated the Ian Smith regime's ability to sell its exports and provided the channel for essential imports—primarily oil that kept the country alive and actually prospering.

Iraq has no friendly neighbors. It has no means of exporting the one commodity—oil—that provides practically all of its earnings. Its assets abroad are frozen. It has no means of paying any bills to anyone. Those individuals or firms willing to violate the sanctions by smuggling things in (one can't smuggle out oil) demand hard currency up front. If we are patient, the economic sanctions will eventually make life so miserable in Iraq that the people will rebel.

Yes, Saddam Hussain's regime is a brutal, ruthless, repressive dictatorship that is today fully in control and capable of putting down popular resistance. But two or three years ago one would have said the same thing about Rumania, East Germany, Bulgaria and other countries of Eastern Europe. Yet the people eventually rebelled, and so will the Iraqis, if we give them enough time and encouragement.

In World War II our announced aim of "unconditional surrender" by Germany and Japan merely served to prolong the war; if you tell people they are going to be killed regardless, they quite rationally decide they might as well go down fighting.

The president, through his rhetoric, has raised the ante in the Gulf crisis to levels that may be unattainable. A wise critic has said that just as much as we need a face-saving device which will permit Saddam. Hussain to back down, we may also need a face saving device for President Bush. We should hope not.

We should have learned from such events as the Cuban missile crisis that it is supremely important to leave open a window, if not a door, through which our adversary can escape from his dilemma. In the Cuban case, we gave up some missiles in Turkey for Khruschev's in Cuba. In the end, it didn't help him to stay in power, but it got us through the crisis without loss of blood on either side.

No matter how many troops we send to the Gulf, they will not frighten Saddam Hussain out of his wits. He will have no choice but to fight. The same goes for most of his troops. Rather than send in thousands of reinforcements, we should be sending in replacements for the troops we have there now, so that those who spent the summer months in the desert can be home soon. We should continue to rotate troops until the crisis is resolved. The mission of those troops should be to deter an attack by Iraq into Saudi Arabia, no more, no less. That is a worthy mission, which will cost money, but nowhere near what a war would cost to everyone involved.

If we go on the offensive, into Kuwait or Iraq or both, American troops will likely be virtually the only ones involved on our side. Such a war would therefore be universally viewed throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds as a war by the United States against the Arabs. That may be inaccurate, but it is perceptions that count. Most Mideast experts think that would be a catastrophe of incalculable proportions for the United States.

Presently the president and the Congress have been arguing about who should decide whether or not we go to war. Initially the Congress held hearings instead of a debate on the floor, which is sensible. But these arguments miss the main point. It is the Congress's right to declare war, and they provide the money. The president is in charge of foreign policy and he's the commander-in-chief.

They both have roles to play, and that famous separation of powers may be the genius of the American system. Before we launch our armed forces against Iraq, there should be total agreement between the branches of government on what our aims are. There does not seem to be agreement at this point, which is another strong argument against launching into war.

The Congress and the American people can do a service to President Bush by praising the brilliance of his early handling of the crisis: the resort to and massive support obtained at the UN; the forging of a broad-based coalition, including major Arab allies; the effective military deployment to Saudi Arabia to protect against farther aggression by Iraq; the caution and restraint shown at the front; the very adroit enforcement of the economic sanctions.

At this very critical juncture, however, we should also be giving this counsel to the president: be patient, take your time, consider all the consequences of all the options, think long-range not short-term, and give the peace option a chance. Also, we should allay his fears that the American people are losing patience. Faced with the alternative of a war that would cost thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of American lives, the American people can surely be patient for months or as long as it takes for the sanctions to force Saddam Hussain to leave Kuwait.

The strongest reason for forgoing the war option and maintaining the economic sanctions against Iraq, -combined with the political isolation of that country, is that Iraq provides a nearly perfect test case of whether UN imposed sanctions of this severity and near-universal support can be effective in altering the unacceptable behavior of an aggressor regime. It seems unlikely that a better test case will appear any time soon. If the sanctions do eventually work in this case, we will have at hand for future use in similar situations a ready means of successfully coping with international aggressors. If, instead, we abandon the sanctions route prematurely and opt for war, then we will have established a quite contrary precedent: namely, that the United States will have to assume the role of international policeman, sending its troops into battle every time someone attacks and gobbles up a weaker neighbor.

Sanctions which work against Iraq may not work in other future, less-than-ideal circumstances. But if we don't try with Iraq, what basis will we have for using this method elsewhere?

Robert V. Keeley, who was US ambassador to Greece when he retired from the foreign service in 1990, is president of the middle East Institute. The views expressed here are his own, not those of the Institute.