Ending or Maintaining the Conflict?

Military Strikes

Karim El-Gawhary

Did somebody press the rewind button? Iraq's Saddam Hussein obstructs the UN weapons inspectors, threatens to end their mission altogether and makes fiery speeches about Iraq's readiness to face any aggression from the outside. Like Pavlov's dogs, the US and Great Britain answer with their usual saber rattling. 1998 starts the same way 1997 ended.

It is hard to see how today's US-British gun boat diplomacy is designed to solve the conflict. While strident voices in the US increasingly demand military action, London moves its aircraft carrier--the "HMS Invincible"--into the region as an "unmistakable sign that Britain is ready to fight," as a defense ministry spokesman put it recently. High-tech bombardments accompanied by stage-managed military briefings may elicit popular support in the US and Britain. They are not likely, however, to change the situation on the ground because Iraq now has little to lose.

This is Saddam Hussein's trump card. Maintaining the tension ensures at least modest popular support for the government, while on the international level, this strategy does little harm to the regime. Seven years after the Gulf War the former anti-Iraq coalition has fallen apart. Saddam Hussein's policy of constantly reminding the international community that the conflict is far from over drives the wedge deeper into his opponents’ former coalition. In the UN Security Council, French, Russian and Chinese discontent is mounting against a US policy that makes Iraq's people suffer through sanctions, yet makes no attempt oust Saddam Hussein.

The Arab states, some of them former members of the anti-Iraq coalition during the Gulf War, are not ready to take part in or endorse any military adventure in Iraq. In fact, the louder the US rattles its swords the more unified the Arab world stands in its opposition to the use of force against Baghdad. Even the foreign minister of Kuwait--the country that seven years ago was brutally occupied by Iraqi troops--recently spoke out against a military option in Iraq. The constant threat of military strikes against an Arab country slowly covers over the painful Arab rift caused by the Gulf crisis. In this sense, the sword of Damocles--the threat of possible military action--is mainly beneficial to the Iraqi regime. Saddam Hussein hopes for increased solidarity with his Arab neighbors with whose help he might one day be able to overturn the embargo.

Military strikes are not a suitable way of solving the conflict. According to the many conspiracy theorists, Washington has never been interested in ending the conflict because it suits US interests to maintain the status quo. For years to come, Iraq will be a weakened player in the fragile balance of the region. It will pose no serious threat to US ally Israel, nor to Washington's vital friends among the oil producing Gulf states. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein will keep the country together to make sure that potentially destabilizing factors like the Kurds or Shi`ites will not challenge the existing state system in the Gulf. They argue that if Saddam Hussein did not exist, he would have been invented by the US. If you believe these conspiracy theorists, there could hardly be a more cynical policy against the Iraqi people suffering under dictatorship and sanctions. If you do not, today's US policy towards Iraq can only be described as incompetent. Threatening gestures and military strikes are no substitute for a strategic foreign policy which should be designed to end a seven-year-old conflict instead of administering it for eternity.

Karim El-Gawhary is MERIP regional program officer in Cairo.