The World Today
January 1999

Saddam’s Survival Strategy

By Raad Alkadiri

 

The past weeks have witnessed yet another chapter in the ongoing crisis over Iraq. Military action was averted in November, but only narrowly. American and British forces were just minutes away from air strikes against Iraq when Baghdad signaled its willingness to yield to UN Security Council demands and allow the unconditional resumption of weapons inspections. However, Iraqi acquiescence proved short lived. On 15 December a critical report by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) said that its work continued to be blocked by Baghdad. In response, Washington and London launched military strikes against Iraqi targets.

The military action took place amidst open calls by Washington and London for the removal of President Saddam Hussein’s regime and active support for what had previously appeared to be increasingly defunct external opposition groups.

Senior US and UK officials met opposition groups in the aftermath of the November tension, urging them to overcome the divisions that have dogged them and undermined their credibility. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration has pushed ahead to enact the recently passed Iraq Liberation Act, which promises opposition groups $97 million in military aid.

 

Reversal of Fortune

This is very different from the scenario that might have been imagined only a few months ago. Then Iraq seemed on the verge of achieving the tangible progress towards the easing of sanctions it has long claimed was its right. Rumours were surfacing that UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was predisposed towards a comprehensive review of Iraq’s compliance with Security Council resolutions. Many felt this would have been a prelude to concrete measures favourable to Iraq, providing the light at the end of the tunnel that Baghdad has repeatedly sought.

Prominent supporters of the review process included France and Russia, which both urged Iraq to acquiesce to its proposals. Behind the scenes, Paris was also beginning to float the idea of allowing a controlled easing of sanctions by permitting foreign investment in the Iraqi oil sector through the financial mechanisms of the oil-for-food deal.

Paris and Moscow’s position was further evidence of the deep schism that divided the permanent members of the Security Council on the issue and paralysed their ability to formulate coherent policy. Realising this, and apparently wary of a repeat of its experiences during the UN–Iraq stand-off in January and February 1998, Washington was in the process of changing tack.

Despite furious accusations by the former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector Scott Ritter, allegations that were gleefully seized upon by Republicans in the US Congress, the Clinton administration appeared to be moving away from a policy of forceful confrontation towards one that placed greater emphasis on containment.

While there was little doubt that sanctions remained an integral part of US policy, the new approach suggested room for manoeuvre at the margins, particularly for those states considered more sympathetic to Iraq’s grievances.

Conventional wisdom explains the shift in Iraq’s fortunes between now and then very simply: Saddam Hussein made yet another of his infamous miscalculations. In attempting to get everything he wanted, he overplayed his hand and ended up with nothing. In many ways he is less well off than when he started. However, this explanation is superficial and, as with many similar ones before it, misses a crucial aspect: the view from Baghdad.

Indeed, the period since August offers important insights into Iraqi strategy and the thinking behind it. Events between October 1997 and August 1998 are similarly indicative of the regime’s perceptions of the Situation. Far from being impulsive or bereft of logic, Iraqi behaviour is consistent and clearly aimed at one fundamental goal. Moreover, it is reactive rather than proactive, a response to policies adopted by other states, particularly the United States, the principal ‘significant other’ in this particular relationship.

 

Just One Objective

Baghdad’s motivations and perceptions are guided by one overriding objective: survival. In and of itself, this is not unusual; survival is one of the fundamental goals of any state. What is different in this case is that the imperative is the survival of the regime, or more precisely the survival of Saddam Hussein. All other aspects of Iraqi policy are products of this objective and the inherent fear that underlies it. This includes Iraq’s oft referred to regional ambitions.

Viewed from the perspective of regime survival, Iraq’s approach to the weapons inspections can be better understood. There is no doubt that Iraqi policy is influenced by elements of national pride, a refusal to adopt the position of the vanquished alter the 1990–91 Gulf War, a desire to play a future regional role and a belief that somehow the terms of the UN Security Council resolutions, passed after the war, are negotiable.

But above all, Iraq’s policy is guided by the view that attempts to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and its capacity to deliver them, are a threat to its national security and to the security of the regime per se.

Iraq sees itself living in a tough neighbourhood, surrounded by potentially hostile states with non-conventional weapon capabilities. For example, Iranian insistence that its recently tested medium-range missile is designed to deter Iraq rather than threaten Israel, may well calm fears in Washington and elsewhere, but it has the opposite effect in Baghdad. Similarly, press reports about Israel’s development of biological weapons, including the ‘ethnic bomb’, alarm Baghdad.

The Iraqi leadership believes that under these circumstances, to be bereft of a nonconventional weapons capability leaves it incapable of imposing itself on the region, and, more importantly, denuded of the capacity to deter aggression and to defend itself.

Guided by this mindset, Iraq since the Gulf War has pursued a foreign policy designed to bring an end to sanctions without leaving itself militarily vulnerable. Baghdad has consistently obstructed and delayed the weapons inspectors, while attempting to undermine the collective regional and international support so vital to ensuring Iraq’s continued isolation and economic strangulation.

This has involved attempts to play on the differences between key international states, and to also take advantage of perceived moments of weakness and confusion. The clear hope has been that international resolve will collapse before either Iraq’s weapons capabilities are fully uncovered, or the regime is brought to its knees by the economic and social impact of sanctions.

While the strategic objective of policy has been consistent, the tactical means have not. Iraqi behaviour has undergone shifts as a result of internal and external factors, with three somewhat overlapping phases:

1.  Non-Cooperation/Domestic Consolidation

This tactic was adopted by Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, when the key objective was to expand and reassert regime authority. This had been heavily shaken by the crushing military defeat and the subsequent internal insurrection in the north and the south of the country during which fourteen of the eighteen provinces briefly slipped from central government control.

Baghdad’s grudging acceptance of the terms of UN resolution 687, which ended the war, played into this approach, giving the regime sufficient respite to begin domestic consolidation.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis played cat and mouse with UNSCOM inspectors, blocking their task as best they could. This policy was guided in part by the belief that sanctions would quickly collapse of their own accord following the liberation of Kuwait. Indeed, Iraqi officials spoke of the embargo lasting no more than two to three years.

2.  Quasi-Cooperation/Humanitarian-Commercial Appeal

As Iraq recognised the error of its initial assumptions, it shifted towards greater cooperation with UN weapons inspectors and belatedly accepted proposals for the long-term monitoring of its weapons capabilities under UN Security Council resolution 715.

However, the increased progress made by weapons inspectors during this phase was accompanied by the first signs of a change in international opinion in response to both the humanitarian toll that the economic embargo was exacting, and the recognition of Iraq’s commercial potential, particularly in the oil sector.

Iraq’s greater willingness to cooperate did little to hide its growing frustration. The clearest expression of this was its military build-up on the Kuwaiti border in October 1994. This was primarily designed to force the United States, and with it the rest of the Security Council, to engage Iraq directly, the vain hope being that somehow the terms of the council’s resolutions might be negotiable.

In spite of this potentially violent interlude, there were signs in early-to-mid 1995 that Iraq’s overall strategy was working, with the beginning of preliminary discussions about the possible closure of some weapons files. Iraq also showed early signs of the maximalism that has characterised its recent behaviour, threatening to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM unless sanctions were lifted.

However, the situation changed abruptly in August 1995, with the defection of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel and his revelations regarding the true extent of his country’s WMD capabilities, particularly in the biological field.

In a rapidly executed crisis management exercise, Iraq was forced to release a huge volume of documents for UNSCOM and withdraw its threats of non-cooperation

The Kamel defection and its aftermath severely undermine Baghdad’s already diminished credibility and weakened international support. Under pressure from its traditional friends, Iraq fell back on cooperation with UNSCOM, although this remained less than complete.

The impact of the humanitarian card was also undercut somewhat by its acceptance of the UN oil-for-food program in January 1996, and its eventual implementation in January 1997.

However, this shift did not signify a change in Baghdad’s perceptions of the world or of UNSCOM’s task. It was merely a tactical ploy, based on the belief — encouraged by France and Russia — that sustained cooperation for eighteen months or so was vital if there were to be any movement towards an easing of the oil embargo. In line with this, Baghdad accelerated its negotiations with foreign oil companies to ensure the rapid development of its reserves once sanctions were lifted.

3.  Cooperation-Confrontation Cycle

Iraq’s loss of faith in the validity of progress through cooperation argument late last year, ultimately led it to shift to the latest phase of its strategy.

The first clear signs of this change came in October 1997 when Baghdad found itself confronted with the prospect of more rather than less sanctions when the Security Council met to consider UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler’s first semi-annual report which detailed a number of incidents of non-cooperation.

Reacting to the council’s deliberations, Baghdad balked and expelled US inspectors. The singling out of Americans was a clear sign that it held the United States directly responsible for its continued fate.

Indeed, Washington’s leading role in pushing the council to adopt more punitive measures to combat Iraq’s reported obstructionism convinced Baghdad once and for all that its rigid opposition to Saddam was serious and non-negotiable. The debacle of the Yevgeni Primakov initiative that November also confirmed to Iraq that its friends were impotent in the face of US power and determination.

As a result, Iraq took matters into its own hands. It stepped up efforts to break Out of its economic and political isolation. Meanwhile, insisting that it had fully complied with Security Council demands, Baghdad indicated that its cooperation with UNSCOM was conditional on tangible evidence that it was leading to an eventual lilting of the embargo.

The new Iraqi approach became more coherent in the aftermath of the January–February 1998 crisis, and in essence was a gamble that the importance placed on the inspections regime by the international community was sufficiently high as to provide Iraq with a bargaining chip.

Baghdad felt that its position was strengthened by the 23 February Iraq–UN memorandum of understanding which effectively ended that stand-off. It interpreted explicit references in the agreement to paragraph 22 of resolution 687 as an affirmation of the direct link between satisfying UNSCOM and lifting the oil embargo.

Iraq also welcomed the call for rapid progress towards this and for greater transparency, something it felt was lacking from UNSCOM’s work. With the memorandum concluded, Iraq believed that the conditions were in place for a trade-off between cooperation and tangible progress.

Viewed from this perspective, Iraq’s behaviour over the remainder of last year, in particular its decisions to limit and ultimately to cease cooperation with UNSCOM, makes far more sense. Iraqi officials made little secret of the fact that their patience was limited, and that unless there were signs of real, tangible progress towards resolving the WMD issue — such as shifting the nuclear and long-range missiles files from the inspection to the long-range monitoring phase — cooperation with UNSCOM would be hatted.

Far from being impulsive or an attempt to take advantage of the international environment, the August and October Baghdad decisions were actually a case of making good on previously articulated threats. Moreover, both were preceded by decisions that implied that the February bargain was being broken deliberately by the United States.

Thus, the August decision was a calculated and relatively restrained response to successful US and UK moves to thwart Russian proposals to close the nuclear file on the basis of a positive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) progress report. Similarly, the October suspension followed Washington’s refusal to countenance any explicit reference to paragraph 22 in proposals for a comprehensive review.

Both cases merely confirmed Iraqi suspicions that it faces an unyielding foe in the form of the United States that is capable of imposing its will on the Security Council and UNSCOM, and therefore that cooperation — even on a limited scale — does nothing to serve Iraqi interests.

 

Confrontation Cycle Continues

Given Iraq’s perception of the forces lined up against it, and Washington’s abject refusal to commit to a lifting of the economic embargo even if UNSCOM is satisfied, so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power, the most likely prospect is for a continuation of the cycle of confrontation.

Following the air strikes in December, Iraq will not see it as in its interests to simply back down and to cooperate indefinitely, as this does nothing to assuage its ever growing frustration with the deteriorating economic conditions. Moreover, UNSCOM has been relatively successful in all but the area of biological weapons, progress that, as suggested earlier, Baghdad regards as ultimately threatening.

This raises the question whether sanctions are the most effective means of dealing with the Iraqi situation. In many respects, sanctions represent the last vestiges of the still-born dream that was the post-Cold War New World Order.

The restrictions on Iraq were conceived and put in place at a time when a unique set of circumstances prevailed: the regime in Baghdad was at its weakest; US — and arguably UN — power was at its zenith; the international community was united in a common goal; and naive hopes that international relations was about to enter a new, peaceful phase abounded in some capitals. These conditions no longer exist, and the sanctions policy they spawned has proven a very blunt and only partially effective instrument.

Nevertheless, sanctions continue to be heralded as the only means of containing the Iraqi regime, largely because of the absence of an acceptable alternative. A potentially more constructive policy such as an easing of the oil embargo — conditional on Iraq’s ability to satisfy UNSCOM — to allow more non-military imports, combined with the political engagement of Baghdad and an acceptance that it has legitimate national security concerns, is unpalatable and politically impracticable for a number of countries, especially the United States. Consequently, the economic embargo on Iraq is set to remain, and it seems the country will continue to be the scene of violence.