Crucial point reached in tug of war (Australia)

The Australian ^ | September 19, 2002 | Greg Sheridan

[Dundee]

Crucial point reached in tug of war

SADDAM Hussein is a mass murderer, a prolific liar, a purveyor of torture and state-sponsored terrorism, a serial violator of UN Security Council resolutions, a serial invader of his neighbours, and a possessor and user of weapons of mass destruction.

All that is given, acknowledged by Simon Crean as well as John Howard and by the European Left as well as the American Right. The question now is: Where does Hussein's agreement to accept weapons inspectors lead us?

The Bush administration will still push for a tough new Security Council resolution and will be supported by the Howard Government. Washington wants one resolution to accomplish several tasks: condemn Iraq for past violations; make explicit the arrangements under which inspectors will work; and outline the consequences, to wit devastating military intervention, if these conditions are violated.

The French – and Australian Labor takes this position, too – want two resolutions, one outlining what the inspectors must do and how Iraq must treat them. Then, after the inspectors have reported back, a second resolution if any action is required. The Russians don't think any new resolution is warranted, although negotiations are intense and the Russians might change.

These differences are essentially tactical, but as any chess player will tell you, tactics are everything. We have reached an extraordinarily delicate, fascinating and fluid moment in the battle of wills between George W. Bush and Hussein.

Anyone who believes Hussein has had a sincere change of heart, or no longer harbours aggressive intent, should go see their psychiatrist at the earliest opportunity.

The questions really are these: Can inspections actually eliminate or reduce to an acceptable level the risk Hussein poses? Is Hussein skilful enough to keep the UN Security Council – especially its five permanent members, the US, the UK, France, China and Russia – divided for long enough that US resolve slowly melts away? And is the Bush administration sufficiently adroit to force a short deadline on Hussein and win new UN authority for a military campaign when he breaches the inspection requirements? Alternatively, is it determined enough to resort to unilateral action if the UN process breaks down?

Anyone who tells you he knows the answers to these questions is not worth listening to.

But we do know a few things. Can inspectors work sufficiently? Inspectors are extremely unlikely to be fully effective. Between 1991 and 1995, UNSCOM inspectors did not detect Hussein's vast biological weapons program, which many consider to be his most dangerous weapons program of all. It was only because of precise information provided by a key defector, General Hussein Kamil, Hussein's son-in-law, that the biological program was discovered at all.

What will Hussein's tactics be in the next few months? The past is not always a reliable guide to the future but Hussein has a distinctive repertoire of tactical devices to which he seems always to return.

His instinct is to engage the UN and haggle over process to win time. In time, he knows, democracies lose interest, their will falters. It may be that he only needs a few months more so that the weather becomes too difficult, too hot, for the Americans to mount an effective ground operation inside suits designed to protect them from chemical weapons.

The sanctions regime under which Hussein has laboured this past decade has been slowly but consistently decaying and Hussein has shown himself adept at propaganda. For example, the anti-American brigade constantly quotes preposterous figures about the numbers of Iraqi children who have allegedly died because of Western sanctions. Yet in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq, infant mortality has declined. It is Hussein who imposes suffering on his people by diverting oil-for-food revenues to weapons programs rather than food or medicine. Nonetheless, it has been powerful propaganda for Hussein during the past 10 years.

Because of the ubiquity of the Al Jazeera television network in the Middle East, Hussein can use this propaganda to inflame Arab popular opinion. He will also certainly do everything he can, by way of sponsoring extremists, passing weapons and so on, to heighten the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to reinforce the illogical but widely held notion that that dispute must be solved first.

Finally, how smart and how determined will the Bush administration be? The past few months have been clumsy and unedifying as the Bushies paraded their internal differences semi-publicly. But as soon as they adopted a unified position, the massive strength of US diplomatic power was on display.

This past week has been fascinating, not least because it is open to opposite interpretations. It is widely seen as even the unilateralist Bushies having to bend to multilateral institutions. But it can equally be seen as even multilateral institutions such as the UN having to bend to the Bushies.

In the end the US never makes an absolute choice between multilateralism and unilateralism. It does whatever works and whatever is needed. Eight years of multilateral efforts on the Iraq problem under Bill Clinton produced embarrassing failure. The mere prospect of unilateral US action kick-started the UN into facing reality and its own long-simmering crisis of credibility, as the PM pointed out.

Oh, and by the way, Canberra will in the end support whatever the US does, just as it would have done if Kim Beazley were PM and not Howard.

Greg Sheridan is The Australian's foreign editor

[enrg]

Oh, and by the way, Canberra will in the end support whatever the US does, just as it would have done if Kim Beazley were PM and not Howard.

This guy knows his politics.... LOL