TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010791/0107992.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 23.7 KB | 473 lines

                                                                              MEN OF THE YEAR, Page 22

IN THE GULF: BOLD VISION

"What If We Do Nothing?"


By moving decisively to blunt Iraq's aggression, Bush begins to
shape a brave new world order

By DAN GOODGAME


    During the heady days after his Inauguration, George Bush
delighted in leading guests on private tours of the White House.
He often paused in the hideaway office beside his bedroom before
a favorite painting of Abraham Lincoln conferring with his
generals during the Civil War. "He was tested by fire," Bush
would muse, "and showed his greatness." And to one friend, Bush
wondered aloud how he might be tested, whether he too might be
one of the handful of Presidents destined to change the course
of history.

    On Aug. 1 he found out.

    It was about 8 p.m. in Washington and Bush had gone upstairs
for the evening, when an aide brought an urgent message from the
White House Situation Room. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. At first,
most diplomatic and intelligence analysts believed Saddam
Hussein would confine his thrust to long-disputed border areas.
But as Bush followed the latest reports -- from the CIA and CNN
-- Iraqi tanks churned into the Kuwaiti capital, forcing the
royal family to flee. It was a full-blown takeover.

    Next morning the world was waiting to hear what Bush had to
say about that blatant act of aggression. At 8, just before an
emergency session of the National Security Council, he invited
reporters in for a brief exchange. "We're not discussing
intervention," Bush insisted. "I'm not contemplating such
action." He stammered a bit, as he often does when he is tired
-- or when he does not believe what he is saying. This time it
was both.

    As Bush would later recall, he had made an "almost
instantaneous" judgment that the U.S. must intervene. In fact,
even before sunup on Aug. 2, he had begun to move against Iraq.
When Bush awoke shortly after 5, his National Security Adviser,
Brent Scowcroft, was at the President's bedroom door. He
immediately got Bush's signature on a pair of executive orders
freezing the assets of Iraq and Kuwait in the U.S. and
prohibiting trade. The two men then resumed the discussions they
had begun the night before, talking through their options:
Let's get the allies to follow us on the asset freeze. Buck up
the other Arabs to condemn Iraq. Keep Israel quiet. Get the
Soviets on board. Work the U.N. Go for economic sanctions.

    Both men were determined to do more -- much more. But Bush
-- obsessed with secrecy as always -- would mask his
inclinations, at least initially, even at his first NSC meeting
on the crisis.

    At that session, once the reporters had been herded out and
fresh coffee had been poured, the atmosphere was relaxed and
matter-of-fact. One by one, Bush's top generals and diplomats,
spymasters and energy experts reeled off their analyses. The
prevailing attitude among the group, recalled one White House
official, was "Hey, too bad about Kuwait, but it's just a gas
station, and who cares whether the sign says Sinclair or Exxon?"
Anyway, what can we do? Doesn't Iraq have the Middle East's
largest army, and aren't we a long way from the scene?

    There was little sense that big U.S. interests were at stake
-- until the President spoke. He asked a simple question that
decisively shifted the debate: "What happens if we do nothing?"


    A Dog That Would Bite

    That question could have been Bush's graven motto, at least
before 1990, and it still could be in all but foreign affairs.
During the first 18 months of his presidency, communism
collapsed, the cold war ended, freedom spread across the Soviet
empire, and Nelson Mandela's release after 27 years in South
African prisons raised the prospect that apartheid might soon
come tumbling down. Except when Bush invaded Panama to remove
an irritating dictator, he had mostly sat and applauded politely
as these momentous events unfolded. His rationale was sound
enough: when things are going your way, don't get in the way.

    Bush's instincts were entirely different in the gulf crisis.
This time, letting events take their course would not suffice.
This was the moment for which he had spent a lifetime preparing,
the epochal event that would bear out his campaign slogan,
"Ready to be a great President from Day 1." And Bush's instincts
were only confirmed as the consequences of allowing Iraq to
swallow Kuwait became clear.

    If Iraq's aggression succeeded, an emboldened Saddam might
send his troops into Saudi Arabia or intimidate the lightly
defended petrokingdom, as well as its neighbors, into obeying
his dictates. Fifty-six percent of the world's oil supplies
would come under the sway of a ruthless dictator who is trying
to amass a force of long-range missiles that could hit every
state in the region, including Israel, with chemical, biological
and -- in a few years -- nuclear weapons. Every petty tyrant who
wanted to redraw the map of the world by force, who hated a
neighbor or coveted that neighbor's goods, would have learned
a lesson: in the post-cold war world, aggression pays.

    Bush knew that only one power, the U.S., could thwart
Saddam. The U.N. might pass a sheaf of resolutions, just as it
has over the decades in trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli
conflict, and with no more effect. As the Arabs and Israelis
both like to say, dogs bark but the caravan passes.

    Bush also knew, however, that Saddam had good reason for
anticipating an ineffectual response. Only eight days before
Saddam's army rumbled into Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie
had told him, on instructions from the State Department, that
Iraq's "border differences" with the tiny sheikdom were of no
concern to the U.S. An outright takeover was another matter --
but no U.S. official made that point to Saddam until after the
fact. The American dog, Saddam assumed, would bark but never
bite.

    Bush, however, would prove him wrong. Against the initial
judgment of many advisers, Bush was convinced that Saddam must
be stopped now, before he became even more dangerous. Bush had
been leafing through Martin Gilbert's The Second World War, and
he cited Winston Churchill's view that World War II need not
have been fought if Hitler had been thwarted in his 1936 push
into the Rhineland, when he was weak enough to be deterred at
relatively low cost.

    Bush resolved that he, not Saddam, would shape the new world
order emerging in the aftermath of the cold war. In this new
order, the U.S. and the Soviet Union would work together through
the U.N. to finally achieve the collective security promised by
the organization's founders in 1945. Bush thus found the
"vision," at least in foreign policy, that he has long lacked.

    Bush recognized that the U.S., as the last remaining
superpower, must continue to lead, but with a different style.
It must accommodate the rise of the economic giants Germany and
Japan, and of various regional powers, while coaxing the Soviet
Union, despite its retrenchment, to play a constructive role.
America, Bush reasoned, must lead through painstaking and often
frustrating coalition building -- precisely the sort of personal
diplomacy and horse trading at which he has excelled in the gulf
crisis.

    At first, Bush turned to the U.N. mainly to provide
diplomatic cover for the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia, as well
as other Arab states reluctant to ally themselves with the "U.S.
imperialists." But as the U.N. showed surprising backbone --
first condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, then imposing a
stifling trade embargo and authorizing the use of military force
to back it up -- Bush grew ever more respectful of the
organization.

    As he implemented his developing vision, Bush, unlike Ronald
Reagan, was no lone cowboy singlehandedly dispensing rough
justice but a sheriff rounding up a posse of law-abiding
nations. If his style is multilateral, however, it is anything
but open. In the gulf crisis, as elsewhere, he zealously guarded
his real intentions and game plan. All along he has retained
tight control of virtually every detail of U.S. action,
revealing as little as possible about his plans to the American
people and to Congress.

    That approach, however, could ultimately undermine Bush's
policy in the gulf. The President's penchant for secrecy, his
cunning stratagems, his willingness to commit the world's most
powerful nation to a course that he alone determines, helped him
assemble the alliance. But those very qualities engender doubts
in the mind of many Americans, who have learned from Watergate
and Vietnam not to invest too much faith in any one man.


    Focus on the Saudis

    In Paul Theroux's novella Doctor Slaughter, a young scholar
at a dinner party observes that China's population has recently
reached 1 billion. "Wrong," tut-tuts another guest, an
international banker. "There are two people in China. And I know
both of them."

    George Bush could make the same claim. After the invasion,
the intimate knowledge of world leaders and world politics that
he had acquired during his years as ambassador to the U.N.,
envoy to Beijing and CIA director helped him forge an
unprecedented international alliance. Throughout, Bush has
displayed an exquisite sensitivity to diplomatic nuance and the
need for subtle compromise -- and sometimes outright bribes --
required to bring together such mutually suspicious bedfellows
as Syria, Israel, Iran and the Soviet Union. His performance
went beyond competence to sheer mastery.

    The initial focus of Bush's diplomatic offensive was Saudi
Arabia. Though the kingdom feared it might be next to fall to
Saddam's rapacious army, King Fahd had grave reservations about
seeking U.S. protection. The King, Bush knew, was leery of
accepting non-Muslim troops, whose presence might provoke unrest
among deeply xenophobic elements of the Saudi clergy and people.
He also could not afford to have the conflict portrayed as Iraq
and the Arab masses vs. the wealthy monarchs of Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia and their "Western imperialist defenders."

    From the earliest hours of the crisis, Bush worked to
overcome those qualms. After his initial NSC meeting, he tried
to phone King Fahd but failed to reach him. Bush then flew to
Aspen, Colo., for a long-scheduled rendezvous with Britain's
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who urged him to counter Iraq
strongly. As the two leaders talked, Fahd returned Bush's call.
The President told him, we think you are in danger. We are
willing to offer air support and more. Fahd, in this and later
conversations, expressed three concerns. If the U.S. sent
troops to protect his kingdom, would the force remain until
there was no longer a threat from Iraq? Once the threat was
removed, would the U.S. withdraw its troops immediately?
Finally, would the U.S. sell Saudi Arabia the advanced warplanes
and other weapons it would need to defend itself? Bush's reply:
yes, yes and yes.

    In the capital on Aug. 3, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and
Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the
hard sell on Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the brash, 41-year-old
Saudi ambassador to Washington. Bandar, a U.S.-trained fighter
pilot, was shown satellite photos of Iraqi armored divisions
massing along the Saudi border as though poised for an assault
on the oil fields near Dhahran, 175 miles away. Bandar called
his uncle the King, and assured Bush that U.S. forces would be
welcome in Saudi Arabia.

    Within weeks, it was the Saudis who were putting a hard sell
on the U.S. They were so alarmed by the growing Iraqi threat
just over their border that Bandar and Prince Saud al Faisal,
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, urged the U.S. to kill Saddam,
using any necessary means. The astonished Bush politely
declined, then observed to aides afterward, "It sure is easy for
other people to say what the U.S. ought to be doing to Iraq."

    Bush recognized from the first that the Saudis would not
accept U.S. troops unless other Arab states, the U.N. and the
Soviet Union also supported action against Iraq, and he and his
aides were working overtime to arrange that. They helped pass
a U.N. resolution condemning Iraq within hours of the invasion.
Secretary of State James Baker, who was traveling in the Soviet
Union, stood with his counterpart in Moscow and issued a joint
declaration demanding Iraq's withdrawal. Algeria, Egypt and
Morocco publicly condemned Iraq for the invasion. And the Arab
League, in an unprecedented show of resolve, followed suit.

    Bush called a second NSC meeting for Friday, Aug. 3, and
made clear that he had decided to dispatch forces to deter any
attack on Saudi Arabia. Two days later, however, Bush expanded
his goals to include the liberation of Kuwait, declaring, "This
will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."

    Over the next 30 days, Bush would place 62 phone calls to
government leaders and heads of state. He pressed Japan, Germany
and wealthy Arab states to provide emergency assistance for
Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, nations hit hard by the embargo on
trading with Iraq. He called on Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to
pump more oil to make up for the 4 million bbl. daily shortfall
resulting from the blockade on Iraqi and Kuwaiti shipments.

    But this whirlwind of diplomacy represented only half of
Bush's strategy. The other half was to present Saddam with a
stark choice: quit Kuwait or be driven out by military force.
To that end, Bush set in motion the largest U.S. military
deployment since Vietnam. It began five days after Saddam's
invasion with the dispatch of 210,000 troops to Saudi Arabia,
enough to deter an Iraqi onslaught.

    Once Bush had vowed to liberate Kuwait, General Powell urged
him to deploy a force so massive that if war became necessary,
it could be fought all out and won quickly, unlike Vietnam. By
November, Bush had authorized a doubling of the force to
430,000, giving him the capacity to go on the offensive if
Saddam refused to meet the Jan. 15 deadline set by the U.N. for
Iraq to quit Kuwait.

    Bush also learned a valuable lesson from Jimmy Carter's
obsession with the U.S. hostages seized by Iranian students in
1979. Determined not to repeat that mistake, Bush deliberately
downplayed Saddam's holding of 3,000 Americans, some of whom
were placed at key military installations as "human shields"
against American attack. Bush repeatedly insisted that he would
not be deterred from military action by the hostages' fate. In
early December his stern stance produced results. Saddam
released his captives, apparently convinced that his "foreign
guests" would not forestall a U.S. offensive and that releasing
them might reap a propaganda benefit.


    Muddling the Message

    Despite his virtuosity in welding the international
alliance, Bush has stumbled in explaining his strategy to his
countrymen. He has consistently and clearly spelled out four
goals: complete Iraqi withdrawal, restoration of Kuwait's
government, protection of American citizens abroad and creation
of regional stability. But in explaining his strategy and
tactics for attaining those goals, Bush has been halting,
ineffective and less than candid. He has particularly left
doubts about why the wealthiest allies are contributing so
little to this crusade, about his sudden rush to use force if
Iraq does not comply with the U.N.'s demands by Jan. 15, and
about what sort of peaceful settlement, if any, the U.S. would
accept with Iraq.

    At times, Bush has likened Saddam to Hitler and claimed Iraq
is on the brink of obtaining nuclear weapons. (The consensus of
Bush's intelligence experts is that an Iraqi nuclear weapon is
about five years away.) Such belligerent talk suggests that
Bush, despite his public statements, would not be satisfied with
an Iraqi retreat but would seek to destroy Saddam's ability to
threaten his neighbors by obliterating his arsenal.

    The goals of American strategy were probably debated most
thoroughly last Aug. 23 in an unlikely setting: aboard Fidelity,
Bush's speedboat, bobbing off Kennebunkport. While Bush and
National Security Adviser Scowcroft trolled for bluefish, they
reviewed the U.S. experience four decades earlier in Korea,
another "police action" fought with U.N. authorization.
Scowcroft reminded Bush that soon after General Douglas
MacArthur's bold victory at Inchon in September 1950, the U.S.
succeeded in restoring the situation that existed before the
outbreak of war by pushing Kim Il Sung's invading army back to
the 38th Parallel, the boundary dividing North and South Korea.
The U.S., however, tried to unify Korea by driving all the way
to the border with China. The result: Beijing intervened and
drove American forces back almost as far as the old border. The
conflict lasted nearly three more years, cost tens of thousands
of additional U.S. and civilian casualties and poisoned
U.S.-Chinese relations for 20 years. All to end up back at the
status quo ante.

    In the gulf crisis, Scowcroft warned, a war fought not only
to liberate Kuwait but also to cripple Iraq could splinter the
coalition that Bush had so masterfully assembled. It could
trigger violent resentment by the Arab masses against the U.S.
and the Arab regimes allied with it. And it could create a power
vacuum that Syria and Iran might rush to fill.

    Iraq's massive conventional and chemical arsenals and its
fast-track nuclear-weapons program, Scowcroft argued, had to be
contained. But that could best be done through a continuing
embargo on weapons and weapons technology and by a security
arrangement among the U.N., the U.S. and the Arab states. "The
world was not willing to make war on Iraq for these reasons
before the invasion of Kuwait," said Scowcroft, "and it is not
clear why the U.S. and its allies should continue a war against
Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait."

    Shortly after this discussion, Bush and his top advisers
decided to make clear to Saddam that he could withdraw from
Kuwait and still save both his skin and his face. He could tell
his people that the invasion had got the attention of Kuwait and
forced it to negotiate Iraq's demands for access to ports and
control of the Rumaila oil field, which runs under both Iraq and
Kuwait. Once a decent interval had passed after Iraq's
withdrawal, the U.S. would not object if Kuwait made concessions
to Iraq. Also, the U.S. would press for progress on the
Palestinian issue, and Saddam could claim whatever credit he
liked.

    This message was delivered both privately -- through the
diplomatic channels of the U.S. and its Arab allies -- and
publicly, most notably in Bush's Oct. 1 speech before the U.N.
General Assembly.


    Down to the Wire

    With the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline only two weeks away, both
Saddam and Bush face fateful decisions. So far, Saddam has shown
no real interest in a peaceful withdrawal. He has reinforced the
100,000 Iraqi soldiers and 350 tanks deployed in Kuwait and
southern Iraq in the days just after the invasion with 410,000
more troops and 4,100 tanks. Bush's attempt to "go the last
mile" for a peaceful settlement by inviting Iraq's Foreign
Minister Tariq Aziz to the White House and dispatching Baker to
Baghdad for a face-to-face talk with Saddam has degenerated into
a dispute over when these meetings could take place.

    Pressures are mounting on Bush to bring the crisis to a
speedy conclusion. Not least of these are the economic hardships
the crisis has exacted on Iraq's neighbors. And high oil prices
are dragging down the economies of every country save the few
that supply oil.

    The calendar exerts a grim logic. In March, gulf
temperatures begin to rise as high as 100 degrees F, threatening
both soldiers and weapons. On March 17 the world's Muslims begin
observing Ramadan; in mid-June the annual pilgrimage to Mecca
begins. The Saudi government, already uneasy about the army of
infidels on its soil, is unlikely to approve the launching of
an offensive at either time.

    Even domestic politics has become a factor. Democrats on
Capitol Hill have grown increasingly critical of what they view
as an ill-considered rush to war. Many are angered by the
President's stubborn refusal to consult with them in advance of
his most momentous decisions. Bush's doubling of the U.S. force
stunned lawmakers, military and diplomatic experts and a large
slice of the public. Georgia's Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, held public hearings at which a parade
of former high-ranking intelligence, defense and foreign policy
experts from both parties counseled a more patient course.

    But the Administration has many reasons for not waiting to
see if sanctions can wear down Saddam's resolve. One is the
difficulty of holding the alliance together for the year or more
it might take for the blockade to pinch harder. That will become
even more difficult if, as Bush fears, Saddam announces a
partial withdrawal from Kuwait that would leave him in
possession of Bubiyan and Warba islands and the Rumaila oil
field. With so little at stake, some allies -- and some
Americans -- might no longer believe a war was worth fighting.

    In addition, a showdown postponed for a year or more would
complicate Bush's 1992 campaign for re-election. Says an adviser
to Bush: "We could have the economy in the toilet and the body
bags coming home. If you're George Bush, you don't like that
scenario."

    Thus far, the greatest threat to the President's gulf policy
has been posed not by Saddam but by one of Bush's long-standing
weaknesses. He has found no voice to match his vision in the
gulf.

    While lavishing personal attention upon the foreign leaders
in the anti-Iraq coalition, Bush has turned almost as an
afterthought to the equally crucial task of convincing his
countrymen that his course is just, his timing and strategy
sound. He has brushed aside Congress's insistence that the
Constitution empowers it alone to declare war. In private, Bush
disdainfully insists he can ignore Congress as long as there is
no consensus for or against his gulf policy.


    History Lessons

    In recent weeks Bush has spoken often of the "lessons of
Vietnam." He means the military lessons: that if the U.S. goes
to war, it must go to win, with overwhelming force instead of
gradual escalation. A quick knockout would deprive critics of
time to organize opposition, and the cheers of victory would
drown out their protests. But the President has not digested an
equally salient message from Vietnam: that the U.S. should not
go to war without solid support from Congress and the people.

    According to Scowcroft, the gulf crisis poses a crucial
question: "Can the U.S. use force -- even go to war -- for
carefully defined national interests, or do we have to have a
moral crusade or a galvanizing event like Pearl Harbor?" Polls
indicate that a majority of Americans support the use of force
if Iraq will not leave Kuwait peacefully. But a large minority
retain serious doubts. If war is necessary, there is little
doubt that the U.S. and its allies will prevail. But it could
prove a Pyrrhic victory if the cost in American lives is so high
that it provokes a new wave of isolationism.

    Bush's answer to the question he posed at the outset of the
crisis -- "What happens if we do nothing?" -- was not to sit
back and watch how events played out, as he had done so often
before. It was to move, quickly and with great skill, to
confront an act of aggression that might have set a disastrous
precedent for the fragmented world that is emerging. His next
moves could determine what future Presidents say when they gaze
at his portrait on the White House wall.