TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820018.000

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                ╖äë                                                          THE GULF, Page 18

COVER STORIES

Read My Ships


George Bush, who has spent a lifetime preparing for the kind of
crisis he faces in the Persian Gulf, has adroitly rallied most
of the world behind him. Now he must keep the pressure on until
Saddam backs down.

By MICHAEL KRAMER -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington


    Communism collapses, America declines. For more than a year,
that coupling has expressed the conventional wisdom: a new
world is emerging, a post-cold war era driven as never before
by economic competition, an order in which other nations, new
superpowers like Germany and Japan, will challenge U.S.
primacy. At best, the argument runs, an exhausted U.S., nearly
bankrupt after 40 years of containing Soviet expansionism, will
have to share global leadership in the 21st century.

    It may play that way. It may even be likely. But not just
yet. The uneven distribution of wealth-producing resources --
the gap between haves and have-nots -- is fueling a regional
crisis, a struggle with severe implications for the entire
world's standard of living. And only the U.S., most everyone
acknowledges, has the capacity to muster the international
effort required to stop the power-grab of a vain, amoral
crusader like Saddam Hussein. It appears that George Bush has
the will and skill to do so.

    "Watch and learn," the President said as events unfolded
last week -- a boast reminiscent of an earlier bit of Bush
self-analysis: "Maybe I'll turn out to be a Teddy Roosevelt."

    This is the crisis for which Bush has spent a lifetime
preparing, the test he knew would come sometime, the challenge
he has always been confident he could meet. Ten years ago, as
he was losing the Republican presidential nomination to Ronald
Reagan, Bush shucked off his shoes, loosened his tie, grabbed
a beer and took a quiet moment to calmly assess the job he
coveted. "You work your ass off, get credit for stuff you're
barely involved in and none at all for things you've put
together behind the scenes. Domestic problems drag you down and
nag all the time. You're up in the polls and down and then up
again. But sooner or later something major happens, something
abroad that only we [the U.S.] can do something about. Then
you show if you can cut it. If you can't, everything else can
be going beautifully and you're probably out of there next
time. If you pull it off, a lot else can go wrong and you'll
be all right. Because when people hit the [voting] booth, well,
then they think, `Hey, when the chips are down, this guy can
defend us and what we stand for, and that's what it's all
about.' I know I can handle the foreign policy side. On that,
at least, our campaign slogan hits it. I really would be a
President we don't have to train."

    Eight years later, Bush still saw foreign policy as his
ticket to the White House and the true measure of presidential
achievement. After Michael Dukakis' rousing performance at the
1988 Democratic Convention, Bush was down 17 points in the
polls. A rash of silly sloganeering and low blows ensued
(remember the Pledge of Allegiance  and Willie Horton?), but the
road back followed a carefully detailed game plan and always
returned to attacking Dukakis as ill equipped to manage
America's world role. Whenever complicated domestic questions
threatened to confuse the message, Bush heeded his handlers'
advice and pushed his central theme. "The single most important
job of the President," he reminded audiences time and again,
"is the national security of the United States."

    On Aug. 4, 1988 (exactly two years before he took the first
steps toward ordering U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf), Bush
delivered a major foreign affairs speech and referred
approvingly to John Kennedy's Inaugural Address: "We shall bear
any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any
foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." After
nearly three decades of convulsive history, that single Kennedy
paragraph, with its repetitive "anys," is one that many
historians identify as representing a misplaced sense of
Manifest Destiny. But Bush told his Corpus Christi, Texas,
audience that J.F.K.'s formulation reflected "the policies and
principles I will follow as President." As bombast worked for
Kennedy, so too it worked for Bush. Election Day exit polls
revealed that of the 25% of all voters who identified defense
and foreign affairs as the deciding factors in their choice,
87% voted for Bush.

    If faith in Bush's ability to protect America's interests
abroad helped elect him, his handling of the present crisis has
been masterly. Iraq's aggression may not be the defining moment
of Bush's presidency, but it is certainly the best so far, and
it comes on the heels of a series of domestic miscues -- on the
budget, taxes, parental leave, civil rights and the S&L
scandal. If Bush ignored the Iraqi threat for weeks, if his
Administration miscalculated Saddam's messianic intentions and
engaged in a quiet appeasement of Baghdad for the better part
of two years, if America is at greater risk because Bush, his
predecessors and Congress failed to develop a credible energy
policy that reduced the country's dependence on foreign oil,
at least since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait the President has
proved adroit, even brilliant.

    Bush may lack an overarching global vision, but he has a
clear understanding of the emerging geostrategic realities and
the ways in which they can be turned to advantage. Were Reagan
still in office, it is almost certain that securing
international cooperation would have been way down on the White
House agenda. Reagan relished America's role as world
policeman, a lone cowboy avenging evil. Bush knows that rounding
up a posse in advance better suits today's world. Last week's
promise of allied and Arab forces may add meaningfully to the
U.S. military effort in the gulf -- or count for little if war
comes. But even if those actions are only symbolic, they matter
greatly. When a dicey situation requires a long-term commitment
-- as the current deployment appears to be -- having others in
your corner, if not in your foxhole, makes it far easier to
prosecute and sustain.

    The key to Bush's unprecedented freedom of maneuver is the
new Soviet-American detente. With Moscow eager to show its more
cooperative face to the world (and avoid offending the U.S.
when the Soviets need Western economic assistance), a joint
U.S.-Soviet condemnation of Iraq was swiftly crafted. Once that
was in place, other nations could join Washington without fear
of reprisal. But the pieces still needed assembling, and the
years Bush spent assiduously courting foreign leaders paid off
handsomely. "Call Fahd, call Ozal, say this to this guy, that
to another," says a Bush aide who watched his boss calculate.

exactly opposite of how Reagan worked. He knew the military
thrust should follow the diplomatic. He knew that to be
effective, the lineup against Saddam had to be perceived as
more than just the rich West against a poor Arab." Within days,
worldwide economic sanctions were in place: a boycott of Iraqi
and Kuwaiti oil and a freezing of those nations' assets.

    One phone call was especially important. Before the crisis,
Japan imported 12% of its oil from Iraq and Kuwait.
Nonetheless, Bush persuaded Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki
Kaifu to join the boycott of Iraqi crude. "People are always
giving Bush guff for his first-name strategy with world
leaders," says an Administration official. "But then he calls
Tokyo and gets Kaifu to go along with the oil embargo, a step
that may not be in Japan's self-interest. To say we were
surprised is to put it mildly." Equally impressive was the
President's engineering of United Nations sanctions against
Iraq -- a delicious irony given Bush's repeated swipes at
Dukakis for naively believing in the U.N.'s usefulness.

    Rallying the Arab world to the American cause has been
trickiest. Saudi Arabia feared that the U.S. might tire of its
mission and pull out, leaving the oil-rich kingdom at Saddam's
mercy. But the resolve Bush projected was perceived as firm,
in part because he waived the Metzenbaum amendment -- a
restriction on the sale of U.S. jets to the Saudis. Coupled
with the satellite intelligence showing that Saddam's forces
were positioned to strike the Saudis, that action turned King
Fahd into a believer, and U.S. troops were promptly invited to
defend Saudi Arabia.

    At week's end Saddam's tirade against his Arab neighbors for
countenancing American aid tipped most other Arab nations to
Bush's view of the Iraqi danger. To their rhetorical anger,
they have now added a pledge of Arab ground forces and support
for the economic isolation of Iraq. Would the region's leaders
have acted so decisively against Saddam if Bush had not already
drawn so many others to his side while deploying U.S. air, sea
and land power into the area? Probably not. The backbone
required to overcome their fear of Saddam was supplied by Bush.

    "In terms of directional clarity," says a Bush adviser,
"this has all been an easy call. Even a dolt understands the
principle. We need the oil. It's nice to talk about standing
up for freedom, but Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are not exactly
democracies, and if their principal export were oranges, a
mid-level State Department official would have issued a
statement and we would have closed Washington down for August.
There is nothing to waver about here." What Saddam offers the
President, says another White House aide, is "a case where he
knows what's right, he knows what the American people think, and
he knows what he should do. Most important, he knows these are
all one and the same thing."

    The public U.S. strategy is two-pronged. Militarily, Bush
intends to stop Iraq at the Saudi border, guaranteeing by the
sheer presence of American troops that an attack on Saudi
Arabia is an attack on the U.S. The international boycott of
Baghdad is in fact an economic offensive designed to squeeze
Saddam so tightly that he is forced to withdraw from Kuwait.
"Nobody can stand up forever to total economic deprivation,"
said Bush last week.

    If a shooting war is avoided now, it may come later. When
and if the economic stranglehold hits Iraq hard -- perhaps in
three to four months -- it is entirely possible that rather
than capitulate, Saddam will lash out militarily. No matter how
supportive the public may be of Bush's intervention today, its
willingness to tolerate flag-draped coffins returning to the
U.S. for weeks on end is at best problematic. "This is not
Panama or Grenada," says a man who has served both Reagan and
Bush. "This is a deal with no known end," and the long haul is
not America's strong suit. "The risk that is we won't be
patient and determined enough to undertake the pressures of
long-term commitment," says House Speaker Tom Foley.

    Even if no military clash occurs, Bush's skills will be
tested further in the weeks and months ahead. Keeping the
nation solidly behind him will become harder if a stalemate
ensues and oil prices continue their upward spiral despite
Saudi promises to increase production. Bush could insulate
himself by finally pressing for a sane energy policy, but he
shows no signs of even contemplating one.

    High gasoline prices represent but one potential political
downside for Bush. A full-fledged recession is likelier than
ever. A budget compromise with congressional Democrats --
elusive even before the gulf crisis -- will be that much more
difficult to fashion if events in the Middle East mean that
energy taxes and defense cuts are now deemed off the table.

    And those are only the non-lethal problems. Saddam's close
ties to terrorist groups -- Abu Nidal is just one Baghdad
favorite -- could put U.S. citizens at risk everywhere. And
then there are the hostages, 3,500 Americans held against their
will in Iraq and Kuwait. Of all the potential political threats
to Bush, this is the greatest. The sight of yellow ribbons,
already a staple of the evening news, will fester like an open
wound. Terrified of the nightmare that doomed Jimmy Carter's
presidency, the White House is straining to avoid the H word.
To no avail, of course. The U.S. knows a hostage when it sees
one.

    What will constitute a victory in the showdown against Iraq?
If a year from now, oil-price stability has been achieved and
Saddam is either back within his own borders or deposed, the
political benefits for Bush will be great. As he said a decade
ago, he will have delivered when the chips were down.

    Beyond the President's personal political fortunes, the
present mess may spawn some truly significant legacies. The
post-cold war U.N., ripe for realizing its lofty aims -- the
maintenance of peace and respect for international law -- has
passed an important test, and could become the useful forum for
conflict resolution it was intended to be. In the Arab world,
new alliances will probably emerge. Whether they are pro- or
anti-Western, less or more hostile toward Israel, they will
surely be different. Of greatest moment -- at least to the U.S.
-- is the fact that Bush may have stumbled on a new role for
America and the military power it commands. Leading the free
world is less of a mission now that so many are free or on the
way to becoming so. But someone is always going to have to lead
the civilized world. Saddam Hussein isn't the last despot
around.

    For hundreds of years, Iraq has been governed by men with
ambitions to expand their country's borders. Whether a
successor to Saddam would perpetuate that tradition is
unknowable. But as long as Saddam himself is around, trouble
will be close by. He is, after all, the same Saddam whose air
force crippled the U.S.S. Stark with an Exocet missile three
years ago. (A mistake, said Baghdad, and apologized.) Saddam
sees himself as the rightful ruler of the Arab world -- and he
is embarked on a nuclear-weapons development program that the
CIA says could be successful in three to five years. Thus the
unstated third prong of Bush's strategy is actually to topple
Saddam, perhaps by letting him stew long enough for domestic
Iraqi discontent to reach new heights. "Let him off the hook
now," says a White House aide, "and sooner or later he will be
back, and we will be too -- back to square one. Drag this out,
and maybe, just maybe, Iraqis will become so fed up that
they'll balk at the prospect of another long war and take out
the fellow who can't seem to live without another one to
fight."

    Symbols tell tales, and politicians manipulate them
shamelessly. When Bush addressed the nation last week -- "in
the morning, because that's when he's best," says a White House
aide -- the credenza behind his Oval Office desk was loaded
with family portraits; the extended Bush family as a metaphor
for the even larger American family the President seeks to
protect.

    But when he made the decision to send Americans to the
Persian Gulf, Bush did so in a conference room at Camp David,
the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin mountains. Not
far away, in a long hallway, a showcase of war mementos greets
passers-by. Dominating the scene is a life-size photograph of
Bush, the kind that tourists in Washington pay $5 to pose with.
But Bush's version, a Christmas gift from the U.S. Army, is
framed and has a dozen-odd bullet holes in its head. It was
retrieved from the private pistol range of Manuel Noriega.
Nearby are the original police mug shots of Noriega, face front
and silhouette. Does the President enshrine these images as
prehistoric men wore totems from which to derive strength? Or
is this the beginning of a Terrorist Trophy Room, where the
President, who often trains a double-barreled shotgun on Texas
quail, can display what he has bagged in the way of bigger
game?

    There is enough room on the wall for a picture of Saddam
Hussein. In what pose, exactly? a Bush adviser was asked last
week. "Dead would be nice," he replied -- a flip remark that
nonetheless reflected both the situation's seriousness and an
outcome the Administration would welcome.

    After seconding John Kennedy's ringing declaration of
America's purpose in his 1988 campaign, Bush was criticized for
jingoism. "I don't think Kennedy was advocating intervention
in every trouble spot," said Bush, and he was right. Many of
America's foreign adventures have divided the nation. The gulf
mission, so far, has united much of the world.