TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14.9 KB | 305 lines

                ²═                                                          WORLD, Page 48

Raising the Ante


In nearly doubling the number of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia,
Bush acknowledges a paradox: to avoid war, one must be prepared
to fight a war

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Dan Goodgame and Bruce van
Voorst/Washington, and J.F.O. McAllister with Baker


    Everyone still hopes no one has to go to war against Iraq.
But the only chance of avoiding it -- perhaps -- is to scare
Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The only way to do that is to
threaten war louder than ever and mean it -- and get into
position to fight, not just defensively if Saddam is mad enough
to start anything further, but offensively if need be to force
him out. That was the essential meaning of President Bush's
high-volume announcement last week that the U.S. is sending new
forces to the gulf, perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 more, nearly
doubling the size of the deployment.

    The purpose is, quite explicitly, to give American
commanders the offensive capability they have so far lacked and
that Saddam knows they have lacked. But the buildup does not
necessarily bring war closer. Bush was explicit about that too.
Maybe, just maybe, the reinforcements will finally make Saddam
beat a retreat. Besides, the biggest U.S. deployment of forces
since Vietnam won't be ready to fight until January at the
earliest. That gives everyone an additional two months to mull
over the options.

    Sound confusing? Well, not as much as it may seem. Almost
from the start of the gulf crisis, the U.S. has been pursuing a
two-track policy. On the military side, a well-armed coalition
of nearly 317,000 troops is threatening Iraq with war if Saddam
does not pull his forces out of Kuwait. On the diplomatic side,
these same allies have imposed a tough economic embargo that
they hope brings Saddam to his senses -- and to a peaceful
resolution of the crisis -- first. But, as Bush tried to make
clear this week, it is impossible to have one without the other:
Saddam has to believe in the war threat if diplomacy is to have
a prayer.

    Nor have the forces arrayed against Iraq retreated from the
fundamental objectives Bush outlined in early August:
unconditional and complete withdrawal of Iraqi forces from
Kuwait, restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government, release
of all foreigners held hostage and restoration of the security
and stability of the Persian Gulf. The confusion lies in how and
when these objectives might be reached and at what cost. No
wonder many Americans echo the question posed to Secretary of
State James Baker last week by a lonely G.I. in the Saudi
desert: "Mr. Secretary, why are we here?"

    The President went some way toward answering that this
week, marking the end of a worrisome period of muddle and
vacillation. Bush and close aides decided on the expanded
buildup more than two weeks ago, but waited to announce it until
the elections were over and the Saudis and other allies could
be informed. The basic reason for the timing, says one of Bush's
top advisers, is that "it's still not clear that Saddam Hussein
is taking us seriously." The Iraqi dictator, he says, is acting
as if time were on his side -- and he might be right. So Bush
decided he had to send "a very strong signal, another strong
signal" about American determination. He went to the White House
press room himself to announce the major reinforcement of U.S.
forces that Pentagon officials have been predicting for three
weeks. The new deployments will roughly triple the firepower
confronting Iraq. Moreover, Bush finally dropped the fiction
that the deployment was "purely defensive." The new buildup,
said the President, is intended specifically to give U.S.
commanders "an adequate offensive military option should that
be necessary" -- in blunter words, the ability to dislodge
Saddam's forces from Kuwait.

    But that was not Washington's only message last week. Baker
was hustling from capital to capital, making sure that all was
well on the diplomatic track. His mission was several-fold: to
keep the alliance firm behind the assertive U.S. lead, to
reassure the allies that the U.S. intended to give diplomacy
every chance, and to sign them up for a United Nations
resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if all else
fails. Baker returned from his eight-day, seven-country swing
through the Middle East, the Soviet Union and Europe with more
-- if at times somewhat cautious -- backing for U.S. policy than
ever. The wavering Soviets, who have been contradictory in their
signals, declared, however reluctantly, that they recognize war
may indeed be necessary. Though no one would say it in so many
words, the U.S.S.R., China (whose Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen,
Baker met in Cairo) and France indicated that they would at
least not veto a Security Council resolution approving the use
of force. But the allies generally made it clear that such a
resolution is a sine qua non if they are to go into battle
alongside the U.S.

    The week was a good one for Bush, underscoring as nothing
else has since early August his determination to fight, should
that be the only way of reversing Saddam's aggression. Almost up
to Election Day, Bush had been talking war and peace in such
quick alternation, sometimes in the same speech, that allies and
the American public alike were bewildered. One can only guess
at the effect on Saddam. Bush announced that he had "had it"
with Iraq's treatment of American diplomats in Kuwait, but later
added, "I'm not trying to sound the tocsin of war." He also said
that "we're prepared to give sanctions time to work" but that
for Iraq the "sand is running through the glass." Which
implication was authentic; which was for public relations
consumption? And by whom?

    To one Arab diplomat in Washington, these pronouncements
meant that "Bush is building a one-sided case for war." To an
official of Israel's governing Likud Party, the same words
signified that the U.S. was getting cold feet. Said he: "The
longer Bush waits, the harder it will be for the U.S. to go to
war." At home too the President faced growing demands to spell
out whether he was in fact taking the nation to war and, if so,
for what goals.

    Even now the ambiguity remains. At his press conference,
Bush was asked point-blank, "Are you going to war?" Said the
President: "I would love to see a peaceful resolution to this
question."

    Administration officials insist that any impression of
confusion or vacillation is unfair. Since the crisis began in
early August, the President has been consistent about his bottom
line. Says one White House official: "We thought our message was
simple enough, that we'd like Saddam to withdraw peacefully but
that we will kick him out if he doesn't. But we've learned that
that's too complicated for most reporters to understand."

    That, in turn, is unfair: there are real reasons for
confusion. If the President has been clear about his fundamental
goal, his shifting messages about how to achieve it have
bewildered many. Yet ambiguity is an essential part of diplomacy
in managing a crisis this complex. Especially when dealing with
an adversary like Saddam, whose future intentions are hidden,
and with allies whose own interests are so different, the U.S.
needs to keep a variety of signals afloat. Part of the message
must sound unavoidably paradoxical: the best hope of avoiding
war is to scare Saddam by making a credible threat of waging it,
and the only way to make such a threat credible is by really
meaning it.

    But Washington also seems genuinely undecided on some
points, notably when and on what evidence it might conclude that
the embargo has failed and war should be the next step. Some
experts insist that the sanctions are working; others contend
it will take months to a year or more before their effect is
felt. Who really knows? And are they saying what they know?

    Nor is Bush the ideal President to articulate such an
ambiguous policy. It's hard to tell when he's being clever and
when he's plain inarticulate. Bush, says one White House aide,
"figures people should leave him alone to do what he decides is
best. His attitude is `This is very complicated. You just
wouldn't understand.'" An Administration official adds that
whether the White House on any given day stresses its hopes for
peace or its willingness to fight sometimes "has been
determined by the President's mood or the questions he gets."

    The biggest trouble, however, is that the U.S. is obliged to
beam conflicting messages to different audiences: Saddam,
America's allies and its own public. Saddam, in Washington's
analysis, is a paranoid thug to whom force is everything. To him
the message can only be that he must pull out of Kuwait because
the only alternative is the destruction of his power and perhaps
his life. But the allies are reluctant to see the Middle East
go up in flames, and so are the Americans whose sons, husbands
and brothers -- or daughters, wives and sisters -- might be
killed. The message to them has to be that the U.S. will turn
to war only after exhausting every possibility for a peaceful
settlement.

    The latest military message, said Bush, is aimed mainly at
Saddam. Up to now, there has been something of a mismatch
between American words and muscle. The old scenario of a quick
victory through devastating air strikes with little or no ground
fighting is no longer widely believed. But the forces on the
scene, while fully adequate for their original mission of
defending Saudi Arabia, are not numerous enough or armed heavily
enough to mount a successful offensive.

    For weeks the Pentagon has been positioning itself for a
big buildup. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had suggested
repeatedly that he needed as many as 100,000 more soldiers,
sailors and airmen to reinforce the 220,000 already on station.
Now the U.S. deployment will grow to at least 380,000. Adding
96,900 Saudi and other allied troops, total forces may for the
first time match or outnumber the 430,000 Iraqi troops estimated
to have dug in in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

    More significant than numbers for offensive purposes is
armament. About 1,200 tanks are to be moved from Europe to Saudi
Arabia, more than doubling the 800 now there. Says a Pentagon
colonel: "The U.S. will have close to numerical equality with
the Iraqis in heavy tanks."

    Paradoxically, the buildup postpones the day of reckoning.
Originally Washington experts predicted fighting would start
around mid-November -- just about now. But it will take eight to
10 weeks to transport the new units to Saudi Arabia and get them
acclimated. So war is unlikely to begin before January at the
earliest.

    The U.S. can use the time to line up more support from its
allies. Some nations in the anti-Iraq coalition have been
sending signals at least as conflicting as Washington's.
Different members of the Saudi royal family have talked like
impatient hawks and worried doves; France has contradicted
alliance policy by asserting that Saddam need only promise to
withdraw from Kuwait, not actually do it, to open negotiations;
Moscow has alternately called a military solution "unacceptable"
and "possibly unavoidable."

    The common element in all this waffling is that the allies
quite reasonably fear the war they know may be necessary. Arab
governments, for example, are well aware that an unpunished
Saddam is a deadly threat to their continued existence, but they
are uneasy about the sympathy the Iraqi President has won among
some of their own people and about being allied to Israel's
biggest backer. They need reassurance that the U.S. is following
a measured policy of steadily turning up the pressure on Saddam
rather than dragging them along on a headlong rush into battle.
As hawkish an ally as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared
last week in an interview with the New York Times that the
coalition should hold off on fighting at least two to three more
months to give the embargo time to work.

    In particular, alliance members have made it clear that
they will not join the U.S. in fighting Iraq unless they get
the political cover that would come from a Security Council
resolution specifically authorizing the use of force. November
is the month to do it, because U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering
is president of the council and in control of its agenda. The
presidency rotates to Yemen next month and then to Cuba, and
both have consistently refused to support anti-Iraq resolutions.

    An uncomfortable chance remains that messages will get
crossed. Some allies may conclude from the buildup that the U.S.
is hell-bent for war. Or Saddam may read the need for the U.S.
to hold off for a while in order to bring the allies along as
a sign of weakness. The G.I.s in Saudi Arabia would rather fight
now, get it over with and go home than continue to wait in an
inhospitable desert. If discontent with Bush's policy ever
becomes rife inside the U.S., it could begin with these troops
and spread to civilians impatient with the game of feints and
threats.

    For now, public opinion still seems solidly behind Bush.
But he risks eroding that support when he muddles explanations
of his policy. He has declared, for example, that he would be
willing to accept a peaceful settlement in which Saddam
withdraws from Kuwait with his military intact. Yet the
President has also compared Saddam to Hitler, who is identified
in the public mind as a ruler so vicious that the only solution
is to destroy him. Critics charge besides that any settlement
permitting the Iraqi dictator to stay in control of an army
equipped with chemical, biological and eventually perhaps
nuclear weapons makes nearly impossible the restoration of
stability and security in the gulf area -- a restoration that
the President has declared is an important aim.

    Bush has also failed so far to answer effectively the
antiwar critics who are becoming more outspoken: demonstrators
hoisting placards reading NO BLOOD FOR OIL now turn up at nearly
every presidential appearance around the country.

    In fact, the rationale for war goes beyond oil. The
showdown with Saddam is a test case of whether the
international community can contain unprovoked aggression in the
post-cold war world. If the Iraqi dictator gets away with his
seizure of Kuwait, the precedent will be set for other
aggressions and other wars, some of them potentially nuclear,
started by any nation that wants to alter the map of the world
by force. American public opinion so far seems to understand
this intuitively, but without much help from the President. He
will have to do better than that if war comes -- and there is
no more reason now to expect a peaceful solution than there has
ever been. The message to the American public is every bit as
important as those the Administration is trying to beam at
Saddam and the allies.