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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 16KB | 307 lines

<text> <title> Why It's Still The Old World Order </title> <article> <hdr> Foreign Service Journal, July 1991 Why It's Still The Old World Order </hdr> <body> By Janice Gross Stein. Janice Gross Stein is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She recently edited (Getting to the Table: Processes of International Prenegotiation). Every war generates lessons and spawns myths. Even though it is still early, several myths already have been created in the euphoria of victory in the Gulf War, and preliminary lessons can be drawn about the management of international conflict. The myths are misleading and the lessons cautionary. Two lessons emerge from the period that preceded the war: deterrence and compulsion both failed. A strategy of deterrence uses threats to prevent an adversary from taking an unwanted action--"don't do that or else." Compulsion involves using the threat of force to convince an adversary to do something he does not wish to do. Both strategies assume as a minimum condition sufficient military superiority to make the threat credible. Despite its unquestioned military advantage, the United States practiced a flawed strategy of deterrence in the two weeks preceding Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2. From the invasion until the onset of war on January 16, the American-led coalition vigorously attempted to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. Neither strategy of conflict management succeeded. Why? Confused messages In the weeks immediately preceding Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Washington sent ambiguous messages about its likely response to a use of force by Saddam Hussein. At the now infamous July 25 meeting in Baghdad, Ambassador April Glaspie told Hussein that "...we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Glaspie subsequently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, during that meeting, she had also warned several times that "we would insist on settlements being made in a nonviolent manner, not by threats, not by intimidation, and certainly not by aggression...I told him orally we would defend our vital interests, we would support our friends in the Gulf, we would defend their sovereignty and integrity." At worst, in the critical two weeks when Saddam was considering the use of force, the United States sent a weak and confused message about its likely response, should Iraq use force. At best, to the extent that Washington did try to deter, the warning was not credible. The president of Iraq doubted not the capability but the resolve of the United States to defend Kuwait. American resolve was in question not because of inept strategy by the American ambassador, but because of confused policy. In the last several years, the United States had courted Iraq as a counterweight to Iran and turned a blind eye to evidence that Hussein might be considering aggression against his neighbors. Under these conditions, it was difficult for the United States, irrespective of its military capability, to make its threats credible. The second lesson is unambiguous. Compulsion did not work. Despite the best efforts of the Bush Administration to manipulate the risk of war and its unquestioned military superiority, Saddam Hussein did not back down. This time, signals were clear, unequivocal and overwhelming, but the strategy still failed. Several factors explain the failure to avoid war. Saddam continued to doubt American resolve, not on the basis of U.S. military capability but rather on the basis of its willingness to suffer casualties. In discussing the battle of Fao, which had been decisive in the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam told Ambassador Glaspie that, "Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle." Drawing an analogy to the withdrawal of American Marines from Beirut, President Hussein was persuaded that the American public would not tolerate large numbers of casualties in a ground war. More to the point, Saddam's calculation of the costs and benefits was different from that of the United States. One probable interpretation of his refusal to retreat is that he could not accept the political costs; after the first week, once he was condemned by fellow Arab leaders at the summit in Cairo, the loss of pride and honor and the humiliation of backing down were intolerable. Saddam preferred to fight and lose than to pay the personal and political price that retreat involved. The success of threat-based strategies of conflict management depends not only on superior military capabilities, but on an understanding of the other side's decision criteria. George Bush and Saddam Hussein could not cross the cultural divide to understand the basis of the other's calculation. In the Gulf, threat-based strategies failed to prevent both crisis and war. These are cautionary lessons for the future management of international conflict. Smart weapons and talking heads The war, fought from January 16 to February 27, spawned other lessons on the management of international conflict in the post-Cold War era. Two stand out in importance. First, smart weapons, especially used from the air, greatly reduced the political costs of conventional warfare. "Smart" weapons thus make it easier for great powers to fight conventional wars against middle and smaller powers in the Third World. Analysts suggest that international cooperation may grow as the cost of military technology escalates. If "smart" weapons are easily available over the next decade, they may undercut peaceful settlements of a myriad of disputes in the Third World and make some kinds of north-south wars more likely. Second, the political constraints operating on President Bush during the war, as distinct from the prewar period, were overestimated. Although the war was high tech, its coverage was not. Management of the media and control of information were carefully planned by the Pentagon before the fighting began. Due to what leaders thought they had learned from Vietnam, this was the first radio war in two generations, in which home TV coverage was largely restricted to "talking heads." In part because the public saw very few visual images of death and damage in the fighting, and because the war was brief, President Bush conducted the war virtually free of political constraints. This lesson has been well learned by military leaders in Washington as well as other Western capitals. Electronic wars and radio coverage make war more, rather than less, likely as a future instrument of international conflict management. New world order? In the post-war period, several dangerous myths have already been accepted. The first and most important is that the orchestration and management of the war confirm "American hegemony" or the emergence of a "unipolar system" dominated by the United States. Some critics allege that the United States, working under the guise of collective security to preserve a hegemonic order, went to war to secure strategic resources in the Gulf and to protect its client regimes. Others insist that the most striking feature of the post-Cold War world is its unipolarity, with the United States unchallenged at the center of world power. The first group sees continuation, the second fundamental change in the system, but both agree on the preeminence of the United States in the post-Cold War international system. This analysis of a unipolar hegemonic order as demonstrated by the performance of the United States in the war in the Gulf mistakes the shell for the substance. The war occurred under very specific conditions that are not likely to be replicated. President Saddam Hussein was widely feared and hated in his own country and beyond his borders in the Middle East. Although his political agenda received wide support in the Arab world, he