Locked & Loaded
Despite European Objections, War is Imminent

Note: This issue appears a week after its cover date because of the recent heavy snowfalls and flooding in the Washington area. It has been updated to reflect events through March 2. The March 7 issue should go to press a week later.

Whether or not one thinks a war with Iraq is necessary or wise, war is about to begin, and the realists in the region are, as noted here previously, hedging their bets. Despite lingering uncertainties about Turkey, its government is trying to cut a deal, and many in the Arab world are resigned to the inevitable and hope that the collateral damage to their regimes will not be great.

The French and German objections have drawn much commentary in the US and Britain, and certainly the positions taken by Paris and Bonn appear to reflect the attitudes of the European “street”, which is perhaps not as resigned to the inevitable as are the Arab regimes and Turkey.

It now appears likely that the timing will be some days or weeks after Hans Blix reports to the Security Council. Iraq’s eleventh-hour agreement to destroy the Al-Samoud 2 missiles Blix recently proscribed (See Defense Briefs), may have guaranteed there will be no “smoking gun” some wavering countries have been asking for (though Iraq was still not clearly committed to destroying all the Samouds). But even if Russia and China could be persuaded, the possibility of a French veto remains. That will not deter the US, but it may have future ramifications for the effectiveness of both the Security Council and the NATO Alliance. The final US push for a Security Council Resolution should follow soon after Blix reports again.

And so the pundits continue to debate the whys and whethers of a war while the military forces in the region are more concerned about the when. Depending on how much delay the Turkish reluctance causes on deploying for the northern front (critical to protecting autonomous Kurdistan against Iraqi pre-emption or reprisals), a launch date of some time in late March, maybe a bit earlier even, seems probable at this point.

One already is hearing the accusation that the war is becoming unavoidable because the military buildup creates an inevitable momentum towards launching the campaign. Logistical considerations and the sheer costs of maintaining significant forces in the field do indeed tend to create self-fulfilling prophecies. There is a famous instance often cited in which the German forces in August 1914, in order to deploy towards Belgium and France according to their mobilization plans, had to violate the Luxembourg border before the German ultimatum had expired: thus war became inevitable logistically before it had become so diplomatically. But train schedules did not really start World War I, and logistics will not start a war with Iraq. The US deployed significant forces to Europe from 1945 until the present, without a war becoming inevitable.

What makes this war inevitable is both the determination on the part of the United States to disarm Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein, and Saddam’s apparent constitutional inability to come completely clean or simply depart into exile. He is a survivor who can usually be depended on to save his own life, but he is also one who has escaped so many attempts to remove him that he may believe himself invincible. Saddam is cunning, but he also has a long track record of misjudging his opponents: Iran in 1980 and the elder George Bush in 1990, to name the two most obvious cases. There is some reason to believe that Saddam really does not believe that war is imminent. Perhaps he, like certain Western European chanceries, believes that with France and Germany opposed, the US cannot, or will not, go to war. Or he believes that he can create a long war with house-to-house fighting in Baghdad which will lead to US public opinion turning against the war. He misunderstood the “Vietnam syndrome” in 1990 and he may be misunderstanding the US withdrawal from Somalia after losing troops in Mogadishu in 1993. Since September 11, the US has talked constantly of being at war, and while Iraq will not be as easy as Afghanistan, domestic public opinion appears prepared to accept the costs.

The real issue remains the “day after” question, and the potential challenges to the US once Saddam is gone and the US has become, as it appears to be planning to become, an occupying power. With the Dossier in this issue, The Estimate begins a brief course in modern Iraqi history and how the legacies of that history will impact the “day after” planners.There are real dangers there for a turn in US domestic opinion. But that will likely be too late to save Saddam. He may well make a number of last-minute concessions, including the Al-Samouds, but the US seems determined not to play that game.

Saddam may indeed fear for his own life, but if he sees no options for saving it, he may also try to destroy Iraq; the US concerns about a firing of the oil wells and a breaking of the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates are real, as is the possibility of the use of weapons of mass destruction against Kurdistan or neighboring countries.

In other words, there is little real likelihood that Saddam will pack his bags and go, and in fact that is not what the US planners want, since it would deprive them of the opportunity to rebuild Iraq.

But if Saddam does not leave, or experience some sort of genuine change of personality and approach, there is going to be a war. To state that fact does not mean that it is a good idea or something that should happen, merely that it is something that is about to happen. Those in a position to do so may have the luxury of denouncing the war and its purposes, but most countries in the region lack that luxury and are simply going to have to watch (or participate, as with Turkey) while the war develops.

Readers are well aware that The Estimate has not been one of those voices clamoring for war with Iraq; not because Iraq is not everything that George W. Bush says it is (it is), but because a nation should go to war only when its vital interests are directly threatened, and it should never overlook the surprises war always holds and the difficulties war always creates, for the peoples on both sides. The debate about whether this war is necessary has, however, been sidetracked into a broader debate about preemption and unilateralism, “cowboy” diplomacy and personal feuds with France and German leaders. That particular sideshow may well continue after the war begins, and last well after it is over. If there are terror attacks in the West or the fall of friendly regimes, there will be recriminations and blaming after the fact, as there have been predictions of danger before it. But at a point not too far away the debates are going to be transformed.

They are going to be transformed because the United States and Iraq are about to go to war. When it ceases to be a threat and becomes a fact on the ground, when American (and Iraqi) troops go not only in harm’s way but into the fire of battle, the debate will be marginalized by the battle. And the surprises which war always brings, the “friction” of which Clausewitz spoke, will be the immediate concern.

Diplomacy which misreads the fact that war is imminent, or which assumes that the US will not act without the United Nations, may send the wrong message to the Iraqis in particular. Saddam’s record of misjudging his enemies may be repeated. The facts, regardless of whether one likes them or not, are simple: the United States is locked and loaded, and war is about to begin.

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