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Iraq I: U.S. Seeks Change Through Coercive Diplomacy, Officials Say By David Ruppe It is not a policy of grand design, but rather one of necessity, independent analysts said. It is also one of risk, namely, the risk of going to war if the threat is insufficient, they said. Even opponents and skeptics about making war now on Iraq say the approach of coercive diplomacy has so far proved effective and could be the best option for pursuing the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “The administration could garner an awful lot of credit if this works out,” said Jonathan Dean, a former U.S. arms control official now with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If he gets us out of this and plays this, I’ll give him all of the credit in the world. If you can get it without anybody getting killed I think that’s terrific,” said Lawrence Korb, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Newly Articulated Policy The man considered one of the administration’s fiercest hawks on Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, articulated the approach last week in two speeches. He said the administration was aiming for peaceful change in Iraq and that the best way to achieve a peaceful outcome is through the apparently “paradoxical” threat of war. “Our only hope of achieving a peaceful disarmament of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is by having a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy,” Wolfowitz said. “Those are not two different policies. To be effective, diplomacy and the threat of force have got to be part of a single policy.” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will only give up weapons of mass destruction for which he “worked so hard and paid such a high price to develop and to retain,” Wolfowitz said, if “he believes that doing so is necessary for his personal survival and for the survival of his regime.” Comments this week by President George W. Bush have further substantiated Wolfowitz’ view. Bush said yesterday the burden was now on Hussein to decide whether to cooperate or, rather, face the threat of war. “We’ve tried diplomacy. We’re trying it one more time,” Bush said. “I believe the free world, if we make up our mind to, can disarm this man peacefully. But if not, we have the will and the desire, as do other nations, to disarm Saddam. It’s up to him to make that decision. It’s up to the United Nations,” Bush said. Success So Far National security experts say so far it appears the threat of a U.S.-led attack has borne some fruit, if only by leading Hussein to adopt policies designed to diminish international support for a U.S.-led attack. “I think the policy has already coerced Iraq into going places it doesn’t want to go,” said Lawrence Freedman, an expert on coercion at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London. The Iraqi government has signaled a willingness to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq with supposedly “unfettered” access (see GSN, Sept. 25). That announcement came amidst ongoing U.N. Security Council debate over whether to pass a resolution authorizing force as a direct consequence of continued Iraqi concealment of weapons of mass destruction. “I don’t think that Iraq would have volunteered this,” Dean said. Iraq also released tens of thousands of prisoners, according to news reports, after Hussein declared an amnesty. Bush administration officials, including Wolfowitz last week, had recently criticized Hussein’s regime for the incarceration of political prisoners, as well as their children. “We all know that President Bush and his administration have frightened many people throughout the world with accusations and charges against Iraq,” said Dean. “But they also had visible success in making the Iraqi authorities more cooperative on inspections. The president will receive and he will deserve a great deal of international credit if these pressures lead to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq without the use of force.” A Question of Intention or Necessity Whether coercive diplomacy had always been a key element of the administration’s strategy for eliminating Iraq’s weapons remains an open question. “I doubt it,” said Korb, who noted that until recently, administration officials led by Vice President Dick Cheney publicly argued that renewed inspections would be insufficient for eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction while at the same time portraying regime change as the best solution (see GSN, Aug. 8 and Sept. 19). Bush, speaking before the U.N. General Assembly last month, argued inspections had failed and either a change of regime or a radical reversal of the regime’s policies regarding a host of U.N. Security Council resolutions was needed. The administration more recently has dropped demands for U.N. support for regime change and endorsed the idea of intensive inspections in Iraq backed by the threat of force. U.S. officials Monday presented a draft resolution to the other permanent members of the Security Council calling for intensive U.N. inspections and warning that Iraq could face “severe consequences” if it fails to destroy its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (see GSN, Oct. 22). “I think this issue has sort of developed a momentum all of its own, as these things often do,” said Freedman. “I think they wanted to do something about Iraq, I don’t think they quite worked out what. I think their minds have changed a lot over the past year.” Korb believes the administration has had to adopt the approach in the face of domestic and international opposition to a war to remove Hussein’s regime. “The president got out ahead of himself talking about regime change before lining up support in the Republican establishment, the Congress and in the world,” said Korb. “Now, he’s trying to make the best of a difficult situation he got himself into,” said Korb. “And I give him credit for that because if he gets rid of those weapons he can say, ‘You see, it was me talking about the threat of war and regime change that got the Congress and the U.N. to finally get off the dime and do something.’” On the other hand, there is evidence the administration has sought — in pursuing its previous goal of regime change and its campaign to gain authority for war — to provoke an internal Iraqi solution, such as an overthrow of Hussein’s regime from within. Administration officials have made no secret of a desire for an internal coup as a way of bringing change to Iraq as an alternative to war. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer at an Oct. 1 briefing suggested, “a one-way ticket” for Hussein to leave Iraq or “one bullet” are among the alternatives to war. “There are many options that the president hopes the world and people of Iraq will exercise themselves of that gets rid of the threat,” Fleischer said. Success Remains in Question The credibility of the administration’s threat of war has been building in recent months with a congressional resolution passed last month supporting action and the very public positioning of U.S. military forces in Southwest Asia (see GSN, Oct. 11). The ultimate success of the threat, though, remains in question and carries with it risks of either having to back those threats with war or a loss to the administration of credibility and political face, analysts said. “A risk is that the next time you threaten North Korea, or whomever, they won’t take you seriously,” said Korb. Another risk with the approach of coercion is timing, said Korb. Inspections, compelled by the threat of force, also could delay the likely use of force to the point it would appear impractical. That could reduce the credibility of a U.S. attack in the event inspections are not successful, he said. “If you don’t go to war before the weather gets hot, then you’ve bought yourself another year, and then it’s a presidential election year,” he said. “You could have problems with Korea, you could have al-Qaeda attacks. There could be lots of other things going on.” A U.N. inspections official said yesterday inspections could take 10 months to produce results (see related GSN story, today). Inspections, furthermore, could cloud the question of whether Iraq retains weapons of mass destruction of sufficient capability to justify the use of force. Although the Iraqi government might appear to cooperate, it would be difficult for inspections to produce 100 percent certainty of Iraq’s biological weapons holdings, the U.N. official said yesterday. “This is a problem. You’ll have these ambiguous situations,” said Korb. Provoking a regime change with the threat of force also could prove difficult, said Freedman. “I don’t think scaring into regime change is quite so easy, you have to go a lot further, at least [from] the Iraqis I’ve spoken to anyway,” he said. “They feel they’ve been taken so far by the West before and then let down. So nobody’s going to risk a sort of insurrection unless the Americans are at the gate and then they might try it.” Hussein Can be Coerced, Study Said Analyzing previous instances of attempted coercion by the United States, a RAND study several years ago concluded Hussein can be coerced. The study concluded U.S. attempts at coercing Iraq since the Gulf War have had a “mixed track record,” with Hussein accepting intrusive U.N. inspections for a number of years, a safe haven in northern Iraq, and U.S.-British patrolled no-fly zones. Hussein, on the other hand, at times has defied the no-fly zones, invaded the safe haven and systematically deceived the inspectors, it said. He furthermore, “remains committed to gaining regional hegemony and developing his NBC [nuclear, biological and chemical] capacity, while his hold on power appears secure,” it said. The study, conducted for the Pentagon, concluded Hussein can be coerced depending foremost upon the size and immediacy of the threat. Diminished Middle Eastern support for U.S. policy regarding Iraq since the war, however, encouraged Hussein to believe he has potential supporters for his defiance, it said.
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