View Full Version : Gulf War II Part Two...

07-03-02, 12:16 PM
The logic of that argument goes further: An attack intended to get rid of Saddam will prompt him to use whatever weapons of mass destruction he has, specifically against Israel, to widen the war and go down as a modern-day Saladin, the slayer of infidels. And in fact, if he's going out anyway, it's hard to believe he wouldn't want to do so in what in his mind is a blaze of glory. U.N. inspectors believe he has managed to hide 12 to 18 Scud missiles left over from the Gulf war and has legally continued to work on short-range missile development--some of which is applicable toward long-range missiles. Further, Saddam has devoted significant resources to figuring out how to keep chemical agents floating in the air--"aerosol-dispensing technology," in WMD argot. If he believes he's going down, everything he has will probably be headed toward Israel. If any of it hits its intended target and the Israelis retaliate, "chaos" is a mild word for what will ensue. A region-wide conflagration, an oil embargo, ever more hatred directed at Israel's sponsor, the U.S. You get the picture. Leave him alone, say the containment advocates, and eventually the world will be rid of him.

Here, as University of Maryland political scientist Shibley Telhami says, "context, and the tenor of the times," are critically important. Again, no one has any brief for Saddam, but skeptics ask, simply, Is this really the moment? Eleven years ago the Arab world was not nearly as inflamed as it is now, its TVs not teeming with images of intifada and the Israelis' iron-fisted response to the deadly reality of teenage suicide bombers. Like it or not, the Saudis and the Egyptians are two of America's critical allies in the Middle East, and their governments are now under fierce pressure from their own population because of it. A campaign against Saddam, particularly one that involves massive air bombardment and attendant civilian casualties (which it will) could have a convulsive impact across the region, even if the Bush Administration manages to rein in the violence with its frantic proposals for a Palestinian state. (And if by contrast the heat doesn't diminish, Saddam may well get a free pass, which is why he will continue writing big checks to the parents of Palestinian suicide bombers.)

How convulsive might the reaction be? Ellen Laipson, a sober-minded Iraq specialist who was vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council until earlier this year, says the Saudis, among others, "can't really be blamed" for being worried. For 11 years they have played a double game with their own people and with the U.S., allowing U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Islam while permitting clerics to preach anti-Western screeds in the mosques and madrassahs. Sept. 11 and widespread support of the Palestinian cause may have been sufficient to bring that jig to an end. A U.S. invasion of Iraq is not something the Saudis want to have to deal with anytime soon, given that at a minimum Washington would again need the state-of-the-art Prince Sultan air base south of Riyadh to help run the air war. In short, a collapse of the house of Saud in the current environment, even if unlikely, is not inconceivable, and what could come in its wake could easily be a government that wouldn't necessarily disown the sentiments of the kingdom's most infamous son: Osama bin Laden. Whatever you may think of the Saudis, they have been a reliable supplier of reasonably priced crude oil for a long time, and for every American Administration since F.D.R. that has been the bottom line. The Bush Administration, though unquestionably attuned to oil interests, is hardly unique in not wanting trouble in Saudi Arabia.

But trouble it is likely to get. The Saudis, like the Egyptians, don't feel particularly threatened by Saddam anymore, and they don't really believe they face a life-or-death threat from bin Laden-style terrorism (even if, on June 18, the Saudis announced that their security services had arrested 13 suspected al Qaeda members who had allegedly been planning attacks against various sites within the kingdom). What they do fear is a growing general discontent among their own populations, fueled by increasing economic problems, sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and the anti-American baggage that comes with it. All of which could be ramped up significantly by a war with Iraq if the regimes in Riyadh and Cairo are seen to be holding America's coat.

Saudi fragility is not itself a reason to leave Saddam alone, even with the possible consequences for the oil market that serious turmoil there would imply (a subject we will get to shortly). But skeptics of any forthcoming Iraq operation believe there is much more trouble to come should the U.S. move anytime soon. Maryland's Shibley Telhami, who organizes extensive public-opinion soundings in the Arab world, believes it is likely that a war with Iraq would result, at least in the short run, in an increase in terrorism throughout the Middle East, directed at any regime--Egypt, Jordan, the other Gulf monarchies--seen as supporting us, and inevitably bring the suicide-bomber phenomenon to U.S. shores. That's precisely what Bush is trying to avoid. Duelfer, the ex-UNSCOM official and one of the most knowledgeable Americans about Iraq, supports removing Saddam but doesn't disagree with Telhami. "There is," he says glumly, "no shortage of kids in the region who seem to want to grow up to be cruise missiles." To the skeptics, an invasion now would only increase the arsenal.

We are, it's true, focusing on the downside here, if only because so little of it has been heard to date. Bear with us: There's a bit more. Many businesses may not be overly concerned right now with the prospective geopolitical fallout of the next war with Iraq, believing that the direct economic impact of any conflict could be contained, especially if the conflict is short and stays within Iraqi borders--a plausible scenario. The U.S. in 2000 exported only about $23 billion worth of goods to the Middle East (Israel excluded), compared with European exports to the region of $63.7 billion. But there are other numbers that should concentrate minds.

Most obvious is the cost of another war--and its aftermath. Japan and Saudi Arabia won't be writing billion dollar checks this time around. A full-scale invasion, even one smaller than Desert Storm, will not be cheap, and it will come at a time when the federal budget is already sinking into deficits.

The effect of a war on consumer sentiment may not be negligible, either. In August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index stood at 76.4. A month later, when the U.S. response remained uncertain, it had dropped just four points. By October, however, when we began counting those prospective body bags, the index fell off a cliff, plunging to almost 30% below the level at which it stood in July. (By March 1991, after the U.S. rout was over, the index had jumped back up to 87.) The point is obvious. If, as seems certain, war planning picks up and details of various Pentagon plans leak to the press (and that's already started), consumers could yet react negatively, particularly if the planning is drawn out.

And drawn out it will be. Even the most fervent cheerleaders for U.S. military action--Iraqi exiles in groups like the Iraqi National Congress--concede that the Administration has so far been painfully slow in trying to figure out not only what kind of war it wants to wage but what it wants a post-Saddam Iraq to look like politically. "There's just a tremendous degree of ignorance as to what it will take to keep things together after a war ends," says Raad al Kadiri, manager of country-risk analysis for the Petroleum Finance Corp. in Washington, D.C. Getting up to speed will take time, and that means the uncertainty that hangs over the forthcoming fight with Saddam will not go away in six months as it did last time. The drop in consumer sentiment may not be as sharp--with Americans in effect discounting for swift, painless success once the battle is joined--but the uneasiness could last longer until it becomes a lot clearer just how it is going to go.

The mother of all economic nightmares revolves around oil. Iraq, under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, has been exporting about two million barrels a day of crude (compared with about 3.5 million barrels before the Gulf war). Even if that is disrupted during a war, and even if Saddam takes Iraqi oil off the market for a while by somehow managing to torch a patch of his own country's capacity on his way out to spite whoever might succeed him, the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and other OPEC members could easily mitigate the effects as long as they were willing to do so.