Foreign Policy By Catharsis: The Failure of U.S. Policy Toward Iraq.

TEN YEARS AFTER THE GULF WAR, U.S. policy toward Iraq continues to suffer from an over-reliance on military solutions, an abuse of the United Nations and international law, and a disregard for the human suffering resulting from the policy. Furthermore, it has failed to dislodge Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power. The GulfWar coalition built by the first Bush Administration is in tatters, U.S. credibility has been further compromised in the international community in general and in the Arab world in particular, and Saddam Hussein's standing in Iraq and throughout the region has been enhanced. Meanwhile, problems which threaten the stability of the region far more than the Iraqi dictator -- such as the violent interruption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, uneven economic development, and the ongoing militarization of the region -- continue to grow, in part due to U.S. policies.

Despite initial hopes that the new Bush team would be more pragmatic than the ideologues who dominated the Clinton Administration policy towards the Gulf, it appears at this writing that it is unlikely that such a shift will take place. Though Colin Powell's advocacy of what he refers to as "smart sanctions" are a tacit admission of the need for change, they fail to address the underlying humanitarian, economic, strategic and political problems with the U.S. approach to Iraq and the Gulf as a whole.

This article examines U.S. policy towards Iraq in relation to the alleged strategic threat posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein to the region.

EARLY APPEASMENT

With antipathy towards Iraq so strong as to lead the United States to engage in an ongoing low-level bombing campaign and to lead the most devastating sanctions regime in modern history, it is perhaps surprising that the United States tolerated the abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime for as long as it did. Most of us familiar with the Middle East did not have to wait until Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Iraq to know that Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator. Many of the crimes committed by the Iraqi ruler now cited by U.S. officials as examples of the heinous nature of his regime were actually committed in the 1980s when the U.S. was quietly supporting Saddam in his war with Iran.

It is ironic that it was the senior George Bush who, as president, first emphasized how Saddam Hussein had "used chemical weapons against his own people." The March 1988 massacre at Halabja, where Saddam's forces murdered 5000 civilians in that Kurdish town with chemical weapons, was downplayed by the Reagan Administration, in which he was the vice-president, even to the point of claiming that Iran, then the preferred enemy of the U.S., was actually responsible. When ABC television correspondent Charles Glass revealed sites of Saddam's biological warfare programs in early 1989, the State Department denied the facts presented and the story essentially died. Glass recently observed that the State Department "now issues briefings on the same sites."

When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report brought to light Saddam's policy of widespread extermination in Iraqi Kurdistan, Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the Prevention of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi regime, but the Bush Administration successfully moved to have the measure killed. Indeed, even before the Halabja tragedy, U.N. reports in 1986 and 1987 documented Iraq's use of chemical weapons, which were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and from U.S. embassy staff who had visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about the ongoing repression, the use of chemical weapons and the potential use of biological weapons, the U.S. was actually supporting the Iraqi government's procurement effort of materials necessary for the development of weapons of mass destruction.

During the 1980s, American companies, with U.S. government backing, supplied Saddam with much of the raw materials for Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program as well as $1 billion worth of components necessary for the development of missiles and nuclear weapons. A Senate committee reported in 1994 that American companies licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department had shipped large quantities of biological materials usable in weapons production in Iraq, some of which were later destroyed by U.N. inspectors. This report noted that such trade continued at least until the end of the decade, despite evidence of Iraqi biological and chemical warfare against Iranians and against Iraqi Kurds. (1) Much of this trade was possible because the Reagan Administration took Iraq off of its list of countries supporting terrorism in 1982, making them eligible to receive such items, despite Iraq's ongoing support of Abu Nidal and other terrorist groups. (2)

As late as December 1989, the Bush Administration pushed through new loans to the Iraqi government, in order to facilitate U.S.-Iraqi trade. (3) Meanwhile, according to a 1992 Senate investigation, the Commerce Department repeatedly deleted and altered information on export licenses for trade with Iraq in order to hide potential military uses of American exports. (4) Such policies raise serious questions as to why, if Iraq has really been such a danger to American security, the U.S. helped facilitate the development of its military capability and its acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

THE WEAK STRATEGIC CASE

The sudden reversal in perceptions regarding Iraq's potential threat is all the more ironic given that Iraq's military, including its potential and existing weapons of mass destruction, was significantly stronger in the late 1980s. Saddam then had his full complement of medium-range missiles, a functioning air force and a massive stockpile of chemical and biological weaponry and material. Yet successive U.S. administrations dismissed any potential strategic threat to the point of coddling Saddam's regime with overt economic subsidies and covert military support. Since then, the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent inspections regime have destroyed virtually any aggressive military potential by Iraq. UNSCOM has reported destroying 38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 liters of live chemical weapon agents, 48 missiles, six missile launchers, 30 missile warheads modified to carry chemical or biological agents and hundreds of related equipment with capability to produce chemical weapons. In late 1997, UNSCOM director Ric hard Butler reported that they had made "significant progress" in tracking Iraq's chemical weapons program and that 817 of the 819 Soviet-supplied long-range missiles had been accounted for. There were also believed to be a couple of dozen Iraqi-made ballistic missiles, but these were of questionable caliber. (5)

Iraq's armed forces are barely one-third their pre-war strength. Even though they have not been required to reduce their conventional forces, the destruction of weapons and economic difficulties have led to a substantial reduction of men under arms. The navy is virtually non-existent and the air force is just a fraction of what it was before the war. Why then, when Iraq had only a tiny percentage of its once-formidable military capability, did the U.S. suddenly start portraying Iraq as an intolerable military threat in 1998? It is no surprise, under these circumstances, that so many Americans, rightly or wrongly, suspected President Clinton of manufacturing the crisis to distract the American public from the sex scandal surrounding his office. Indeed, the December 1998 bombing began on the very day of his scheduled impeachment by the House of Representatives.

The Clinton Administration was never able to publicly present any credible evidence that Iraq even had biological weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the late 1990s which was used to justify U.S. air strikes, though Iraq has certainly in the past produced both chemical and biological agents and may indeed continue to do so, albeit at a greatly reduced capacity. UNSCOM inspections revealed evidence of the production of large amounts of biological agents, including anthrax, and have charged that Iraq had "vastly understated" the amount of biological warfare agents they had manufactured. In response, UNSCOM placed sophisticated monitoring devices to detect chemical or biological weapons, though these were dismantled after the bombing raids of December 1998 known as 'Operation Desert Fox'. (6) However, the mass production or deployment of such weapons would almost certainly be detected and destroyed in the unlikely event that Iraq was able and willing to advance production to a level that could be a m ajor threat to neighboring countries.

More importantly, there are serious questions as to whether the alleged biological agents could be successfully dispersed in a manner that could harm the civilian population, given the rather complicated technology required. For example, a vial of biological weapons on the tip of a missile would almost certainly be destroyed on impact or dispersed harmlessly. Frightening scenarios regarding mass fatalities from a small amount of anthrax assumes that the Iraqis have successfully cultivated the rare strain lethal to human beings (an anthrax bacillus is usually fatal to animals but rarely to humans) and have developed the highly sophisticated means of distributing them by missile or aircraft. To become a lethal weapon, highly concentrated amounts of the spores must be inhaled and then left untreated by antibiotics. Similarly, the winds would have to be just right, no rain could fall, the spray nozzles could not clog, the population would not be vaccinated and everyone would stay around the area targeted to be at tacked.

It is also hard to imagine that an Iraqi aircraft, presumably some kind of drone, would somehow be able to penetrate the air space of neighboring countries, much less all the way to Israel, without being shot down. Most all of Iraq's neighbors, have sophisticated anti-aircraft capability and Israel has the most sophisticated regional missile defense system in the world. Similarly, as mentioned above, there is no evidence that Iraq actually had any Scud missiles and launchers survive the Gulf War. Indeed, UNSCOM reported in 1992 that Iraq had no launchers for their missiles or even any engines.

Israeli military analyst Meir Stieglitz, writing in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, noted that:

... there is no such thing as a long-range Iraqi missile with an effective biological warhead. No one has found an Iraqi biological warhead. The chances of Iraq having succeeded in developing operative warheads without tests are zero. (7)

While Iraq's potential for developing weapons of mass destruction should not be totally discounted, Saddam's lack of full cooperation with the inspections regime prior to the December 1998 bombings and his subsequent outright refusal to cooperate is far more likely a desperate power play by a weakened tyrant than an indication that Iraq was hiding anything potentially threatening to neighbors. Indeed, UNSCOM was unable to come up with any evidence that Iraq has been concealing prohibited weapons since October 1995. (8)

A THREAT TO WHOM?

In accusing either an individual or a nation of a crime, or even the potential of committing a crime, the accuser should be willing to make a plausible case about what would motivate the criminal. Neither the Clinton administration nor the second Bush administration has ever been able to make a plausible case about what Iraq would gain by attacking its neighbors with biological weapons and what risks it would take by doing so. Indeed, the Israeli government has made no secret that it would be willing to use nuclear weapons against Iraq in retaliation. The fact remains that Saddam has far more to gain through creating an ongoing series of crises with the United States and thereby increasing his popularity with the Arab masses than to engage in a suicidal attack with biological weapons against another country.

Despite a great deal of evidence documenting Iraq's intention to produce anthrax bacillus, there has been no plausible scenario as to how or why the Iraqis would deliver these to other countries. Indeed, during the GulfWar, Saddam still had a large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons as well as scores of ground-to-ground missiles and aircraft. In the course of that conflict, with his nation being attacked in the heaviest bombing raids in history by the largest multinational armed force ever assembled, a situation where a leader would be most tempted to use such weaponry, he did not use any of the substantial arsenal of these weapons then at his disposal. The U.S. has been unable to make a convincing case as to why Saddam would suddenly be motivated to make such an attack now, when not even provoked.

This raises another question regarding who would be the potential victims of such an Iraqi biological weapons attack. Even if we were to assume that Iraq had the motivation and capability to launch such an attack by air, these weapons would certainly be no threat to the U.S. In addition, virtually none of Iraq'a neighbors within range of Iraqi missiles believe that military action was or could be the most appropriate response. The only real exception has been Israel, which has a nuclear deterrent against such potential attacks as well as substantial conventional weapons capability with which to launch massive pre-emptive strikes against Iraq if it felt it was necessary.

A far more likely scenario for an Iraqi distribution of such biological agents would be through terrorists smuggling them clandestinely into targeted countries. Such a possibility requires aggressive counter-intelligence efforts by the United States and other potentially targeted nations, but it is not the sort of contingency for which bombing campaigns would prevent. The ongoing sanctions regime and military strikes would more likely encourage rogue elements of Iraqi intelligence or an allied terrorist group to engage in such an attack as an act of revenge for the heavy Arab casualties resulting from these policies.

THE UTILITY OF BOMBING

That the U.S. could allege that Desert Fox and subsequent bombing campaigns could somehow destroy Iraq's laboratories or storage facilities for biological weapons seems bizarre in hindsight. Unlike chemical or nuclear weapons production, there are no large, visible and stationary processing facilities. Indeed, an entire operation could take place in a facility the size of a large kitchen and could be packed up and moved at will. Furthermore, if the raw materials are in hand, some biological weapons can be produced as easily as fermenting beer, so any stockpiles destroyed could have been replaced virtually overnight.

More seriously, military strikes destroyed the ongoing inspection efforts. Essentially, Operation Desert Fox caused the United Nations to go from a 95% compliance rate to a 0% compliance rate, which was a major reason why most UNSCOM officials opposed such a military response.

General Charles Homer, who commanded U.S. air forces in the 1991 Gulf War, correctly predicted in 1998 that "Using force could have negative consequences -- and it probably would not solve our major problem: Destroying nuclear, biological and chemical weapons." He added, "Ultimately, neither an air nor a ground invasion would solve the conflict over weapons of mass destruction. We will still need trained inspection teams to look for biological and chemical weapons." (9)

Since the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent inspections regime destroyed essentially every capability the Iraqi government had to produce or deploy weapons of mass destruction, the only implements remaining were those which could not easily be removed or hidden -- such as laboratory samples, scientific instruments and computer ware -- which cannot be destroyed through an aerial bombing campaign. Good intelligence capability, not firepower, is the most effective means of countering whatever threat such laboratories might harbor. Indeed, even during the Gulf War -- the heaviest bombing in world history -- allied bombers were unable to destroy a single Scud missile on the ground because they did not know where these mobile weapons were at a given time. A 1996 report by the General Accounting Office study charged the Pentagon with grossly exaggerating the effectiveness of its most expensive high-tech aircraft, missiles, and "smart bombs." (10) As late as November 1997, a senior intelligence official acknowledged, in reference to anthrax production facilities, "If we knew where they were and how much there were, we'd go and get them," but that there was no way to do so. (11) The United Nations had the ultimate intelligence network available to them in the form of UNSCOM, but -- thanks to the bombing -- no longer has access to Iraq.

THE NO-FLY ZONES AND ONGOING BOMBING

The United States, Great Britain and France unilaterally initiated "no-fly zones" in northern and southern Iraq in response to popular concern over the humanitarian crisis generated by severe repression by the Iraqi government of the Kurdish and Shi'a communities following their uprisings against the government in March 1991. They are designed to protect these areas from Iraqi air strikes by banning Iraqi military flights. These no-fly zones have no precedence in international law and no authorization from the United Nations; France has subsequently dropped out from the enforcement efforts.

According to the 1994 and 1996 State Department reports, the creation and military enforcement of "no-fly zones" do not in fact protect the Iraqi Kurdish and Shi'a populations from potential assaults by Iraqi forces. Indeed, the straight latitudinal demarcations of the no-fly zones do not correspond with the Kurdish and Shi'a populations. Indeed, they are widely seen to be an excuse for ongoing American and British bombing of Iraq; the targets have no relation to preventing Iraqi attacks against vulnerable minorities. That the U.S. and U.K. routinely allow the Turkish Air Force to conduct bombing raids within the "no-fly zone" against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq is but one indication of the lack of concern about actually protecting the Kurdish population.

Hopes that the new Bush administration might reverse the Clinton's administration's failed policies were shattered less a month into office with the U.S. bombing of areas in suburban Baghdad. The bombing was justified on the grounds of enforcing the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. However, the targets of the March 2001 attacks were well outside the no-fly zones and appear to have no credible defensive rationale. Indeed, it appears to be yet another example of foreign policy by catharsis, an expression of anger and frustration against a recalcitrant dictator which may feel good and help a president's standing in public opinion polls, but actually accomplishes little.

Neither the United Nations nor any other international body established the no-fly zones the U.S. seeks to enforce. They were unilaterally declared by the United States and Great Britain in 1991 and have no precedent in international law. Despite their dubious legality, however, the no-fly zones initially received widespread support as a means of curbing the Iraqi government's savage repression of its Kurdish and Shi'a communities. During that spring, thousands of civilians had died in assaults by Iraqi helicopter gun ships and other aircraft in the now-protected areas.

International support for the no-fly zones has diminished dramatically, however, as they have evolved from an emergency humanitarian measure to an excuse for the U.S. and Britain to launch repeated air strikes against this impoverished country of 22 million people. Initially, the U.S. military presence was in place to challenge Iraqi encroachments into the proscribed airspace. Then, it was escalated to include assaults on anti-aircraft batteries that fired at allied aircraft enforcing the zone. It was escalated still further when anti-aircraft batteries were attacked simply for locking on their radar towards allied aircraft, even without firing. Then, the Clinton Administration began attacking radar installations and other military targets within the no-fly zone, even when they were unrelated to alleged Iraqi threats against U.S. aircraft. Now, the new Bush administration has escalated things still further, targeting radar and command-and-control installations well beyond the no-fly zone.

The Bush administration's propensity for Orwellian language was demonstrated when Marine Lt. General Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, justified the air strikes as a necessary response to Iraqis "aggression." The Iraqi government has certainly engaged in acts of aggression in the past, such as its invasion of Iran in 1980 and its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Yet this may be the first time in history that the use of radar to track foreign military aircraft encroaching within a country's internationally recognized airspace has been declared an act of aggression.

Despite efforts by administrations of both parties, echoed by media pundits, to portray the ongoing low-level air war as putting pressure on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator has not been harmed. However, hundreds of Iraqi civilians and unwilling Iraqi conscripts have been killed in these air attacks, which have averaged several times a week over the past three and a half years.

This creeping escalation of vis-a-vis the no-fly zones adds to the considerable belief that the United States has actually been looking for excuses to bomb Iraq. This is also evidenced in the events leading up to the heaving four-day U.S.-British bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.

In November 1997, the Iraqi banning of American participants from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) inspection teams led the United States to mobilize forces for a major bombing campaign, which was suspended when the Russians were able to negotiate an agreement where the Iraqis rescinded the ban. A number of analysts noted how the disappointment among some Clinton Administration officials was palpable. Soon thereafter, the Clinton administration began to raise concerns about Iraq's refusal to allow UNSCOM inspectors to visit so-called "presidential sites," a liberally-defined series of buildings and grounds across the country which Iraq claimed were used by government officials. The United States and some UNSCOM officials believed that the reason for the Iraqi restrictions was that anthrax and other biological warfare agents might be being produced within some of those sites.

The Iraqis, by contrast, saw granting unfettered access by inspectors as yet another intrusion on their sovereign rights. Given that many prominent American political leaders from both parties have openly called for killing Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader's reluctance to allow Americans into presidential palaces may have also been a result of concerns that such access would make him and other top officials personally vulnerable. Indeed, there have been complaints that, despite a stated policy of avoiding staffing UNSCOM with experts from "intelligence providing states," there were disproportionate numbers of Americans involved in the inspections, which the Iraqis have periodically complained have deliberately prolonged the process and potentially provided information to the U.S. military. (12)

Even those in the West dubious of Iraq's alleged concerns were also suspicious of American motivations: Though such Iraqi restrictions on these "presidential sites" had existed since the beginning of the sanctions regime nearly seven years earlier, the U.S. announced only in January 1998 that it had become an intolerable violation of the cease fire resolution which might necessitate a sustained bombing campaign against the country. By February, war seemed likely, until United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was able to broker a deal late that month which met the United Nations' insistence that the sites be open to U.N. inspectors, but with an additional diplomatic presence in recognition of the sites' special status.

In November, Iraq imposed new restrictions on UNSCOM that resulted from revelations that the United States was using UNSCOM as a vehicle for spying on the Iraqi government. Press reports indicate that the U.S. pressured UNSCOM chairman Richard Butler to pull UNSCOM out of Iraq in early December without the required authorization from the Security Council. U.S. officials then helped him draft his report blaming Iraq exclusively for the impasse in a late night session at the U.S. Mission across from the United Nations.

INTERNATIONAL LAW

The U.S. initially rationalized for Operation Desert Fox on the grounds that Iraq was in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, the imposed cease fire agreement at the close of the 1991 Gulf War which, among other things, provided for the destruction, removal or rendering harmless all Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capability, including both the weapons themselves and facilities for research, development and manufacturing, as well as eliminating ballistic missiles with a range of over 100 miles. In order to follow through on such a disarmament program, United Nations inspectors were to be allowed free access to inspect and destroy such weaponry.

What many American analysts seem to fail to understand was that the conflict regarding access for U.N. inspectors was between the Iraqi government and the United Nations, not between Iraq and the United States. Though U.N. resolution 687 was the most detailed in the world body's history, there were no enforcement mechanisms specified. It was therefore assumed that, should enforcement be necessary, it would be brought before the Security Council as a whole, as normally done when governments violate all or parts of such resolutions. According to articles 41 and 42 of the United Nations Charter, unless the U.N. Security Council determines there has been a material breach of its resolution, determines that all non-military means of enforcement have been exhausted, and specifically authorizes the use of military force - as it did in November 1990 with resolution 678 in response to Iraq's ongoing occupation of Kuwait - no member state has the right to enforce any resolution militarily. Therefore, the unilateral U.S . attacks have been illegal. Indeed, they create a very dangerous precedent: for example, Russia could now claim the right to attack Israel, France could claim the right to attack Turkey and Great Britain could claim the right to attack Morocco for their ongoing violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Indeed, the U.S. insistence on the right to attack unilaterally has effectively undermined the principle of collective security and the authority of the United Nations, which some analysts fear could encourage international anarchy.

International law is quite clear as to when military force is allowed. In addition to the aforementioned case of U.N. Security Council authorization, the only other time any member state is allowed to use armed force is described in Article 51, which states it is permissible for "individual or collective self-defense" against "armed attack ... until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." If Iraq's neighbors or the United States ever feel threatened by Saddam Hussein's armed forces, any of these countries could approach the Security Council and make their case as to why their security was threatened. Iraq's neighbors have not done so because they apparently have not felt threatened. The United States has not done so because they know such a claim would be seen as ludicrous, and, as a result, would have virtually no support on the Security Council. Despite the fact that the U.N. Charter was ratified by the United States and thus, according to the U.S . Constitution, has force of law, the Clinton and Bush Administrations and the leaders of both major political parties have supported the bombing.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright callously dismissed the lack of international support by saying that the U.S. would act against Iraq "multilaterally if we can and unilaterally if we must" because "We recognize this area as vital to U.S. national interests."

When the Security Council unanimously endorsed Annan's agreement with Iraq on 2 March 1998, they rejected American insistence that they authorize the use of force in the case of future non-compliance. While warning Iraq of "severest consquences," the Council, in the resolution's final paragraph, declared that it alone had the authority to "ensure implementation of this resolution and peace and security in the area." This point was reiterated by a number of ambassadors as well as in most analyses by the media that followed. Despite this, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson declared that the agreement "did not preclude the unilateral use of force" and State Department spokesman James Rubin insisted "we've made clear that we don't see the need to return to the Security Council if there is a violation of the agreement." Even more incredibly, President Clinton claimed, despite the wording of the final paragraph, that the resolution "provides authority to act" if the U.S. is not satisfied with the level of Iraqi compliance. (13) Nine months later, the U.S. launched major air strikes against Iraq. Periodic bombing raids have continued ever since.

SANCTIONS

The question of whether and under what circumstances the United States should impose economic sanctions on foreign countries has long been a source of controversy. Critics on both the left and the right have both advocated and condemned the use of sanctions, oftentimes based in part on the ideological orientation of the regime in question. Some conservatives of a libertarian persuasion oppose sanctions on principle since it interferes with the rights of investors. Indeed, with the creation of the World Trade Organization, it has become more difficult to legally justify' sanctions on non-economic issues at all. In addition, recent efforts by the United States to enforce its unilateral sanctions against Cuba and Iran on foreign companies has led to heated diplomatic exchanges with Canadian and European allies.

One of the biggest criticisms of the use of economic sanctions, however, has not been on the legal or political realm, but in regards to ethical questions over their impact on the civilian population. Most people recognize that civilians will, in the short term, inevitably suffer to some degree from economic sanctions. However, it is hoped that this suffering will thereby spur the population to challenge the policies of the government that led to the imposition of sanctions and perhaps even lead to the overthrow the offending regime itself. Sanctions, then, while not painless, are often seen as a nonviolent alternative to military intervention as a means of applying pressure to recalcitrant regimes.

In the case of Iraq, however, ongoing United Nations sanctions -- most vigorously supported by the United States -- may have actually been more violent than war, in terms of the numbers of lives lost as a result. While there is virtually no opposition to the United Nations' strict weapons embargo against Iraq, the embargo against civilian trade has created great controversy due to its humanitarian consequences and questionable political effectiveness. Indeed, it was the perceived lack of prospects for lifting the sanctions that prompted Iraq's defiance of United Nations inspectors, prompting the U.S. air strikes and Iraq's resulting refusal to have them return.

Sanctions were originally imposed by the United Nations in August 1990, immediately following Iraq's invasion, occupation and annexation of Kuwait. There was little controversy within the international community or in the United States about such a course of action. Indeed, many believe that had the U.N. imposed sanctions following Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran or his use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, he would not have been emboldened to invade Kuwait in the first place. When sanctions finally were imposed, it was the most rigorously-enforced sanctions regime in history: the CIA estimated in a report that autumn that U.N. sanctions were blocking 90% of Iraqi imports and 97% of Iraqi exports. Sanctions failed to be sufficient to pressure the Iraqis to withdraw their forces, however. Some argue that the Bush Administration's insistence that sanctions would continue even if Saddam Hussein withdrew his forces from Kuwait gave the Iraqis little incentive to comply. Furthermore, the simultaneous preparation for an armed assault caused many Iraqis who might otherwise have challenged the regime over the country's deteriorating economic situation rally around the flag in the face of an imminent attack.

The war had a devastating impact on Iraq's civilian infrastructure, as the country experienced the heaviest bombing in world history. Far more so than most other countries subjected to heavy air strikes, such as largely rural societies like Vietnam and Afghanistan, the heavily urbanized Iraq is were severely impacted by the sudden absence of clean drinking water, normal distribution systems for basic commodities and -- in part due to the fact that they are a largely arid country dependent on irrigation systems severely damaged by the bombing -- severe food shortages.

Sanctions have remained in effect for the ten years since the war as a result of Iraq's less-than full compliance with several provisions of United Nations Security Council resolution 687 imposed at the end of the war. This has not only led to enormous human suffering, but has been counter-productive to the broader U.S. goal of bringing down the Iraqi dictator. It was out of Iraq's middle class from which could have come the forces capable of successfully challenging Saddam's regime. Having been reduced to penury, struggling to survive, they no longer serve as an effective political opposition. Thousands have emigrated. Indeed, as more and more families become dependent on government rations for their very survival, they are forced to cooperate even more with the government, and the already-high risks of challenging Saddam's rule has become too great for many. Critics of the current sanctions regime argue that the lifting of non-military sanctions would allow for the country to be deluged with businesspeople and others, creating an environment far more likely to result in a political opening than the current sanctions regime which places the country in impoverished isolation under Saddam's grip.

There has been some limited media coverage in the United States of the hardships the sanctions have inflicted on the once-prosperous Iraqi middle class, such as professors selling their valuable books, families selling their beloved pets and women selling their family jewelry in order to buy basic necessities, as food prices are now 12,000 times what they were in 1990. Yet it is Iraq's poor, particularly the children, who have suffered the most. Estimates of the total number of Iraqis killed as a result of malnutrition and preventable diseases as a direct consequence of the sanctions have ranged from a quarter million to over one million, the majority of whom have been children. UNICEF estimates that at least 4500 Iraqi children are dying every month as a result of the sanctions. (14) Indeed, perhaps there has been no other time in history when so many people have been condemned to starvation and deaths from preventable diseases due to political decisions made overseas.

While the repressive nature of Ba'athist rule under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s is well-documented, the Iraqi regime -- like a number of fascist governments historically -- maintained a comprehensive and generous welfare state, generally doing a respectable job of meeting the nutritional, housing and health care needs of its population; indeed, Iraq had the highest per capita caloric intake in the Middle East. Most of the population had direct access to safe water and modern sanitation facilities; there was a wide network of well-functioning and well-supplied hospitals and health care centers. (15) The overall economy was strong, with Iraq considered a "middle income" country, importing large numbers of foreign guest workers to fill empty spots in their growing economy. Now, it ranks as one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), "four million people, one-fifth of the population, are currently starving to death in Iraq. Twenty-three percent of all children in Iraq have stunted growth, approximately twice the percentage before the war. Alarming food shortages are causing irreparable damage to an entire generation of children." The FAO further estimates that there has been a 72% rise in childhood malnourishment, effecting 32 percent of children under five. (16) The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that "there has been a six-fold increase the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the country's population has been on a semi-starvation diet."

These deaths are a result of inadequate medical supplies, impure water and nutritional deficiencies. With water purification and sewage systems heavily damaged by American bombing raids in 1991, and with the Iraqis unable to repair these facilities since the embargo prohibits the importation of spare parts, there has been a dramatic increase in typhoid, cholera and other illnesses that had largely been eliminated in Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Importation of ambulances and other emergency vehicles, and even their spare parts, are among the items banned. Hospitals are unable to acquire spare parts for incubators, kidney dialysis machines and other equipment. Even materials such as food and medicines not covered by the ban have become difficult to purchase due to the lack of capital. Electricity is irregular and conditions at hospitals are becoming increasingly unsanitary. With tap water no longer safe, a gallon of bottled water now costs as much as 500 times a gallon of gasoline.

Iraq's primary source for foreign exchange, oil exports, is also subject to the embargo, with the exception of a limited amount of petroleum which could be sold for food under strict U.N. monitoring. Until recently, Iraq was allowed to sell only $2 billion in oil for food and about one-third of that was allocated to Kuwait for reparations and to the U.N. for administrative costs. Though the FAO and the WHO have given Iraq high marks for their distribution of food and medicine, the U.N. estimates that about $4 billion is the minimum needed to meet basic needs for food and medicines. (17) Over initial U.S. objections, the U.N. raised that amount to $5.2 billion (or $3.5 billion which actually could go to Iraq) in the spring of 1997, though the lack of spare parts for its oil industry has made it difficult for Iraq to produce that much oil. A full quarter of the school-aged population is no longer in school in a country which previously had near-universal primary education. For those who can attend school, books and other educational resources are in extremely short supply. (18)

The U.S. has blamed the suffering on the Iraqi regime for its failure to more fully cooperate with the United Nations. According to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "Saddam Hussein is the one who has the fate of his country in his hands, and he is the one who is responsible for starving children, not the United States of America." Furthermore, there has been some outcry at the Iraqi government's decision to use scarce resources in the construction of opulent mosques and additional palaces for Saddam Hussein, his family and associates, though the Iraqis claim that these function as public works projects using indigenous materials and paid for in Iraqi dinars, which are worthless outside Iraq. Albright has justified the sanctions in part as a test to prove if Saddam "really cares about his people." Most knowledgeable observers of Iraq recognize that no such test is necessary; Saddam's primary concern has always been his own power. Indeed, while Saddam Hussein is ultimately responsible for his peopl e's suffering from the sanctions, since it has long become apparent that such suffering is not altering Iraqi policy, it therefore also raises the question of moral culpability by the United States as well.

Part of the ineffectiveness of the sanctions comes from the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime. It is more than simply another authoritarian Middle Eastern government; indeed, next to North Korea, it is the most totalitarian regime on the planet. Therefore, the ability of the population to organize effectively against the regime or its policies, particularly under such dire economic conditions as those created by the sanctions, is severely limited. Indeed, this is why virtually every recognized Iraqi opposition group has come out against the sanctions regime. The potential political effectiveness of sanctions -- as well as their morality-- can be judged in part by the willingness of the opposition to have their people endure the hardships imposed. A counter-example would be the case of South Africa, where the black majority had long lobbied for a tough stance by the international community against the apartheid regime.

Surprisingly, there is little debate in the U.S. Congress regarding the lifting of sanctions. Indeed, there is some pressure to make it tougher. Former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms has called for a total blockade, including food. Only a few members of Congress have begun to publicly question its effectiveness.

Much of the organized opposition has been among some churches, humanitarian organizations and peace groups, which have sent delegations to Iraq to bring medical supplies, often in direct defiance of the sanctions. Such acts of civil disobedience and the stories participants have brought back home to their congregations, civic groups and local media has begun to influence public opinion, though some individuals and organizations have compromised their credibility by citing exaggerated statistics and engaging in apologetics for the Iraqi regime.

Part of the problem is that the United States has given Iraq little motivation to cooperate with its international obligations. For example, Madeleine Albright declared in March 1997 that the U.S. would veto any U.N. Security Council efforts to lift sanctions, even if Iraq finally came into full compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions; only if Saddam Hussein no longer ruled Iraq would the U.S. allow for the sanctions regime to end. President Clinton reiterated this position in November 1997. This not only goes far beyond the original U.N. mandate, but it gives the Iraqi government no incentive to cooperate: Saddam might be willing to make further compromises on issues of weapons production and inspector access if that would result in lifting the sanctions, but not if sanctions would remain intact anyway. Furthermore, no one expects that Saddam would give up power voluntarily. Indeed, Saddam's harassment of U.N. inspections was based largely on the realization that he has nothing to lose as long as t he U.S. will block the lifting of sanctions even if he complies fully. Some recent statements by the Bush Administration indicate that there may be a willingness to lift sanctions in return for Iraqi compliance, though it remains unclear.

It has long been recognized that for sanctions to work, one needs a carrot as well as a stick, something which the U.S. has largely failed to recognize. Indeed, there has been a historic tendency for governments to ignore the huge body of evidence that punishment doesn't change behavior of other governments as effectively as does reward. It would be far more effective for the United States, in consultation with other members of the Security Council, to offer specific promises for lifting certain nonmilitary sanctions in return for compliance with inspections and other outstanding issues of U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 and to be specific as to what positive responses could be expected for what specific improvements in behavior. Former UNSCOM chief Rolf Ekeus has proposed just this sort of a scenario.

The vigor with which the United States has pursued strict sanctions against Iraq over its failure to comply with sections of one Security Council resolution stands in stark contrast to the U.S. position blocking sanctions against governments allied with the United States -- such as Israel, Morocco and Turkey -- for their ongoing violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions. This perception of a double standard has led the Iraqis, rightly or wrongly, to determine that the sanctions are punitive and politically motivated. Whereas sanctions against Iraq during the occupation of Kuwait were widely seen by ordinary Iraqis as the fault of their own government, the post-war sanctions are almost universally blamed on the United States and the West. The humanitarian crisis has also led to widespread resentment in the Arab world, even by those very much opposed to Saddam Hussein. Such resentment can spill over to anti-American violence. Indeed, along with U.S. support for Israel and the Saudi royal family, the conti nued sanctions against Iraq are among the main grievances expressed by terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.

The morality of a particular foreign policy is tempered by its results. If human suffering from economic sanctions can advance a policy goal that would lead to less suffering in the long term, one could make the case that it was morally justified. Indeed, in an interview on "60 Minutes" regarding the devastating impact sanctions were having on the children of Iraq, Albright declared, "we think the price ... is worth it." Yet the apparent failure of the sanctions to move Iraq's level of compliance with the international community forward raises serious doubts. Former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali challenged the international community to confront "the ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the target country is a legitimate means to exerting pressure on political leaders whose behavior is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects." Indeed, there is little indication that Saddam Hussein, his inner circle and key elements of the military leadership ar e suffering any shortages of food, drinking water and medical supplies. The suffering of the civilian population has become an effective propaganda tool to stir up anti-American sentiment, but does not seem to have had an impact in altering Iraqi policy in ways consistent with U.S. interests.

CONCLUSION

Current U.S.-U.N. policy on Iraq has failed, and has largely lost credibility. It is widely viewed internationally as reflecting U.S. (and to a lesser degree British) insistence on maintaining a punitive sanctions-based approach regardless of the humanitarian impact, and is increasingly recognized as having failed to bring about either democratic changes in Iraq or security for the Gulf region. Numerous countries are challenging, if not directly violating, the sanctions regime and international support has largely eroded.

The United States is the driving force behind U.N. policy, with the U.S. holding effective veto power over any proposed changes. The U.S. is becoming increasingly isolated in the world body, with only Great Britain remaining in support of the American position. There is little question that a change to a more humane and practical policy by the United States would quickly be accepted by the U.N. Security Council as a whole.

U.S. policy on Iraq has also failed to take into account the consequences of widespread opposition in the Middle East -- across the region at the street level and increasingly at the governmental level as well. The administration of President George W. Bush has tacitly acknowledged this failure through Secretary of State Colin Powell's advocacy of "smart sanctions." This is being depicted as a major shift towards a more targeted and humane means of enforcing a sanctions regime against the Iraqi government. However, since the new formula is based upon ongoing U.N. Security Council supervision over Iraq's oil exports and revenues and vigorous inspections of any and all inter-state commerce, it appears designed more to halt the growing violations of the sanctions regime than actually easing the suffering of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi government has rejected the proposal and most international humanitarian groups working in Iraq have expressed serious reservations. There also appears to be little support from fo reign governments.

In the U.S., neither the current policy nor the proposed modifications have much support, but there has been strong opposition to ending the sanctions, based on charges that so doing would be "soft on Saddam Hussein." The result has become a largely politically driven inertia; with the cost-benefit assessment limited to whether changing the policy carries a higher domestic political price than maintaining the current failed policy.

As with U.S. policy in recent decades towards Southeast Asia, Central America and Southern Africa, there is unlikely to be any real change until there is effective political mobilization by ordinary citizens to force a change of policy. Also, as with these other conflicts, the pathology may go beyond misconceptions and ideological rigidities to broader institutional imperatives. Iraq fits neatly into the "rogue state doctrine," which enables the U.S. government to maintain public support for high levels of military spending and such dubious initiatives as Nuclear Missile Defense. With the end of the Cold War threatening to result in a dramatic reduction in the Pentagon budget, the senior Bush administration embarked on a "regional strategy" based on the prospect of periodic clashes with emerging Third World powers. The result was the adoption of a military posture, essentially confirmed by the Clinton administration in its 1993 review, which argued that the United States must maintain enough force to fight tw o simultaneous major regional wars on the scale of the 1991 war against Iraq, in response to surprise attacks from rogue states and with no allied forces to support the American side. To fight such a war, it is argued, requires standing combat personnel totaling 1.4 million and the air, naval and land equipment to support them. While most independent observers see such a scenario as extremely unlikely if not ludicrous, it has been adopted as the basis for maintaining high levels of military spending to this day. The scenarios of the Bush and Clinton administrations were developed by Pentagon planners who had a vested interest in maintaining a large military establishment. According to strategic analyst Michael Klare 

To justify this vast expense, the Clinton Administration must be able to demonstrate that the United States is indeed threatened by potent foreign enemies. Hence the periodic alarms in Washington over the military power and aggressive designs of Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea. Only when Congress and the American people can be shown an authentic -- and sufficiently menacing -- threat on the horizon will they be prepared to subsidize indefinitely a cold-war-level military establishment. (19)

It is to control these rogue states of the Middle East, along with North Korea, that the United States justifies a military budget of more than $300 billion, a figure higher, even adjusted for inflation, than the level of military spending during most of the Cold War, including the final military budgets of such Republican presidents as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The crimes committed by the Iraqi regime are still very real. Similarly, double standards are not unusual in the foreign policy of any great power. Yet it is becoming increasingly apparent that the most serious offenses by Iraq in the eyes of U.S. policy makers are not in the area of human rights, terrorism, nuclear ambition, subversion or conquest, but in daring to challenge American hegemony in the Middle East. It is such regimes which are preventing the United States from exercising its political dominance over this crucial region. Having these regimes overthrown or under control would give the United States unprecedented leverage in shaping the future direction of the Middle East.

Thus, the final irony: Serving as an impediment to such American ambitions gives these regimes a credibility and legitimacy they would not otherwise receive from large numbers of Middle Eastern peoples resentful of foreign domination. The result is to strengthen these regimes' rule at home and their influence throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Stephen Zunes is an Associate Professor in the Politics Department at the University of San Francisco.

ENDNOTES

(1.) William Blum, "Anthrax for Export: U.S. Companies Sold Iraq the Ingredients for a Witch's Brew," The Progressive, April 1998, p. 18.

(2.) It is noteworthy that both Syria and Cuba remain on the list of terrorist supporters despite the failure of successive administrations to demonstrate any backing of terrorist groups by these countries for more than a decade.

(3.) Chomsky, op. cit., p. 26.

(4.) Cited in Blum, op. cit., p. 20.

(5.) Institute for Policy Studies report, "Iraq's Current Military Capability," February 1998.

(6.) Ibid.

(7.) Cited by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, on PBS "Newshour", 10 February 1998.

(8.) Berton Gellman, Washington Post, 20 March 1998.

(9.) Charles A. Horner, "Military Force Has Its Limits," New York Times, 7 February 1998.

(10.) Tim Wiener, "'Smart' Weapons Were Overrated, Study Concludes," New York Times, 9 July 1996.

(11.) Institute for Policy Studies, op. cit.

(12.) Sheila Carapico, "Legalism and Realism in the Gulf," Middle East Report, Spring 1998, p. 5.

(13.) Ibid.

(14.) See "The Health Conditions of the Population of Iraq Since the Gulf Crisis," Geneva: World Health Organization, March 1996; "Special Report: FAO/WFP Food Supply and Nutritional Assessment Mission to Iraq," Rome: FAO, 1997.

(15.) The Economist Intelligence Unit, Iraq Country Report, 1995-96, p. 6.

(16.) UNICEF, "Nearly One Million Children Malnourished in Iraq," 16 November 1997.

(17.) Center for Social and Economic Research, U.N. Sanctioned Suffering: A Human Rights Assessment of United Nations Sanctions on Iraq," 1996.

(18.) UNICEF, "Nearly One Million Children Malnourished in Iraq," 16 November 1997.

(19.) Michael Klare, "Making Enemies for the Nineties," Citing The Military Balance, 1994-95 Edition. Institute for Strategic Studies, p. 626.