Put a war with Iraq in the diary for January
The Middle East expects the mother of all walkovers, but Europe will hate it
Despite the political inconvenience Bernie Ebbers has caused in the past few weeks, George W. Bush does not view the WorldCom boss as the main megalomaniac he has to deal with.
The President yesterday called for tough laws and longer jail sentences for those who distort corporate balance sheets, but fell short of saying that he favoured any “regime change” on Wall Street or that “we will use all the weapons at our disposal” to achieve one. There is no court in America which could impose the sort of sentence on errant business executives that Mr Bush intends to make mandatory for President Saddam Hussein.
The relative quiet in Washington in the six months since the President made his “axis of evil” State of the Union address should not be mistaken for inactivity. The Administration has made the decision to eject Saddam, almost certainly in January and February next year, unless the Iraqi dictator has been deposed by then, or the UN weapons inspectors have returned with the cast-iron mandate to work at will.
And when that Iraqi operation starts, the repercussions will be considerable, but paradoxical. The reaction in Western Europe will be more genuinely hostile than that of those in charge of many Middle Eastern nations. In a further twist, the prospect of a swift American military triumph will again trigger far more concern in Berlin and Paris than Amman or Cairo.
There are three reasons why an American intervention in Iraq is all but booked. The first is the transformation in US foreign policy thinking in the aftermath of September 11. The second is the conviction of the current White House that the feeble policies pursued by Bill Clinton against Saddam encouraged not only Iraq, but others, to believe that the United States was weak and vulnerable. The third is that there is no other blueprint for dealing with Baghdad that has the remotest shred of credibility.
The claim that a US military operation would succeed at speed is born not out of arrogance but realism. A force of 250,000 men (or about half the total deployed in the 1991 Gulf War) would have to be assembled, but it is a matter of debate whether anything like that number would be needed in practice. The chances of a coup being effected against Saddam, once it became clear that the US was determined to act, or after the air war had been initiated, are higher than often allowed for. If a formal invasion were to take place, the prediction among pessimistic neutral professionals is that Iraq would be conquered in eight weeks, and this assumes that the US Army would face notable resistance.
Three factors make that assumption contestable. The first is that it is fashionable either to underestimate the degree of popular loathing felt towards Saddam or to dismiss it as inconsequential. But the majority of Iraqis would consider Mr Bush their liberator.
The second is that Saddam’s own repression and his determination that his son Qusay will succeed him has upset the equilibrium between family clans that is the essence of traditional Iraqi society. Almost every other section of the elite has an incentive to prevent son following father.
The third element concerns the Iraqi Armed Forces. Saddam is not, despite his enthusiasm for their garb, a career soldier. Qusay, although afflicted with the very same bug for the dressing-up box, has weaker links still with the military.
Although the army in Iraq has historically been reluctant to interfere in domestic politics, Saddam’s willingness to place personal cronies in top slots regardless of efficiency, service record, or seniority has shifted the argument. Once it is obvious that Washington is committed to the fight, the best outcome, from the army’s standpoint, would be to be shot of Saddam quickly.
Other Middle Eastern rulers, long subject to the inconvenience of Saddam’s inconsistent habits and aware that what is coming will be the mother of all walkovers, would adopt a pragmatic attitude. Ritual distaste may be expressed in public, but private energy would be devoted to carving up the spoils. The oil market, especially, would be transformed if a US-approved figure were established in Baghdad. It would be a change to match, and in many ways cancel out, the fall of the Shah in Iran 23 years ago.
In Western Europe, though, an awesome demonstration of raw American power would be taken rather differently. The crowds would not take to the streets to hail the termination of the world’s most dangerous weapons of mass destruction project. The complaints would be of American “unilateralism” and “hegemony”. They would be amplified by the fact that in most EU countries the Left is in opposition and unencumbered by any sense of diplomatic responsibility. That a US invasion of Iraq might be popular with that country’s citizens would not stop it being condemned as “imperialism”.
The same would be true, if perhaps at a slightly lower decible level, in Britain. The Prime Minister will sense, accurately, that he has little choice but to back Mr Bush in fairly robust terms and provide a modest amount of military assistance. The Labour Party would revolt to some degree and ministerial resignations would occur but, because Labour is in office, the rebellion should be manageable. Tony Blair’s preferred foreign policy would, nonetheless, be shaken as he sought to reconcile his stance that Britain’s “destiny” lies in Europe with the prominence of the Anglo-American alliance.
The Tories would hardly be in a position to exploit any public backlash that takes place as their position on Iraq is, if anything, slightly to the right of that held by Donald Rumsfeld. All of which leaves the possibility of one last paradox. Namely, that the British politician who could be the short-term winner from a one-sided battle between Mr Bush and Saddam is Charles Kennedy.
