Iraq: AreSanctions Collapsing?
Senate Foreign Relations CommitteeEnergy and Natural Resources Committee
joint hearing
May 21, 1998
Testimony Delivered by David A. Kay before the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations on May 21, 1998
The Kofi Annan brokered agreement of February removed, at least
temporarily, Iraq from the headlines and talk shows. There is no reason,
however, to believe that defusing a crisis over the inspection rights of
UNSCOM equates to a long term solution to an Iraq led by Saddam and
armed with WMD. Indeed the start of any sensible long-term approach to
Iraq is to realize that the UNSCOM arms inspections are sliding toward
irrelevance in coping with the puzzle of an enduring Saddam and his
efforts to protect and expand his capacity to produce weapons of mass
destruction.
UNSCOM's efforts to eliminate Saddam's WMD capacity were based on
four assumptions, all of which have turned out to be false. These were:
(i) Saddam's rule would not survive the disasters suffered by Iraq as a
result of its invasion of Kuwait;
(ii) Iraq's WMD capabilities were not extensive nor significantly
indigenous;
(iii) a post-Saddam Iraq would declare to UNSCOM all of Iraq's WMD
capabilities;
(iv) UNSCOM would be able to "destroy, remove or render harmless" Iraq's
WMD capabilities leaving an Iraq that would not have WMD capability as
an enduring legacy.
The reasoning of Bush Administration officials that no regime could
survive a disaster as compelling as Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War was no
doubt true for a democratic system. Saddam's endurance, however, stands
as yet another stark reminder of the dangers of attempting to understand
the world on the basis solely of our own values and experience. Saddam's
Iraq was and is a fierce, totalitarian dictatorship that can survive as
long as it maintains coercive power over its citizens. Once Saddam's
survival became a fact then all hope of his voluntarily yielding up the
very weapons that allow him to hope to dominate the region was lost.
What is much less well understood is the impact that the discovery of
the gigantic scope and indigenous nature of Saddam's weapons program had
on the prospects of being able to eliminate this program by inspection
alone. We now know that the Iraqi efforts to build an arsenal of weapons
of mass destruction:
. spanned more than a decade;
. cost more than $20 Billion;
. involved more than 40,000 Iraqis and succeed in mastering all the
technical and most of the productions steps necessary to acquire a
devil's armory of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as
the missiles necessary to deliver them over vast distances.
Iraq's weapons programs benefited greatly from access to Western
technology and material, however, by the time of the invasion of Kuwait
this program had become thoroughly indigenous and for reasons of both
deception and efficiency was often embedded in civilian, dual-use
industries. The over-all project code for the Iraqi nuclear weapons
program was PC-3 - Petrochemical Project 3.
The capability to produce weapons of mass destruction cannot be
eliminated by simply destroying "weapons" facilities. The weapons
secrets are now Iraqi secrets well understood by a large stratum of
Iraq's technical elite, and the production capabilities necessary to
turn these "secrets' into weapons are part and parcel of the domestic
infrastructure of Iraq which will survive even the most draconian of
sanctions regimes. Simply put, Iraq is not Libya, but very much like
post-Versailles Germany in terms of its ability to maintain a weapons
capability in the teeth of international inspections. Once sanctions are
eased, or ended, that capability can be expected to become quickly a
reality.
For seven years, US Iraqi policy has focused essentially on only
two related issues, maintaining sanctions and keeping UNSCOM's
inspections going. The hope was that inspections and sanctions would
keep Saddam's WMD program in check until somehow Saddam would disappear.
While sanctions and inspections still have considerable value, the Annan
agreement makes clear that they no longer can define US policy and, in
fact concentrating on them has masked a series of challenges that the US
must now face.
The most recent crisis with Iraq over sanctions began in October
1997 and ended with an agreement brokered by the UN Secretary General in
February-March 1998. This most recent dispute with Iraq has been widely
portrayed as over the right of the inspectors to immediate,
unconditional and unrestricted access in their search for Iraq's
remaining weapons of mass destruction. This formulation of the crisis -
and it is one that Iraq has succeeded in having widely accepted - is
fundamentally wrong. Immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access
has never been more than a means - important, but still a means - to
achieve the primary objective of the UN inspectors which is defined as
the "destruction, removal or rendering harmless" of Iraq's prohibited
weapons of mass destruction and their means of production.
The consequence of this misconception can be seen in the contrasting
manner in which the diplomatic nannies that the Secretary General and
Iraq agreed must accompany the inspectors to designated sensitive sites
reported on the first series of visits as opposed to the report prepared
by the inspectors that the diplomats accompanied.
. The diplomats report concerns itself entirely with issues of
access and resolving disputes that occurred over access. The tone is
positive and is well reflected in the statement by the President of the
Security Council when the Council on 14 May 1998 reviewed the report.
The President of the Security Council, on behalf of the Council,
"welcomes the improved access provided to the Special Commission and the
IAEA by the Government of Iraq following the signature of the Memorandum
of Understanding by the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and the Secretary
General on 23 February' and its subsequent approval by the Council.
. The head of the inspectors, however, struck a quite different
tone. For example, "The initial entry to the sites had limited
objectives, which were achieved. It is important to emphasize that this
mission was not a search-type mission, nor was it no-notice. Iraq had
over a month to make whatever preparations it desired.. The mission was
not intended to be a search for prohibited material and none was found.
In fact, there was very little equipment, documentation or other
material in the sites at all. It was clearly apparent that all sites had
undergone extensive evacuation.. Another potential problem surfaced
regarding the procedures and stated requirements for the presence of
senior diplomats at specific locations. Iraq stated that UNSCOM and IAEA
staff could not enter buildings without a diplomat being present. This
did not pose a problem during the course of this mission since many
diplomats were present and it was not a surprise visit. However, it must
be noted that the procedures do not contain any such requirement and in
fact allow for the division of the team into sub-teams at the discretion
of the Head of the Team of Experts. There is no stated requirement for a
senior diplomat to be present in each sub-team. In the future this may
be problematic since no-notice visits require quick movement into the
location often by multiple sub-teams. Assuring the presence of several
diplomats at all locations will inhibit the possibility of surprise,
since non-Baghdad-based senior diplomats may then be required."
. The Chairman of UNSCOM, Ambassador Butler, summed up best the
consequence of focusing on access and forgetting the reason that access
is important when he submitted in April his latest semi-annual report on
the inspections. ".as is evident in the disarmament section of this
report, a major consequence of the four-month crisis authored by Iraq
has been that, in contrast with the prior reporting period, virtually no
progress in verifying disarmament has been able to be reported. If this
is what Iraq intended by the crisis, then, in large measure, it could be
said to have been successful. Iraq's heightened policy of disarmament by
declaration, no matter how vigorously pushed or stridently voiced,
cannot remove the need for verification as the key means through which
the credibility of its claim can be established."
Unfortunately, Ambassador Butler is correct. Iraq has been
successful. The focus now has shifted to procedure and process. The real
aim of the inspections, the elimination of Iraq's WMD weapons and
production capacity and the establishment of a long-term monitoring
process is sliding away in the face of resolute Iraqi defiance and the
desire of the Russians and the French for short-term economic gain. We
should also credit a successful Iraqi propaganda campaign that has gone
unanswered and has convinced many in the Gulf and in our own country
that the US is responsible for keeping on economic sanctions that have
devastated Iraq women and children.
The major problems that now must be confronted include:
The security structure that Secretary Baker crafted to respond to Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait is no longer viable. Major states in the region,
certainly including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are no longer
willing to let an automatic anti-Saddam reflex define their policy in
the Gulf. Even states, such as Kuwait and Bahrain, which are much more
dependent upon the US for their security, are resisting US leadership
when it threatens military confrontation. Equally important, Iran is no
longer the marginalized state that it was in 1990-91 and has learned to
skillfully play each crisis to benefit its long-term goal of removing US
influence from the Gulf.
We are left with "allies" that lack sufficient military power to stand
up to a rearmed Iraq, and that are unwilling to provide the US with the
political support and operational bases that would allow the US to deal
with Iraq even in its present weakened state. This same splintering of
alliance ties can be seen in the non-regional allies that were a key
part of Gulf coalition structure. The French are no longer willing
partners, and the Russians can no longer be coerced or bribed into
silent cooperation.
The US has failed to convince its allies of the dangers to themselves of
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the tinderbox Middle
East. Also we have not yet equipped our own military forces to be able
to fight and win when faced with such a threat at costs and risks that
appear tolerable to our own citizens and political leaders. If there
were ever a psychological campaign that either was not fought or
misfired, it has been the US effort to make the states of the Gulf and
our European and Asian allies understand how much more dangerous the
future is about to become as Iraq rebuilds its nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, the Iranians further accelerate their own efforts
and the rest of the region scrambles for political and military
protection.
The US military build up in the Gulf between October 1997 and February
1998 should send shockwaves through both policy makers and Congressional
leaders who though that some important lessons had been learned as a
result of the Gulf War. First, the build up took almost five months to
reach a force level that military commanders seem to think was adequate
to achieve an admittedly shifting set of political objectives. This was
almost as long as it took the US to deploy a much larger force to meet
the invasion of Kuwait.
True to the warnings of many who said we should never again give an
opponent that much time to counter our force deployment, Saddam used the
time to hammer our forces - not with Scuds and chemical weapons but with
a political campaign that was probably even more effective. Second, the
US forces that came to do battle brought smarter weapons, but none that
their commanders seemed to be confident could find or kill chemical and
biological weapons without risking unacceptable damage to civilians in
the region. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the much-touted US
counterproliferation forces are not yet ready to meet the standards that
they must if they are to be a real threat to proliferators.
If these are the major problems, what choices are we left with? Few
and mostly bad in the short run is the simple answer. The easy nostrums
- support the opposition, containment as we did with the Soviets, or
even Annan's "I can do business with Saddam" - seem expensive, risky
and, at best, only partial answers.
The best hope of the opposition was in the chaos at the end of the
Gulf War. This opportunity, however, was lost when the US decided to
stand aside and let Saddam freely slaughter many brave Iraqis. In the
seven intervening years US policy toward the opposition has grown to
resemble nothing so much as the mating ritual of the female Back Widow -
promising but quickly lethal to the male. I do not believe that it is
true that supporting forces of democratic change is something that
Americans are genetically unable to do. It is clear, however, that we
generally are so inept at it that it is likely to deplete the gene pool
of promising opponents to tyrants before we are successful. It is
certainly a policy worth another try, if you can find any of Saddam's
opponents willing to run the risk of having us support them, but it is
not a policy that will offer short term successes.
Containment has a nice ring and the virtue of a clear success in the
fall of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, one can only despair that
those who urge containment of Saddam as an appropriate policy have not
examined the preconditions of the Cold War case to see if they exist in
the Gulf. The US maintained for 40 years more than a million troops in
Europe as part of its effort to contain the Soviets and invested vast
resources in the social, political and economic reconstruction of Europe
into a bastion of democratic values. In the Gulf there is no simple
overriding fear of Saddam that will dominate all politics the way the
Soviet threat did. For example, the Iranians who have every reason to
fear the Iraqis will not see a US presence that contains Saddam as
serving their interest. Many holders of traditional tribal societal and
fundamentalist religious values will worry more about the threat of
democratic and modern influences that flow from US presence than they
will the threat from Iraq. Some of the states in the region are more
fearful of a rapid democratic modernization of their societies than they
are of Saddam.
Political change in Iraq holds the only hope for eliminating Iraq's
capacity for producing weapons of mass destruction and the equally
dangerous arms race that is about to ignite across the Gulf. Clearly
Saddam needs to be held in check, that is contained, while the forces of
political change are given a chance to work. But a policy that is solely
one of containment is more likely to ignite the fires of
anti-Americanism, undermine our allies and embolden Iraq, Iran and
Russia than it is to accelerate political change. The various opposition
groups inside and outside Iraq clearly have a role in accelerating
political change, although I doubt that this will be greatly hastened by
covert assistance programs.
Political change seems most likely to be accelerated by four factors.
. First, the external world must make it clear that Saddam will not be
part of the solution. Annan is wrong. We must clearly insist that we
cannot "do business" with Saddam. There should be no "ifs, ands, buts"
or escape clauses of deathbed conversions to this policy. If we are less
than committed to the removal of Saddam as a precondition for the
reintegration of Iraq into the global system we will have Saddam and
destroy all opposition groups.
. Second, a better definition is needed of what post-Saddam Iraq can
expect in terms of reconstruction and reintegration into the world. Iraq
has become a land of sorrow and little hope. Saddam bears the ultimate
responsibility for this fate, but we all share a failure to hold up a
compelling vision of what the future can be for the Iraqi people.
. Third, the US must abandon the myth that it helped create that there
can be a stable Gulf policy apart from a stable Middle East. This myth
served US interests well during the Cold War, but we forget that it was
never more than a useful myth. Unless and until the security needs of
Israel and its neighbors can be reconciled and jointly shared, long-term
stability in the Gulf will be an unattainable dream. This is not to say
that the Gulf does not have many problems of its own that require
resolution, but as long as Arab-Israeli politics remains characterized
by daily violence and deep distrust, stability in the Gulf will never be
possible.
. Fourth, the US military needs to drive to rapid completion the
restructuring of its forces and doctrine. In situations that look like
neither the Cold War of Central Europe nor the idealized situation we
found in Desert Storm, we must be able to credibly and quickly bring to
bear decisive military force. Diplomacy is not likely to be strengthened
by a military force and deployment structure that gives the opponent
time to raise questions about our own adequacy, even more so when those
questions start to resonate at home.
. Fifth, U.S. intelligence - and more broadly all of the institutions of
U.S. national security and foreign policy - must rediscover that oldest
tool of true covert operations, information operations that aim to shape
the perceptions of opponents. As in most things, it is fair to say that
the Chinese first did it and the Greeks first got credit for it, but
information operations should be a technique at which Americans excel.
We apparently do when it comes to domestic politics and consumer
marketing. Our record, however, in foreign operations - and never more
so than in Iraq after the Gulf War - is sadly wanting. I commend, and
strongly urge that everyone carefully read, the recent comments of
Representative Porter J. Goss, Chairman of House intelligence committee,
on the importance of information operations to the revitalization of
U.S. intelligence.
In summary, Mr. Chairman,
. the effectiveness of UNSCOM inspections have been seriously eroded by
the agreement reached by the Secretary General earlier this year, with
the inspection moving toward controlled, pre-announced visits to
pre-cleared sites;
. Iraq continues to engage in very active denial and deception
activities and a very successful propaganda campaign to convince the
world that their population is suffering from an American-led effort to
impoverish them even though they have fully complied with all requests
of the United Nations;
. Iraq's fundamental technical capacity to re-establish its WMD program
remains undiminished.
. Economic sanctions remain the only limitation on Saddam resuming his
WMD program and their further erosion is a very real prospect.
Iraq is of a class of problems where all the easy answers seem to have
been in the past and all the near terms options are not answers. But
that is the future in the Middle East. If it is of any comfort, we
should all acknowledge there were never any easy answers in the past.
Unless we take immediate steps to address the issue of obtaining
fundamental political change in Iraq, we will soon again face a rearmed
and emboldened Saddam.
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