12 February 2003
Brookings Scholar Says Franco-German Iraq Position "Nonsensical"
(Author Kenneth Pollack has DVCs with 8 countries February 12) (890) By David Anthony Denny Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- Brookings scholar and author Kenneth Pollack says the positions taken by France and Germany both in the U.N. Security Council and in NATO are "essentially nonsensical," and may adversely impact both organizations. Pollack, who is director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, took part in four digital video conferences (DVCs) February 12 with local audiences at eight U.S. embassies: Tallinn, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; Nicosia, Cyprus; Vilnius, Lithuania; Prague, Czech Republic; Madrid, Spain; Santiago, Chile; and Mexico City, Mexico. The topic of each DVC was "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," which is the title of Pollack's latest book. After Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council February 5 of evidence that Iraq was not complying with U.N. resolutions, France and Germany said weapons inspectors should be allowed more time. The reason that is a nonsensical position, Pollack said, is that neither time nor inspectors are going to be able to disarm Iraq. "A hundred inspectors aren't going to be able to make Saddam disarm," Pollack said. "Nor are 300, nor 3,000, nor even 30,000 inspectors. The only way it will happen is for Saddam to voluntarily disarm," he said. The Franco-German position could only make sense if they were to argue for more time in hope of a radical transformation of position by Saddam Hussein to one in which he genuinely wanted to disarm, he said. Moreover, Pollack said, Saddam Hussein has publicly said that he believes that if he can simply string the current process out until the summer, support for the U.S. position will crumble and he will never face the threat of U.S. forces again. He believes, therefore, that he needs only to play for time. "The Franco-German position plays right into Saddam's hands," Pollack said. "It feeds into his own strategy." Pollack responded to questions concerning NATO and the situation with Turkey -- a NATO member that has asked the alliance for Patriot anti-missile missiles, AWACS early-warning aircraft and anti-chemical-biological warfare gear because it fears Iraqi retaliation in the event of a U.S. invasion. Sixteen members of NATO agreed, but France, Germany and Belgium disagreed, preferring to wait for some further period. Pollack called the Turkey issue "a no-brainer." He said some in the U.S. administration must be thinking that NATO's utility is ended. Built to deal with the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, if NATO cannot deal with such an obviously bad case as Iraq, that will build the case for doing without it, Pollack said. "It is in NATO's charter that it must provide for the threat to members, given that the threat is legitimate," Pollack said. "Plus, Turkey's going to believe that racist Western Europe just doesn't want Turkey to be a part of 'the club.'" As he does in his book, Pollack argued that all the other alternatives to war with Iraq have been tried and have failed. He mentioned containment as the method that was tried by the U.N. Security Council beginning in 1991, but which he said also failed by the mid-1990s. For starters, he said, containment must be made to work not just for a month or two, but for 10, 20 or 30 years -- for Saddam Hussein's lifetime and that of his sons. They are his logical successors, and they "are just as despicable as he is," Pollack said. The other requirement for containment is the cooperation of the international community, Pollack said. This is what doomed containment by the mid-1990s, he said. "There's talk now of needing a defector to tell us where the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are hidden. Well, in 1995 we had the 'mother' of all defectors, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, the head of Iraq's WMD programs." He told us how Iraq had hidden and cheated on all of its programs, and the Security Council didn't care, Pollack said. As for talk now of needing "smoking guns," in 1996 inspectors came to the Security Council with Russian gyroscopes for ballistic missiles purchased by Iraq after the Gulf War and hidden at the bottom of the Tigris River. "And the Security Council did nothing," Pollack said. "Then in 1997, inspectors came to the Security Council with VX gas traces -- some of the most lethal stuff on earth -- on Scud missile warhead fragments, and the Security Council did nothing," Pollack said. The reason, he said, was that the international consensus to contain Iraq no longer existed. For Pollack, the choice is not between war and some other alternative. It is between war now and war after Saddam Hussein attains nuclear weapons. "What we have seen Saddam say about nuclear weapons is more dangerous than what we have seen any leader ever say about them," Pollack said. "His half-brother once famously said Saddam wants them in order to have a strong hand in re-drawing the map of the Middle East." Saddam is unique in that he would use nuclear weapons for offensive purposes, Pollack said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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