How
Long Will Powell’s Victory Last?
December 1, 2002
The return of UN arms inspectors to Iraq is a great personal triumph for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell who argued vigorously with President Bush to take this route against formidable and relentless opposition from Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Powell’s opponents believe that by returning the initiative for Iraq’s disarmament to the UN, crucial time will be lost as Saddam Hussein plays cat and mouse games with the arms inspectors and the UN Security Council equivocates whether or not Iraq is once more in "material breach" of its numerous resolutions. Powell had to fight hard and make his case directly to the President himself. His winning argument was that the U.S. cannot fight Iraq alone, let alone occupy it in the aftermath of victory, without cooperation from key allies in Europe and the Middle East. Perhaps most telling were his observations that, in the aftermath of victory, international cooperation will not only be essential but very much in America’s interest. His views reinforced those already made to Bush by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Based on these inputs Bush decided to go once more to the United Nations in September and ask for the new resolution against Iraq.
Whether Powell’s moment of victory will be short lived is now a matter of considerable speculation. Saddam Hussein has allowed Hans Blix and his initial team of inspectors to begin their work in Baghdad, but the next big hurdle comes on December 8th. By that date, Saddam Hussein has to have provided the UN Security Council with a comprehensive list of Iraq’s forbidden WMD programs. But Iraq, in its letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan accepting the UN resolution, made clear that, from its point of view, it had no weapons of mass destruction. If this is the case then the piece of paper to be submitted by Iraq will be blank since they have nothing to declare. Yet everyone knows this is nonsense. Therefore Iraq will have to provide some details of its programs if it is to avoid an immediate demand by the United States for military action. Under these circumstances the Security Council would be hard pressed not to support the U.S. position since Iraq would have demonstrated it has no intention of cooperating. The assumption is that Iraq will indeed provide a list of items – probably a very long list - that it will argue are not technically WMD but could be construed that way. And so will begin the very complicated process of inspecting every nook and cranny in Iraq, including Saddam’s palaces, mosques, underground storage facilities, food and pharmaceutical productions facilities, hospitals and all the other likely hiding places for Iraqi WMD. This process will drag on through the early months of 2003 and if Saddam continues to cooperate it may be difficult to go to war, at least with a major ground force presence, since the hot weather in the spring will make operations very difficult. This would postpone any military operation until the fall of 2003.
One thing that will be sure to happen is that the military buildup will continue and that increasingly Saddam’s military officers will know that they are completely surrounded by a huge, formidable force, including a major ground force presence which now has the support of the UN Security Council and presumably many of the Arab countries who would otherwise be hesitant to cooperate. Some hope that in the context of this tightening noose around Iraq there will be cracks in the solidarity in Baghdad and another leader could emerge having mounted a coup and gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his immediate entourage.
As the debate over the inspections reaches a new plateau there is intense speculation over just what sort of Iraq will emerge after Saddam has gone. Rumors that he is trying to make arrangements for his family to have asylum in other Arab countries, possibly Libya, raises the speculation that Saddam now does understand that this is his last moment to do a deal. Whether his pride will permit him to cooperate with the inspectors or whether he will then look so weak that his days are ended anyway, remains to be seen. The next three weeks will be a critical test for everybody.
