Conflict Management In The Middle East

Steven L Spiegel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429722592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores efforts being made to create Russian-American cooperation in managing recurrent conflict in the Middle East. Theoretical, historical, and policy sections provide the framework for chapters that represent the most current, multinational thinking on issues of war prevention, crisis avoidance, and conflict resolution. The contributo

Part One
The Changing International Setting

Steven L. Spiegel

1
Superpower Conflict Resolution in the Middle East: Implications of the Persian Gulf Crisis

The Persian Gulf Crisis of 1990–91, which ended in the massive defeat of Iraq, represented neither the last of the Cold War nor the first indication of a new era. Unlike the Cold War’s competition in which both superpowers jockeyed for political and military gains at the other’s expense, in 1990–91 the United States and the Soviet Union were on the same side. Although the Soviet Union may have been more inclined to seek a diplomatic rather than military solution, it voted with the United States at the United Nations and coordinated its diplomacy with Washington. Even when the collaboration became frayed on the eve of the ground war, the Soviets did not maneuver to undermine the American position nor to increase tensions, as they frequently had done during the Cold War.

In previous Middle East crises from 1945 to 1990, war had occurred by the action of superpower clients, in some cases despite Soviet or American attempts to restrain them. The Soviets had at times meddled in ways that precipitated combat, with disastrous results, as in 1967. When the superpowers sent troops to the area on previous occasions, they did so in a limited manner for circumscribed goals: the United States intervention in Lebanon in 1958, the American role in the multi-national peace-keeping force in Lebanon in 1982, the U.S. reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1987–88, the Soviet assistance to the Egyptians in the War of Attrition against Israel in 1970. In these cases the external power intervened to manage the conflict by preventing additional escalation and ensuring the survival of its regional client. The Persian Gulf Crisis was the first time that a country from outside the region, supposedly engaged in restraining conflict, had actually engaged in full-scale war. If crisis management is defined as the prevention of war, then the management of this crisis was clearly a failure. The absence of Soviet-American competition may have actually led Saddam Hussein to seek to expand Iraq’s power, and it facilitated the decision of the American-led coalition to go to war. In the absence of a major danger of escalation to superpower confrontation, there was little to prevent the coalition from attacking except for the fear of the use of unconventional weapons by Iraq. That fear militated in favor of employing a military option. Once Hussein invaded Kuwait, many in the coalition believed that hesitating to destroy Iraqi weaponry would only lead to a greater danger later.

Why did war occur in 1991? Central to any explanation are the miscalculations committed by both the United States and Iraq. While it has been argued that cultural differences played an important role in these miscalculations, this explanation is not convincing. The end of the Cold War, however, may have been a contributing factor in the failure of both sides to understand the “rules” of the “new world order.” Let us examine these failures in greater detail.

American Miscalculations: A Failure of Deterrence?

In one sense the American failure to deter Saddam before August 2 was not so much an inability to prevent him from acting as it was a failure to try in the first place. With the major reflagging operation of Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1987 and 1988, the United States had in effect supported Iraq against Iran. Both the Reagan and Bush administrations had largely ignored Baghdad’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Iraq’s Kurdish civilians. The Bush administration reacted mildly to the increasingly harsh statements against the United States and Israel by the Iraqi government in 1989 and 1990. Indeed, until Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, the Bush administration had actively opposed efforts by many in Congress to impose sanctions against the Iraqi regime for its use of chemical weapons and its development and acquisition of long range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. The United States had thus given Iraq great latitude in its conduct of a controversial and aggressive foreign policy.

We will never know whether or not Saddam could have been deterred had the United States attempted to do so wholeheartedly. The Bush administration clearly miscalculated Saddam’s intentions, in part due to inaccurate interpretations of intelligence reports in light of faulty assessments by Egyptian and Saudi leaders. These errors were compounded by the post-Iran-Contra Washington atmosphere, which led to the removal, resignation, or transfer of officials who had advocated closer relations with Iran as a balance to Iraq. Those who remained were reluctant to question the prevailing tilt toward Baghdad even if they had doubts about the wisdom of that policy.¹ Opposition to Iran, with a concomitant favoritism toward Iraq, was so well-entrenched that even had the Iran-Contra scandal not happened, it was highly unlikely that a change in policy regarding Baghdad would have occurred. The scandal made such a shift impossible.

If the Bush administration had not taken any steps to discourage Saddam, then technically the policy would not have been a failure of deterrence. Yet in a somewhat confused fashion a deterrence policy was pursued. The administration’s effort to placate Iraq can be seen as an attempt to engage in positive inducement, in a roundabout route consistent with deterrence in the minimal definition of seeking to raise the potential costs of an action above any benefits. By offering benefits that could be removed, the administration was raising the costs of any negative policy pursued by Saddam.² If this logic is accepted, then the Congressional efforts to reduce or eliminate export credits and the readiness to impose negative sanctions decreased the potential costs to Iraq of an attack on Kuwait. Consistently applied tough sanctions, favored by many in Congress, might have conveyed to Saddam Hussein the dangers of aggressive action. Positive inducements, favored by many in the Administration, might have led him to give greater weight to maintaining good relations with the United States. In the end, the interplay between Congress and the idministration undermined both approaches and left American policy toward Iraq confused and thus inadequate in the months prior to the invasion of Kuwait.

There is, however, evidence that the United States did indeed attempt to deter Iraq on the eve of the invasion. It can be found in the State Department’s warnings of mid-July 1990, in response to a bellicose Iraqi statement concerning Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Baghdad was informed that the United States was “strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the Gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties."³ These warnings were followed by the announcement on July 24 that there would be a joint military exercise with the UAE in response to the increase in Iraqi forces on the border with Kuwait.⁴

The next day U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie held a controversial and now famous meeting with Saddam Hussein. According to the Iraqi version of the meeting, Glaspie said that “we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” Yet in a message which could be construed as a veiled warning, she also told Hussein that:

we can … see that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally this would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you have said on your national day … then we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the UAE and Kuwait [are], in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned.⁵

According to Glaspie’s emendations to Congress in March, 1991, she had said prior to the first quote that “we would insist on settlements being made in a non-violent manner, not by threats, not by intimidation, and certainly not by aggression."⁶ These words further strengthen the view that an implicit warning was made. In any case, according to both reports, Hussein assured her that there would be a peaceful resolution of Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait. Instead of deterring the Iraqi leaders, American warnings only succeeded in convincing him to provide false promises.

Saddam’s Miscalculations

It can be argued that the attack against Kuwait was neither irrational nor foolish. The United States, prior to August 2, 1990, seemed preoccupied with the end of the Cold War, uncertain as to its place in the world, and turning inward to confront its economic problems. In the months before Saddam’s action any signals sent by the United States were at best ambiguous. Given Iraq’s longstanding claims on Kuwait, in 1990 it would have been possible for a leader intent on conquest to convince himself that the United States would likely respond primarily with rhetorical objection but would not act in any forceful manner.

To the extent that the United States was indeed trying to deter Iraq, Saddam Hussein did not consider the signals very credible. His statements to Glaspie demonstrate a complex message, which included an assurance that American interests, in particular oil, would be taken into account no matter what developments ensued, a threat that Iraq could not be intimidated, and a disdain for U.S. capabilities:

I assure you, had the Iranians overrun the region, the American troops would not have stopped them, except by the use of nuclear weapons. I do not belittle you. But I hold this view by looking at geography and [taking the] nature of American society into account. Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle.⁷

Indeed, he might have pointed out that in 1983 the United States could not accept even 241 dead in the attack on the Marine headquarters in Beirut.

Additionally, with American and world attention diverted from the Middle East by events in Europe and the Soviet Union, from Saddam’s point of view it was logical to anticipate that the international reaction would be tolerable. Certainly no one would have been able to predict the immediate and strong American reaction to the invasion of August 2, much less the Soviet-American cooperation and the willingness of the Gulf Arab states to accept an American military presence. The only precedent for the kind of UN collective security operation that followed the invasion of Kuwait was Korea, which did not involve the U.S.S.R. and had occurred 40 years earlier.

We can thus accept that it was logical and even rational for Saddam Hussein to expect that an attack against Kuwait was worth the risk. Yet the tough stand taken after August 2 by the United States and its allies would have seemed to have pressed overwhelmingly in favor of an Iraqi compromise, especially after the allied preparations had proceeded as far as they had by January 1991. We may never know why Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait. Based on his statements, and the situation as it existed prior to January 15, it is possible to make a variety of educated estimates. The unspectacular demonstration of American military prowess in Vietnam, Grenada, and even Panama would not have contributed to predictions of the overwhelming superiority of U.S. arms that led to a quick victory. Many in the West expected an extended war with significant coalition, and in particular American, casualties. It is plausible that Saddam Hussein may have calculated similarly. He had made his contempt for America’s ability to absorb casualties clear to Ambassador Glaspie on the eve of his invasion of Kuwait. The “Vietnam Syndrome” and America’s reluctance to engage in substantial warfare in the Third World must certainly have been a factor in Baghdad’s calculations, especially as it was perceived as an influence in the United States itself.

In the weeks prior to the coalition attack, the Congressional debate and anti-war sentiment, as expressed in demonstrations in the United States and Europe, could certainly have convinced an isolated leader that the United States was weak, divided and confused. As Hussein put it in his famous interview of January 29, 1991, with CNN’s Peter Arnett, “all the people of Iraq are grateful to all the noble souls … amongst the United States people who are coming out into the street, demonstrating against this war."⁸

George Bush’s own actions also conveyed a sense of uncertainty. The President had operated with exceptional skill in organizing the coalition and by January 15 had sent more than 500,000 troops to the area. However, after his shaky performance in the budget crisis in October and his uneven public reaction to the ebb and flow of events throughout the crisis, it was possible for an observer to conclude that in the end he would not go to war. Who could have anticipated that the United States would suddenly and effectively exert the full weight of its considerable military might?

It was even plausible for Saddam Hussein to believe that a limited military defeat could later be transformed into a political victory and a setback for the United States in the region. Saddam may have thought that the governments of the Arab states that supported the United States would be threatened by domestic instability in the face of their alliance with the “imperialists” and “paymasters” of Zionism. He may even have believed that an attack on Iraq would lead to their overthrow and replacement by radical regimes sympathetic to Iraq and antagonistic to the United States. Demonstrations in some Arab countries in favor of Saddam’s cause could have reinforced this perception. If all else failed he planned to attack Israel in the hope that it would retaliate, transforming the conflict into an Arab-Israeli confrontation and thereby increasing domestic opposition in the Arab states aligned against him. On each point Saddam miscalculated, as none of the pro-American regimes were seriously threatened, much less overthrown, and in the wake of the coalition’s successes Israel refrained from retaliating.

The Clash of Cultures: A Failure to Communicate?

Why did the United States fail both to deter Iraq before August 2 and to convince Saddam to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait thereafter? A possible interpretation is that the difference in cultures did not permit accurate communication. This type of analysis suggests that the veiled warnings before the invasion and George Bush’s efforts to convince Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait were cursed by the President’s inability to make points that would be effective in terms understandable to a leader imbued with “Arab culture.” This position assumes that the differences in backgrounds between American and Iraqi officials made the transfer of a clear message impossible.

This argument, that “Arab culture” played an important role, while appealing to some, does not stand up to close scrutiny. The United States was effective at various times in the past in convincing Arab parties to take actions which they might not have otherwise pursued. In September 1970 Syria was persuaded to withdraw its forces from Jordan, in part by the impact of American diplomatic and military maneuvers. In Lebanon in 1958 the United States acted to prevent the accelerated spread of Nasserism throughout the area. The 1986 air raid against Libya did lead to a decline in Colonel Khadafi’s backing of international terrorism. Most notably for the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf crisis, it is worth recalling the British intervention in Kuwait in 1961 to deter a threatened Iraqi attack. Given these examples, it is clear that “Arab culture” did not prevent other Arab leaders from understanding and respecting Western interests, especially when there was a clear determination to act vigorously to defend them.

Another argument that has been offered to explain Saddam’s refusal to withdraw is that he was backed into a corner by President Bush’s demand for the unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the transformation of the U.S. force to an offensive posture with its near doubling after November 8, 1990, and the December UN authorization of the use of force, accompanied by a January 15, 1991, deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. According to this view, if left with an opening Saddam might have withdrawn, but he could not possibly submit to the President’s obstinacy without losing face--and ultimately power--in the eyes of his own people and the entire Arab world.

This argument for a kind of “Arab machismo” is belied by Saddam’s own subsequent fate. Despite the humiliation of an overwhelming military rout and multiple rebellions in the wake of Iraq’s decimating defeat, Saddam Hussein not only remained in power after the war but accepted a degrading cease-fire. He was not the first. An example of an Arab leader who had survived a humiliating defeat, albeit with his reputation tarnished, was Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. This persistence in power is not explained by Arab culture, but by the authoritarian nature of both regimes. For these types of governments, military defeat does not necessarily lead to the overthrow of the old leadership, nor does political compromise. Saddam was strong enough to take whatever action he chose, and could have justified a compromise if he had hen one or both sides are ready and willing to undertake them, and this was a cardinal case of such an example. At no point in the crisis was either side willing to see its goals compromised, while both were willing to threaten and subsequently to use force. Conflict management does not lend itself easily to a situation when compromise is not considered a viable option. Saddam represented a peculiar type of leader with a proclivity to violence, and George Bush, who was prepared to resort to force if necessary, could act with relative flexibility because of the end of the Cold War.

It is doubtful that the American intervention is a model of patterns that will evolve in the new era. In many ways, the Persian Gulf War was a unique event. First, with the demise of the Soviet Union’s ability significantly to influence events, the United States had attained political and military hegemony, at least in the Middle East. The United States thus emerged as the only country that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE The Changing International Setting
• PART TWO Theoretical Underpinnings
• PART THREE Historical Cases
• PART FOUR Policy Implications: Potential for Soviet-American Cooperation in the Middle East
• About the Contributors
• About the Book and Editor
• Index