The Gulf Wait a Minute

By Michael Kramer

Where was the gulf pendulum last week -- closer to war or to peace? As the fall and rise of world oil prices demonstrated, it was swinging wildly from one side to the other. Rumors of a dream -- the release of some hostages -- talk of possible deals, growing alarm at the costs of war, all sparked a flush of optimism that diplomacy could save the day.

By week's end, though, the prevailing sounds were decidedly hawkish. Whatever the conciliatory talk elsewhere, Washington was having none of it, at least in public. George Bush blasted suggestions that a trade could be made to induce Saddam Hussein to withdraw. "I am more determined than ever to see that this invading dictator gets out of Kuwait with no compromise of any kind whatsoever," he said. To ensure that Saddam perceives the military alliance ranged against him as "credible," and to achieve an offensive capability beyond the "defend and deter" mission described as Washington's objective to date, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney signaled that as many as 100,000 additional U.S. troops would soon join the 210,000 already in the gulf. At the same time, CIA Director William Webster said the Middle East would never be secure until Saddam was removed from power or "disassociated" from his weapons of mass destruction.

Only the Soviets, who had told nonaligned members of the Security Council last week that Saddam was not interested in negotiation, continued to hold out hope. On Saturday President Gorbachev said the Iraqi leadership may be softening its hard line, so military force should not be used.

But the Cheney-Webster message was unmistakable: there may be no way out short of war. But a growing ambivalence pervades the enterprise nonetheless. The "wait a minute" second thoughts echoing on Capitol Hill -- a skittishness in marked contrast to the "let's get him" talk of several weeks ago -- reflects an increasing reluctance among the American public to start shooting.

The Pentagon itself has been soberly reassessing the costs of conflict. The quick and clean scenarios floated brashly in September have been tossed aside. If war comes, said Cheney, "it won't be easy." So while the significant increase in allied firepower helps telegraph Washington's seriousness of purpose, it is military necessity as much as psychological posturing that mandates the added punch.

% If the balloon goes up, winning will require more men and equipment than previously acknowledged. The Iraqis have dug deeper into Kuwait in recent weeks. Fortified bunkers and minefields dot the country, and a network of roads increases the mobility of Saddam's army. Barring a wholesale surrender of the 430,000 Iraqi troops stationed in Kuwait and southern Iraq, no force will liberate Kuwait without sustaining heavy casualties.

Given this more somber assessment of a war's costs, it is no wonder that the parameters of a peaceful solution, a deal, are being explored afresh by some of those who would bear the brunt of conflict.

To a certain extent, this is nothing new. Led by Washington, the alliance has always followed a two-track policy. Get out of Kuwait unconditionally, Saddam has been told, and your claims to Kuwait's territory and oil can be addressed through negotiation and arbitration. So, too, Bush and others have signaled that a renewed drive for an overall regional peace plan could follow an Iraqi retreat. Most of the West avoids explicitly linking a gulf solution to an Arab-Israeli settlement, but an implicit linkage in terms of Arab expectations exists all the same.

From the start, the problem of a peaceful resolution has revolved around matters of timing. The U.S. and its allies have insisted on an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait before anyone talks about anything else. That bottom line demand is rooted in a determination to deny Baghdad even a token reward for its aggression. Few believe that Saddam would leave quietly without the elements of a face-saving deal squarely on the horizon, but the prospect of sketching a settlement in advance causes apoplexy in Washington. This is why war is seen as inevitable.

It also explains why Cheney suddenly appeared on all four U.S. television networks last Thursday. Only five days before, Prince Sultan ibn Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister, had seemed to tie Kuwaiti land concessions too closely to an Iraqi withdrawal. "We needed to dampen the talk of a peaceful settlement that wafted around Sultan," says a White House aide. "That's why Dick went public even before ((Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman)) Colin Powell got back to Washington to formally request more troops."

On close inspection, Sultan's remarks represented little if any deviation from the allied position, but the message was imprecise and a peace feeler was suspected. Speculation on what lines a negotiated settlement might follow were also old hat: a proposal to lease the strategically important Kuwaiti islands of Bubiyan and Warba to Iraq, and a settlement of Baghdad's claim that Kuwait was extracting too much oil from the Rumaila oil field that straddles the Iraq-Kuwait border. Before the Aug. 2 invasion, Kuwait was prepared to discuss these issues and had even indicated it might accommodate Saddam's complaints. In essence, Sultan simply repeated the allied proposition that everything is negotiable, but only after Saddam retreats.

Nevertheless, a concession to aggression was perceived. James Akins, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, says the Saudis "recognize that war would be a catastrophe for everybody. Why shouldn't they at least explore a negotiated settlement?" Whether Sultan intended a signal to Saddam or had merely spoken sloppily, the Defense Minister immediately claimed that he had been misinterpreted, but enough doubt lingered to precipitate Cheney's hurried remark about additional troops.

The only people ecstatic about the dustup following Sultan's comments are some Kuwaiti officials. They are certain they will have their nation back, but they are worried that if Saddam leaves Kuwait peacefully and with his military machine intact, he will merely regroup for another foray on another day. And they know the Kuwait they get back will not be the same country they lost. "Whether Saddam goes quietly or is bombed out, the place we return to will be a shell," says Finance Minister Ali al-Khalifa al-Sabah. "We prefer liberation soon to halt Iraq's daily atrocities against our people."

For this and other reasons, not the least being revenge, almost all Kuwaitis hope for a punishing war and are eager for it to begin quickly. "You can view Sultan's statements as of a piece," says a senior Kuwaiti official. "His remarks and the search for a peaceful way out mean that when the decision to fight is taken, as it will be taken, we will be able to say that we tried to talk Iraq back and that war is the only option left." The Kuwaitis welcome talk of peace for another reason as well. They believe it perversely lures Saddam into staying his course in the mistaken notion that the opposition against him will fold. "We are certain that Saddam is reinforced in the belief that the coalition against him is weakening, that he will be able to keep Kuwait if only he hangs tough," says the official. "As long as he keeps thinking like that and stays put, we will have the opportunity to go after him | militarily, which is exactly what we Kuwaitis want to happen. The only way of truly getting rid of this menace is to get rid of him once and for all."

Yes, but a peaceful resolution that accomplishes the same thing, or close to it, would still be preferable. Besides the incalculable costs of war, there is the question of what would follow Saddam's defeat. The Middle East might become more stable, or it might not. And the possibility of a continuing terrorist retaliation for having taken out Saddam is chilling. Abul Abbas, the man behind the Achille Lauro seajacking, told the Wall Street Journal that "there is an Arabic saying that revenge takes 40 years. Some day we will have missiles that can reach New York."

Leaving aside timing and appearance, would a trade of the kind that attended Prince Sultan's comments fly? The Kuwaitis want compensation for the looting of their nation. The pool of frozen Iraqi assets and the oil revenues that would again flow to Baghdad once the embargo is lifted could eventually satisfy Kuwait on that score. Striking a bargain over drilling rights in the Rumaila oil field is doable as well. Before the invasion, Kuwait was extracting just 10,000 barrels a day from Rumaila, less than 1% of the country's daily production, an amount that could easily be covered by pumping more elsewhere. Leasing Bubiyan and Warba islands to Baghdad would be harder, if not for the Kuwaitis then for the Iranians. President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has said Iran will not tolerate Iraq's control of the northern gulf, which is exactly what Iraq's possession of the islands would yield. "We will act within our means to stop" such a deal, Rafsanjani told the French daily Le Monde two weeks ago.

Assuming even this objection could be overridden, a simple trade of the kind implied by Sultan's statement would probably be insufficient for the reason CIA Director Webster stated: Saddam's weapons. "We are ready for a long-term U.S. or U.N. presence in our country," says a Kuwaiti aide to the exiled Emir, "but we wouldn't deal on the islands or the oil unless Iraq's war- fighting capacities are crippled. If Saddam gets something from us that he can portray as a victory, then the rest of the world is entitled to an even greater and longer-lasting victory."

Would Saddam accept a favorable resolution of his claims against Kuwait in exchange for both withdrawing from Kuwait and neutralizing his most fearsome military capabilities? This is the point on which any deal would probably founder. It is unlikely that Iraq would agree to any settlement that reduces its own military without similarly reducing Israel's force. Most Arab nations would certainly support such a demand.

But even if that obstacle could be hurdled -- which is surely a pipe dream -- there is still the tricky matter of Saddam's ultimate designs. From his assumption of power in Iraq in 1979, Saddam has sought regional hegemony: if not by outright territorial conquest, then by the application of military muscle to dictate oil-production quotas, pricing arrangements and regional diplomacy. Beyond that, Saddam's animosity toward Israel remains unappeased. Without his military might, Saddam is just another bit player.

There is still the possibility that Saddam will get smart, leave Kuwait and go about increasing his powers of intimidation by completing his nuclear weapons program. If he doesn't see a need to withdraw to the status quo ante -- and there is no sign yet that he "gets it," to borrow the phrase in vogue in the White House -- it appears that much of the world is headed toward war against the man George Bush once again last week called "Hitler revisited."

With reporting by William Dowell at the Saudi-Kuwaiti border and Dan Goodgame and Bruce van Voorst/Washington