POLITICS
There is no new world order.
History has returned to normal
BRUCE ANDERSON
even years ago, it all seemed very dif- ferent. Despite the forebodings, the Gulf War had been one of the smoothest opera- tions of all time, diplomatically as well as militarily. The Americans had not only behaved like a superpower; they had built a coalition. That minimised the destabilising effect which the war could have had on the Gulf, while the smart weaponry took care of American public opinion. During the weeks before the war, Washington had been oppressed by two secret anxieties. The first was that their troops would not fight; the second that even if the troops were sound, the public might react badly when they started to be killed.
In the event, such fears were made to seem groundless. The Americans had dis- covered an acceptable form of warfare in which the bodybag was superseded by the microchip, and the Gulf War had provided the ideal form of counselling to help the US military to recover from Vietnam. Seven years ago this February, we appeared to be witnessing the birth of a new concor- dat between technology, diplomacy and American power, enabling George Bush to claim that out of Desert Storm a new world order had emerged.
It is very easy to mistake changed circum- stances for a new dispensation. The Gulf War was new, in that it would not have been possible had the West not won the Cold War. But with his 'world order' George Bush was making the same mistake as Francis Fukuyama, who thought that just because a few recent developments had been beneficent, history was over.
In retrospect, the very efficiency with which the West fought the Gulf War gave rise to disadvantages. Many wars are start- ed with the aim of restoring the status quo ante bellum, but most peace treaties are concluded on different terms. Nations that have sacrificed blood and treasure on the altar of Mars are easily moved to inflict reparations, and revenge, on their defeated foes — and Saddam certainly deserved vae victis. But the Gulf War had been less fear- ful than even the most optimistic commen- tators had anticipated, at least in terms of Western losses. So the West was less inclined to anger than to guilt — in Homer- ic terms, to aidos — at the ease with which thousands of Iraqis had been slaughtered. The two principal American commanders, Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, were both determined to end the fighting as rapidly as possible, to the extent that some British officials wondered whether either — or both — of them wanted to write a book entitled The Hundred Hours War. But it was easy to understand why Americans should be so enthusiastic about an unambiguous military victory. There was also a general disinclination to pollute a just war with unnecessary blood-letting.
An invasion of Iraq would have caused diplomatic problems, reinforced by logisti- cal ones. Most of the world would have argued that the UN mandate only covered the liberation of Kuwait and could not be used to justify a wider belligerence. It is almost certain that the Arab members of the coalition would have taken that view, so further action would have had a high diplo- matic cost. Nor would it have been wholly straightforward in military terms. Southern Iraq is full of watercourses, and the West- ern armies were not equipped for bridge- building. This would not merely have caused delay, but would have added to the diplomatic repercussions; the less surgical any invasion, the more unacceptable the Arabs would have found it. But even if the equipment had been available, it is not clear that there would have been a surgical option. No one in the West had the least interest either in taking over the govern- ment of Iraq or in fighting their way into Baghdad. Any invasion would, presumably, have been intended to destroy Saddam's authority in order to facilitate his over- throw. But in military terms, that would have been a hopelessly vague objective.
There is a widespread belief that if only Mrs Thatcher had still been in No. 10, she would have put backbone into Bush and got rid of Saddam. But in the view of some of those who were closely involved with British policy at .the time, that is a myth. Had she still been in office, the likelihood is that she herself would have recognised the force of the arguments against invasion, especially as she would probably have suc- cumbed to an illusion that was almost uni- versal among policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm: that Saddam was finished. The assumption was that his power and prestige were both broken, and that he would be out in weeks if not days. 2,500 days later, we know better. Desert Storm had scotched the snake, not killed it. Saddam is now better equipped with weapons of mass destruction than he was in 1991.
The West is now in a position where it must act, though the action may well not only be fruitless, but counterproductive. It is almost impossible to eliminate all Sad- dam's deadly weaponry, or to eliminate him. His grip on Iraq would appear to be absolute, which makes it very difficult to organise an assassination. That would require, ideally, 'humine (intelligence reports from agents), plus `siginf (electron- ic intelligence enabling his movements to be monitored). Hardly surprisingly, not much humint is coming out of Iraq at the moment, while those who organise Saddam's transport are good at maintaining radio silence. He probably sleeps every night in a bunker under a children's hospital.
But the radio silence has not muzzled his propaganda. Saddam has persuaded a lot of Arabs that the West is guilty of double standards. We in the West take it for grant- ed that Saddam's weapons of mass destruc- tion are a threat to world peace, but not Netanyahu's; few Arabs would agree. There are also signs of instability among some of Saddam's neighbours, especially in Jordan. Another ill-thought-out military mission, Suez, contributed to the fall of the Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. It would be a grim irony if a largely pointless attack on Iraq led to chaos in Hashemite Jordan. Many moderate, Westernised Arabs believe that the Americans are in league with Israeli fun- damentalists who want to turn Jordan into a Palestinian state; nonsense, of course — but it testifies to the extent of Arab alienation.
Yet despite all the dangers, it is not clear that President Clinton had an alternative. Saddam could not be allowed to flout the UN inspection process. Nor does Premier Blair have an alternative. The American alliance is a more important British interest than the niceties of Arab opinion, especial- ly as the Americans would have pressed ahead without us.
Saddam may back off, as he has before, though that would only postpone the prob- lem, not solve it. So there is every reason now for doubt and fear. In early 1991, we seemed to see our way forward; it was a simple matter of lining up the cross-hairs on our chosen target. Now, it is impossible to predict even short-term outcomes. But that should not surprise us. It merely means that history has returned to normal.
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