PERSPECTIVE ON THE PERSIAN GULF : Strike Now by Air and Punish Iraq : The response to Hussein’s aggression involves the stability of the post-Cold War world order, not just Kuwaiti sovereignty.

Saddam Hussein has a record of miscalculating the outcomes of his aggressive initiatives, as in his war against Iran. An appropriate forceful response to his latest provocation transcends the crisis in Kuwait; it is crucial for the sake of buttressing the world order, which is being molded after the termination of the Cold War. Allowing Hussein to end up with even the smallest gains with impunity, produces an ominous precedent liable to be followed by other Hussein-type dictators. What is at stake is the danger of the world order relapsing to anarchy, and not just the fate of Kuwaiti independence. As the relations between the superpowers have improved, the law of the jungle should not be allowed to fester relations between lesser powers.

An economic response such as a blockade and a boycott will have only delayed effects. What is needed is an early punitive action in the form of an air strike. The world witnessed the salubrious effects such an act had on Libya. The United States is understandably loathe to see itself sucked in into land fighting in regional conflicts. Precisely because the danger of a military confrontation between the superpowers has receded, the United States does not need large armed forces for a central war. Being the main overseer of world order and the only superpower left, the United States needs an agile force allowing it to intervene promptly in cases of international piracy.

Countries nowadays are very vulnerable, as many of them have centralized installations such as electrical power plants, the destruction of which would have immediate effects and is blatant in its message to the population. Such centers are few in most countries, without back-up systems. A strike against such a center would be sharp retribution since rebuilding may take many years. It can be coupled with the threat that other strategic targets will be hurt, unless the aggressive country complies with the demand to retract.

The other lessons are in the framework of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and may be more tentative in nature. The Iraqi army concentrations near the Saudi border are probably meant as a threat to deter Saudi Arabia from closing the Iraqi pipelines that traverse the kingdom and from collaborating with the Americans. The traditional Saudi pusillanimity and the expectation that others would pull the Saudi chestnuts from the fire are obnoxious. Still here, too, it is not the Saudi reigning family that deserve saving, but the Saudi oil. The Arab states face in a vigorous way the true nature of inter-Arab relations and the frivolity of their solidarity. An Arab state was aggressed by another Arab state, its capital occupied and plundered, and no common front was erected against the predator.

The staunchest supporter of Iraq from among the Arab states has proved to be Jordan of King Hussein. The future of Jordan is tied up with Arab-Israeli conflict more than any Arab state. Jordan can survive only in a calm Middle East. King Hussein apparently considers that the deadlock in the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict was caused by Israeli leaders deliberately; that they are interested in perpetuating the deadlock, as a settlement of the conflict will require Israel to give up the occupied territories; that their call for peace is only a guise for their effort to force the Arabs to recognize that Israel should keep these territories. He sees their position as dooming the Middle East to agitation and radicalization. He believes that a military showdown between the Arab nation and Israel is both inevitable and perhaps desirable. Thus he became bellicose and drew nearer to powerful Iraq.

Most Israeli commentators have been inclined to consider that the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait was an accomplished fact and, thus, they underestimated the possibility that Iraq will prove to be the loser. For instance, Moshe Arens, the Israeli minister of defense, speaking on the Israeli radio on August 4, stated that the world has to be mobilized to prevent “additional conquests” by Iraq, as if the previous conquest is safe in Saddam Hussein’s pocket. Perhaps the common Israeli tendency to believe that history is made by acts of audacity and of fait accompli, conditions such views. Hussein won only a battle, not the war.

Israelis use the Kuwaiti crisis to claim that they saw in the past and see in the present better than others the dangers emanating from Iraq. They use the Kuwaiti crisis as if it validates Israeli policy in the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, they argue, recent events prove that the Arab states, not the Palestinians, are the major actors in Middle Eastern politics with whom negotiations should be conducted. Furthermore, that the Iraqi aggression depicts the aggressiveness inherent in the Arabs and justifies Israel’s claim to retain the West Bank, and that the negotiations on elections in the territories should be deferred to after the settlement of the Persian Gulf crisis.

These arguments are spurious. The need to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict has not receded, but only increased. Defeating Saddam Hussein’s adventure will constitute an important contribution to the possibility of a peace process. It will be a lesson of the importance of propriety of behavior for all, including Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs. The Kuwaiti crisis has not change by a whit the verity that settling the conflict is an existential necessity of the highest order for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.