DANGER: Arabian Quicksand : This Time, U.N. Sanctions Will Work to Strangle Iraq

The world’s attention in the last few days has been concentrated on the American military force in Saudi Arabia. But that is not the pressure likely to determine the outcome. The main pressure is economic: the mandatory embargo on all trade with Iraq proclaimed by the U.N. Security Council Resolution 661 on Monday, and adopted by the European Community the following day.

World opinion is understandably skeptical about the effectiveness of sanctions ordered by the United Nations. The sanctions against Ian Smith’s Rhodesia were cynically violated from the beginning by the very country that had called for them: Harold Wilson’s Britain. Smith’s Rhodesia, for the entire period of its existence, was fueled by British oil, supplied through South African ports.

The Security Council’s embargo against supplying arms to South Africa itself, in 1977, was at least not quite so disgraceful, as the Rhodesia case was. The military embargo was applied, and it worked, as far as it went. Unfortunately, its only effect was to bring about the creation of a powerful South African arms industry. More general sanctions against South Africa, introduced later, played a larger part in the change of front that has occurred under the De Klerk government, but the extent of their effectiveness is still doubtful.

The sanctions ordered by Resolution 661 are, however, much more formidable than any previous sanctions. They are more formidable because the Security Council has itself become more formidable. For almost all its history, the Security Council was paralyzed by the conflict of purposes between the superpowers. The beginning of the last decade saw the end of that conflict. As a result, Javier Perez de Cuellar became the first secretary general in the history of the United Nations to enjoy the full support of all five permanent members in carrying out a resolution of the Security Council.

When the Security Council instructed Perez de Cuellar to negotiate an end to the Gulf War, all five permanent members, acting separately, instructed their embassies both in Baghdad and in Tehran to give full cooperation to the secretary general on his peace mission.

When I read that, I rubbed my eyes. The United Nations I had known in the ‘60s, during the Congo crisis, was one in which the permanent members each had conflicting interpretations of the relevant Security Council resolutions, and acted accordingly. If any one of the powers concerned differed from the secretary general’s interpretation, that power either openly defied and abused the secretary general--as the Soviet Union did--or ostensibly “supported” him while actually sabotaging his efforts--as was the case with Britain, France and the United States, during different phases of the Congo operation.

The Congo crisis was the worst--since Korea, that is--in terms of infighting between the permanent members. But infighting continued, at somewhat lower levels, until the transformation wrought by the Washington and Moscow summits and the final gasps of the Cold War. Conscious of the history of the United Nations, as it was from 1946 to 1980, an old U.N. hand such as myself can only marvel and rejoice at the coming of genuine consensus to the U.N. Security Council.

Though genuine, the current consensus over the gulf crisis is not perfect; no consensus ever is. There are signs of divergence between the positions of the United States and the Soviet Union, and between the United States and the secretary general. A U.S. spokesman sought to represent the U.S. move in Saudi Arabia as following on Resolution 661. A U.N. spokesman indicated that this was not the case, but rightly did not labor the point. The Soviet Union indicated that it would send naval vessels to the gulf, to enforce a naval blockade of Iraq, only if that is specifically ordered by the Security Council. A decision to that effect by the council seems likely to follow.

Technically, the U.S. operation in Saudi Arabia is outside the ambit of the sanctions ordered by the Security Council, and it is likely to remain so (if only by reason of the reservations of the Soviet Union). But in terms of its impact on world opinion--and specifically on the world’s governments--the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia is exceedingly conducive to the success of sanctions. That presence conveys to all concerned the clear message that the most powerful country in the world is fully committed to the undoing of the aggression against Kuwait. Perhaps knowing that, any country contemplating a bit of sanctions-busting is likely to think again.

I believe that sanctions, backed as these are, are bound to work and work quite soon. Iraq will be--indeed is already--unable to sell its oil, and will soon be unable to feed its people. The soldiers will feel the misery like everyone else. A million-strong army is only an asset as long as you can pay the troops. Saddam Hussein won’t be able to pay them much longer. When he can no longer pay them, he will be shot. Or before that, and preferably before that. For if Hussein is allowed to go on to the bitter end, still in control, the death agonies of his regime could be terrible indeed for the Europeans and Americans now in Iraq and in Kuwait, as virtual hostages--and for Israel, and possibly for the Americans, in Saudi Arabia.

It is vitally important that the officers around Hussein be made to see the handwriting on the wall, as the courtiers of another Middle Eastern despot saw it in ancient times. The message should be delivered to these officers that, if hostages are harmed, they personally will be treated as war criminals, and that if Iraq uses chemical weapons, against any target, nuclear weapons will be used against Iraq. Whether or not nuclear weapons are actually used, in such a dire conjuncture, the threat of their use needs to be made clearly now, so that an order from Hussein to use chemical weapons will be disobeyed, if made, and he himself be killed, before he brings more death and destruction to others.

Either way, the aggression against Kuwait will be undone, and other potential aggressors will be made to pause. The United Nations will be strengthened, especially if the United States agrees with the Soviet Union to reactivate the Military Staffs Committee envisaged in the U.N. Charter. All that will happen, in whatever way Hussein goes down. But the urgent thing now is to get the people around him to see the writing on the wall, for themselves personally, and bring him down, sooner rather than later.

A million-strong army is only as asset as long as you can pay the troops. When Hussein can no longer pay them, he will be shot.