Winners, Losers Unclear in Long Term : Outlook: Analysts say the casualties of war could even include President Bush’s ‘new world order.’

On the eve of what now appears to be an inevitable war, there is a growing consensus among American analysts that virtually no major party to a Persian Gulf conflict, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, will emerge with an outright long-term victory.

“This whole thing will not finally be won or lost on a battlefield but in the political balance between the survivors,” said Helena Cobban, a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington.

“There are too many blind alleys and traps that may mark the post-conflict scene, many of which could be deadly,” said Augustus Richard Norton of the International Peace Academy in New York.

The casualties may even include the “new world order” that has been at the center of President Bush’s conviction that there must be no compromise with Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait.

“The irony is that the Administration has emphasized the new world order as an objective. But, in the process of imposing a new world order on Iraq, it may disable future efforts to build that peaceful order,” Norton said.

“The United States may have a Pyrrhic victory, but at the same time have suffered economic and human consequences which may chill any enthusiasm for new adventures in the Third World for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Assuming a victory by the multinational force, the principal winners in theory would be Kuwait, the U.S.-orchestrated coalition members, and the new Arab axis built around Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The losers in theory would be Iraq and politicians, such as Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, and countries, such as Yemen and Sudan, which supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But what seemed plain initially is no longer so clear-cut. In each case, the victors could lose critical long-term goals, while the vanquished may eventually record key political gains, U.S. analysts increasingly believe. Even nations that tried to straddle the crisis, such as Jordan, could lose.

Operation Desert Shield is widely expected to achieve its military goals: restoring Kuwaiti sovereignty and removing the immediate Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia. But both nations face daunting domestic and regional challenges that could make them losers in the long term.

“Kuwait has been proven to be utterly dependent on external power. Most of the gulf states spent considerable sums of money on military machinery, and inevitably people are prone to ask what good it has done and to question the core of these governments’ legitimacy. Many people in these sheikdoms will feel misled, in the literal sense,” Norton predicted.

In Saudi Arabia, the current and probable future militarization could provide “motivation and means for the Saudi military to seize power” from the ruling House of Saud, said Henry Shuler of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He compared the dangers to the ouster of Libya’s monarchy in 1968 by a young military officer named Moammar Kadafi. That occurred after the Libyan monarchy made massive foreign arms purchases, brought in British military trainers and built up the army in a sparsely populated country where the royal family was widely seen as corrupt and intolerant of domestic dissent.

In the Persian Gulf crisis, other members or allies of the 28-nation coalition arrayed against Iraq also may win at serious political cost. For example:

* Syrian President Hafez Assad, who has achieved major diplomatic gains by sending troops to the gulf--improving relations with the West and moderate Arabs--has taken the biggest risk in his political career, U.S. analysts say.

“If there’s war, you have to watch out for Assad, who’s walking a fine line in terms of domestic reaction,” Cobban said.

“If Israel comes into the war, Syria will look rather foolish in Arab eyes,” Norton added.

* In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has won cancellation of billions in foreign debt by the United States, as well as new leadership stature after a decade of isolation because of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. But the longer a war goes on, the higher the political dangers to all Arab parties. Anti-war sentiment is growing even in Egypt, which has the largest Arab contingent in the gulf coalition.

“If the war gets down to street-to-street fighting and enormous casualties are inflicted, then we’ll have to watch the reaction in the Arab world. Everyone is paying attention to American casualties, but we should also pay more attention to Arab casualties, which are not in our interest,” Cobban said.

“If there are lots of Iraqi civilian casualties, then it could undermine any gains Syria and Egypt hope to take away from their participation in the multinational force,” she said. The prospect of Arabs killing other Arabs strikes at the soul of all Arabs.

* Turkey, after losing its strategic value with the end of the Cold War, has won new prestige by providing the West with access to air bases and cutting off Iraq’s oil pipeline. Yet President Turgut Ozal’s position has been undermined at home by the resignation of his defense and foreign ministers and the army chief of staff over Turkey’s involvement in the gulf crisis.

“We’re putting Ozal and Turkish democracy at risk if the Turkish army does not want to take part in a military conflict with the Arabs,” Shuler said.

Meanwhile, the losers of a war could win politically on the underlying causes of conflict.

“Iraq is a loser. But ultimately the causes for which Saddam says he is fighting, the Arab underdog and the Palestinians, will become the primary focus of international efforts,” said Robert Hunter, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“In the same way, the PLO loses in the short term but Palestinians may finally win in the long term.”

Israel may also win the elimination of the biggest and best-armed military now threatening its existence. But U.S. analysts suggested that it has already lost on the long-term issue of a Palestinian homeland, which the international community has made a commitment to address after a denouement in the gulf.