POLITICAL FORECAST : How--and When--Will Allies Know They Have Defeated Hussein? : <i> How would you define an allied victory in the Gulf War? When will it occur? The Times asked seven experts, government officials and activists.</i>

Melor Sturua,political columnist for Isvestia, now a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government:

Victory would be restoration of the sovereignty and independence of Kuwait. This would be complete victory for the United Nations, because this is the aim of all its Security Council resolutions.

The U.S. goal, if I understand it, is a little bit broader. It is the destruction of the Iraqi armed forces, or, if you wish, the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces--especially his chemical, biological and nuclear potential. If Kuwait is freed and Hussein’s armed forces remain intact, the United States will feel that its goal was not achieved.

If the United States just wants to wage a war with technological means, especially with its Air Force, it will just postpone victory. It’s impossible to achieve a decisive victory without engaging armed ground forces.

The independence and sovereignty of Kuwait can be achieved in maybe two or three months if the United States engages its ground forces decisively, being ready to sacrifice people. But if the United States wants to destroy Hussein completely, it would take six months--and who knows? After that, he could start guerrilla warfare and drag it on as long as possible. The whole Arab hinterland would support his guerrilla warfare.

Helena Luczywo,publisher and deputy editor, Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw:

Victory would be not only the restoration of the undemocratic but more-or-less-legal government of Kuwait but also the overthrow of Hussein, a terrible violator of civil liberties and human life. I am not as pacifistic, perhaps, as people in the United States.

I don’t like wars. I don’t like people being killed. We who were underground with Solidarity built our movement on nonviolence. But in Poland, there is a very strong association of Hussein with dictators like Hitler, who should be stopped. I just don’t know how else he could be stopped.

For most people in Poland and Eastern Europe, Lithuania is more important than what happens in the Gulf. Not only because it is next door, not only because of our emotions, but because we think it’s very dangerous what is happening in the Soviet Union.

It’s gradual, this “creeping martial law,” as Soviet troops patrol the streets there. This way, the military may take over in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev is allied with the military now, and if the second power in the world is taken over by the military, this is always very dangerous.

Ran Ronen,Israeli consul general in Los Angeles:

The withdrawal of Hussein from Kuwait is one goal, but not the only one. The ultimate goal should be that he not be in power at the end of this conflict--that all his military-industrial infrastructure, including the chemical and nuclear, should be destroyed. Why? Otherwise, the same Western world will be forced to return to the Persian Gulf within two years with one outstanding difference--by then, Hussein will have his nuclear bomb.

The key factor that affects the war’s length is the damage inflicted on Iraq. If the allied air forces succeed in totally destroying strategic targets--Hussein’s military-industrial infrastructure, his command-and-control systems, his communications--the war is over. The allies can achieve this terminal damage in one week to 10 days.

Maybe, then, Hussein will launch whatever he has--some chemicals, something. But this (would be) a very short period. Then the collapse will start. Then the allies should launch a ground war, very carefully, with elite units.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, former secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum and currently a political sociologist at the American University in Cairo:

Victory would be getting Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait, returning the emir of Kuwait and the legitimate government to the country and securing Kuwait for the foreseeable future. That is the minimum necessary for an allied victory.

It would mean a defeat of Hussein’s approach to regional politics--using force to settle legitimate, as well as illegitimate, accounts is justified. It would mean that the use of force to fulfill even legitimate objectives--Arab unity, an equitable distribution of wealth--has failed and that the negotiation approach has prevailed.

Based on available information and some guesses about the state of Iraqi affairs--military, social and economic--Hussein can resist, or can credibly defend himself, for between three and five weeks. Should he opt to carry on the fight, he would probably have to retreat to the northern mountainous province of Kurdistan, from which he could probably wage guerrilla warfare against any foreign troops who enter Iraq or against any regime that the allied forces may put in Baghdad. In that case, he could probably prolong the fight for several months. But if there is a secure political regime in Baghdad, I don’t think he could wage guerrilla war for more than several weeks, probably from five to seven.

Of course, this could change if Hussein withdrew from Kuwait. That would probably enable him to get a new lease on life--not for several weeks, but several months, even several years. But just getting out of Kuwait would mean a defeat not only for him as a leader or for the Baath regime as a regime, but also for an approach that has been entertained by several despotic Arab leaders in the past three decades.

If there’s no clear-cut victory for the allied forces in the early days of the land battles, he may not immediately consider withdrawal from Kuwait. But if these battles are devastating for him, Hussein may try to cut his losses and accept something along the lines of the U.S.-Soviet proposal put forward last week.

Gudrun Agnarsdottir,medical doctor and member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Women’s Alliance, 1983-1990:

A military victory is an illusion. It cannot solve the complicated problems that led to the war, nor the many problems caused by the war. The military power of Iraq was certainly not created by one man alone; it has been contributed to by some of the allied countries. A true victory, not only for the allied coalition but for the world, lies in an initiative that leads to a peaceful solution. This will not be an easy victory now, but I hope it will be very soon.

Randy “Duke” Cunningham,member of the House of Representatives (R-San Diego):

Our military victory could come quickly--perhaps in two or three weeks--if the Iraqi armies advance from their dug-in positions. But if Hussein stays tight in his bunkers, which I believe is more likely, we can expect the allied air assault to continue for several months before a ground attack is launched.

That would be the military victory, in fulfillment of the 12 U.N. resolutions ordering Hussein out of Kuwait.

But more is needed. Without a great deal of further care and cooperation among our allies and the people of the Gulf region, the root conflicts that could fuel the next despot’s rise to power will surely persist.

This greater victory will not happen in just a few months. Its progress will be measured in generations. A long time? Not when you consider that armies and despots have been marching to and fro across the Middle East for thousands of years.

William M. Hammond,military historian:

For the last 4,000 years, aggressive empires have battled, one after another, over Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Suppiluliuma, Adad-Narari, Shalmanesor, Nebuchadnezzar, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Ashurbanipal, Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Alexander, the Caesars, Diocletian, Justinian, Godfrey de Bouillon, Saladin--the list of generals is endless. All won great victories, yet the achievement of each was overthrown by someone stronger, sometimes within the victor’s own lifetime. Only a few are remembered today.

So it will be with us if our goal and that of our partners in the Gulf War is only the overthrow of Hussein and the reconstruction of Kuwait. For if those are necessary first steps that Americans can attain, true peace can only come when the residents of the Middle East themselves undertake to remedy, in justice, the causes of the unrest that have afflicted the region for so long. Unless that is done, this war will settle little. New Saddam Husseins will lay claim to old grievances to justify new aggressions. And the blood, after perhaps only a short interval, will continue to flow.