U.N. Curbs Iraq but Hussein Maintains Grip

The U.N. Security Council’s stringent cease-fire terms on Iraq seem to guarantee that Baghdad will be too weak to threaten its neighbors for decades but strong enough to keep a tight and oppressive hold on the country’s restive population.

Despite the fondest hopes of President Bush and most allied leaders that Saddam Hussein would lose his grip on power as a result of the war, the Iraqi dictator has managed to hold on. The Security Council clearly has no stomach for forcing him out.

Hussein “seems to be more resilient than anybody thought,” said Eliot A. Cohen, director of strategic studies at the School for Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.

“The country has been humiliated and devastated,” Cohen said. “But his grip on that country rests on fear. The (Kurdish and Shiite Muslim) revolts will be crushed with utmost brutality. The fear will remain because the people will realize that no one from the outside will come in to help them. He has enough troops to suppress any likely insurgency.”

Assuming that Hussein accepts the Security Council’s cease-fire terms--and from a practical standpoint, he has little choice--Iraq will have to abandon its hope of becoming a regional military superpower. The complex resolution imposes tough curbs on Iraqi arms programs and requires reparations payments to Kuwait that will cripple Baghdad’s ability to pay for the kind of army it has maintained over the last decade.

However, even with a share of its oil revenue diverted to Kuwait, Iraq will remain a relatively wealthy nation, at least by Third World standards. Unlike the ruinous World War I reparations that pauperized Germany and may have indirectly led to the rise of Adolf Hitler, Iraq should retain sufficient wealth to feed, clothe and house its population, provided that it abandons its dream of regional hegemony.

From a military standpoint, the cease-fire may have reached a goal that Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, set out with tongue in cheek earlier in the crisis: an Iraq so weak that it will not threaten its weakest neighbor yet so strong that it can deter its strongest neighbor.

In terms of global stability, it is an outcome that could hardly be improved upon.

“Iraq is not going to be terribly vulnerable,” said military historian Trever N. Dupuy, a retired U.S. Army colonel. “Even after losing half of its equipment, it still has more conventional weapons than any other Arab country, with the possible exception of Egypt. It will be in a position to defend itself if it regains unity and national control.”

Economically, Iraq emerges from the war with bright prospects.

“It is a potentially very rich country with the second-largest proven oil resources in the world,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council expert on the Middle East. “They are an industrious people who have shown a good capacity to adapt to modern technology.

“Iraq will be a lot better off than most countries,” said Kemp, now a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It will take them five years to rebuild things--so what? They are not in the same condition as Germany in 1945 or 1918.”

But for all of its apparent success in blunting Iraq’s claws without leaving it defenseless in the Middle East jungle, the Security Council resolution leaves Hussein firmly in power. And that poses some severe problems for the United States and the West.

Bush has said repeatedly that the United States will not maintain normal diplomatic relations with Iraq as long as Hussein is in power. U.S. officials have said that they expect Hussein’s colleagues in the Iraqi military and political elite to step in and evict Hussein in a palace coup. These officials say that even if the new leader is nothing more than a Hussein clone, Washington would be able to deal with him.

But the United States seems unwilling--and perhaps unable--to support potential coup-makers.

“Saddam has the upper hand for the time being,” said George Carver, a former deputy director of the CIA. “I think the government here wants to be very careful to bend over backwards so it will not appear that any successor government was installed by the Americans.”

Nevertheless, Carver said the Security Council resolution may have an indirect effect of weakening Hussein. He reasoned that Hussein might reject the cease-fire conditions because they are personally humiliating to him. If that happened, Carver said, other Iraqi government officials would have to choose between standing by Hussein--which could produce ruinous consequences--or dumping the dictator and accepting conditions that Iraq clearly could bear.

But if Hussein swallows his pride and agrees to the U.N. conditions, as now seems likely, he may be able to hold onto power for some time.

A former Iraqi diplomat, asking anonymity, scoffed at suggestions that Hussein might defy the cease-fire terms.

“I think he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq as much as Mr. Bush does,” said the former diplomat, now living in Western Europe.

He pointed to Hussein’s selection of Saddoun Hammadi to be Iraq’s new prime minister as an indication that Hussein is ready to put the war behind him and proceed with reconstruction of the war-ravaged nation.

“Hammadi is a reconstruction man, not a policy man,” the diplomat said. “His job will be to supervise the economy and restore the infrastructure.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this report.