What Is Saddam Hussein Up To? : Iraq: He courts disaster, but he’s not suicidal; his plan is to arouse and lead the Arab world.

The behavior of Saddam Hussein continues to baffle the most astute observers of the Middle East. In 10 years, he has nearly reduced to rubble a country that, during the late 1970s, seemed to be the emerging power in the region. He has also fragmented Iraq, ethnically, religiously and politically, to a degree unprecedented in the history of that ancient land.

Against all odds--war, embargo, the enmity of neighbor governments--Saddam Hussein has held onto power. Now he is again courting disaster by defying a United Nations team that has a mandate to find and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, he is pursuing this provocative course after being unequivocally warned by the United States and the U.N. Security Council that failure to comply could lead to military retribution.

Hussein’s reckless behavior leads some to suspect that he is nurturing a death wish. Yet there is nothing suicidal about the Iraqi dictator. On the contrary, his will to survive and prevail is strong. The difficulty of fathoming his character and motives derives from the fact that he acts according to values and logic that are deeply rooted in extreme Arab nationalism. This way of thinking cannot easily be understood by Westerners or by Arabs who do not share his commitment.

Thus, most observers misinterpreted his motives in picking a fight with Kuwait and risking a war with the United States. Saddam Hussein’s quarrel with Kuwait was not about a couple of islands, oil fields or a few more miles of coastline on the Persian Gulf. At stake was a vision: gaining leadership of the Arab world to move it toward a destiny that he deeply believes is the birthright of the Arab people.

Now that he has survived the war, Saddam Hussein’s ultimate goal remains the same, and he is pursuing it both at home and abroad. Confronting the United States and defying what he and many other Arabs see as U.S. efforts to impose hegemony on the Middle East is an essential ingredient of his strategy.

Through this strategy, Saddam aims to consolidate his position in Iraq and the region as the only surviving symbol of Arab nationalism and the Arabs’ last hope for an independent future. Domestically, his strategy rests on an appeal to the Sunni Arab heartland, where Iraqi and Arab nationalist feelings are strongest. Iraq’s Kurds are non-Arab, and its Shias have always been suspect because of their links with Iran. His defying the West will, he hopes, help to build nationalist support for his quest of making Iraq the dominant Arab state. Conversely, he is warning his supporters that, without Iraq’s military strength and his leadership, the enemies of the Arab people will divide Iraq and thus destroy any hope for Arab rebirth.

In his confrontation with the U.N. mission, Saddam Hussein is reminding the Arab audience that he is still here, bloodied but unbowed, ready to champion the cause of Arab nationalism. While he has been disappointed by the failure of the Arab masses to respond to his call for an uprising, he knows that Arab frustration and the contradictions of Arab societies have not disappeared as a result of the Persian Gulf War. He is thus trying to assure resentful Arabs that all has not yet been lost, and that he is ready to champion their cause. For their part, they must follow his call and rid themselves of the governments that have betrayed them.

Above all, he is trying to tell these Arabs not to accept defeat as irreversible. Arab nationalism has been declared dead by some scholars, and it is, currently, as a viable strategy. But its echoes linger even among moderate Arabs, providing a reservoir that he is trying to tap.

It is in this context that Saddam Hussein wishes to perpetuate tensions with the United States, in order to make it difficult for Washington to lower its regional military profile. He calculates that the deeper the U.S. military involvement in the region, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, and the longer it lasts, the more resentment there will be against Arab governments and their U.S. ally.

Saddam Hussein might even welcome another military strike, hoping that it will shake the Arabs out of what he sees as their inertia. He is also playing to a U.S. audience, calculating that the American people are enjoying their victory but do not want permanent entanglements abroad. He believes that, if he can make the threat of long-term entanglement credible, he can generate a debate in the United States about the wisdom of extensive commitments in the region. And this debate, he thinks, will weaken the confidence of his Arab enemies in U.S. guarantees and might force them to come to terms with him.

This is Saddam Hussein’s logic. And, as in the past, it is wrong. Indeed, his latest adventurism may finally persuade his own people and his fellow Arabs that he is the problem. Only then can a successor emerge, thereby allowing Iraq to heal its wounds and the process of regional reconciliation to get under way.