Did the U.S. Coddle a Despot?

U.S. policy toward Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the years preceding his 1990 invasion of Kuwait has been only a marginal issue in the presidential campaign. The Democrats accuse President Bush of coddling a despot, Bush replies that his conciliatory policy was a good-faith effort to lure Iraq into the “family of nations,” and there the matter has pretty much rested. That was until last Monday’s three-way debate, when independent candidate Ross Perot accused the Bush Administration of helping to encourage Iraqi aggression and then hiding documents pointing to its responsibility.

Perot zeroed in on the question of what instructions were sent by the State Department to Ambassador April Glaspie before her meeting in Baghdad with Hussein, a week before he invaded Kuwait. A transcript of that meeting was released by Iraq in September, 1990; the State Department has not challenged its basic accuracy. A key portion of the transcript, relating to Iraqi claims on the oil fields in northern Kuwait, has Glaspie telling Hussein: “ . . . We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. . . . I was in the American embassy in Kuwait during the late ‘60s. The instruction we had . . . was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. (Secretary of State) James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.”

Glaspie then refers to Iraq’s military buildup near Kuwait and says, “I received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship--not in the spirit of confrontation--regarding your intentions.” Hussein gives a long recitation of Iraqi grievances and concludes by saying that Iraq is ready to meet with Kuwait and other Arab states on the issue. Glaspie welcomes this “good news.”

Perot said that all this helped invite Iraq’s invasion--”we told him he could take the northern part of Kuwait. . . .” Then he demanded release to the appropriate congressional committees of “the written instructions for Ambassador Glaspie.”

In a prompt reply, the State Department said there were no specific written instructions, only a general policy guideline sent by Baker to all embassies in the region. Baker’s cable expressed concern about Iraq’s aggressive statements, but also affirmed that the United States was taking no position “on the border delineation” controversy. Perot, then, was clearly off base in saying that Glaspie was instructed in effect to tell Hussein “he could take the northern part of Kuwait,” although that inference might have been drawn from the U.S. policy of neutrality in the border dispute.

What ought to be looked at in examining pre-invasion U.S. policy toward Iraq in any event is not a single cabled guideline. What ought to be looked at is how policy-makers went about kidding themselves about the U.S. ability to change Iraq’s behavior, and whether this policy encouraged Hussein to misread the potential American response to his aggression. For many months reports by this newspaper and information developed by several House committees have shown that such a pattern clearly existed. Perot may have been wrong about what Glaspie was told, but not about the general thrust of U.S. policy toward Iraq.