Clinton Said ‘No,’ and Saddam Blinked : An admirable show of firmness by the Administration

Challenged by Iraq’s menacing military moves toward Kuwait, the Clinton Administration responded with a resoluteness and decisiveness in both word and deed that do it credit. There has been no ambiguity, no wavering or evidence of internal differences in its public statements, beginning with the President’s at last Friday’s press conference. Neither was there any hesitancy in ordering to the Persian Gulf area the troops, planes and ships that would be needed to oppose any new Iraqi aggression.

Clinton and his aides immediately and clearly saw what had to be done. Their judgment was sound, their actions effective. “We will not allow Saddam Hussein to defy the will of the United States and the international community,” the President said Monday night. In the face of that determination, Hussein apparently has chosen to pull his troops back from the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait.

However, Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, accompanied his announcement signaling this retreat with an affirmation of sovereignty that, in the circumstances, has to be prudently seen as something more than routine diplomatic boilerplate. “We reserve the right to move them (the troops) any time in the future to wherever we want within Iraqi territory.” In other words, the army in southern Iraq could again be put on the road south if Hussein should again conclude that he has something to gain by demonstrating his continuing ability to make trouble.

The crisis, for now, appears to have been suspended. But the implicit threat that it could be renewed at any time hangs in the air.

That could mean that American forces in some numbers will have to remain on and around the Arabian Peninsula for a while to come. It could also mean, as Defense Secretary William J. Perry has suggested, that at some point U.S. forces would simply act to defang Hussein’s army in southern Iraq, rather than settling in for an extended stay along the border. It’s both expensive and morale-eroding to keep highly trained forces on indefinite alert far from home. What Perry was pointedly implying is that Washington doesn’t intend to let Baghdad dictate the terms of the U.S. deployment.

Searching for rational motives in Saddam Hussein’s behavior has always been something of a fool’s errand. As Gertrude Stein remarked in another context, there’s no there there. He is a master of self-deluding miscalculations, as his enormously costly invasion of Iran in 1980 and his brutal attempt to annex Kuwait a decade later show. A sense of subtlety is alien to his conduct of international relations.

The consensus is that he hoped by this latest example of belligerent posturing to influence the U.N. Security Council to ease the economic sanctions against his country. He especially wants to begin selling oil to earn hard currency. Until a few days ago Russia, France and China, all permanent members of the council, were sympathetic, Russia because Iraq owes it more than $6 billion, France because it sees considerable commercial opportunities once the sanctions are lifted.

The U.S. and British view is that the sanctions should stay because Iraq is still a long way from proving its readiness to comply with U.N. resolutions and abide by the tenets of international law. Its behavior over the last week has left no doubt about that.