THE WORLD / IRAQ : The Naive Hope That Allowed Hussein to Weigh Mass Murder

How was it possible for the government of the United States, as well as other nations and international organizations, to so badly underestimate the extent of Saddam Hussein’s sophisticated campaign to acquire weapons of mass destruction? Can anything be done to prevent, say, a Libya or a North Korea from achieving similar capabilities?

As the United States prepared for war in the Persian Gulf, worst-case planning led the U.S. military to assume that Iraq might defend itself with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. But even as American soldiers trained for such combat, policy-makers and intelligence officers fiercely debated the likelihood that Hussein even had acquired or developed such weapons.

Since the late 1970s, a combination of wishful thinking and narrow legalistic analysis had persuaded most U.S. policy-makers that allegations that Iraq was acquiring weapons of mass destruction were little more than anti-Arab propaganda intended to block U.S.-Iraqi reconciliation. Iraq’s signature on various nonproliferation treaties bolstered this belief.

Such a misguided U.S. view can be traced to the Iranian revolution and the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. Washington’s twin-pillars policy of relying on Iran and Saudi Arabia to preserve and protect U.S. oil interests had collapsed. Searching for an alternative, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, suggested Iraq.

Despite Baghdad’s close relationship with Moscow, its overt attempts to wreck the nascent Egypt-Israel peace process, its support for and use of international terrorism and its well-established ambition to dominate the Persian Gulf, U.S. policy-makers believed that a U.S.-Iraq relationship would help restore and maintain stability in the Gulf.

While Washington nurtured this hope, U.S. and Israeli intelligence analysts were reporting that Iraq was close to fielding a nuclear weapon. Iraq’s abrogation, in 1980, of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection rights--purportedly to prevent Iranian espionage during the Iran-Iraq war--did not deter proponents of a U.S.-Iraqi reconciliation, because, they claimed, Iraq was still a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Most policy-makers simply didn’t want to believe that Iraq was working on a nuclear weapon because such a development would undermine their policy.

At the same time, Iraq was acquiring the technology to build chemical weapons from West Germany. Under the guise of developing a capability to manufacture advanced fertilizers, Iraq began producing nerve and mustard gases, which were used against the Iranians. At first, Iraq denied it had any such chemical capability. But, eventually, it conceded that chemicals were its only means to stop the Iranians. When then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz accused Iraq of using chemicals weapons against its Kurdish population, Baghdad dismissed the charges as hypocrisy.

The extent of the Americans’ lack of realism concerning Iraqi intentions and capabilities is underscored by the disclosures coming out of the United Nations. Baghdad now admits, among other things, that it had developed, stockpiled and was prepared to use biological weapons during the Gulf War.

The replacement of outlaw regimes by democratic governments offers the best possible means for eliminating the dangers of weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands. Until then, it is essential that policy-makers acknowledge that halting the proliferation of such weapons is a vital interest of the United States. Resolute intelligence activities, diplomacy, economic sanctions and, where necessary, sustained military action must be used against regimes that try to acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Rogue leaders must understand that their political survival is incompatible with acquiring such capabilities.

Many in Congress and elsewhere continue to hope that treaties offer the best means for success at nonproliferation. But the Chemical Weapons Convention, or similar treaties, are effective only when signatories honor their commitments.

Outlaw regimes can never be trusted. If a major, covert weapons program could be concealed from the U.N. Special Commission, other outlaw leaders can no doubt find the means to violate international agreements with impunity.

The most important step in preventing this is enhanced intelligence collection and analysis. While the intelligence community typically focuses its efforts on the “demand side” of the equation, special emphasis should now be placed on the “supply side.” A thorough inventory of U.S. and foreign companies able and willing to sell technology and products that facilitate weapons programs is essential. To achieve this, the CIA should hire more technical, engineering and scientific talent who can target, collect and analyze information about the industrial dimension of the problem.

The resulting information should be distributed throughout the government so that policy-makers can more intelligently devise strategies to pressure, cajole and, if necessary, compel outlaw states to give up their weapons of mass destruction. Without this kind of information, it will be impossible for any administration to build the public consensus necessary to check rogue nations bent on amassing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The disclosures of Iraq’s mass-destruction capabilities provide a strong reason to take off the gloves--and the policy blinders that block realism from entering our views of the post-Cold War world. Central to such a realism is a recognition that there are no easy answers or cheap solutions to the dangers posed by international outlaws armed with weapons of mass destruction.*