In Iraq Crisis, U.S. Waged Costly Fight for Status Quo

While U.S. officials can declare victory in getting Baghdad to back down and allow international weapons inspectors back into Iraq, from the Iraqi perspective, the United States was forced to expend tens of millions of dollars to deploy its biggest guns and its fanciest war planes just to maintain the status quo.

Iraq, meantime, at no cost--political, economic or military--has forced the world’s top diplomats to begin discussing the issue most pivotal to the future of President Saddam Hussein’s regime: How and under what conditions would the international community lift sanctions that had been put in place to punish Iraq for its disastrous 1990 invasion of Kuwait?

Hussein, for three weeks, also has forced his rivals, including the vulnerable Persian Gulf emirates that fear him the most, to back away publicly from the use of force.

He has also bought time to disperse critical equipment and information on his deadliest weapons, at least some of which U.N. inspectors believe they were close to uncovering.

For Iraq, the American inspectors--ejected by Hussein last week and accused of being spies--provided a swift, easy way to put its core dispute back on the international agenda.

In Baghdad on Friday, a leading newspaper bragged about how Hussein--who has dominated headlines and commanded around-the-clock television coverage for three weeks--bested the world’s superpower.

“Our latest battle with the world oppressors in America has led to a great victory worthy of pride and glory. We have proven to everyone . . . that we have a national iron will,” Ath Thawra, a newspaper that serves as mouthpiece of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party, said in a front-page editorial.

The superlatives may have been excessive. But U.S. experts said Friday that Iraq genuinely feels it has made gains, the most important of these centering on the international sanctions.

Since last spring, a new, harder line out of Washington began to redefine the end game for Iraq and make it appear further away than ever. In a speech by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in March, the Clinton administration formalized what it long has suggested: The United States would not allow the lifting of the tough sanctions until Hussein is gone.

But by the simple act of expelling seven American inspectors, Hussein has orchestrated a process that eventually got the world, including the United States, to talk about Iraq’s punishment and the possibility of easing it. More importantly, he sparked discussion on whether his leadership was part of the price to be paid for an easing of the sanctions, said James Placke, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq now with Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Without the crisis as catalyst, the issue might have been on the back burner indefinitely.

So while U.N. weapons inspectors may be back, the real negotiations, which will feature active challenges to the newly articulated U.S. position, may only be beginning.

“Saddam has won attention to sanctions, which is a large part of what he wanted. The Russians, French and Chinese are all now in a stronger position to argue for the end of sanctions and terms for the end game at the United Nations,” added Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at National Defense University in Washington.

The Russian-Iraqi communique released Thursday pledged that Moscow will “energetically promote the speedy lifting of sanctions against Iraq on the basis of its compliance with the corresponding U.N. resolutions.”

And the Russians on Friday pressed the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq to declare Baghdad in compliance in two critical disarmament areas--long-range missiles and nuclear weapons--and sought an increase in the number of non-American inspectors at work in Baghdad.

The latest standoff in the Gulf also underscored more than ever the nearly unbridgeable divides among the allies that evicted Hussein from Kuwait. All parties are still united on dismantling Iraq’s deadliest weapons. But most differ with the United States, in varying degree, on many other key issues.

And virtually no country, including Kuwait, now favors the use of force.

“This really has shown the weakness of the coalition. It particularly reveals how deeply bitter and estranged the Arab world is,” said Phebe Marr, Iraq expert at National Defense University.

The crisis has apparently helped Hussein edge his way back into the Arab world. Countries that once dispatched troops to fight under American command against Iraq have over the past three weeks received Baghdad’s envoys and urged the United States to show restraint.

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As the week closed, Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, Iraq’s front man in the confrontation, spent two days in Egypt for talks with top officials.

Egypt led the way in mobilizing that Arab sphere against Hussein during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

Hussein’s regime may also have gained domestically at a time of increasing hardships.

Earlier this fall, Baghdad imposed new, tighter rations of up to 30% on some basic foodstuffs.

“He’s got a serious domestic problem because of his inability to provide some basics for his people. His fear of domestic fallout is probably growing and fed into the need to create a crisis. It distracts attention,” Yaphe said. “Now there is a sense at home that he’s created movement on the issue.”

A proposal now under consideration by the international community would increase the amount of oil Iraq can export to buy humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. U.N. Resolution 986 now calls for the sale of $2 billion of oil over a six-month period.

Since the start of this standoff, however, the United States and Britain have publicly begun to suggest that the international community could increase the amount of oil that Iraq could sell.

Washington and London intended this shift to undermine international clamor over suffering by Iraq’s 20 million people under the sanctions and to show that these rules were not the cause of shortages--that it was Hussein’s decisions that were harming his own people.

But, in turn, even the talk about adjustments to the sanctions may ease internal problems in Iraq, helping to buy Hussein more time.

In the Arab world, where not losing face is vital, the mere fact that Hussein challenged the United States helped too.

Marr said Hussein “got a chance to strut on the world stage, which always plays well at home and in the Arab world.”