A Final Diplomatic Push

American officials are warning that the countdown to taking military action against Iraq has begun. In unusually blunt language, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has affirmed that if necessary the United States will act alone to enforce the U.N. Security Council’s demands for full international inspection of Iraq’s suspected covert weapons sites. Albright’s current trip to Europe and the Middle East is not, she emphasizes, a support-rallying mission. It is to explain the course of action the Clinton administration has decided on and to underscore that such action could come soon.

Her point is to give diplomacy yet another chance to resolve the crisis that Iraq precipitated last November when it prevented American technicians on the U.N. inspection teams from doing their work and decreed that certain “presidential” compounds were off-limits to all inspections. Albright is stressing to her counterparts, especially the foreign ministers of France and Russia, that the United States is determined to punish Iraq militarily if it does not comply with the agreements that brought the 1991 Gulf War to a close. Thursday night she won qualified French endorsement for the use of force if Iraq continues to block inspections. The secretary’s hope is that the seriousness of U.S. intentions will be communicated directly to Saddam Hussein by those whose sympathy he has been courting. President Clinton, meanwhile, is working the phones, spreading the same message of U.S. resolve to his counterparts abroad.

Military action, if it comes, will have been carefully prepared in the diplomatic arena and in the buildup of U.S. and British naval and air power in the Persian Gulf. Whether it would succeed in getting Iraq to back down is an unanswerable question. New weapons, including deep-penetration missiles, could destroy underground depots for the biological and chemical arms that Iraq is believed to have. But first those sites have to be located, no easy task. The prolonged air assault that is likely would be ineffective if Iraq was left in possession of its weapons of mass destruction and if it led to the end of the U.N. inspection program.

Iraq’s game has always been to drag out inspections in hopes that the concerted will briefly embodied in the Gulf War coalition would fade away. That hope has been realized. Where Iraq miscalculated was in underestimating U.S. readiness, with strong bipartisan support in Congress, to act unilaterally if pushed. It remains to be seen if Iraq can be coerced into compliance with U.N. resolutions. At a minimum, its adamancy invites a new round of costly destruction.