A Message for Baghdad

Iraq has maneuvered itself into a political dead end by its ineffective and costly effort to interfere with U.S. and British overflights of its northern and southern regions, and in frustration it has now tried to intimidate neighboring countries from which the flights are launched. Baghdad’s direct appeal to Turkey to deny its Incirlik air base to allied aircraft has been rebuffed by Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, prompting Iraq to extend to Turkey the threat of retaliation it previously made against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. None of the threatened countries seem particularly alarmed. The Saudis, not famed for political boldness, have scoffed at Iraq’s threat, jeering its inability even to control its own airspace.

Saddam Hussein’s decision to challenge the overflights appears to have been yet another miscalculation by a chronic blunderer. With the U.N. Security Council deadlocked over what to do after Iraq barred any dealings with the U.N. arms inspectors, Hussein chose to press his luck by first sending planes into the no-fly zones and then firing on the allied patrols. The main result so far has been the increasing destruction of Iraq’s air defense system. Rather than showing strength by provoking this confrontation, Hussein has exposed Iraq’s tactical weaknesses.

But meanwhile Hussein’s secret work on banned weapons of mass destruction moves on. The arms inspection system made that work harder, but Iraqi cheating and non-cooperation are known to have preserved much of the means and material for making chemical and biological weapons and, say international experts, for eventually reviving its nuclear arms program. For their own self-serving political and commercial reasons Security Council members China, France and Russia won’t face up to the significance of this threat. That has left it to the United States and Britain to try to keep Iraq in line. Turkish, Saudi and Kuwaiti bases are vital to that task. All three states have refused to be coerced by Baghdad’s blustering, and that’s a message.