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Iraq: Is Peace an Option?

Summary

For nearly a year, Iraq has been the centerpiece of U.S.
President George W. Bush's foreign policy. There were multiple
reasons for this obsession, but in the end, Bush created a
situation in which Iraq became the measure of his administration.
However, over the extraordinarily long run-up to a decisive
confrontation with Baghdad, massive, global opposition to U.S.
policy on Iraq has emerged on both the public and state levels.
Creating the sort of coalition that the United States enjoyed in
1991 has become impossible. This war, if it comes, will be fought
in the face of broad opposition. The question now has arisen as
to whether the United States would back away from war in the face
of this opposition. Our analysis is that, at this point in
history, the United States has few choices left: The constraints
that now surround U.S. policy indicate that Washington will have
to choose war.

Analysis


Over the past few weeks, the pressure against a U.S. attack on
Iraq has mounted intensely. Massive demonstrations were launched,
and nations that oppose war have not shifted their positions. But
the opposition is not decisive, in the sense that the United
States does not need the material assistance of anti-war nations
to invade Iraq, nor does the public barrage of opposition create
a material challenge to war. What these factors do is create is a
psychological barrier in which the sense of isolation has the
potential to undermine U.S. determination.

U.S. polls give some indication that this psychological dimension
is having some effect on Washington. The majority of Americans
continue to support a war, but the number is declining somewhat.
Moreover, the number of Americans who want to go to war only if
there military action is sanctioned by a U.N. resolution is quite
large. The essential position of the American public seems to be
that citizens favor war but would much prefer that military
action be internationally sanctioned. Now, polls are volatile: At
the beginning of a war, the numbers have historically shifted
toward overwhelming support for the president. For long years
during the Vietnam War, public opinion continued to support the
military action. Therefore, the Bush administration knows that
the poll numbers being seen now are sufficient to support a war.

However, two problems emerge. First, the political configuration
in Britain has deteriorated substantially over the last two
months, and Prime Minister Tony Blair is clearly signaling
intense political problems. Unlike other countries, Britain
provides substantial material support to the war effort, and loss
of that support would directly affect U.S. war-fighting
capabilities. The second problem is military: A quick U.S.
victory in Iraq would change the political equation domestically
and have a substantial effect globally, particularly if
casualties were minimal and occupation forces were to discover
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. However, there is no
way to guarantee any of these things. This war - like all wars -
potentially could be more difficult and costly than either side
expects or hopes.

Therefore, the United States must make a calculated risk. It is
possible that massive U.S. pressure might produce a shift within
the U.N. Security Council, but the basic configuration of global
opinion will remain intensely opposed to war. There is a high
probability of victory, but no commander can afford to begin a
war that he not only must win, but win quickly, cheaply and with
no nasty surprises. Therefore, the United States could find
itself in a more extended war than it seeks, with the
psychological pressure of global opposition reverberating through
the media. That is the last thing Washington wants.

It would seem to follow that the logical course for the United
States would be to find a basis for not going to war with Iraq.
Enough solutions are floating around in the world that Washington
could craft a suitably plausible justification for the decision
not to go to war, and perhaps even claim a victory of sorts.
Since the Bush administration appears to have lost the diplomatic
and psychological initiative gained after the Sept. 11 attacks,
this would seem the rational outcome.

In our view, this is not what the Bush administration is going to
do -- because it cannot afford to do so from either a strategic
or a political standpoint. There is no doubt within the Bush
administration that the protracted run-up to war has allowed
opposition to solidify, and that the international political
process leading up to war has become unmanageable. The decision
to use the threat of weapons of mass destruction, rather than the
deeper strategic issues we have been discussing to justify a war
has created unexpected problems. It was assumed that the presence
of WMD in Iraq would be generally recognized and regarded as a
problem that must be solved -- even if there was war. Instead, it
has turned the discussion of war into a detectives' game in which
some of the judges will not admit that a violation exists, even
when photos of a missile are distributed. At root, France, Russia
and the rest are not particularly concerned about Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction. They are deeply concerned, however, about
the strategic consequences of a U.S. victory in Iraq, which would
leave the United States the defining power in the region. These
countries oppose the strategic outcome of the war and are using
the publicly stated justification for military action -- WMD -- as
their reason to oppose war. Allowing the WMD issue to become the
touchstone was clearly a fundamental miscalculation by the
Washington.

Put another way, the opponents of war recognized the U.S. gambit
and, for reasons of grand strategy -- as well as some
idiosyncratic realities -- refuse to play.

Nevertheless, retreating from the commitment to war would
represent a serious challenge to the Bush administration in three
areas: strategy, psychological warfare and domestic politics. As
in a game of chess, many options appear to be available -- but
when the board is studied in detail, the constraints are much
more substantial and the options much more limited.

The strategic challenge is tremendous. After Sept. 11, the United
States did not have a war-fighting strategy. The strategy that
was first adopted -- a combination of defending the homeland and
attacking al Qaeda directly -- has proven difficult, if not
ineffective. Al Qaeda is a sparse, global network operating in a
target-rich environment. A defense of the homeland is simply
impractical; there are just too many potential targets and too
many ways to attack them. Attacking al Qaeda on an operative-by-
operative basis is possible but extremely inefficient. The
inability to capture -- or actually to locate -- Osama bin Laden
is emblematic of the challenges posed to the United States in any
dynamic, global conflict with a small, mobile group.

Washington's decision to redefine the conflict was driven by the
ineffectiveness of this response. The goal has been to compel
nations to crack down on citizens are enabling al Qaeda --
financially, through supplying infrastructure, intelligence and
so on. Many governments, like that of Saudi Arabia, had no
inclination to do so because the internal political consequences
were too dangerous and the threat from the United States too
distant and abstract. The U.S. strategy, therefore, was to
position itself in such a way that Washington could readjust
these calculations -- increasing cooperation and decreasing al
Qaeda's ability to operate.

Invading Iraq was a piece of this strategy. Iraq, the most
strategic country in the region, would provide a base of
operations from which to pressure countries like Syria, Iran and
Saudi Arabia. Iraq was a piece of the solution, but far from the
solution as a whole. Nevertheless, the conquest and occupation of
Iraq would be at once a critical stepping-stone, a campaign in a
much longer war and a proof of concept for dealing with al Qaeda.

If the United States does not invade Iraq, it will have to
generate a new war-fighting strategy against al Qaeda. The
problem for Washington is that it doesn't have another strategy,
except the homeland defense/global covert war strategy, which has
not proved clearly effective by itself since Sept. 11. If the
United States abandons the operation in Iraq, follow-on
operations against enabler of al Qaeda will be enormously more
difficult.

First, the key base of operations would not exist.

It should be noted here that the United States has deployed the
bulk of its mobile strike forces to the region. They cannot be
kept there indefinitely, due to threats elsewhere in the world.
Therefore, as they withdrew, profound political concerns would
emerge in countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman,
which have taken political and strategic risks to align
themselves with the United States. As Washington withdraws its
forces and Saddam Hussein continues to dominate Iraq, the
willingness of other nations to stand with the United States will
decline. The effect on U.S. allies in the region who have agreed
to participate in the war against Iraq will be substantial and
will reverberate for an extended period of time.

This is the second point: Coalition warfare relies heavily on
perceptions of reliability. During the Cold War, this was called
"credibility." Credibility is a two-edged sword: It can
create
coalitions, and it also can cause nations to do things they don't
want to do in order to retain their credibility. Credibility must
be managed, but it is indispensable. A precipitous capitulation
would damage credibility seriously.

This leads to the second dimension: psychology. The credibility
of the threat posed by the United States will decline
substantially if there is no war. The calculation within the
Islamic world of whether al Qaeda or the United States is more to
be feared will solidify rapidly: Al Qaeda is a real threat to
regimes in the region; the United States is not. If Washington
abandons its war plans and Hussein is left in place, the
perception of the Islamic world will be that the United States
had neither the will nor the power to destroy its enemy. One of
the arguments that al Qaeda has made consistently is that the
United States is weak and that its troops will not endure
hardship and danger. It is this argument that has made bin
Laden's recruitment effective.

If the United States abandons war under the current conditions,
Hussein not only would be perceived as victorious, but also seen
as victorious because of a bodyguard of great powers that protect
him. It would be argued that these great powers oppose the United
States just as much as the Islamic world did. The United States
would be seen as having been strategically paralyzed by a global
alliance.

Thus, at a time when the United States is trying to reverse the
perception within the Islamic world that it is a militarily
ineffective power, mobilizing forces, deploying them to the
region, threatening war and then refraining from action would
have the opposite effect. Moreover, at a time when the United
States is less dependent on allies for war-fighting than at other
points in its history, the perception that would result would be
exactly the opposite.

The net result would be increased credibility both for Hussein
and Islamic radicals, who might have very different ideologies
but share common interests. There have been those who have argued
that recruitment for radical Islamic groups would grow in the
event of war against Iraq. That might be true. However, one of
the major bars to recruitment has been a sense that the radical
cause is hopeless. A U.S. abandonment of war at this point would
increase hope and therefore increase both ferment and
recruitment. Things that have appeared impossible now would
appear manageable, and risks that wouldn't be taken before could
be taken now. An abandonment of war, in our view, actually would
increase the probability of strikes by Islamic militants against
U.S. interests over the long run.

Finally, there is a domestic political consideration. All U.S.
presidents take these considerations into account when mulling
whether to fight -- or not to fight -- wars. All presidents keep
their eyes on the polls when making their decisions on war and
peace, and George W. Bush is no different. Bush is almost exactly
one year away from the Republican primaries. He is facing a
Democratic Party that thus far is still sorting itself out from
its mid-term election losses and a quiescent Republic Party.

If the president abandons his plans on Iraq and the Hussein
regime survives intact, Bush would lose a good portion of his
party, of which about 83 percent support the war option. There is
not much anti-war sentiment among Republicans, and the anti-war
movement is not going to endorse Bush -- but rather would make the
argument that it blocked Bush from making war. The net result
would be a challenge to Bush within the Republican Party,
probably from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who simply would argue
that Bush is too indecisive to be president. Even if he turned
back the challenge from McCain -- or someone else -- Bush would
be badly weakened in 2004. He cannot afford to be weak after
after his marginal and disputed victory in 2000. Therefore, for
Bush, the domestic consequences of not going to war would be
devastating: His opponents would get the credit for stopping the
war and his supporters would feel betrayed.

Bush's problem is that, for nearly a year, he has been talking
about the importance of the Iraq issue. He has made it the
centerpiece of his public diplomacy and of his domestic political
base. Iraq also represents the only coherent strategy that has
emerged from a politico-military standpoint since Sept. 11. It is
not a great strategy against al Qaeda, but it is the only
coherent strategic option on the table -- aside from waiting and
hoping that the next attack is foiled. It does not have an
immediate application, but it has a long-term application. It is
the best hand Bush has in a series of pretty bad hands.

Therefore, it is extremely difficult to imagine Bush simply
abandoning his policy on Iraq, or adopting a transparent pretense
of having achieved his goals. There was certainly a time when he
could have chosen to abandon the Iraq issue; there also was a
time when he could have attacked with much less public outcry.
Those times are past. He cannot walk away now, and he cannot
attack without an international uproar. The logic of his
situation is that he will attack, endure the uproar and let what
he badly hopes is a quick victory carry him over the hurdle.

Bush may wish at this point that he had not embarked on his
campaign against Iraq. Alternatively, he might wish that he had
acted sooner. However, given his strategic premises, diplomatic
realities and political interests, we continue to believe that
Bush will order an invasion of Iraq -- regardless of the
evolution of diplomatic events -- and that this attack will come
sooner rather than later.

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