U.S. Iraqi Policy Alienating Arab Allies

COLLEGE PARK, MD. —  As the crisis with Iraq headed toward military confrontation last week, the United States found few international backers for its approach, which enabled Russia to take the diplomatic lead in--and credit for--defusing tensions. Since Iraq’s violation of the U.N. resolutions on weapons inspections was undisputed, how could this have happened?

The answers underscore the need for a new U.S. approach to Middle East policy even as Washington must remain steadfast in demanding Iraqi compliance. Specifically, the current institutional separation between Arab-Israeli issues and the rest of the Middle East must be erased. “Linkage” of these issues, temporarily suspended in 1990, can no longer be avoided. The essential task of maintaining a broad consensus on what to do about Iraq requires greater U.S. sensitivity toward its allies’ concerns.

The administration should have been better prepared for Saddam Hussein’s periodic gambles to ease the sanctions regime against him. First and foremost, that would have required maintenance of a political coalition in the region. Instead, the rift between the United States and its Arab allies over Iraqi policy has been growing daily, exacerbated by Arab frustrations over the glacial pace of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Washington simply has not been paying attention to widespread Arab sentiments, evident for months, that the economic sanctions against Iraq should be scaled back. Even members of the staunchly anti-Hussein Gulf Cooperation Council, which are concerned not only about the humanitarian costs but also about the long-term consequences of a disintegrating Iraqi society, back this view. Last week’s call by the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, to normalize relations with Iraq had been privately made weeks ago.

During the Gulf War, U.S. policy sensibly separated Arab-Israeli peace issues from the rest of the Middle East. Unfortunately, war-time expediency has been mistaken for reality and even institutionalized in the State Department with the appointment of a special envoy on peace issues, leaving the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs with minimal involvement in Arab-Israeli issues during the past few years. Consequently, there also have been scant evaluation of how various Mideast issues affect each other. The mistake made by many analysts during the Gulf War of assuming that public opinion on the Arab-Israeli peace process was the most critical factor in the region has been replaced by the mistake of assuming that public opinion is not important at all.

This helps explain why the administration spent valuable time and leverage--and still failed--in its attempt to drum up maximum participation at the inconsequential Middle East Economic Conference in Doha, Qatar, when postponement would have been the far-wiser course. For weeks, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two indispensable Arab players in any successful U.S. strategy, had signaled they desire not to attend the conference. But the United States persisted and, in the end, found itself facing a politically failed conference that only served to highlight the deadlock in the peace process and tension among Arab allies, Israel and itself. American political leverage had been depleted at a time when maximum coordination was required.

Not surprisingly, U.S. diplomacy in both the Arab-Israeli arena and in the Gulf region is faltering. Last week, President Bill Clinton acknowledged that the stalemate on the Arab-Israeli front complicated U.S. policy in the Gulf.

But the difficulties facing U.S. Gulf policy are not limited to the fallout of a collapsing peace process. There are some important differences between the United States and its Arab allies on policy toward Iraq, differences that the administration has not seriously addressed.

For starters, U.S. Iraq policy is contradictory. On the one hand, it aims for full Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions while, on the other, it seeks to undermine Hussein’s government. This explains why most Washington analysts are hesitant to read the Russian-brokered resolution of the crisis as a success: Although Hussein allowed U.N. weapons inspectors back in his country, his government was no weaker for it. More generally, U.S. policy is a non-winner, for if Iraq fully complied with U.N. resolutions and the sanctions against it were accordingly removed, Hussein would only grow stronger, economically and politically. The time has thus come for the United States to choose its priorities.

Until then, regional perceptions of U.S. goals will remain conflicting. Some Arab states will continue to believe that Washington is intentionally maintaining Hussein’s government as way of scaring them into accepting U.S. policy. Others will fear that the United States is incapable of toppling the Iraqi leader but cannot admit it. Neither view bolsters U.S. policy in the region.

But the biggest concerns in the region remain humanitarian and strategic. Most Arab states do not trust the Iraqi government but they are sensitive to reports of thousands of dead children and middle-class women turning to prostitution to survive. They regard American insensitivity to such suffering as another example of the West devaluing Arab lives. This is no mere cosmetic difference. The perceived schism between Arab and American sensitivity toward Iraqi suffering runs deep across the region, and U.S. policy cannot ignore it. It is key to sorting out U.S. priorities on sanctions policy.

The United States currently regards the sanctions regime--military and economic components--as a single package. As such, removing economic sanctions is seen to play into the Iraqi government’s hands by increasing its ability to cheat militarily. Although Washington has partly responded to humanitarian demands by approving a U.N.-administered oil-for-food deal, its approach to overall economic relief for Iraq remains limited.

But growing ally misgivings about the dire effects of economic sanctions are undermining the entire package when the United States seems to have lost the diplomatic initiative to Russia and France. Accordingly, the day is approaching when the United States will have to make military sanctions its primary objective if it wishes to maintain any significant influence in the region. It can secure regional and international support for this policy shift by being more responsive to Arab and European concerns about the hardships induced by economic sanctions.

The crisis with Iraq may have been defused for now, but it certainly will not be the last, or most serious, crisis in the Gulf. The U.S. military is fully capable of repelling any Iraqi invasion, but it is incapable of resolving medium-size crises without the guidance of a diplomatic strategy. The success of U.S. policy will ultimately depend on the extent to which Washington coordinates its conduct with its key coalition partners, assesses the regional consequences of its actions and acknowledges that the situation today is not the same as in 1990, when a powerful Iraq marched across Kuwait’s borders.*