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IRAQ
BEYOND SADDAM
The search for regional
security
By James A Russell
With the Bush administration intent on regime
change in Baghdad, much attention in the press and in
the policy community is understandably focused on the
rights and wrongs of tactics of removing Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein. But while the circumstances of Saddam's
removal are being crafted and debated, the broader issue
facing strategic planners is the task of reconstructing
a regional security architecture that may be more
relevant to the region's emerging requirements in a
post-Saddam era.
Just as the attacks of September
11, 2001, forced a break from the past and enabled
new ways of thinking about how the United States should
interact with the international community, the debate
over the removal of Saddam provides the US with an
opportunity to reexamine a host of assumptions that have
driven US security strategy and policy in the region
over the past decade.
When the
Berlin Wall came tumbling down
in 1989 and the inauguration of the "post-Cold War"
world was proclaimed, the forces of change
that swept through various other parts of the globe
did not materially affect the Persian Gulf. The presence
of a defiant Saddam and the so-called "box" of
containment constructed largely with American military
power were major reasons why forces unleashed by the
absence of the US-Soviet rivalry did not manifest
themselves in the Gulf. But the prospect of a Gulf
without Saddam could represent a "crumbling" of a Berlin
Wall of sorts in the region and unleash a variety of
pent-up forces for change that could profoundly affect
regional security and stability.
The dictates of
prudent planning suggest that the US, the region and the
international community start thinking about these
issues now if we hope to see how a war with Iraq could
be made into a positive force for long-term security. If
the Gulf has been slow to see the forces of change
flowing in the post-Cold War era, it is also true that
US strategy in the Gulf has changed little during the
past 20-odd years. American interests, strategy and
policy have remained remarkably constant over the
decades.
Starting with formulations by senior
policymakers dating to the 1940s, the US has always
regarded unimpeded access to the oil of the region as a
"vital" interest. While using force to protect this
interest was by extension always an implicit assumption,
it wasn't until president Jimmy Carter's January 1980
statements in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan that the commitment finally became public.
Flowing from this commitment, the US subsequently
deployed forces to the Gulf in the 1980s to protect oil
tanker traffic and then fought the Gulf War after Saddam
threatened to overrun the Arabian Peninsula in 1991.
US strategy and policy in the region since then
have operated on three assumptions:
1. The need
for access to reasonably priced oil.
2. The need to
ensure that no hostile force control the region and its
oil supplies or so intimidate other states so as to
coerce supplier states into taking actions inimical to
consuming nations.
3. A commitment to use force if
necessary to protect and further these interests. The US
security architecture in the region is largely based on
these key premises. The idea of a "security
architecture" suggests a complex interrelationship
between a host of political and military variables and a
decision-making process that can coherently and
systematically integrate them into a whole. In terms of
defining the critical elements of the architecture, the
US has over the decades:
1. Defined the US vital
interests in the Gulf.
2. Developed a strategy to
protect and further those interests.
3.
Formulated policy to implement that strategy.
4. Committed
the political and financial resources to operationalize
this policy in the region.
During the 1990s, the
US did reasonably well following this logical process in
establishing a security architecture that served its
interests. In strictly military terms, that architecture
had a number of main elements: forward deployed US
forces engaged in ongoing operations, access to host
nation facilities, prepositioned equipment, sales of
defense equipment to promote the self-defense
capabilities of American allies, and regional military
engagement through exercises and training. (1) The issue
facing the policy community today is whether this
existing security structure will be relevant to the
post-Saddam period and whether it will continue to
protect and promote US interests and those of its
allies.
Regional security during the 1980s
and 1990s
With the fall of the Shah in 1979 and
the Islamic revolution in Iran, the US found itself
without a regional security strategy. The "dual pillars"
of Iran and Saudi Arabia had essentially been reduced to
one - the House of Saud. With the eruption of the
Iran-Iraq war in 1980, the US gradually acceded to the
idea pushed by its Gulf partners that a strong and
viable Iraq - even a heavily armed one - should be a
primary component of the region's security structure.
The main purpose of a secular, Sunni-led Iraq, so the
formulation went, was to provide a counter-balance to
the more populous and potentially dangerous Shi'ite Iran
and its Islamist regime.
The understanding
during the 1980s - and it was a role taken by Saddam
willingly and aggressively - was that Iraq would serve
as the bulwark against any military expansion of the
Islamist revolution by Iran into the Tigris and
Euphrates valley and onto the Arabian Peninsula. The
benefit to the US and the rest of the world was
predictable and unimpeded access to oil at reasonable
prices. The Gulf states consequently provided Iraq with
billions of dollars in support during the Iran-Iraq war,
and the US assisted Iraq's war effort with intelligence
and other economic assistance as part of a general
policy to prevent an Iranian victory.
During
this period, the US deployed forces to the region on an
episodic basis to supplement a small naval presence in
Bahrain. Operation Earnest Will in 1987-88, in which
the US escorted Kuwait's oil tankers through the Gulf,
proved to be a precursor to a larger military presence
in the 1990s. When Iraq proved to be a threat rather
than a pillar of regional security, the US adopted the
policy of "dual containment" of the regimes in Baghdad
and Tehran, a policy that was maintained throughout the
1990s.
While the US sought to prevent each
country from exercising undue influence in the region,
there was also an implicit understanding that the US and
its regional partners did not want Iraq to collapse
completely or be dissolved into several successor states
for fear of creating a strategic imbalance that could be
exploited by Iran. Further, while Iranian relations with
the Gulf states generally improved during the 1990s
(with the exception of the United Arab Emirates), the
region remained concerned about Iran's Islamist
revolutionary government and its aggressive pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), especially nuclear
weapons and long-range delivery systems that put their
capitals at risk.
While the need to preserve
access to the region's oil reserves was still present in
US policy formulations during the 1990s, the need to
promote simultaneously the Middle East peace process
while containing Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Iran
gradually came to be seen as the primary elements of US
Gulf policy. Reflecting this emphasis, the US-Saudi
"strategic partnership" that had been greatly enhanced
during the 1980s in the Reagan and Bush administrations
grew less important to Washington. While the Saudis
provided the means for the US to implement its policy of
containment by providing access to Prince Sultan Air
Base and other facilities, the US-Saudi relationship did
not necessarily flourish and grow correspondingly in
other areas. Little progress was made in the two most
important issues in the bilateral relationship: US-led
efforts to negotiate a settlement to the Arab-Israeli
dispute and the Saudi request for US support to join the
World Trade Organization (WTO).
The Saudis were
reluctant to support US-led efforts in the Middle East
peace process during the 1990s, and the Clinton
administration insisted on a variety of preconditions
being met before backing Saudi Arabia's entry into the
WTO. The pattern of relations with Saudi Arabia was to
be repeated elsewhere in the Gulf: security and military
issues predominated in the bilateral relationships
throughout the region. Reflecting this emphasis, senior
Defense Department officials made routine trips to the
region during the 1990s, while senior State Department
involvement was largely confined to the Levant and
Israel. Amid this backdrop, the US - spearheaded by the
Defense Department and the Central Command - set about
constructing the physical infrastructure to support
ongoing operations that had the dual purpose of
containing Iran and Iraq and, in the US view at least,
enforcing UN Security Council resolutions affecting
Iraq.
From a military perspective, the base
structure served two broad purposes:
1.
It provided a political statement and signal of
US commitment to defend the region and conduct
operations designed to "contain" Iraq.
2. It dramatically
reduced the time it would take to assemble forces in a
contingency.
The 1990s effectively saw the
creation of what has been regarded as the "permanent"
military presence in the Gulf, in which the US completed
its move into the vacuum created by the British
withdrawal from the Gulf in the early 1970s. Some
observers described this as the era of "Pax Americana"
in the Gulf. (2)
Contemporary security
structure
What did the security structure
look like on the eve of the massive build-up of 2002-03?
On any given day during the 1990s, 17,000-25,000 US military
personnel, 30 naval vessels, and 175 aircraft were
deployed in the Persian Gulf region. During the periodic
crises between UN inspectors and Saddam, these numbers
increased significantly, but they rarely fell back below
these baseline levels. Air Force aircraft operated out
of Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and Ali
al-Salem and al-Jaber air bases in Kuwait as well as
al-Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates.
Together with carrier-based aircraft, these
forces flew Operation Southern Watch missions to enforce
the southern no-fly and no-drive zones in Iraq.
Established in August 1992, Operation Southern Watch
followed the precedent of Operation Provide Comfort in
northern Iraq, entailed coalition aircraft patrolling
Iraqi airspace below the 32nd parallel, and later
expanded to the 33rd parallel in 1996 in response to the
Iraqi attack in Irbil. In the aftermath of the August
1994 Iraqi build-up in southern Iraq and pursuant to UN
Security Council Resolution 949, the US and its
coalition partners also created a so-called "no drive
zone" in southern Iraq to prevent Iraq, by force if
necessary, from significantly enhancing its military
forces in the south.
At sea, the
Bahrain-headquartered Central Command naval component,
called NAVCENT or the 5th Fleet, provided the forces
and command and control over enforcement of the UN trade
embargo against Iraq through the Maritime Interception
Force, or MIF. In what came to be known as Operation
Desert Spring, a continuously deployed ground element in
Kuwait exercised with prepositioned military equipment
stored at Camp Doha just north of Kuwait City. During
this period, the US effectively developed primary
operational "hubs" that could provide support for
ongoing operations while at the same time able to
receive forces that would flow quickly into the region
in a contingency.
Reflecting this presence and
pace of operations, Dubai became the US navy's busiest
port of call in the world outside the continental US
during the 1990s. The buildup of the infrastructure
depended, of course, on political elements incorporated
into the architecture, namely the agreement and
participation of the Gulf states, which had always
depended on outside support for their security. During
the 1990s, the governing elites happily developed robust
politico-military relationships with the US as a way to
guarantee their security. These states were driven by
the knowledge that they could never rival a still
heavily armed Saddam, and by their lingering mistrust of
Iran - despite President Muhammad Khatami's election and
the resulting Iranian attempts at regional
rapprochement.
To secure the necessary regional
cooperation, the US concluded agreements with every
country in the Gulf except Saudi Arabia, agreements
which guaranteed access to host nation military
facilities, protected the rights of deployed US military
personnel, and permitted, in principle, the
prepositioning of US military equipment. By the end of
the 1990s, the US had prepositioned heavy brigade sets
of ground equipment in Kuwait and Qatar, with one
additional brigade set remaining afloat. This presence
was almost always augmented by a carrier battle group.
The combination of the forces in theater and the
prepositioned military equipment ensured that the US
could constitute what amounted to a heavy armored
division in a matter of weeks, with a capacity to fly in
troops to use the prepositioned equipment. This ground
component, in conjunction with air and naval assets
already in the theater, gave the US the ability to
create a reasonably strong combat capability on short
notice; a capability that would, at the very least, hold
Iraq until reinforcements arrived. In turn, of course,
this served as a deterrent to aggression since attackers
would know for sure that the US could respond in force
to any aggression.
The idea of "deterring forward"
was made into a reality in the Gulf during the 1990s,
and arguably provided the model that was subsequently
integrated into the Bush administration's quadrennial
defense review, which specifically calls for the US to
develop capabilities in the operational theaters
themselves that will enable an immediate response to
local military contingencies.(3)
In military
terms, the fruits of the efforts during the 1990s are
being reaped today, most immediately in the war on
terrorism, but in other areas as well. In addition to
the support provided to prosecute operations in
Afghanistan and other missions in Central Asia related
to the war on terrorism, the Gulf infrastructure will
help accommodate whatever forces are necessary and
provide the command and control backbone for any
potential military operation against Iraq.
It is important
to note that the host-nation facilities made available
to US forces in the 1990s have been augmented by
the ability to use the al-Udeid airfield in Qatar and plans
to open a new prepositioning site at Arifjan in Kuwait.
Arifjan will replace the Camp Doha prepositioning
site, providing better storage facilities as
well as space for the Army's Central Command component
headquarters, called ARCENT. Al-Udeid, with its
12,000-foot (3,660-meter) runway, has apparently developed into a
major hub for current and future US military operations.
The site can reportedly accommodate hundreds of aircraft
and up to 10,000 military personnel. A Central Command
forward headquarters element may also be taking up
residence at al-Udeid - providing the forward presence
in theater for the command that has long been sought by
military planners.(4)
During the 1990s, the US
military presence and its supporting base structure was
developed in the context of a policy of containing
Saddam and, to a lesser extent, deterring Iran from
regional adventurism. The "traditional" rationale of
protecting access to oil supplies became increasingly
supplanted by the "newer" principle of deterring
aggression and maintaining regional stability as the US
focused politically and militarily on containing Saddam.
Perhaps reflecting this shift, discussions about the
importance of Gulf oil receive scant attention in the
Bush administration's case to use force against Iraq.
Building a new security structure
The
Bush administration's goal of removing Saddam provides
civilian and military planners with the opportunity to
re-examine a host of assumptions that have essentially
gone unchallenged over the past decade. A new government
in Baghdad could dramatically alter the political
landscape throughout the region that would also enable
new ways of thinking about regional security. In
preparation for this eventuality, the US and its Gulf
partners should set about reviewing a number of critical
issues to determine whether (and if so, how) the
approach to regional security should be modified to
address the new security environment. Among these issues
to be determined are:
1. What are US interests in
the Gulf?
2. To what extent can Iraq "balance" Iran?
3. What will be the role and configuration of the US
military presence in the region?
4. What role will
individual countries play in providing for regionwide
security and for their own defense from external
aggression?
Addressing these four issues would help the
US and its regional partners devise an enduring security
architecture for the new century. The US would emerge
from regime removal in Iraq with unparalleled military
power in the region and, quite possibly, with the
necessary political leverage to convince its Gulf
partners to overcome their historic reluctance to
cooperate with each other in a more systematic approach
to regional security. It is an opportunity that should
be seized aggressively by all parties.
Oil
and US vital interests
The basis for the US
strategic interest in the Gulf has always been oil,
followed in the 1980s and increasingly thereafter by a
commitment to help preserve regional security and deter
aggression.
Recently, however, some analysts
have challenged the idea that access to Gulf oil is of
paramount interest, pointing to a decreasing US
dependence on Gulf oil and the emergence of potential
alternative suppliers (Russia and the Caspian Sea, for
example) that may make the Gulf less directly important
to the US. Periodic crises with important suppliers
notwithstanding, world oil markets today are
characterized not by the scarcity of crude, but by the
emergence of additional suppliers and new economically
viable oil recovery techniques that should enable oil
producers to keep pace with the expected increase in
global demand for oil for the foreseeable future.(5)
This is a welcome development for the global economy.
What challenges this analysis is that the
projections also demonstrate that the Gulf will remain
unrivaled as a supplier capable of delivering vast
quantities of cheaply produced oil. Assuming these
projections are accurate, it is clear that the Gulf will
become steadily more important to the global economy
during the next 20 years. Specifically, the Gulf is
currently estimated to possess 679 billion barrels in
proven oil reserves (representing 66 percent of the
world's total), 22.7 million barrels per day in current
production capacity (31 percent of the world's total),
and a little over 5 million barrels per day in excess
production capacity (91 percent of the world's
total).(6) And these figures do not take into account
the Gulf's additional margin of relative importance if
Iraq were to return as the world's second leading oil
exporter.
US dependence on Gulf oil has declined
over the past decade as suppliers in the Western
Hemisphere (Venezuela, Mexico and Canada) have become
relatively more important to the US. During 2001, the
Gulf supplied approximately 30 percent of all US gross
crude oil imports, or about 2.1 million barrels of oil
per day. By contrast, in 2001 the Western hemisphere
accounted for 48 percent of all US gross crude oil
imports, or about 4.7 million barrels per day.(7) The
anticipated emergence of new oil sources over the next
decade and beyond is projected to increase US reliance
on Western hemisphere and Atlantic basin suppliers in
relative terms. By 2020, the US is expected to consume
an additional 7.4 million barrels per day, reaching
approximately 27.5 million barrels per day (about 24
percent of the world's estimated daily consumption of
approximately 112 million barrels per day).
With
the continued slow decline of US domestic production
over this period, the US will become gradually more
dependent on imported oil over the next 20 years. Net
oil imports are projected to grow from 9 to 12.7 million
barrels per day, constituting approximately 65 percent
of total US oil demand by 2020 as compared to an
estimated 56 percent in 2003. To quench the nation's
growing thirst, it is estimated that by 2020, the US
will double imports of Persian Gulf oil to 4.2 million
barrels per day; Atlantic basin and Western hemisphere
sources are expected to supply the US with approximately
9 million barrels per day during the same period.(8)
But if the US will become somewhat less
dependent on Gulf oil relative to the growing dependence
on Western hemisphere and Atlantic Basin suppliers,
other parts of the world will see their dependence on
Gulf suppliers grow dramatically. Developing Asia
(China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand,
Singapore and the Philippines) is expected to increase
its oil consumption by 3.7 percent a year, needing an
additional 15.8 million barrels of oil per day by 2020,
with most of it coming from the Gulf. When anticipated
oil demand from developing and industrialized (Japan,
Australia, and New Zealand) Asia is aggregated, the
region is expected to consume nearly 21 million barrels
of oil daily, with most of this coming from the Gulf.
China alone is expected to import 7.2 million barrels of
oil per day by 2020, mostly from Gulf suppliers.
To meet this demand, it is estimated that the
Gulf will have to increase oil exports from 14.8 million
barrels per day in 2000 to 33.5 million barrels per day
by 2020. In short, the Gulf will have to more than
double oil exports over the next 20 years to keep pace
with the expected increases in the demand for oil from
Asia and North America. (9) Thus, the US interest in
Gulf oil is more complicated than what in the past has
been more narrowly defined as dependence on oil from the
region.
While the industrialized world's
dependence on Gulf oil is expected to increase
incrementally over the next 20 years, the
non-industrialized or developing world's dependence on
Gulf oil is expected to increase exponentially. The
implications of this development for regional security
have not been addressed by either the US or the wider
international community.
Oil and political
stability
Interconnected with the importance of
oil to the US and global economies is the question of
political stability and whether the Gulf political
structures now in place can adapt to a new political
environment that may emerge in a post-Saddam period.
While the immediate shape of a post-war government in
Iraq is uncertain, it seems clear that the Bush
administration's long-term objective is to establish
some form of democracy in Iraq when Saddam is gone. It
is unclear what impact such a development would have on
the Gulf states, that until now have made only halting
steps towards their own form of democracy (Kuwait,
Bahrain and Qatar). The impact of a democracy in Iraq on
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have made no moves
towards representative government, is an even greater
uncertainty.
Whatever happens in a post-Saddam
era, however, the international community must work with
the region to try and ensure that any process of
political transition remains peaceful. Catastrophe
awaits the world if political transition turns into
violent revolution. Internal political stability is a
prerequisite for all the Gulf states, without which it
would be difficult for them to make the domestic
investment and create the conditions to attract the
foreign investment necessary to meet the world's growing
demand for oil. These investments will also be critical
for internal stability, as the Gulf states attempt to
meet the twin challenges of cushioning the impact of
macroeconomic reform on their populations and expanding
their gross domestic products fast enough to keep pace
with population growth rates that are among the highest
in the world.
The situation is particularly
acute in Saudi Arabia. While the smaller Gulf states
(Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar) can conceivably continue to
rely on their rentier economies over the short term due
to their small populations, Saudi Arabia's projected 56
percent population growth over the next 15 years
suggests that its economy will require fundamental
change to preserve the country's stability.(10) An
inescapable conclusion is that a process of political
and economic transition must occur in Saudi Arabia if
internal stability in the kingdom, if not the entire
region, is to be preserved.
This is especially
true since instability in Saudi Arabia would almost
certainly affect the other countries on the Arabian
Peninsula. Such a formulation suggests that political
and economic stability must also be regarded as a vital
US interest and hence involves the US, and arguably the
whole world, in the process of political and economic
transition throughout the Gulf. How the US involves
itself in this process, if at all, is a key policy issue
- may be the key policy challenge for developing a new
security architecture in the post-Saddam environment.
Expected developments over the next two decades
suggest a different formulation for the US's strategic
interest in Gulf oil, with a number of interconnected
assertions:
1. The fastest developing and growing
parts of the global economy will be increasingly
dependent on access to reasonably priced Gulf oil.
2.
As the world's largest economy, the US has a vested
(even a vital) interest in continued global economic
development and growth.
3. The US has an interest in
ensuring that political conditions in the Gulf enable
the region to make the necessary investments to ensure
that production can be increased quickly enough to keep
pace with global demand.
4. The US must decide how,
if at all, to involve itself in the process of political
and economic transition that will inevitably occur in
the region.
Role for a reconstituted
Iraq
A potential ouster of Saddam Hussein
provides US officials and their regional partners with a
unique opportunity to review assumptions on the role of
Iraq in the regional security environment. Today's
policy reflects an assumptive construct built on a
balance of power theory, which in the region has held
that Iran and Iraq served as counterweights to each
other, making the area more stable as a result. Based on
this reasoning, if one of these states was to weaken,
the other state would fill the vacuum and create
conditions for regional hegemony and instability.
Reviewing the historic circumstances that gave
rise to this approach is a worthwhile exercise which can
guide arguments as to whether this approach still makes
sense in a post-Saddam environment. To be sure, US
policy today continues the approach taken over the past
20 years. US officials continually posit the requirement
to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq, however
artificial its borders may have been when they were
created by French and British civil servants in the
Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The continued banding
together of Iraq's three incongruous components - a
minority Sunni center, a Kurdish north and a Shi'ite
south - is deemed essential to regional security. In
addition to the need to balance Iran, it is feared that
a breakup of Iraq would encourage Turkish intervention
in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and Iranian
intervention in the Shi'ite areas of southern Iraq.
These concerns notwithstanding, an argument can be made
that the evidence does not support the underlying
assumption positing the necessity and role of a strong
Iraq in maintaining Gulf security. A critical
examination of the historic circumstance suggests that a
strong Iraq has been one of the main causes of regional
instability over the past 30 years, particularly a
highly centralized Iraq under military and Ba'ath
strongmen, most notably Saddam Hussein.
Even before Saddam came to power,
Iraq threatened Kuwait in 1961 and was faced down only by
a British deployment to the Kuwait-Iraq border.
After a relatively peaceful period during the 1960s and
early 1970s, the Saddam-led Ba'ath regime started two
major regional wars, developed and used chemical weapons on
its opponents and its citizens, and aggressively
developed WMD, including nuclear weapons. The death
of an estimated 1.5 million people in the Iran-Iraq and
Kuwait wars, the proliferation and use of WMD, and the
necessity of a continuously deployed forward US presence
to prevent further Iraqi aggression simply does not
support the idea that a unified Iraq has been a
stabilizing force in the region.
Given this
historic record, it further remains unclear whether and
how Iraq's Sunni, Kurdish and Shi'ite communities can
function together in any sort of "modern" political
context in a post-Saddam era. Iraq has been controlled
by an authoritarian, Sunni-led minority regime since its
inception, starting with the Hashemite monarchy imposed
by Great Britain, which was followed by military rule
and a Sunni-led Ba'ath Party apparatus that evolved into
a totalitarian dictatorship. The country has always been
held together by coercion and force - not by an
underlying congruence of interests among Shi'ite, Sunnis
and Kurds that translated into common consent of the
people.
Quite the opposite has been the case.
The Sunni minority regime has sometimes admitted a few
Shi'ites and Kurds into the power structure, but has
basically kept overwhelming control in its own hands
since the inception of the Iraqi state. Today, as has
been the case throughout Iraq's history, the Sunni
minority fears being overwhelmed by the more numerous
Shi'ite and being set on by vengeful Kurds. This belief
on the part of at least some Sunnis, that they are in
dire danger if the regime falls, is one of the last
cards in Saddam's hands in his effort to maintain
support and to ensure that the army fights on his
behalf.
Some have suggested a federalist
democracy as a way to ensure a balance among the
competing communities, perhaps reducing their ethnic
coherence by making trans-communal alliances attractive.
Federalism would give groups-nominally regional, but
also ethnic-related given the geographic concentration
of these groupings-local self-rule. If the democracy
aspect is intended to heighten the attraction of
maintaining a unified state, the federalist component is
intended to reduce the perceived cost of surrendering
authority to a central government. How such "democratic"
arrangements can be structured to keep the more numerous
Shi'ite from exercising proportionately more control in
a central government is unclear.
This system
could work, but it would be a difficult task. Of course,
the recreation of some type of dictatorship (even if one
far milder than Saddam's regime and supplying relatively
more benefits to its citizens) would always remain as an
attractive short-cut to maintaining Iraq's national
cohesion. Indeed, the more imperiled Iraq's apparent
survival as a unified entity, the more some would
advocate such a solution. One other difference would be
that the identity of the dictatorial, dominant group
could come from more sectors than formerly had been the
case.
When confronted with the breakup of the states in Europe at the
end of the Cold War, the West gave in to the inevitable.
No matter how hard US officials and their European partners
tried, they could not keep artificial entities together
if the people in them could not or would
not live in peace. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in
fact, made the decision in Bosnia-Herzegovina to separate the
warring communities and to deploy military forces to end
the violence. Perhaps the lessons of the Balkans are
irrelevant to the situation in Iraq. Still, this history
and their supporting assumptions are worth reviewing as
the international community contemplates the nature of a
post-Saddam Iraq.
Whatever the practical
difficulties of keeping Iraq together, the US must
declare its intention to preserve the territorial
integrity of Iraq to attract what political support it
can for regime change in Iraq. Yet it should be under no
illusions about the difficulties of unifying the three
groups. US officials should consider that by allowing
the breakup of Iraq, the US might find a viable path
toward realizing an overriding policy objective, which
is to prevent the re-emergence of another military
dictator that will continue to develop WMD and threaten
its neighbors, if not the entire international
community.
Another overriding US objective in a
post-Saddam Iraq is internal stability, which would
allow the country, in whatever form, to reconstitute
itself economically and politically. Whether internal
stability is ensured through democracy, confederation or
some other acceptable political form, the US should be
less concerned with the labels of the political system
than with results. With the second largest known oil
reserves in the world, Iraq has a resource and a market
for it that can easily pay for economic recovery. This
outcome would benefit everyone: the Iraqis by repairing
the damage of many years of failed government and
sanctions, and the world by increasing the supply to
meet anticipated increases in its demand for oil. This
is particularly important as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and
Kuwait alone are incapable of meeting the expected rise
in demand for Persian Gulf oil.
An Iraq-Iran
balance?
If the idea that a strong, centralized
Iraq is essential for regional stability is open to
question, it also seems equally the case that the threat
to the Arabian peninsula posed by Iran seems less
compelling than it did 20 years ago. Simply put, the
Islamic Republic no longer constitutes a force capable
of unleashing political upheaval throughout the region.
Today, Iran is beset with internal political troubles,
and the government seems incapable of addressing the
country's systemic economic problems.
While the
conservative mullahs in Tehran continue to manipulate
the state resources available to them to support
terrorism, develop WMD, and actively undermine the
Middle East peace process, it seems increasingly clear
that their extremist views are disconnected from the
broader Iranian polity. Reflecting this situation, the
mullahs seem to have given up on the idea of building
domestic popularity. In addition to the continued
popularity of the "moderate" President Mohammad Khatami,
public opinion polls in Iran seem to indicate a desire
for more global integration and even dialogue with the
US, despite the regime's efforts to deter and demonize
such beliefs. (11)
It seems clear that the
region no longer fears the spread of the Islamic
Revolution. Indeed, in a complete reversal of the
situation one and two decades ago, Iran is more
imperiled with the specter of internal upheaval than are
the Gulf Arab monarchies. The conventional military
threat to the region posed by Iran also seems reduced
over the last decade. (12) At this point, it is hard to
see that Iran's conventional military capabilities
represent any serious threat to the Gulf States.
Amphibious operations across the Gulf to threaten Qatar,
the UAE and Oman are simply not plausible. And the
presence of allied or American troops in Iraq would make
any use of force along that avenue impossible to
contemplate.
A quarter-century after the Islamic
revolution, Tehran's military threat to the region has
decreased and the broader political and ideological
challenge to the Gulf states initially presented by the
revolution has ameliorated. While Iran's continued
development of WMD and its support for terrorism remain
a concern, the regime's interest in, and ability to
realize, regional domination are far more limited. Even
if the regime was intent on regional military dominance,
the US and its partners are well positioned to meet the
challenge. All these factors suggest that a regional
security strategy built on the idea that Iran represents
a serious political and military threat should be
re-evaluated.
Moreover, the requirement for a
"balance" between Iran and Iraq as a means to ensure
regional stability is by no means clear. Instead of
maintaining a balance between Iran and Iraq, the
relative decline of the conventional military threat
posed by Iran to the Gulf states suggest that the time
may be ripe to make an attempt to integrate Iran into
regional security arrangements to promote transparency
and build trust. Drawing Iran into such arrangements
will be initially difficult in a post-Saddam environment
due to the large numbers of US military forces that will
be deployed in Iraq, not to mention the forces already
deployed in Afghanistan. It is easy to see how Iranian
extremists will paint an apocalyptic picture of the US
finally "surrounding" Iran.
In this environment,
it is critical that the US and its regional partners
make clear to Tehran its intent to build a post-Saddam
era in the Gulf on the pillars of trust, transparency
and confidence building measures.
Role and
configuration of the US military presence
The
removal of Saddam will lead to an unparalleled US
military presence in the region since the immediate
situation in a post-war Iraq will likely require
thousands of US troops deployed for reconstruction,
humanitarian operations and local security. But the
context of this presence needs to be treated very
carefully - avoiding the characterizations of the cry of
"Pax Americana" that are bound to come from critics.
Indeed, if care is taken in crafting the
post-Saddam security environment, it is possible to
foresee circumstances that eventually would allow the US
to significantly reduce its military presence in the
region. Such a development would undoubtedly be welcomed
in the Gulf states, where the highly visible US military
presence has become a domestic political liability for
the ruling elites. While forces will be needed inside
Iraq, a post-Saddam environment may change the
requirements for large contingents of continuously
deployed forces in the other Gulf States.
With
Saddam gone, for example, there would be no need to
continue Operations Southern and Northern Watch and the
Maritime Interception Operations. These operations have
required large numbers of personnel and equipment
rotated through the region on an ongoing basis. Ending
these operations does not mean that the US should
abandon or otherwise withdraw from the region. Even
while the Saudis have stated they will ask for American
troops to leave after a victory over Iraq, this does not
seem to mean that the infrastructure built up for
cooperation and emergency deployment would be
dismantled. The US still has a requirement defend the
region if necessary, and to have forward operating areas
to help prosecute the war on terrorism.
Indeed,
it would be a mistake for the US to withdraw from the
infrastructure developed during the 1990s, which could
provide a foundation for a new regional security
structure. Such a structure would move the US away from
the 1990s model of ongoing operations that depended on
large contingents of continuously deployed forces.
Instead, the infrastructure could develop into a vehicle
to promote coalition interoperability, collective
security, and regional military integration; in addition
to the capabilities it provides the US to help defend
the region.
Emphasizing and then implementing
these concepts would require fundamentally new ways of
thinking about security on the part of both the US and
its Gulf partners. Despite protestations to the
contrary, the US military prefers to operate without
coalition partners, which is particularly true in the
Gulf. For their part, the Gulf states seem equally
uninterested in developing any credible system of
collective security outside the American security
umbrella. Bridging this political and philosophical
divide is made more difficult by technical issues, in
which the mismatch between the US and the region's force
structures cannot be overstated. Differences in
doctrine, training, platforms, weapons and data formats
make cooperation at the operational level extremely
difficult. Still, Rome was not built in a day.
A
phased, step-by-step process to build US-coalition
military integration might yield results with sufficient
long-term political commitment by both sides. Initially,
the facilities' infrastructure could facilitate the
dissemination of region-wide early warning information
and intelligence to promote confidence and transparency.
The infrastructure also could provide a command, control
and communications backbone that could be used to
coordinate exercises and training throughout the region.
Emphasizing these functions might mean a reduction and
different configuration for the US forces deployed in
the Gulf outside Iraq.
Under such a scheme,
headquarters command elements would assume more of an
immediate role in regional security than forces engaged
in ongoing operations. Using the existing bilateral
agreements with our security partners as the basis on
which to proceed, the US should continue to maintain
Central Command service-specific forward headquarters
elements in the theater. The footprint of such a scheme
would look like that which is in place today: Army staff
headquarters in Kuwait at Arifjan/Camp Doha; Air Force
staff headquarters at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi
Arabia, with the navy staff remaining in Bahrain. A
Central Command headquarters group could be based in
Qatar at al-Udeid.
These staff elements should
be integrated with a secure communications system and
could share common operational picture information
throughout the theater with coalition partners as
appropriate. The headquarters elements would have a
variety of functions; First, they would provide early
warning of potential threats to regional security and
have the ability to communicate this information in
real-time throughout the theater. Second, they would
provide the advance administrative and logistical
vanguard necessary to coordinate any buildup of US
forces in the region. Third, using the Operation Desert
Spring model in Kuwait to exercise continuously with
prepositioned military equipment, these elements could
be involved in continuous military exercises either
using pre-positioned equipment or command-post exercises
that continued to hone our ability to build up quickly
if necessary. Fourth, these elements could be configured
in such a way as to build command-level integrated
relationships with host-nation militaries.
For
example, it might be possible to foresee that the
Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base
would serve as a nerve center for all Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) air forces. Or, alternatively, that all
GCC Air Forces might be linked to each other through the
facility at Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB). Each of the
service-specific "hubs" could replicate this notional
model of coalition operations at PSAB. Thus, the US
headquarters elements would serve as hubs to facilitate
region-wide sharing of a common operational picture and
early warning, promoting confidence and transparency
between friendly militaries. Finally, these facilities
could provide the in-theater platform on which to build
genuine coalition war-fighting interoperability,
starting with coalition command post exercises and
ending with actual multilateral exercises modeled on
Operation Bright Star in Egypt - currently the largest
multi-national exercise in the region that takes place
every other year.
Role of the Gulf
Cooperation Council in regional security
With the
prospect of Saddam being gone, the time is ripe to try
and change the way the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
and the US think about collective security. The GCC -
whose members include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE - remains the only available
mechanism for the US to work through to provide an
integrated, region-wide approach to collective security.
Thus far, the GCC has failed abysmally to
develop into a meaningful mechanism for this purpose.
But an ouster of Saddam provides the US and its GCC
partners with an opportunity to breathe new life into
the concept of collective security and regional military
integration. At the conclusion of the GCC summit on
January 1, 2000, GCC members signed what press reports
characterized as a "joint defense pact". The agreement,
which has not been released publicly, reportedly calls
for a four to five-fold increase in the existing GCC
Peninsula Shield force (PSF) from 5,000 to 25,000 and
for the GCC to develop a shared early warning system.
The agreement also reportedly includes language stating
that an attack on one member is an attack on all GCC
states.
The new pact represents the culmination
of efforts since the end of the Gulf War to give the GCC
secretariat a more meaningful role in developing
mechanisms for collective defense and regional military
integration. It is unclear how the new PSF force would
be structured, and how quickly the force might be
reconfigured, or more importantly, how much political
commitment there is for the Gulf States to following
through on the agreement. (13)
In a post-Saddam
environment, the US could directly approach the GCC
secretariat and volunteer to start working with the
members to develop the Peninsula Shield force along the
lines that have already been agreed. In addition to
constituting an actual force to serve as an instrument
of regional security, the US and the GCC could integrate
themselves more closely via the US-built infrastructure
and the Hizam al-Taawan (HAT) project, a C4I air defense
system built by the GCC that will provide interfacing of
radar data, operational support messages and secure
voice communications to all the GCC members.
The
main purpose of HAT is to provide the GCC member
militaries with a common air picture through terminals
in all the member defense ministries. A fiber optic
cable that stretches from Kuwait along the southern Gulf
to Oman ties the system together. This cable could be
used to as a data backbone to disseminate US and
coalition-provided information on shared early warning
and battle space visualization to the GCC militaries as
appropriate.
Such an initiative would have to
overcome significant hurdles, mostly stemming from the
GCC members' own reluctance to pursue collective
security seriously. But with strong US leadership, the
circumstances of a post-Saddam environment provide an
opportunity to work on these ideas that should not be
passed up.
Conclusion
As the world's
pre-eminent economic and military power, the US has a
vital interest in helping to create the internal
conditions that will be necessary for the Gulf suppliers
to increase their oil production to meet global demand
over the next 20 years. Access to reasonably priced oil
promises to be more important, not less important, to
the health of the global economy. A credible security
architecture that protects the region from external
threat while promoting collective security and regional
military integration would certainly support this
overall strategic objective.
For the Gulf states
and their peoples, the critical objective is to move
through a period of economic and political transition in
the post-Saddam era while maintaining internal
stability. It is critical that the region is free from
external threats during this period. The example of
Kuwait's relatively effective investment and development
program being threatened with destruction by a powerful
neighbor continues to show how deadly and dangerous
events can be if things go wrong.
The question
is how the wealth of the GCC states benefits their
citizens or becomes an attraction for those who would
expropriate their wealth. The stakes are extremely high
for the local people, US interests, and the world as a
whole. Consequently, serious planning needs to start now
on the configuration of the regional security structure
in the post-Saddam period.
The promise of a
post-Saddam period in the Gulf represents an historic
opportunity to fundamentally redefine the dynamics of a
region that has proven to be among the most unstable in
the world. The challenge to the US, the region, and the
international community-whether beforehand they support
or oppose it happening - is to ensure that another Gulf
war and the removal of Saddam serves as a positive force
to allow the Gulf to make a peaceful transition into the
post-cold war world, providing an enduring framework for
peace and security.
James A Russell is
the Visiting Office of the Secretary of Defense Fellow
in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval
Postgraduate School. The views expressed in this article
are his own.
Notes
(1) United
States Security Strategy in the Middle East, Department
of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs,
May 1995, pp. 21-23.
(2) See Foud Ajamai's
eloquent treatment of this development in Dream
Palace of the Arabs (Vintage Books, New York, 1998)
pp. 178-192. Also see Ajami's article "The Sentry's
Solitude", Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001, for
more discussion of "Pax Americana" in the Gulf.
(3) Quadrennial Defense Review Report,
Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, p. 25.
(4) Detail on activity at al-Udeid and on the
impending deployment of the Central Command's forward
eadquarters elements is provided in Tony Perry's, "A
Command Center Rises from the Desert Gulf", Los Angeles
Times, October 10, 2002. Also see Vernon Loeb, "US
Forces in Tampa Plan Qatar Exercises", Washington Post,
September 12, 2002, p. A1. At this point, it is unclear
whether the headquarters element will deploy to al-Udeid
permanently. See Reuters Wire Service report "US
Postpones Qatar military Exercise to December", October
22, 2002, 0534 am.
(5) See Edward Morse and
James Richard, "The New Oil War", Foreign Affairs,
March/April 2002, pp. 6-31. Also see Thaddeus Herrick,
Marc Lifsher and Jeanne Whalen's article "Persian Gulf
Oil Still Critical, but US Grows Less Dependent", Wall
Street Journal, March 15, 2002, p.1. (6) Persian Gulf
Oil and Gas Fact Sheet, Energy
Information Administration, March 2002.
(7) United
States Country Analysis Brief, Energy
Information Administration, May 2002.
(8)
International Energy Outlook 2002, Energy
nformation Administration, March 26, 2002. p. 28, p.
38 Figures from International Energy Outlook 2003,
Energy Information Administration, January 9, 2003.
Breakdown on potential sources of oil imports were
derived from International
Energy Outlook 2002, Energy Information
Administration, March 26, 2002. p. 38.
(9) Figures
derived from International Energy Outlook 2002, p. 38.
(10) US Census Bureau data used in "Global
Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with
Nongovernment Experts", National Intelligence Council,
December 2000, show that the Saudi national (foreign
workers excluded) population will increase from
approximately 15.8 million in 2000 to 24.7 million by
2015. A report by M Ghazanfar Ali Khan in the October
26, 2002 Arab News, "Riyadh Population to Cross 11m by
2020", summarizes the findings of a recent study
suggesting that Riyadh's population (including foreign
workers) will grow at an annual rate of 8.1 percent over
the next 20 years, creating a regional mega city that
will rival Cairo in size.
(11) On September 22, 2002, Iran's state-run
National Institute for Opinion Polls released a survey,
which found that three-quarters of 1,500 surveyed people
in Tehran backed opening talks with Washington. Another
46 percent said US policies on Iran were "to some extent
correct". The director of the polling center, Behrouz
Geranpayeh, was subsequently thrown in jail by the
Iranian judiciary, which is controlled by the
conservative mullahs. For a summary of other recent
polls and an interesting discussion of the Tehran
"underground", see Tim Judah's article "A Revolution
Crumbles" in the Manchester Guardian Weekly Magazine,
October 5, 2002.
(12) The deterioration of
Iran's conventional forces over the past decade and the
decreased threat to the region is detailed in a
recently-released report by the Rand Corporation. See
Daniel Byman and John Wise, "The Persian Gulf in the
Coming Decade: Trends, Threats and Opportunities", Rand
Corporation, Santa Monica, California, January 2003, pp. 19-26.
(13) See Associated Press report out of Manama,
Bahrain, "Six Gulf Nations Sign Defense Pact," December
31, 2000.
This article is reprinted from Middle
East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal
[vol 7, no 1, 2003]. Copyright MERIA. For a free
subscription, e-mail MERIA at gloria@idc.ac.il. Or visit
all MERIA
publications. To see the work of MERIA's publisher,
visit the Global
Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center.
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