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	March 26, 2002	atimes.com

Front

Checks on the American eagle
By Ahmad Faruqui

This month, US Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from his safe place at an undisclosed location in the United States to begin a 10-day journey through the Middle East. He had a single-point agenda: garner support from the Gulf countries to launch a military strike against Iraq.

Reports from Washington indicate that the invasion is being planned for September, once the summer heat has abated, and the Pentagon has replenished its inventories of precision munitions. The goal is to destroy Saddam's armor in two weeks, remove him from power and install a compliant regime in Baghdad. Washington's timing is designed to capitalize on the success of the war in Afghanistan, while it still appears to be a success.

Winning domestic support for a strike against Iraq will not be a problem. Americans remain grief-stricken and will back any attack on anybody in the name of the war against terrorism - at least at first. Winning support overseas continues to be a tall order, and the White House is reluctant to move unilaterally. A coalition is badly needed to establish the legitimacy of any US-led strike against Iraq, and to prevent the media in the Muslim world from portraying it as a war against Islam.

Access to Arab air and land space will be critical for launching an integrated attack on Baghdad. The US would not mind getting paid for its efforts. During the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf countries paid Washington US$36 billion, which helped defray about half of the final price tag of $61 billion to $71 billion. It is unlikely that the US will need any large numbers of Arab troops to mount its military operations, and their involvement will be mostly symbolic. The US fielded 500,000 marine and army personnel in the Gulf War, and these constituted the bulk of the troops.

Cheney hoped to establish a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, knowing well that evidence was scant. In fact, Osama bin Laden had tried to create an Arab coalition to fight Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Cheney's diplomatic blitz began in Britain, and he was able to get a guarded statement of support from Prime Minister Tony Blair. However, within a few days, splits had emerged among Blair's party, and a Guardian poll showed that a majority of Britons opposed a strike against Iraq. The nine Arab nations on his itinerary had been in the vanguard of the Gulf War coalition of 34 nations, and he expected to get a fair hearing in their capitals.

Bringing back memories of his August 5, 1990, trip to Saudi Arabia, Cheney told reporters that he knew the region and its leaders well. He was expected to use his no-nonsense approach to "knock heads together", and build support for the US position. As he said before boarding his plane from Washington, the portents were ominous. Just a week earlier, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, during a trip to Washington, had counseled the US not to move militarily against Iraq.

Then the Los Angeles Times published details from a classified Pentagon report. It stated that the US would use nuclear weapons against Iraq if it attacked Israel. Jordan's King Abdullah, a staunch US ally like his father, expressed strong opposition to a US attack, saying that it would create "a catastrophe for the region".

The normally reticent Saudis begged the US not to strike Iraq. To prepare Cheney, the Saudi Crown Prince gave a pair of rare television interviews before his visit, indicating that an attack on Iraq would destabilize the region. The United Arab Emirates told him bluntly that it would oppose any US strikes on Iraq. The Emir of Qatar suggested in a newspaper interview that Arab countries should try to solve the Iraqi problem by opening a dialogue with Baghdad. The Crown Prince of Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is headquartered, reminded Cheney during a joint press conference that "the people who are dying today on the streets are not a result of any Iraqi action".

To make matters worse, the Arab News carried an article by a retired US general, James David, that said Iraq was no threat to the US, but it was a threat to Israel. He questioned whether American lives should be endangered to protect Israel, whose military in just the past 17 months had killed more than 900 Palestinians, demolished more than 300 homes, and made more than 1,500 children homeless. Cheney's last Arab stop was in Kuwait, which not only opposed the strikes, but also refused to allow its soil for being used to attack Iraq. Cheney was told that any US attack would hurt the people of Iraq, without ensuring the removal of Saddam.

When he visited Turkey, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said another war with Iraq would create severe economic difficulties for Turkey, which is still in the throes of a serious macro-economic crisis. Turkey suffered economic losses of $30 billion during the Gulf War.

Cheney's journey gave Iraq a chance to mount a charm offensive, and four of Saddam's top lieutenants were dispatched to various Arab capitals. They stated that Iraq had not committed any provocation, such as invading a neighboring country, and had no connection with the events of September 11.

These visits evoked a positive comment by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who urged the US to focus on diplomacy. While visiting London, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the US should not undertake any unilateral strikes against Iraq, and urged it to work through the United Nations.

All through his journey, the continuing violence in Palestinian territories continued to tug away at Cheney's single-point agenda. The world was reminded that while Iraq may possess weapons of mass destruction, so did Israel. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked Israel to stop violating the Geneva Conventions, and Saudi Arabia called on it to end its illegal occupation of Arab lands that dated back to the 1967 war. In the end, a flustered Cheney conceded that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "is a preoccupation for everyone in this part of the world".

Cheney's trip may be judged a failure, but it may have helped Washington come to terms with the limits on its powers. Like ancient Rome, the US has unrivaled military primacy across the globe. The American eagle spans the globe like a colossus. Yet such a posture is insufficient for shaping world events today, which are shaped even more by the information revolution, technological change and globalization. As Harvard strategist Joseph Nye puts it, wars have ceased to be the arbiter of politics.

Thus, hard power based on military assets is much less important today than it was in ancient times. What matters more is soft power, the "ability to get others to want what you want". If Cheney's trip has made it easier for the White House to grasp this basic lesson, historians may well call it a success.

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