INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE GULF CONFLICT, 1990-91

Also by Alex Danchev

ESTABLISHING THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE

*INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FALKLANDS CONFLICT (editor)

OLIVER FRANKS

VERY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Also by Dan Keohane

LABOUR PARTY DEFENCE POLICY SINCE 1945

*From the same publishers

International Perspectives on the Gulf Conflict, 1990-91 Edited by

Alex Danchev Professor of International Rt:lations Keele University

and

Dan Keohane Lecturer in International Relations Keele University

* Selection, editorial matter and Introduction © Alex Danchev and Dan Keohane 1994 Chapters 1-12 © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1994 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-57326-6

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Contents

List of Tables vi Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors ix Introduction: The Rules of Propriety xi Alex Danchev and Dan Keohane

1 Regional Politics and the Conflict 1 Shahram Chubin

2 Calculation and Miscalculation in Baghdad 23 Amatzia Baram

3 Israel and the Conflict 59 AviShlaim

4 Palestinian Perspectives on the Conflict 80 Anoushiravan Ehteshami

5 US Policy in the Conflict 106 Richard K. Herrmann

6 Soviet Policy in the Conflict 136 Vladimir Nosenko

7 British Policy in the Conflict 145 Dan Keohane

8 French Policy in the Conflict 175 Jolyon Howorth

9 The Theory of Limited War 201 Lawrence Freedman

10 The Air War 224 Edward Luttwak

11 The Laws of War 259 Adam Roberts

12 The Conflict in Comparative Perspective 295 Oliver Ramsbotham

Index 325

v

List of Tables 4.1 Main Palestinian factions and organizations 82 4.2 Estimated Palestinian population figures and distribution,

1987 and 1989 84 10.1 Sorties flown, 17 January to 27 February 1991 228 10.2 Aerial ordnance delivered 230 10.3 'Strike' sorties by aircraft type 234 10.4 Guided/unguided ordnance delivered by selected aircraft 236 10.5 Protective support requirements of non-stealth aircraft 249

vi

Acknowledgements

This book grew out of an international conference on the Gulf Conflict, held under the aegis of the Department of International Relations at Keele University in September 1992. One of the aims of that conference, like its predecessor on the Falklands Conflict, was to bring together, not only dif­ferent nationalities, but also different experiences: former participants -witnesses, as it were - diplomats and officials still professionally involved, and analysts, journalistic and academic. The debate among these various species is reflected in the following pages.

The conference was made possible by financial support from the British Academy, the Middle East Centre of St Antony's College, Oxford, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Th1st, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Nuffield Foundation and. at Keele, the Bruce Centre and Research Development and Business Affairs. For their advice and encouragement we are grateful to General Sir John Hackett, Robert O'Neill and Roger Owen. A number of our students, past and present, allowed themselves to be recruited as temporary unpaid administrative assistants: Alan Collins, Andy Howell, James Jackson, Sue Marlow, Cielo Porras Gil, and Anna Pritchard. They gave sterling service throughout, coping magnificently with every contingency and mixing easily with the great and the good around the conference table. We are much indebted to them all. Without Mrs Maureen Groppe the Department of International Relations could scarcely function: we are immensely grateful to her and to Mrs Annette Owen for secretarial support before and after the event Finally, we should like to express our gratitude to a distinguished group of commentators on the original conference papers: Maha Azzam, Roland Dannreuther, ~ise Hampson, Eric Herring, Rosemary Hollis, Efraim Karsh, Edward Mortimer, Sir John Moberly, Roger Owen, Paul Rogers, Greg Shapland, and Sir Harold Walker.

There are perhaps two tests of a successful conference - that it is interesting and even enjoyable to attend; and that it has a long scholarly half-life. This conference, like its predecessor, appears to have passed the first of those tests. It is about to take the second.

vii

Alex Danchev and Dan Keohane Keele, 1993

Notes on the Contributors Amatzia Baram is Senior Lecturer in the Department of the History of the Middle East at Haifa University in Israel. He has devoted fifteen years to the study of modem Iraq and its ruling party. He is the author of Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba'thist Iraq 1968-89 (1991).

Sbahram Chubin is a freelance consultant based in Geneva. He was formerly an Assistant Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and Director of Research for the Programme on Strategic Studies at the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva. He specializes in the international politics of developing coun­tries, and has a particular interest in the Middle East. He is the co-author of Iran and Iraq at War (1988) and the author of Iran's National Security Policy (1993).

Alex Danchev is Professor and Head of the Department of International Relations at Keele University. He specializes in military history and inter­national security studies. He is the editor of the companion volumes to the present work, International Perspectives on the Falklands Conflict (1992) and International Perspectives on the Yugoslav Conflict (in preparation).

Anoushiravan Ehteshami is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham. He is the author of Nuclearisation of the Middle East (1989) and co-author of War and Peace in the Gulf(1991).

Lawrence Freedman is Professor and Head of the Department of War Studies, King's College London, and one of Britain's premier strategic thinkers. Among his many other works, he is the author of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1989) and co-author of The Gulf Conflict 19~1991 (1993).

Richard Herrmann is Associate Professor of Political Science and Direc­tor of the Program in Foreign Policy Analysis at the Mershon Center for National Security Research at the Ohio State University, Columbus. In 1989-90 he was awarded a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship to study US foreign policy in regional conflicts at the State Department. He

ix

X Notes on the Contributors

has written on Soviet foreign policy and on Middle East politics, notably 'The Middle East and the New World Order' in International Security 16 (1991).

Jolyon Howorth is Professor of French Civilisation at the University of Bath. He ranges widely over French political and social history. He is the author of France, the Politics of Peace (1984), co-author of Defence and Dissent in Contemporary France ( 1984 ), and co-editor of Europeans on Europe (1992).

Dan Keohane is Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University. He specializes in British security policy and arms control. He is the author of Labour Party Defence Policy Since 1945 (1993).

Edward Luttwak is Burke Professor of Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. Among his many other works is the highly acclaimed meditation on Strategy (1987).

Vladimir Nosenko is Deputy Director of the Middle East Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry. He was formerly a senior researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. He writes here in his capacity as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Oliver Ramsbotham is Lecturer in Peace Studies at Bradford University. He is the co-author of Beyond Deterrence (1991), and author of Moderniz­ing NATO s Nuclear Weapon ( 1989) and On Disagreement (forthcoming).

Adam Roberts is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. His work centres on the various limitations on the use of force in the international system. He is the author of Nations in Arms (1986), and co-editor of United Nations, Divided World (1988) and Documents on the Laws of War (1989).

Avi Sblaim is Alastair Buchan Reader in International Relations and Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. His article 'Israel and the Gulf' in the London Review of Books (24 January 1991) won the David Watt Memorial Prize for 1992. He is the author of Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) and The Politics of Partition (1990).

Introduction: The Rules of Propriety Alex Danchev and Dan Keohane

The ruin of states, the destruction of families, and the perishing of individuals are always preceded by their abandonment of the rules of propriety. 1

Saddam Hussein's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990-91 pre­sented the international community with the clearest act of defiance since Adolf Hitler's remorseless extinction of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39. To annex another state, in the late twentieth century, is the ultimate abandon­ment of the rules of propriety. Iraq's behaviour faced a wide range of states and other actors with choices they had hoped to avoid or never contem­plated, choices which many found excruciatingly difficult to make. For others again the unexpected turn of events threw up various opportunities, some unrecognized, some deliberately ignored, and some seized with alac­rity. For all concerned, the ensuing conflict raised the disturbing prospect of their continuing entanglement in the torrid affairs of the Gulf.

For the Security Council of the United Nations, which according to the Charter has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, the purported annexation of Kuwait was a fundamental challenge. If the Security Council failed to make an effective response it would suffer a fatal erosion of its recently enhanced credibility. In the event the United Nations was able to take a coherent set of decisions largely because of a fortuitous set of circumstances consequent on the ending of the Cold War and the unusual dependency of both China and the Soviet Union on the goodwill of the West - in particular, of the United States.

An ineffective response by the United Nations to the obliteration of Kuwait would not only damage that organization's reputation; it would also lower the prestige of the three Western permanent members of the Security Council- the United States, Britain and France- as leading actors in the United Nations and as champions and upholders of a peaceful inter­national order. A Gulf dominated by a 'greater Iraq' which retained control of Kuwait would be seen as evidence that these three powers were unable

xi

xii Introduction

to protect their strategic and economic interests in a traditionally important region, and were unprepared or indeed unwilling to defend their Arab allies, clients and friends. For any of these impressions to gain currency would be extremely damaging.

The Western powers did enjoy certain advantages. In combination, they clearly had the military capacity to eject Iraq from Kuwait, provided that they could secure a firm base in a neighbouring Arab country and the sup­port (or acquiescence) of a sufficiency of Arab regimes. The risks attached to such an enterprise were greatly reduced by the refusal of the ailing Soviet Union to involve itself militarily in the Gulf. Thus one of the main challenges for the three Western powers was one of persuasion: they had to persuade their domestic constitutencies to support military intervention, once again, in the Middle East. For a variety of reasons, some of them his­torical, this task was considerably easier for the British than for the French or the Americans. The Germans did not even consider sending a major mil­itary contingent to the Gulf in 1990, principally because they were then preoccupied with the onerous business of unification and additionally because (like the Japanese) the provisions of their Constitution were thought to preclude it. As a consequence of the variegated military responses of the Europeans, the image and cohesion of the European Community was significantly undermined.

For the Soviet Union, Iraq's actions forced a choice between an old-style client in the Middle East and a new-style partner in the West. The crisis in the Gulf highlighted Moscow's dependence upon its former adversary, the United States, and revealed to itself and to others the degree of its margin­alization in the international coalition ranged against Saddam Hussein.

In the Middle East, Iraq's aggression presented a formidable test of state­craft for the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC), and many other regional actors. The occupa­tion of Kuwait offered a graphic demonstration of the GCC's inability to protect its members and of the ACC's impotence in Baghdad. As for the League, a majority including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria condemned Iraq and voted to send forces to defend Saudi Arabia. Saddam had run a knife through the heart of the Arab family. The Saudi rulers in particular were faced with a remarkably difficult and fateful choice. If they accepted Baghdad's claim that the status of Kuwait was an inter-Arab conflict, to be managed by Arab states, and assumed that there was no immediate threat to their own country, they would be perilously exposed to attack or coercion by their predatory Iraqi neighbour. Proverbially, the appetite grows with eating. If Saddam could swallow Kuwait, might he not be tempted at least

Introduction xiii

to nibble Saudi Arabia? At worst, King Fahd might suffer the same fate as the wretched al Sabahs- an unthinkable ignominy. In many eyes, however, the alternative was hardly more attractive. By placing themselves under the protection of the West, the Saudis would sacrifice much that they held dear­est. The choice they made (or were persuaded to make) meant that the cus­todian and defender of the Islamic holy places permitted a prodigious military operation, dominated by non-Muslim forces, to launch a war of incalculable cost against their fellow Arabs in Iraq.

The Palestinian people were also caught on the horns of a dilemma. They felt obliged to take sides between Iraq and its sympathizers on the one hand and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Western powers on the other. Given that Saddam Hussein presented himself as a mighty Arab leader, willing to challenge Israel and the United States, it was not surpris­ing that Palestinians viewed him in a favourable light - all the more so when he linked withdrawal from Kuwait with Israel's departure from the Occupied Territories. Palestinians on the West Bank, in Israel, in Jordan and elsewhere, inured to defeat and disappointment, snatched desperately at this poisoned chalice. They paid a high price in alienation and. expulsion for their alignment.

Israel's restraint, by contrast, enhanced its standing with the members of the international coalition; but the crisis also demonstrated that Israel was a dimin­ishing strategic asset for the USA. During the conflict the Israeli Government had the task of assuring the population that their best form of defence was to deploy US Pabiot missiles and to rely on the actions of the coalition. For Israel's leaders, and especially for the armed forces, not to retaliate aggress­ively and at once against an attack, but passively to place themselves in the hands of others, was a discomforting break with a proud tradition.

Other Middle Eastern states, mostly rivals of Iraq's, were not slow to grasp the opportunities offered to them by the conflict Iran regained its position on the Shatt al-Arab waterway, recovered territories lost in the earlier Gulf war, and obtained the return of its prisoners of war. Syria's Ba'athist ideology and anti-imperialist rhetoric did not prevent that pliable regime from joining an international coalition led by the United States. In return Syria secured aid and approbation from both the Gulf states and the West, and strengthened its influence in Lebanon. Egypt for its part seized the moment to reassert its natural role as the leading Arab state, received aid from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and had the major part of its foreign debt written off: on some measures a highly satisfactory outcome.

In certain important respects the Gulf Conflict of 1990-91 did not begin in 1990 or end in 1991. In 1961, when Kuwait was thought to be at risk

xiv Introduction

from attack by Iraq, the precautionary intervention by British forces dis­couraged any aggression on the part of Baghdad. On that occasion Arab forces soon replaced the British troops and Kuwait went on to establish itself as an independent actor on the international stage. Nearly three decades later, the Western powers did not intervene to forestall a potential Iraqi attack, and had no mind to try. Unhindered and undeterred, the poten­tial became actual. After the fact, it required the most powerful and diverse international coalition ever assembled to reverse the aggression, or more precisely to maximize the pressure on Iraq and minimize the casualties of the West.

The contrast between Kuwait's experience in the early 1960s and the early 1990s served to underline major changes in the Arab regional order and in the power distribution in the Gulf since the 1970s. The first of these relates to the fracturing of Arab solidarity. Egypt's separate peace with Israel, sponsored, promoted and facilitated by the United States, reflected an 'Egypt first' policy which tended to discount the concerns of the Arab community at large. The separate peace isolated Egypt in the Arab world, ended its leadership role, and tilted the Arab-Israeli military balance firmly in favour of Israel. Secondly, in the Gulf, the Iranian revolution of 1979 shattered Western dreams of maintaining security through the Shah. The subsequent detention of US diplomats as hostages humiliated Washington in the Middle East and elsewhere. Now claiming to lead the Arab nation, Iraq took advantage of Iran's pariah status to launch a war against Tehran in 1980. During the protracted conflict which ensued, Saddam simultaneously boosted his military power and depleted his financial resources, thereby increasing both the capacity and the need to coerce its rich, weak neigh­bours.

Since 1979, therefore, the security of the ripe Gulf states (and thus of Western interests in the region) was highly vulnerable to challenge. The challenge could come from either Khomeini's Iran or Saddam's Iraq. Until the end of the 1980s that reality was partially obscured by the Iran-Iraq war, which ground to a halt only in 1988. Throughout the later stages of that war Baghdad received regular aid and comfort from Western govern­ments. Iraq was seen to be protecting the exposed and fearful Gulf states, and indeed the West itself, from the onslaught of the dreaded Ayatollahs. Saddam Hussein was claimed to be ruthless but pcagmatic. In the words of a senior adviser to President George Bush, 'we asked ourselves not whether Saddam was a wonderful human being but whether by sticks and carrots we could encourage him to take a more moderate course.' Bush himself explained after the war: 'we were trying to work with Saddam

Introduction XV

Hussein and trying to bring him along into the family of nations'. 2 In pur­suit of that objective the United States and its allies fed carrots to a rapa­cious regime until the very eve of its invasion of Kuwait. The carrots came in all shapes and sizes - intelligence data, agricultural credits (regularly misused), technology transfers, anns sales. This spectacularly unsuccessful policy is only now being thoroughly investigated. 3 The outcome of that investigation is likely to colour all subsequent accounts of the conflict. For the moment it defies detailed description. Already, however, it can be labelled. One label, pregnant with history, is appeasement. Another, espe­cially resonant in Washington, is Iraqgate.

Since the ceasefire there have been few indications that a pattern of stable and secure relations is emerging in the Gulf, or the region as a whole. Certainly the international coalition contributed to the restoration of major elements of stability. Kuwait is self-governing once more; other Gulf states have recovered some of the confidence shattered in 1990. Iraq's neighbours are reassured by the dramatic reduction in its military strength, and in particular by the apparent elimination of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction. For the most part they are content to see Saddam Hus­sein's control of his country curtailed and monitored by the United Nations and the Western powers. Yet some appear anxious about specific acts of punishment administered by Western airpower and by the humanitarian consequences of continued economic sanctions. Beyond Iraq, it is possible that certain developments may weaken support for challenges to the exist­ing pattern of international relations in the region. The most conspicuous of these is the Middle East 'peace process', jointly sponsored by the United States and Russia. The needs and wishes of the various participants are, of course, extraordinarily diverse. We wait to know whether the peace process can reconcile them.

But this is hope deferred. The conditions presently obtaining in the region suggest continuing instability and the intermittent or even sustained military entanglement by Western powers in its affairs. Firstly, Saddam Hussein's aggression imposed immense costs- human, social, ecological­on Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Yemen, and substantial economic penalties on most other states in the region. Secondly, the conflict of 1990-91 exacer­bated the gross disparities in income and wealth which exist throughout the Middle East. It also exposed and deepened the conflicting emotions towards Saddam felt by rulers and ruled in several Arab states, and contrib­uted to widespread feeling of loss and humiliation. The latter sentiment draws strength from the striking differences in the way in which the United Nations enforces resolutions affecting Iraq and Israel. The sentiment is by

xvi Introduction

no means confined to the Middle East. Thirdly, inter-Arab divisions and the deep distrust manifest between supposed allies - fissures which helped to create the possibility for the invasion - have not been overcome, certainly not between Iraq and Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The false prom­ises offered by Saddam in the months before the invasion, together with the failure of Kuwait's Arab friends to provide effective support in the face of threats from Baghdad, have left a corrosive legacy. It is a legacy which counsels Arabs against basing their security on the assurances of other Arabs.

Not surprisingly, therefore, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continue to look to the West and especially to the United States for protec­tion. Post-war announcements to the effect that Egypt and Syria would play a major part in shoring up the security arrangements of the Gulf states proved to be premature. At a time when Western leaders trumpeted the importance of restricting arms transfers to the Middle East, the Gulf rulers have agreed to purchase costly and sophisticated weapons systems from the United States and other Western powers. These purchases, eagerly sought by the sellers, are designed in part to foster Western commitment, not only to a trading relationship but also to a security one. Kuwait itself has made defence agreements with the United States, Britain and France; the US has held joint military exercises and pre-positioned military sup­plies in that country. The entanglements multiply.

And yet, many Middle Eastern regimes feel threatened from within and from without. The regimes themselves evidently fail to meet the fundamen­tal requirements. Security without legitimacy is a chimera. Paying protec­tion money is an evasion. In this light the Gulf Conflict of 1990-91 resolved little. The rules of propriety are not well observed in that volatile and unpredictable region. Saddam Hussein abandoned them in 1990. Unexpectedly, he was punished. Which will be the next to risk its ruin?

NOTES

l. Li Chi, the Chinese Book of Rites, compiled in the first century oc; quoted in Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner (London: Viking, 1992) p. 23.

2. Anonymous adviser, quoted in J.F.O. Mcallister, 'The Lessons of Iraq', 'I'ime, 2 November 1992; Bush on 'Larry King Live', 4 October 1992, quoted in Murray Waas and Craig Unger, 'In the Loop: Bush's Secret Mission', New Yorker, 2 November 1992.

Introduction xvii

3. See, generally, Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby (London: Bantam, 1992). For the first wave of investigatory (and angry) work on British policy see Chris Cowley, Guns, Lies and Spies (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992); David Leigh, Betrayed (London: Bloomsbury, 1993); John Sweeney, Trading with the Enemy (London: Pan, 1993).