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What's Next: Iraq and Saudi Arabia
War Analysis by Ken Martin 11.28.01
The war in Afghanistan has progressed so rapidly it is foolhardy to
try to make predictions. Events on the ground have made fools of not
only the leftists and smart-alecks who forever predict disaster, but
even a few of us on the clear-eyed, right-hearted side of the
spectrum.
They say that generals always prepare to fight the last war. It is
clear that our present crop of generals have done considerably better
than that, but I will confess to being flummoxed when I saw no Gulf
War-style buildup in advance of the beginning of ground operations.
On the other hand, I feel some satisfaction in having never mouthed
the cliche that has been printed in a thousand columns and repeated
in a thousand chat shows, that is, the somber reminder that no
foreign army has ever defeated the Afghans in war. It never occurred
to anyone that we weren't planning to defeat them, but rather work
with the Afghans themselves to take back their own country. We
became the Afghan Air Force, and our guys on the ground fought
alongside the Afghans to help them achieve their own goals. I
believe this style of fighting gives us an idea of what to expect as
the "war on terrorism" shifts its focus to other venues.
Iraq
We have been dropping hints that, maybe, our next port of call may
be Somalia, or Sudan, or some other troublesome backwater. But I
believe that Saddam Hussein believes he is next on our "to-do" list,
and I also believe he is right.
Prior to the buildup for the Afghan War, I would have said that the
last thing we wanted to do was to revisit the Gulf War. The idea of
another buildup to go after the million-man Iraqi army was
politically unthinkable. Even in the wake of 9/11, our allies have
been warning us not to go there.
But what if we held a "war on terrorism" and didn't invite Saddam?
That really would be unthinkable. We left the Iraqi army intact at
the end of the Gulf War, in order to hold back the ayatollahs in
Iran, not realizing that Saddam himself would be able to thrive in
defeat. Considering the potential threat that the Iranians posed at
that time, this may well have been a smart decision, but it is a
smart decision that has cost us dearly in the decade since.
The world has evolved since then. Iran has moved on, and no one
fears them anymore. In the new environment, Saddam is way more
trouble than he is worth, and a nuclear-tipped Saddam, with
intelligence operatives on the ground inside the US, is something
that can not be allowed to stand, certainly not in the aftermath of
9/11.
But will defeating Saddam require another Gulf War buildup? I
believe not.
The Gulf War, and the present Afghan war, show very well the
capabilities of air power against ground forces on open ground. But
air power needs to be followed up by ground forces who will occupy
that ground. Ten years ago the US Armor did that duty in Kuwait;
today in Afghanistan, Northern Alliance troops are fulfilling the
same function.
Where is our Northern Alliance in Iraq?
The Kurds come to mind. They are semi-independent, thanks to our "no-
fly zone" air patrols, and anxious to win independence. But that
very desire for independence makes them problematical as partners.
Fully 1/3 of Turkey is Kurdish, and an independent Kurdistan next
door would almost certainly lead to the dissolution of Turkey, and
they will not sit still for this. Since anything we do in Iraq will
rely on Turkish support, I believe we will steer clear of giving too
much encouragement to the Kurds.
But they will have an important role. They are armed, they control
an important piece of territory, and we have access to them. But
everyone will studiously avoid saying anything about "independence".
Secondly, armed groups among the southern Shi'ites have already been
active, and have managed a number of shootouts with government
forces, supposedly even killing one of Saddam's generals. They may
well have a role. While publicly there may be some tut-tutting about
their ties to Iran, the reality is that we, and Iran, have already
moved way past our old animosity. No one says so publicly, though,
so as not to awaken any sleeping dinosaurs.
But the most likely force presently available, trained and armed and
ready to take on Saddam, is the Iraqi Army itself.
Saddam has been forced time and again to resort to mass executions
of Army officers, due to repeated coup conspiracies, real or
imagined. Regular Army units are not allowed to move out of the
district where they are stationed, not allowed to move toward Baghdad
under pain of death; Republican Guard units are always placed between
Army units and the capital.
Our most likely strategy will be to drive a wedge between the
Republican Guard and the Army. We attempted this before, a few years
ago, launching a heavy bombing campaign against the Guard while
dropping leaflets on the Army encouraging revolt. In the aftermath
Saddam again executed a number of command officers, suggesting that
the tactic had been partially successful, at least in Saddam's mind
and possibly in reality.
I expect another attempt will be made along similar lines. The Guard
will likely be visited by fuel-air bombs, while regular Army will be
leafleted, and command officers will be contacted and encouraged to
either revolt against Saddam, or at the very least stand aside and
stay out of any military actions we initiate against the Republican
Guard.
The sad thing is that this could have been done at the end of the
First Gulf War had we not lost our nerve. We hoped for a military
rebellion but did nothing to make it happen. And those military
rebellions that did, in fact, occur during the Nineties were
unheralded and the officers who acted to save their country paid
with their lives.
Saddam, for his part, is bright enough to see all of this coming,
and may try to jump-start negotiations with the UN as his only hope
to de-rail the locomotive that is coming his way. It won't work.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has been a key partner for the US for many years, often
behaving as an unofficial extension of the US in the Middle East.
They have funded off-budget CIA operations, and have tied themselves
to us militarily and economically. English is the country's second
language, and thousands of US and British workers call the Kingdom
home.
This is one means by which the Saudis have bought stability.
The other source of stability, the source of the Kingdom's
legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens, is its status as "defender"
of Islam. The Saudi royal family has a centuries-old relationship
with the Wahabi sect, a very fundamentalist strain of Islam. It was
this alliance with Wahabiism that brought the Saud family to power
in the late 1700's, and has sustained them ever since.
Just as the closeness of our relationship has meant the Saudis must
tolerate our inexplicable fondness for the Israelis, we have
tolerated the split personality that is Saudi Arabia, with its
Western educated and Western oriented elite, that masquerade as 18th
century desert sheiks. The Kingdom actively supports and promotes the
Wahabi faith, maintaining the tie that is the source of the
historical legitimacy of its rule.
The schizophrenia that this entails finally caught up to them in the
aftermath of 9/11. It has been hard to ignore that our best friend
in the Middle East is also the homeland of 9 out of 10 suicide
bombers. The Saudis have been as loyal to us in this fight as they
have always been, but this time their preference for a loyalty that
is quiet, behind the scenes, under the table, between the lines, has
begun to rankle and offend.
The controversy, for example, about the use of Saudi bases for the
Afghan operations was a bogus one; there was never any doubt that
they would support us. There was a need, however, from their side to
keep it out of the papers, to give them some plausible deniability.
In the past we have always respected that need, but our reality has
changed since September, and we have come to recognize that the Arab
world, at least at the level of the common citizen, is uniformly
hostile to us. A crucial part of our war effort, in which we are
failing, is the PR campaign, to communicate our point of view to the
Arab world. This is something that simply can not be effective
without the help of our closest friends in the Arab world, and in
our moment of greatest need our friends are silent.
Practical help? Fine, they are there as they always have been. But
when we need someone to speak up, they can not do it for fear of
arousing a fundamentalist backlash that might bring down their rule.
This is equally true in Egypt, where the libels against the US in
the government media have gone unanswered by government leaders we
count as friends.
In the past we could tolerate this, but those days are gone.
Economics 101
A basic misunderstanding of economics has often led people to
believe that the Saudis were more important than they are. Certainly
we have had unusually good relations with them, going back decades.
They give preference to American goods, American companies, and have
always been generous in their financial support for under-the-table
US projects.
And it is certainly true that the US economy is dependent on oil,
and the Saudis certainly have lots of it. But the Saudi economy is
totally dependent on oil, to a degree we can scarce imagine. If the
price of oil doubles, or drops by half, we adjust our driving habits
a bit, but only a bit. Companies spend a little money to increase
fuel efficiency, but otherwise, nothing happens.
But for many oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, a small drop in
price can mean bankruptcy, social unrest, a heightened risk of
revolution and blood in the streets.
To us, it really doesn't matter to us who "owns" the oil while it is
in the ground. American oil companies buy concessions, paying for
the right to work an oil field. American oil service companies do
their work under contract. So whether it is the Kuwaiti Emir, or
Saudi King, or Saddam himself, in business terms it matters little
or not at all. Oil companies can generally work with anyone. Since
oil companies get paid by taking a percentage of the oil they pump
or process, financial relations are simple and transparent, at least
on the oil company's side.
Since the Saudi economy is, like most other OPEC countries utterly
dependent on oil, the notion that they, through OPEC, can control
the price of oil is a fantasy. They can try to cut back on
production to manipulate the price upwards, but the effects are only
temporary. Since price increases only encourage other countries to
start drilling for oil, every attempt to manipulate the price of oil
only costs them market share.
When you add to the picture the Central Asian oil that is already
beginning to reach the market, and the Iraqi oil production that
increases each year as sanctions are weakened, OPEC's ability to
"control" the price of oil reveals itself to be mostly PR.
In terms of the price of oil, it would have made little or no
difference had Saddam seized all of Kuwait's oil, or even all of the
Saudi oil as well. Since at the time of the Gulf War American
companies were very active in Iraq, we could easily have dealt with
Saddam commercially.
Lazy journalists like to say that our military is in the Persian
Gulf to protect our right to drive SUV's, which is silliness of
course. Our presence there does little or nothing to raise or lower
the price of oil. We originally entered the Gulf militarily to keep
Iran from interdicting the shipping lanes, and stayed on to keep
Saddam in his box. But the concern is geo-political, to keep any
single aggressive power from taking complete control of Persian
Gulf oil.
Crossroads
A soldier's morality is very different from the diplomat's.
Diplomats use words and documents to obscure reality. Soldiers want
to know who will be at their side when the lead starts to fly, and
words therefor take on a purity that diplomats work to avoid. We are
starting to notice what is said about us in Saudi and Egyptian
newspapers and editorial columns, we are noticing how untrue and
libelous and shockingly dishonest are the attacks on us, made more
painful coming as they do from friends. The "diplomat" within us
knows to overlook these things, and focus on the bigger picture.
But the "soldier" within us, and right now that includes most
of us, expects better of our friends now that we are under fire.
Whatever the outcome of our dealings with Iraq, our dealings with
Saudi Arabia will never be the same. During the Gulf War, we bent
over backwards to accommodate Saudi sensibilities on such issues as
religious insignia, female soldiers, taking care to keep as low a
profile as possible. We ended the war, in part, in deference to the
Saudis, who did not want Saddam overthrown.
This time around, while we will publicly observe the formalities, I
doubt seriously whether we will be anywhere near as queasily
deferential. We have already fired a shot across the Saudi bow, with
discussions of reducing our military presence there, which is really
a threat to leave the Saudis to Saddam's tender mercies.
The fact is that if we do our work well, the Saudis will become
superfluous. A prosperous and democratic Baghdad would be the natural
center of gravity of the Arab world, and its very existence would
bring about the end of the House of Saud, leaving an Arab Republic
in its place.
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