Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 4, 1991 TAG: 9104040386
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NORMAN KEMPSTER/ LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Despite the fondest hopes of President Bush and most allied leaders that Saddam Hussein would lose his grip on power as a result of the war, the Iraqi dictator has managed to hold on. The Security Council clearly has no stomach for forcing him out.
Saddam "seems to be more resilient than anybody thought," said Eliot A. Cohen, director of strategic studies at the School for Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.
"The country has been humiliated and devastated," Cohen said. "But his grip on that country rests on fear. The revolts will be crushed with utmost brutality. The fear will remain because the people will realize that no one from the outside will come in to help them. He has enough troops to suppress any likely insurgency."
Assuming that Saddam accepts the Security Council's cease-fire terms - and from a practical standpoint he has very little choice - Iraq will have to abandon its hope of becoming a regional military superpower. The complex resolution imposes tough curbs on Iraqi arms programs and requires reparation payments to Kuwait that will cripple Iraq's ability to pay for the kind of army it has maintained over the last decade.
However, even with a share of its oil revenue diverted to Kuwait, Iraq will remain a relatively wealthy nation, at least by Third World standards. Unlike the ruinous World War I reparations that turned Germany into a pauper and may have indirectly led to the rise of Adolf Hitler, Iraq should retain sufficient wealth to feed, clothe and house its population, provided it abandons its dream of regional hegemony.
From a military standpoint, the cease-fire may have reached a goal that Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stated with tongue-in-cheek earlier in the crisis: an Iraq so weak that it will not threaten its weakest neighbor yet so strong that it can deter its strongest neighbor.
In terms of global stability, it is an outcome that could hardly be improved upon.
"Iraq is not going to be terribly vulnerable," said military historian Trever N. Dupuy, a retired U.S. army colonel. "Even after losing half of its equipment it still has more conventional weapons than any other Arab country with the possible exception of Egypt. It will be in a position to defend itself if it regains unity and national control."
Economically, Iraq emerges from the war with bright prospects.
"It is a potentially very rich country with the second-largest proven oil resources in the world," said Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council expert on the Middle East. "They are an industrious people who have shown a good capacity to adapt to modern technology.
"Iraq will be a lot better off than most countries," Kemp, now a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. "It will take them five years to rebuild things, so what? They are not in the same condition as Germany in 1945 or 1918."
But for all of its probable success in blunting Iraq's claws without leaving it defenseless in the Middle East jungle, the Security Council resolution leaves Saddam firmly in power. And that poses some severe problems for the United States and the West.
Bush has said repeatedly that the United States will not maintain normal diplomatic relations with Iraq as long as Saddam is in power. U.S. officials have said that they expect Iraq's military and political elite to evict Saddam in a palace coup. These officials say that even if the new leader was nothing more than a Saddam clone, Washington would be able to deal with him.
But the United States seems unwilling - and perhaps unable - to support potential coup makers.
"Saddam has the upper hand for the time being," said George Carver, a former deputy director of the CIA. "I think the government here wants to be very careful to bend over backwards so it will not appear that any successor government was installed by the Americans."
A former Iraqi diplomat, who asked not to be identified by name, said he believed that Saddam would accept the cease-fire terms.
"I think he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq as much as Mr. Bush does," said the former diplomat, now living in Western Europe.
He pointed to Saddam's selection of Saddoun Hammadi to be Iraq's new prime minister as an indication that Saddam was ready to put the war behind him.
by CNB