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The Achille's Heel of the Iraqi Operation
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17169 |
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EDITORIAL
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12 / 1990 |
782 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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Whether by the time this editorial appears in print the Bush administration's reaction to the invasion of Kuwait appears brilliant or something less than that, the operation reveals the limits of its conception of international organization. President Bush was able to organize a worldwide coalition against Saddam Hussein only because there was a clear case of aggression and sufficient direct interest in opposing it on the part of the anti-Iraq coalition. That may not be possible in even more dangerous crises in the absence of an appropriate international organization.
Saddam Hussein is within several years of possessing nuclear weapons. His plants are dispersed so that a surgical strike, if possible, will be much more difficult than the earlier Israeli strike. Because of the increased vulnerability of Israel, we cannot count on Israel to take these targets out.
Should Saddam Hussein, or some successor to him, or some other dangerous state announce that it has nuclear weapons - and it is more likely only to hint at this or to permit intelligence to leak - that will not create the same sort of clear circumstances or direct interests that are likely to permit a similar coalition to be organized either within or without the United Nations. And it will be too late if or when the weapons are poised to be used.
There must be a framework of policy and organization that permits quick action in these circumstances and, so far, such frameworks have been resisted by the Bush administration. The Security Council of the United Nations is too diverse, clumsy, and formal to suffice in this sort of circumstance. The Helsinki organization has too many states and interests to permit quick and surgical action. Furthermore, the continuing use of NATO, if not freezing the Soviet Union out, makes it difficult to include that country in the planning stages of any operation.
I have written on several occasions in these pages of what is required. We need a new revived Concert of Europe: perhaps the ambassadors of the united States, the Soviet Union (or Russia), Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and whatever other nations might be invited to participate on particular occasions relevant to their countries.
The ambassadors should get into the habit of meeting to discuss both particular and general topics of mutual interest. They should meet to plan, among other subjects, how nuclear nonproliferation (NNP) can be maintained within a framework of peacekeeping and disarmament that protects the independence of nations. Unlike the earlier period when the NNP Treaty ran roughshod over the interests of nonnuclear states, the current situation in which the United States and the Soviet Union are on friendly and cooperative terms is one that can establish a regime congruent with their interests.
Such a concert could work out in advance certain issues that would invoke common actions of control, subject only to discussion with the affected states if this is possible. It would create a climate of information in which there is a probability of deterrence of provocative behavior and of common response if deterrence fails.
The Concert of Europe could be supplemented for some purposes by the Helsinki organization and the United Nations. But it would be
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