The basic issues are clear enough. There will have to be some sort of formal arrangement to promote stability in the gulf. There will have to be arms agreements to forestall blackmail by countries possessing nuclear or other unconventional weapons, or huge armies. The Israeli-Palestinian wound will have to be salved. And, to deprive future Saddams of an issue, the wide gap between the haves and the have-nots of the Arab world will have to be narrowed.
Of the four, perhaps the easiest task is to design a permanent Desert Shield. A clear lesson of the war is that lightly defended but wealthy countries like Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates present inherently attractive targets for aggression. Ideally, the administration believes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Hafez Assad’s Syria should shoulder this task through a tripwire force under the banner of the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council or even the United Nations. The West would stand behind these forces. There is a debate over whether that force will consist of ground troops or ships and planes only. If air power turns out to be the decisive factor in ousting Iraq from Kuwait, the argument against a ground presence will gain credibility.
But at a minimum, U.S. tanks and other equipment would be pre-positioned in Saudi Arabia. And some administration experts argue it’s unrealistic to consider withdrawing all American ground forces. Privately, some Saudis concur. A high-ranking Saudi official outlined his country’s goals to NEWSWEEK recently: the kingdom wants Iraq’s military severely and permanently hobbled. The possible power vacuum doesn’t trouble the Saudis, since Turkey has renounced any claims on Iraq; Syria is tied down in Lebanon, and Iran is still recovering from its war with Iraq. On this theory, U.S. troops would remain in the region for a substantial period, but discreetly. Washington would announce the beginning of withdrawal, but the pullout would drag on a year or more, for what could be explained by the allies as logistical reasons.
The problem with that scenario is that the American public will want the troops home as soon as possible. Meanwhile, pressure for the United States to leave will also come from Egypt and Syria; both will prefer an Arab peacekeeping force. Iran might seize on the continuing U.S. presence to try destabilizing Saudi Arabia, possibly through Saudi fundamentalists arguing that infidel forces defile the holy places. A compromise solution could put the bulk of U.S. troops in Kuwait or Bahrain, with a high-profile but small, complement of Islamic-nation forces garrisoned in Saudi Arabia.
Whether Saddam stays or goes, the United States wants an embargo against Iraq and probably Iran when it comes to nuclear, chemical and even conventional weapons. A Middle East nuclear-free zone was one of former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze’s pet projects. For Arab states to participate, Israel would have to agree to give up its own stockpile of perhaps 100 nuclear warheads. Interestingly, when Shevardnadze advocated this idea last December, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir did not dismiss the notion.
When the war ends, America’s Arab partners, especially Egypt, will be under pressure to show their people that working with the United States helped bring relief to stateless Palestinians. This is especially true now that Arabs have been vividly shown scenes of American bombs actually killing Arab civilians. The United States believes it can orchestrate Arab-Israeli talks on the subject, perhaps under the umbrella of arms-control talks. Meanwhile, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been quietly exploring ways Palestinians in the territories could select leaders to talk with the Israelis. In the wake of Yasir Arafat’s alliance with Saddam, the PLO is discredited not only within Israel, but also in the eyes of many of its former Arab friends. Already, Israel and Syria are simultaneously battering 7,000 PLO fighters in Southern Lebanon.
Much will depend on how Israel interprets the outcome of the war. Israeli moderates will argue that the destruction of the Iraqi threat and the discrediting of Arafat, coupled with the U.S. debt to the moderate Arabs, have made it both inescapable and feasible for Israel to trade land for peace. Others, including hard-liners in the government of Yitzhak Shamir, will argue the reverse: the Iraqi-PLO defeat, coupled with an increase in world sympathy for Israeli restraint in the face of Scud attacks, means Israel can proceed unopposed to permanent control of the West Bank. Some Israeli doves will argue that the government trumped up espionage charges against the moderate Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh, a plausible West Bank interlocutor, to discredit him in advance of any Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
A debate is already emerging within the government. At most, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir may float another version of the local-election plan similar to one his own Likud bloc backed away from in 1989. Shamir’s political rival, Foreign Minister David Levy, has stressed a somewhat different tack. Anticipating new pressure for a settlement, he wants Israel to take the initiative and insists that bilateral relations between Israel and the Arab states come prior to resolution of the Palestinian issue. German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said during a visit to Damascus last week that Syria was willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist as part of a comprehensive Middle East peace order. Even before that, Levy caused a stir by saying he favored unconditional talks with Syria.
Still, Saddam’s anti-Western crusade has aroused passions among the Palestinians that may already be out of control. One result may be even more radical splinter organizations or the growth of the Muslim fundamentalist movement Hamas. If Israel refuses to deal with the Palestinians, then Syria could switch tacks, joining the radicals in the name of Pan-Arabism.
Earlier this month Baker called for a regional development bank that would channel money region, particularly Egypt. Baker’s pitch to, Nations forces the oil-rich Arabs is: poverty, and the resentment of the rich it breeds, will only create future Saddams. The gulf Arabs, for their part, are positive about one thing: they won’t be spending money on Arabs who backed Iraq, such as Jordan, the PLO, Sudan and Yemen. “Instead of these countries showing appreciation and gratitude, the opposite took place,” says Abdullah Yagoob Bishara, the Kuwaiti secretary general of the GCC. In the future, wealthy Arabs contend, they will lend the way the World Bank does: to support specific projects backed by sound economic management by recipient governments. There will be no more blank checks for “friendly” governments. “The objective,” says Bishara, “is to establish a survival stake in the stability of the gulf for the recipient countries.”
But spreading the wealth alone is only part of the answer to Arab resentment of the free-spending gulf Arabs. The gulf states will inevitably face pressure to modify their quasi-feudal systems. The war has brought unprecedented outside scrutiny to these monarchies and sheikdoms, and moved Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates to announce tentative steps toward more representative government. A liberated Kuwait will probably have to go even further to answer both Saddam’s argument that the ousted al-Sabah family represented no one but itself and American critics who might question having shed American blood for a centuries-old dynasty. At a minimum, the al-Sabahs must contain their returning people’s anger toward the Palestinians of Kuwait who sided with Iraq. “There are many people in the Kuwait government who intend to make Kuwait free of all Palestinians after liberation,” says a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh.
Arabs and Israelis alike welcome the renewed U.S. commitment to their region. But while Washington gets high marks for good intentions, it gets downgraded on realism. Says an Israeli official in Washington: “They aren’t aware enough of the undercurrents in the Arab world, especially [Muslim] fundamentalism and the pressures that exerts. They’re a bit naive. What they’re trying to do will take not a year or two, but a generation.”
Saddam may fall, but the ideas he manipulated to shake the region will not be so easy to banish. King Fahd, the gulf emirs, Hosni Mubarak and Hafez Assad will be vulnerable to radical, universalist appeals as long as there is no generally accepted principle of political legitimacy in the Arab world. Arab states, based on family dynasties or lip service, are not yet true nation-states. Only in democratic Israel, and perhaps in Egypt and post-Khomeini Iran, have Middle Eastern states figured out how to change leaders without bloodshed.
Democracy has yet to take root anywhere else. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalism may set countercurrents in motion. Fundamentalists may yet topple King Hussein of Jordan, with unpredictable consequences for the West Bank and Israel. The United States has staked the gulf’s security on the Saudi royal family, but if the Saudis don’t take steps to shore up their own legitimacy, could fundamentalists overthrow them, as it did the Shah of Iran? Washington may win the war in a matter of months, but the struggle to stabilize the Middle East could be a labor of years.
Considering Iraq’s attacks on Israel, would you support or oppose the following U.S. steps? (Percent saying support)
Continue to ask Israel not to strike back militarily
Offer Israel increased financial aid if it doesn’t
Reduce pressure on Israel to settle the Palestinian issue if it doesn’t
From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Feb. 15, 1991
Once the war has ended, should the United States:
Retain some ground forces for peacekeeping in the Persian Gulf area
Retain only naval and air forces for peacekeeping in the Persian Gulf area
Leave peacekeeping in the gulf area to Arab or United Nations forces
From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Feb. 15, 1991
