It’s been said that Pollack, a national-security official under Bill Clinton, is the Midas of the Iraq conflict: everyone he touches turns into a hawk. In his new book, Pollack shows, step by step, the terrible consequences of letting Saddam build up an arsenal. Last week he spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Seth Mnookin from his office at the Brookings Institution.
NEWSWEEK: What did you think of Colin Powell’s presentation before the U.N.?
Kenneth Pollack: I thought Powell did an excellent job. I’d describe it as a very good start for the endgame. There were three different audiences–the Security Council, the American people, and international public opinion. It was least relevant to the Security Council. They already know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. They know Saddam is cheating. But the administration hasn’t sold this to the American people. There are a lot of people out there who know Saddam Hussein is pure evil and feel if the president says we need to go to war they’re willing to believe him. But they don’t understand why. The State of the Union speech and Powell’s speech were very important in terms of starting to lay out those reasons. In some ways that’s the most important audience. We want to have them all on board, mainly for the day after. Then it will be the international community rebuilding and not the U.S. colonizing. This is not going to be the end of foreign policy. There’re going to be operations where we need our allies. North Korea is a perfect example. We’re not going to solve that unilaterally. Or India-Pakistan. The U.S. can’t just go in and solve that. Even though we’re the biggest ones on the block, the more allies we have on the block the better it’s going to be for us. What happens when China becomes an actual threat? What happens when there’s another Rwanda? On all these issues we’re going to want to have allies. So we don’t want to piss off the whole world. It’s very much in our interest to build as big a coalition as we can this time, so that other countries don’t feel like we’re a rogue superpower.
Is part of the problem that the administration has tried to psychologically link September 11 with Iraq when they are separate issues?
I think that’s certainly is part of it. I still don’t see going to war with Iraq as necessary to destroy global terrorism. It’s not the crucial battle for global terrorism, I didn’t think it was essential that we had to go to war this winter. My argument is we should go sooner rather than later, but it’s not necessary to go right now. We could wait a year or two to make sure if we did do this we had the support. Part of the problem is that the administration hasn’t really made the case for why we need to do it this year.
There’s a sense that Bush believes he had the most support for going after “evildoers” immediately after the attacks on America, and that support has been slipping ever since. That would give him a good reason to try and link Iraq with Al Qaeda.
I don’t know what is in President Bush’s head or Dick Cheney’s head. I do know there was a series of briefings at the end of 2001 laying out worse case scenarios, including if terrorists got weapons of mass destruction. My understanding is that had a profound impact on lots of the principals. Personally, I tend see more along the lines of the CIA: I think Saddam wouldn’t give WMD weapons to terrorists unless he was being invaded. But I think the principles do really believe there is this nexus between Iraq and global terror. I may not, but they do.
It looks like we are going to war. What are the doomsday scenarios that are laid out?
If we attack Saddam you have to assume at some point he’s going to use everything in his arsenal. Exile seems unlikely–it’s not been his profile. He believes he has this historic destiny which includes destroying the state of Israel. So I think it’s likely he’ll try to go out in a blaze of glory. That said, I think there are some very important considerations. Saddam Hussein is a congenital optimist. Many times in the past, Saddam has done incredibly bizarre and foolish things in the mistaken thinking that things are going to work out for him. In this case, that tendency is likely to work to our advantage. He always believes he can wriggle out from under. Saddam may not realize that he really is doomed until its too late for him to act. And, we actually have very good counters to every one of the doomsday scenarios.
Which are?
The use of WMDs tactically against our troops and homeland; terrorist attacks; destabilizing Jordan; massacring the Kurds; lighting the oil fields on fire; going after Israel; stoking the Palestinians. In every case, there are real and serious problems, real potential for casualties, but we have good counters to each and every one.
What are the counters?
I don’t want to be too specific. But we’ve done a really good job with Jordan–one of the biggest thing he could do is cut off Jordan’s oil flow. The Scud threat we’re taking very seriously … On the negative side, I would have preferred that Al Qaeda to be much weaker and I would have preferred for there to be a peace process going between the Palestinians and the Israelis. I think if the administration had really made an effort to get negotiations back on track, just even getting them to sit down at the table and talk. The U.S. needs to restore the sense of hopefulness that was here in the 1990s.
If containment didn’t work in Iraq, is there a situation where it could work in the future?
Containment should always be an arrow in your quiver. But Iraq is an exceptional case. Once Saddam Hussein gets a nuclear weapon, he believes he can do whatever he wants in the region, because we’ll be terrified to intervene. As far as I know this is unique. In North Korea the experts say they want it for defensive purposes. Saddam Hussein apparently wants it for a nuclear weapon for offensive purposes. He thinks as long as he doesn’t attack our homeland he can do whatever he wants to in the region. I’d like to be seeing the Bush administration making that point, that Saddam Hussein is a unique threat who requires an extraordinary response. What I’ve experienced in talking to foreign diplomats is a tremendous trepidation that this is just the first step in a series of preemptive wars.
Could it be that the administration’s failure to lay out what makes Saddam exceptional is for precisely that reason? They want to keep their options open?
Their absence or unwillingness to iterate that point is troubling to me. I think that would make people feel comfortable. It would also make people feel comfortable about foreign policy. I hear all the time concern about not Iraq, but that Iraq is just No. 1 on the U.S.’s list.
What about the response in the Arab world? Is there fear that once again, they’ve been told the cavalry is coming and once again they’re not sure if it really is going to show?
Arab rulers are nervous that we won’t go through with this. If we don’t go this year I don’t think the gulf states are ever going to let us come back. I’ve talked to Arab diplomats who’ve said, “Come May, we plan on opening an embassy in Baghdad. It’s just a question of who’s there to meet us.” The Arab states are really worried, wondering if this is going to be just another U.S. operation where we come in, beat up, and then just walk away. So much of the animosity in the Arab world is directed at a sense of our not having lived up to our promises … So many Arabs feel like Osama bin Laden, that all we do is back Arab autocracies that do nothing but demean, alienate and impoverish their own citizens. I think for the Arab states there’s a bigger question than what are we going to do about Saddam, it’s what is the U.S. going to do in the Middle East after Saddam is gone.
This administration hasn’t exactly embraced nation-building. Bush campaigned against it. And look at Afghanistan.
That’s true. But Colin Powell has hinted that this is a course the administration is thinking about nation-building inside Iraq, helping affect political and economic change throughout the region … We need to recognize the problems of the Middle East are much deeper than Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The problems have to do with the social and economic and political problems which have given rise to Al Qaeda and all these terrorist groups. And how we frame that is very important. We need to help the people of the region help themselves; it can’t be the U.S. coming in and imposing its will … I think they’re realizing we walked away from Afghanistan much too quickly. To me, Al Qaeda is a symptom of a bigger problem, which is the stagnation, the political and economic stagnation of the region, which creates the anger and frustration that bin Laden taps in to.
