Now that the United States, Great Britain and most other members
of the EU seem convinced that the time has come to disarm Saddam
Hussein by force, this past weekend saw our French and German
friends attempt yet another gambit that they say is designed to
slow down the U.S. “rush to war.” According to reports in the
European press, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder plan to
introduce a resolution this Friday (when Hans Blix is due to report
once again to the Security Council) that will call for a tripling
of weapons inspectors, increased surveillance flights and even the
use of U.N. troops to support Blix’s team.
The question arising on this side of the Atlantic, as expressed
by Secretary Powell last weekend: Is this what the French and
Germans mean by “serious consequences” (the wording in U.N.
Resolution 1441) for Saddam Hussein’s continued foot dragging in
complying with that resolution’s terms?
If so, it is a most curious position in light of the original
construction of the UNMOVIC inspections team and French, German and
Russian contributions to its configuration. Almost to a man the
former UNSCOM inspectors have stated that the only inspections
regime with a ghost of a chance to discover Iraq’s WMDs — in the
face of a police state committed to thwarting such inspections —
would have to be virtually indistinguishable in size from a
military occupation of a country the size of California. When
UNMOVIC was put in to replace UNSCOM, the U.S. had wanted the far
more aggressive Rolf Ekeus, former head of UNSCOM, to head it up
along with a goodly number of his former inspections team. At the
insistence of the French, Germans and Russians, however — and with
the backing of Baghdad, naturally — the more pliable Dr. Blix was
chosen and a less technically capable but more politically correct
team of inspectors assembled.
It’s safe to assume that Chirac and Schroeder, with Vladimir
Putin joining the chorus, have now agreed to terms they initially
rejected merely to forestall the removal of Saddam Hussein. And if
one can take at face value the remarks of Saddam’s former bombmaker
Khidhir Hamza,
writing in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the French
and Germans, if not the Russians, had considerable economic
interests in providing Saddam with nuclear technology in addition
to their well-documented oil interests. In its cynicism, the
Franco-German demarche comes down to a bald-faced attempt to string
out the process. The assumption is that the U.S. cannot keep the
type of force it has assembled on hold indefinitely, not with
spring and summer weather making the prospects for action much more
difficult.
Our wayward European friends, in short, are hoping that we and
our other coalition partners will get tired, that the failed
inspections and ineffective sanctions of the '90s will return, and
that they can go back to protecting their economic interests with
Saddam Hussein as before. When the archives of the Baath Party are
opened up following Saddam’s ouster, one has to wonder what
“serious consequences” they’ll end up facing.
