Raising The Ante

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Everyone still hopes no one has to go to war against Iraq. But the only chance of avoiding it -- perhaps -- is to scare Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The only way to do that is to threaten war louder than ever and mean it -- and get into position to fight, not just defensively if Saddam is mad enough to start anything further, but offensively if need be to force him out. That was the essential meaning of President Bush's high-volume announcement last week that the U.S. is sending new forces to the gulf, perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 more, nearly doubling the size of the deployment.

The purpose is, quite explicitly, to give American commanders the offensive capability they have so far lacked and that Saddam knows they have lacked. But the buildup does not necessarily bring war closer. Bush was explicit about that too. Maybe, just maybe, the reinforcements will finally make Saddam beat a retreat. Besides, the biggest U.S. deployment of forces since Vietnam won't be ready to fight until January at the earliest. That gives everyone an additional two months to mull over the options.

Sound confusing? Well, not as much as it may seem. Almost from the start of the gulf crisis, the U.S. has been pursuing a two-track policy. On the military side, a well-armed coalition of nearly 317,000 troops is threatening Iraq with war if Saddam does not pull his forces out of Kuwait. On the diplomatic side, these same allies have imposed a tough economic embargo that they hope brings Saddam to his senses -- and to a peaceful resolution of the crisis -- first. But, as Bush tried to make clear this week, it is impossible to have one without the other: Saddam has to believe in the war threat if diplomacy is to have a prayer.

Nor have the forces arrayed against Iraq retreated from the fundamental objectives Bush outlined in early August: unconditional and complete withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government, release of all foreigners held hostage and restoration of the security and stability of the Persian Gulf. The confusion lies in how and when these objectives might be reached and at what cost. No wonder many Americans echo the question posed to Secretary of State James Baker last week by a lonely G.I. in the Saudi desert: "Mr. Secretary, why are we here?"

The President went some way toward answering that this week, marking the end of a worrisome period of muddle and vacillation. Bush and close aides decided on the expanded buildup more than two weeks ago, but waited to announce it until the elections were over and the Saudis and other allies could be informed. The basic reason for the timing, says one of Bush's top advisers, is that "it's still not clear that Saddam Hussein is taking us seriously." The Iraqi dictator, he says, is acting as if time were on his side -- and he might be right. So Bush decided he had to send "a very strong signal, another strong signal" about American determination. He went to the White House press room himself to announce the major reinforcement of U.S. forces that Pentagon officials have been predicting for three weeks. The new deployments will roughly triple the firepower confronting Iraq. Moreover, Bush finally dropped the fiction that the deployment was "purely defensive." The new buildup, said the President, is intended specifically to give U.S. commanders "an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary" -- in blunter words, the ability to dislodge Saddam's forces from Kuwait.

But that was not Washington's only message last week. Baker was hustling from capital to capital, making sure that all was well on the diplomatic track. His mission was several-fold: to keep the alliance firm behind the assertive U.S. lead, to reassure the allies that the U.S. intended to give diplomacy every chance, and to sign them up for a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if all else fails. Baker returned from his eight-day, seven-country swing through the Middle East, the Soviet Union and Europe with more -- if at times somewhat cautious -- backing for U.S. policy than ever. The wavering Soviets, who have been contradictory in their signals, declared, however reluctantly, that they recognize war may indeed be necessary. Though no one would say it in so many words, the U.S.S.R., China (whose Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, Baker met in Cairo) and France indicated that they would at least not veto a Security Council resolution approving the use of force. But the allies generally made it clear that such a resolution is a sine qua non if they are to go into battle alongside the U.S.

The week was a good one for Bush, underscoring as nothing else has since early August his determination to fight, should that be the only way of reversing Saddam's aggression. Almost up to Election Day, Bush had been talking war and peace in such quick alternation, sometimes in the same speech, that allies and the American public alike were bewildered. One can only guess at the effect on Saddam. Bush announced that he had "had it" with Iraq's treatment of American diplomats in Kuwait, but later added, "I'm not trying to sound the tocsin of war." He also said that "we're prepared to give sanctions time to work" but that for Iraq the "sand is running through the glass." Which implication was authentic; which was for public relations consumption? And by whom?

To one Arab diplomat in Washington, these pronouncements meant that "Bush is building a one-sided case for war." To an official of Israel's governing Likud Party, the same words signified that the U.S. was getting cold feet. Said he: "The longer Bush waits, the harder it will be for the U.S. to go to war." At home too the President faced growing demands to spell out whether he was in fact taking the nation to war and, if so, for what goals.

Even now the ambiguity remains. At his press conference, Bush was asked point-blank, "Are you going to war?" Said the President: "I would love to see a peaceful resolution to this question."

Administration officials insist that any impression of confusion or vacillation is unfair. Since the crisis began in early August, the President has been consistent about his bottom line. Says one White House official: "We thought our message was simple enough, that we'd like Saddam to withdraw peacefully but that we will kick him out if he doesn't. But we've learned that that's too complicated for most reporters to understand."

That, in turn, is unfair: there are real reasons for confusion. If the President has been clear about his fundamental goal, his shifting messages about how to achieve it have bewildered many. Yet ambiguity is an essential part of diplomacy in managing a crisis this complex. Especially when dealing with an adversary like Saddam, whose future intentions are hidden, and with allies whose own interests are so different, the U.S. needs to keep a variety of signals afloat. Part of the message must sound unavoidably paradoxical: the best hope of avoiding war is to scare Saddam by making a credible threat of waging it, and the only way to make such a threat credible is by really meaning it.

But Washington also seems genuinely undecided on some points, notably when and on what evidence it might conclude that the embargo has failed and war should be the next step. Some experts insist that the sanctions are working; others contend it will take months to a year or more before their effect is felt. Who really knows? And are they saying what they know?

Nor is Bush the ideal President to articulate such an ambiguous policy. It's hard to tell when he's being clever and when he's plain inarticulate. Bush, says one White House aide, "figures people should leave him alone to do what he decides is best. His attitude is 'This is very complicated. You just wouldn't understand.' " An Administration official adds that whether the White House on any given day stresses its hopes for peace or its willingness to fight sometimes "has been determined by the President's mood or the questions he gets."

The biggest trouble, however, is that the U.S. is obliged to beam conflicting messages to different audiences: Saddam, America's allies and its own public. Saddam, in Washington's analysis, is a paranoid thug to whom force is everything. To him the message can only be that he must pull out of Kuwait because the only alternative is the destruction of his power and perhaps his life. But the allies are reluctant to see the Middle East go up in flames, and so are the Americans whose sons, husbands and brothers -- or daughters, wives and sisters -- might be killed. The message to them has to be that the U.S. will turn to war only after exhausting every possibility for a peaceful settlement.

The latest military message, said Bush, is aimed mainly at Saddam. Up to now, there has been something of a mismatch between American words and muscle. The old scenario of a quick victory through devastating air strikes with little or no ground fighting is no longer widely believed. But the forces on the scene, while fully adequate for their original mission of defending Saudi Arabia, are not numerous enough or armed heavily enough to mount a successful offensive.

For weeks the Pentagon has been positioning itself for a big buildup. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had suggested repeatedly that he needed as many as 100,000 more soldiers, sailors and airmen to reinforce the 220,000 already on station. Now the U.S. deployment will grow to at least 380,000. Adding 96,900 Saudi and other allied troops, total forces may for the first time match or outnumber the 430,000 Iraqi troops estimated to have dug in in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

More significant than numbers for offensive purposes is armament. About 1,200 tanks are to be moved from Europe to Saudi Arabia, more than doubling the 800 now there. Says a Pentagon colonel: "The U.S. will have close to numerical equality with the Iraqis in heavy tanks."

Paradoxically, the buildup postpones the day of reckoning. Originally Washington experts predicted fighting would start around mid-November -- just about now. But it will take eight to 10 weeks to transport the new units to Saudi Arabia and get them acclimated. So war is unlikely to begin before January at the earliest.

The U.S. can use the time to line up more support from its allies. Some nations in the anti-Iraq coalition have been sending signals at least as conflicting as Washington's. Different members of the Saudi royal family have talked like impatient hawks and worried doves; France has contradicted alliance policy by asserting that Saddam need only promise to withdraw from Kuwait, not actually do it, to open negotiations; Moscow has alternately called a military solution "unacceptable" and "possibly unavoidable."

The common element in all this waffling is that the allies quite reasonably fear the war they know may be necessary. Arab governments, for example, are well aware that an unpunished Saddam is a deadly threat to their continued existence, but they are uneasy about the sympathy the Iraqi President has won among some of their own people and about being allied to Israel's biggest backer. They need reassurance that the U.S. is following a measured policy of steadily turning up the pressure on Saddam rather than dragging them along on a headlong rush into battle. As hawkish an ally as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared last week in an interview with the New York Times that the coalition should hold off on fighting at least two to three more months to give the embargo time to work.

In particular, alliance members have made it clear that they will not join the U.S. in fighting Iraq unless they get the political cover that would come from a Security Council resolution specifically authorizing the use of force. November is the month to do it, because U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering is president of the council and in control of its agenda. The presidency rotates to Yemen next month and then to Cuba, and both have consistently refused to support anti-Iraq resolutions.

An uncomfortable chance remains that messages will get crossed. Some allies may conclude from the buildup that the U.S. is hell-bent for war. Or Saddam may read the need for the U.S. to hold off for a while in order to bring the allies along as a sign of weakness. The G.I.s in Saudi Arabia would rather fight now, get it over with and go home than continue to wait in an inhospitable desert. If discontent with Bush's policy ever becomes rife inside the U.S., it could begin with these troops and spread to civilians impatient with the game of feints and threats.

! For now, public opinion still seems solidly behind Bush. But he risks eroding that support when he muddles explanations of his policy. He has declared, for example, that he would be willing to accept a peaceful settlement in which Saddam withdraws from Kuwait with his military intact. Yet the President has also compared Saddam to Hitler, who is identified in the public mind as a ruler so vicious that the only solution is to destroy him. Critics charge besides that any settlement permitting the Iraqi dictator to stay in control of an army equipped with chemical, biological and eventually perhaps nuclear weapons makes nearly impossible the restoration of stability and security in the gulf area -- a restoration that the President has declared is an important aim.

Bush has also failed so far to answer effectively the antiwar critics who are becoming more outspoken: demonstrators hoisting placards reading NO BLOOD FOR OIL now turn up at nearly every presidential appearance around the country.

In fact, the rationale for war goes beyond oil. The showdown with Saddam is a test case of whether the international community can contain unprovoked aggression in the post-cold war world. If the Iraqi dictator gets away with his seizure of Kuwait, the precedent will be set for other aggressions and other wars, some of them potentially nuclear, started by any nation that wants to alter the map of the world by force. American public opinion so far seems to understand this intuitively, but without much help from the President. He will have to do better than that if war comes -- and there is no more reason now to expect a peaceful solution than there has ever been. The message to the American public is every bit as important as those the Administration is trying to beam at Saddam and the allies.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame and Bruce van Voorst/Washington, and J.F.O. McAllister with Baker