Can Sanctions Still Do The Job?

By Bruce W. Nelan

One of the draft resolutions Congress considered but did not pass last week called on President Bush to postpone military action against Iraq and give sanctions time to work. That is the approach most senior Democrats on Capitol Hill favor, along with a significant portion of the U.S. public and some of the other 27 countries arrayed against Saddam Hussein in the gulf. Said Senate majority leader George Mitchell: "I don't think we should go to war. I believe that the correct policy is to continue the economic sanctions."

The U.N. Security Council last Aug. 6 ordered all member states to cut off trade and financial dealings with Iraq. Only nine days later, George Bush said in a speech at the Pentagon, "Sanctions are working." But last month Secretary of State James Baker was telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "They haven't worked." Behind this seeming flip-flop were differing interpretations of what it means for sanctions to work.

In one sense -- the ability to damage Iraq's economy -- the embargo and blockade are undeniably working. Iraq is especially vulnerable to sanctions; its foreign-exchange earnings depend almost entirely -- some 95% -- on oil exports, and shipments have been shut off, depriving Baghdad of more than $1.5 billion in sales every month. Its imports of food and industrial goods have also been squeezed to less than 10% of the quantities Iraq consumed before its invasion of Kuwait last August.

Historically, economic pressures have failed more often than they have succeeded. Usually they were too narrow, like those imposed by the U.S. on Poland after martial law was declared in 1981, or poorly policed, like the U.N. oil and arms embargo directed at South Africa. But the sanctions against Iraq are more potent than any since World War II, says Gary Hufbauer, a professor of international finance at Georgetown University. Everything moving in and out of the country is affected, and much of the world is participating. Observes Hufbauer: "This is isolation of magnificent proportions."

The most authoritative Administration evaluation of the effects so far has come from CIA Director William Webster, who predicts that Iraq's military effectiveness will begin to decline between July and the end of the year as spare parts are exhausted. Iraq, he said, should run out of foreign-currency reserves by spring, "leaving it little cash with which to entice potential sanctions busters" to run the blockade.

Patrick Clawson, a resident scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, is convinced that the Iraqis "will be in desperate straits by the end of 1991." There is general agreement among civilian experts that the sanctions will inflict severe damage in one to two years. But Clawson adds, "We're seeing a slow deterioration, not a collapse."

This is where the ambiguous word working takes on another meaning. The U.S. and its coalition are not seeking simply to punish Iraq by destroying its economy. They have pledged to force Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. It is impossible for anyone on either side of the debate to prove that slow deterioration, no matter how prolonged, will accomplish that objective. As the U.S. learned recently in its dealings with Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, even wide-ranging sanctions may not coerce a conscienceless dictator.

By increasing food production, tightening rations, cannibalizing spare parts, shifting factory production to high-priority items and producing domestic substitutes for certain imports, Saddam is extending his ability to wage war. After an eight-year battle with Iran, Iraqis are accustomed to shortages and improvisation. "They can take a lot of economic punishment yet," says Michael Dewar, deputy director of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. Saddam has already announced that his armed forces have first claim on resources.

At his congressional testimony last month, Webster added that in spite of the damage sanctions were doing, there was no guarantee that they would be sufficient to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. In the midst of last week's debate, he repeated his assessment in a letter to House Armed Services Committee chairman Les Aspin.

"Even if sanctions continue to be enforced for an additional six to 12 months," the CIA director wrote, "economic hardship alone is unlikely to compel Saddam to retreat from Kuwait or cause regime-threatening popular discontent in Iraq." An additional six to 12 months of sanctions, Webster added, would "diminish" the defensive strength of Iraq's air force and produce a "marginal decline of combat power" in its armor and artillery. But the ability of Iraqi ground forces to defend Kuwait "is unlikely to be substantially eroded."

Time, or the lack of it, is the key factor in the White House's new evaluation of sanctions. If it were not, a sustained blockade would eventually significantly weaken the Iraqi military and possibly even touch off a coup against Saddam. But the U.S. must worry about the steadfastness of its allies. France is already breaking ranks with Washington in its effort to put together a deal that might tempt Saddam. Moscow's support is open to question now that Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has announced his resignation and the military high command, where many have long been partial to Iraq, is regaining clout. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria are nervous about keeping so many U.S. troops in the region indefinitely. The entire coalition could come unglued if the sitzkrieg continues much longer.

Other problems add to the time pressure. Kuwait is being looted and terrorized; its existence as a nation is in danger. Saddam is fortifying the conquered territory with concrete bunkers and fire trenches, and improving his chemical and biological weapons. Even if there is no war, the deployment of American forces in the gulf is expected to cost $30 billion this year, and every country in the world that imports oil is paying a higher price for it. Even the best of troops cannot be kept on prolonged alert in such inhospitable terrain without losing their combat readiness.

If the decision is made, in spite of these considerations, to wait and see what sanctions could do, the next step would have to be rotation of U.S. troops out of the region. Their numbers would have to be cut to just enough to deter an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. That kind of pullout would give Saddam a propaganda windfall by enabling him to claim a great victory over the foreign invaders. Once again, he could say, the Americans lacked staying power. After a year or two, even if Iraq's military strength has deteriorated badly, Washington could find it politically difficult to mount either a multinational or a unilateral attack on Iraq.

Sanctions were imposed last August because they could be put in place quickly and were a necessary first step in responding to Saddam's aggression. Bush pledged from the beginning that the occupation of Kuwait "will not stand," and repeatedly refused to exclude any options, including military force.

But Bush's initial rhetorical enthusiasm for sanctions and his engineering of a burst of U.N. resolutions convinced many people in the U.S. and elsewhere that he thought economic pressure, combined with the threat of force, could do the job. They were understandably startled when he almost doubled the size of the U.S. force in the gulf last November. But that military momentum and the Security Council's deadline of Jan. 15 for an Iraqi retreat probably make any further discussion of the utility of sanctions academic. Time has just about run out.

With reporting by William Mader/London and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington