A way out

Reading the statements coming out of the White House for the past week, one has to wonder what the administration's real goals are in Iraq and world politics in general. The administration now says that it can accept nothing short of regime change in Iraq, and damns Iraq even for its acts of compliance. This policy sets up perverse incentives, creates dangerous precedent, and prevents peaceful resolution of conflicts.

Taking the hard line on Saddam made sense before, even if your only goal was to get Iraq in compliance with UN regulations. When Saddam is faced with the threat of violence, he will respond by cooperating with inspections. He will perhaps only cooperate enough to live one more day, but at least it's getting somewhere. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust the White House's opinion that Saddam's gestures are merely token. He has agreed in principle to destroy 120 missiles deemed illegal by the UN, and has actually destroyed 16 already. He revealed new "proof" that support his claims that he has destroyed biological and chemical weapons, and has promised.

The White House's response was to criticize even Saddam's gestures of compliance. Spokesman Ari Fleischer said today, "He denied he had these weapons, and then he destroys things he says he never had. If he lies about never having them, how can you trust him when he says he has destroyed them?" Saddam's good behavior should receive praise, however temperate, just as his bad behavior should be punished. This would encourage Saddam in the future to reveal and destroy more weapons. If he sees that disarmament may actually get him somewhere, then he will be more willing to work with the US and the UN.

But if regime change is the policy, then Saddam has no incentive to comply. If he does comply, he will be in a weaker position to fight off a US attack. The White House has then given a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US says, "We want regime change because Saddam will never comply with inspections." Saddam, seeing that regime change is the policy, is reluctant to disarm, thereby fulfilling the American prophecy, and making war inevitable.

Any policy that makes war inevitable has to be a bad one. Part of the genius of JFK's resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that he gave the USSR a way out of the conflict without losing credibility. To resolve the standoff in Iraq, the US would have to give Saddam some room to disarm while saving face with his neighbors and people. But at this point the Bush administration itself has no way out. Right now, Bush needs war. He has ridiculed inspections too much to decide that they have been successful. He has doubted Saddam too much to change his mind based on new proof.

The Bush administration, as well as others from all sides of the political spectrum, do not want Saddam to save face, they just want him out. Not because of his breach of UN Security Council resolutions, but because of his disregard for human rights and the borders of his neighbors. This kind of missionary zeal sets a very dangerous precedent.

As Canadian prime minister Jean Chretein said, "If you start changing regimes, where do you stop? Who is next?" The question is an important one. Saddam Hussein is far from the only horrible dictator in the world today. Even after a century that saw the creation of more democratic governments than any other, democracy is still the exception rather than the rule.

Besides that, we have political alliances with many countries that are decidedly despotic, all over the world. To cut those ties would be to lose valuable allies. Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said of Rafael Trujillo, a Caribbean dictator and US ally, "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

This could accurately describe many of America's allies, from the Middle East to Asia to Latin America. The problem is, there are lots of sons of bitches in power all over the world, and there's not much we can do about that. Clinton tried in Haiti and Somalia to get fairly weak, ineffective sons of bitches out of power and had a hell of a time of it. The US military was able to force the Taliban out of power after some doing in Afghanistan, but there has been no democratic revolution or dramatic institution building in Afghanistan since. Very soon what will be left are our sons of bitches.

The principle of sovereignty may be bothersome to some, because we may not like what others do with their own sovereignty. We may not like the way other countries treat their own citizens. But sovereignty deserves respect nonetheless. Without it, international law falls apart.

Saddam Hussein needs to be presented with an incentive structure that rewards disarmament and cooperation, and punishes covert behavior and aggressive acts. To do that, the principle of Iraqi sovereignty should be acknowledged and respected. In that case we may both find a way out of the standoff.