Marching Towards a High-Risk War in Iraq

I start from the point that I believe the coming war with Iraq is a very bad idea, from which we should step back if at all possible. But it seems almost impossible that the Bush administration will turn around and decide against war. He has gone way too far out on the limb and would be humiliated if he thought better of it and retreated (although he should, since the one thing worse than embarrassment is persistence in a dangerous strategic mistake).

But nothing will stop war now except a coup d'etat in Baghdad, and maybe not even that - the coup would need to eliminate the whole upper stratum of the Baath regime, and serve up all Iraqi scientists in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs to get full revelation of locations of Biological Weapon (BW) and Chemical Weapon (CW) stocks, laboratories, production and testing facilities so the whole infrastructure can be eradicated. Regime change in itself would not guarantee elimination of WMD, and without a radical change of regime, there is no assurance that Iraq's WMD would not be reconstituted once the initial cleansing or occupation of the country are finished. But a good-enough coup does remain the one hope for avoiding war - a slim chance, but maybe ten to fifteen percent odds that it will happen?

The main issues now are:

1. What will strategy be in war?

2. How long will operations take to complete the invasion and elimination of Baath regime and Republican Guard fighting forces?

3. How will the country be occupied, for how long, with what consequences?

4. What risks require special attention and precautionary countermeasures?

No point in trying to predict exactly how Gen. Tommy Franks will prosecute war tactically, but a big question is whether it will be one lightning push on the ground after the initial air attacks, which will probably last at least several days, or there will be two phases, as some press reports suggest - initial penetration, then a pause to reinforce and build up a conventional armored offensive if the Iraqis don't crumble immediately.

If all Iraqi forces crack at the outset, and there is general military collapse allowing nearly unopposed entry to Baghdad, many risks will be lower. This is possible, but not highly probable - the American ground forces being deployed to the theater are far smaller than in 1990, and without allied forces of consequence as there were then. The US Army is not enthusiastic about daring, unlimited operations with limited forces. Few experts expect the regular Iraqi Army to fight effectively, if at all, but many believe the Republican Guard units, or a reasonable portion of them, and the Special Republican Guard, will fight, and that if they burrow into the cities, rooting them out will be highly destructive.

If the American advance to Baghdad is not done in one fast, unrelenting phase, disorienting the Iraqis completely and moving faster than they can react, it will be harder for Iraqi commanders who want to surrender to do so, or to disobey orders to launch chemical or biological weapons, if they have Baathist political commissars sitting at their right hands, ready to put a bullet in their heads.

If the resistance within Baghdad is effectively organized, it will not take massive numbers of loyal Republican Guards to force house to house fighting and prolonged carnage, like what we witnessed in Israeli operations in Jenin but on a much wider scale, which will erode support for the invasion the longer it goes on, and give Saddam Hussein, hunkered down in his bunker like Hitler in April 1945, time to contemplate ordering his best parting shot - use of WMD in the region or inside the USA, if he has managed to pre-position agents and bacteriological weapons for retaliation.

Once war is over - and it will be over within very few months at the outside - how will occupation proceed? Iraq is a vast country, with many contending ethnic, religious, tribal and political groups, and no history of democracy to draw on for institutionalizing reform (unlike Germany and Japan in 1945). If chaos is to be prevented once the lid kept on by Saddam Hussein is released, US forces will have to be obtrusive and active, and clearly in charge of ruling the country for some time. The idea that some exiles can be flown in to set up an effective functioning government, with minimal direct American involvement, is fanciful. And if Al Jazeera and other media show consistent images of American uniforms running the country, for a long time, predispositions to believe the worst about American imperialism, and animosity in the Arab world, may be confirmed.

But how will we staff and fund a serious occupation that forces Iraq to be free, a la 1945? We have not been doing too well in Afghanistan, where the American-installed President Karzai is known derisively, but unfortunately, accurately, as the "Mayor of Kabul." With burgeoning budget deficits here at home, and allies who have no interest in paying for what they didn't want us to do anyway, we are likely to do it on the cheap. And where will personnel come from? One estimate I've heard was an occupation force of 75,000. That's a very significant portion of the whole US Army, which is stretched thin in deployments around the globe already. Perhaps we can get the UN or NATO to take over the job, but we can't count on that, and how well will we expect them to perform if they do? Better than in Bosnia, Cambodia, or elsewhere that peace-keeping operations have had a mixed record to say the least?

If we handle these risks, on the other hand, by settling for a quick and limited occupation, what will we have to show a year or so after we leave? And how confident can we be that what comes after will be so benign that the war to oust Saddam may not come to seem quixotic?

How do I estimate odds of various outcomes? I have no confidence in an estimate. There are too many imponderables, things that could go either way. But I have a hunch about the odds for three general outcomes from good to awful. I would say:

There's a thirty percent chance that the whole business will be as successful, quick, and clean as optimists in the Bush administration hope (as the first, much more limited Persian Gulf War was a dozen years ago). In this case: short war, with little combat and only modest destruction and casualties, no Israeli intervention, relatively effective occupation, and rooting out of WMD infrastructures, outrage among the world's Muslims contained and dissipating quickly, and decent steps toward political construction (not "re" construction, since no one should want to reestablish any political system that has existed in Iraq before), with no chaotic disintegration, warlordism, civil war, or establishment of new dictatorship.

There's a fifty percent chance that war will be messier and much more costly than optimists anticipate, but that we will get out of it without intolerable disaster: War that lasts weeks or months, with bloody urban combat, high casualties and collateral damage, political upheaval in much of the Muslim world, further diplomatic and political damage to US alliances, limited use of CW against US forces but not elsewhere, high expenditures, and botched occupation that's too obtrusive or the opposite - too brief and weak, leaving the country to wallow in disorder and strife, or to revert to brutal dictatorship.

There's a twenty percent chance of real catastrophe: Use of biological weapons against Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or cities here in the USA (the underestimated threat about which I wrote an article in Foreign Affairs two months ago), with American civilian casualties in the tens of thousands; overthrow of conservative governments in Egypt, Pakistan, or other critical states in the region, and their replacement by radical anti-western regimes; transfer of Iraqi WMD to terrorist groups, as Saddam is going down; a dramatic upsurge in recruiting for al Qaeda; simultaneous war or wars in Korea and Kashmir, as local tensions get out of control while contestants try to take advantage of US distraction in the Middle East; or other disasters.

If these hunches are correct, the good news is that the odds of catastrophe are not very high. The bad news is that they are still too high.