Contrary to reports, President Clinton is not inheriting a world of crises. He does not have to worry about Somalia. He can get out of there any time he wishes. He has no immediate worries about Bosnia. He can stay out of there for as long as he wishes.
He has but one urgent worry: Iraq. There is no way out of there short of capitulation, not the wisest way for a foreign policy neophyte to begin his presidency. Saddam's inaugural "cease-fire" notwithstanding, Iraq is Clinton's first crisis.Saddam's olive branch is extended only to the Clinton of Jan. 13, the one who indicated, before being corrected by his foreign policy team, that he would be willing to live with a reformed Saddam.
"I am a Baptist. I believe in deathbed conversions," Clinton told The New York Times. Someone should tell him what happened to the last famous Baptist to challenge a Middle East tyrant.
Saddam is trying to draw out Clinton. He is offering to call off his incessant cheat-and-retreat campaign and give Clinton a breather to concentrate on domestic affairs - if Clinton begins loosening the no-fly, embargo and inspection regime imposed on Iraq after the gulf war.
Clinton dare not do that, for it means the return of Iraq as a threat to the region, forfeiting the considerable, if incomplete, achievement of the gulf war in reducing Iraq from regional menace to irritant. Which is why the honeymoon with Saddam must end soon. When he realizes that the new American administration will not restore him the freedom he lost in the war, the testing of Clinton will begin.
Clinton had better be prepared. The worst thing he can do is repeat the feeble and flailing "proportionate" bombing runs of Bush's last days. It is easy to understand why Bush chose this response. He was afraid a massive attack would be interpreted as a parting act of personal pique.
He was afraid of leaving behind captured airmen as his final presidential legacy. He was afraid of rocking the coalition, reckoning that a moderate response would do less to weaken the resolve of such waverers as Egypt, Turkey and Russia.
Most of all, he chose as he did because, to the end, he had no strategy. Bush knew he had to do something, and, in the absence of any larger idea, he chose the least risky option. And the most ineffective.
Bush said the air strikes would send Saddam a "message." It did not work because air forces are not for sending messages. As Samuel Goldwyn (or his press agent) once said: "If you want to send a message, get Western Union."
The problem with proportionate response is that it leaves the initiative to the aggressor. Saddam knows what he risks with each provocation. That allows him to calibrate the effects of the next one.
Proportionate response thus has the perverse effect of encouraging rather than deterring further provocations. It is an invitation to escalation, the folly of which we should have learned in Vietnam.
Colin Powell was in Vietnam. Which is why he believes in the use of overwhelming force. That is the essence of the Powell Doctrine, which proved itself in Panama and the Persian Gulf. It is demonstrably the best way to make conflict cheap, brief and successful.
If Clinton wishes to avoid four years of endless, nail-biting brinkmanship with Saddam, he must return American policy to the doctrine of disproportionate response. Saddam must be made to pay a heavy price for violating the U.N. sanctions - not just for individual plays of his cheat-and-retreat game. He has to be told unequivocally to allow U.N. inspections, stop the blockade of the Kurdish north and remove his threats to allied aircraft. And that violations will bring him ruin.
Ruin of two kinds: attacks on military installations (Republican Guards, weapons facilities) or on physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, power plants). Not a 15-minute raid, but a recapitulation of the opening days of Desert Storm, a promise to set back the physical reconstruction of Iraq by months or years. Challenge the rules of the cease-fire and we turn out the lights in Baghdad.
Won't that fray the coalition? Bush's futile tit-for-tats have already frayed the coalition without any effect on Saddam. The coalition will fray with every attack. That is a reason to make each one count, not to squander what coalition cohesion still exists.
It is not Clinton's fault that Bush has left him a mess in Iraq. But it was not Nixon's fault that Johnson left him a mess in Vietnam. Excuses, however, are no excuse. Saddam will challenge Clinton. Clinton will have but three choices: tacit capitulation, gradual escalation or massive retaliation. His only hope of success is the last. Anything less and Saddam gets out of his cage. Then we have no choices.