Monday, Oct. 01, 1990

Who Lost Kuwait?

By Bruce W. Nelan

Behind the steel curtain of Iraqi tanks and guns, occupied Kuwait is losing its national life. The uniformed invaders who declared the tiny country a province of Iraq are systematically destroying what remains of its identity, pillaging its economy and brutalizing its people. Everything of value, from furniture to computers to uprooted traffic lights, is being shipped to Iraq.

In the process, Saddam Hussein is remaking Kuwait's demography to suit himself. Thousands of fleeing Kuwaitis have been allowed across the border into Saudi Arabia and replaced by an influx of Iraqi civilians. Government records are being carted off or burned; soon it will be hard to prove who is or is not a Kuwaiti.

At the Khafji crossing point on the Saudi-Kuwait border last week, air- conditioned Mercedes-Benz and other late-model sedans lined up by the hundreds. Their passengers told stories of beatings, looting and nights full of gunfire. While there is still food in the shops, they said, rationing had begun, and Iraqis had first claim on all supplies. Other refugees told of shootings, explosions and summary executions of suspected resistance fighters.

As the "Iraqization" of Kuwait becomes bloodier, it raises a serious question for the U.S. and its allies: Even if the international effort succeeds in forcing Saddam out, what will remain of Kuwait? Meanwhile, full- scale finger pointing has begun in Washington on a related question -- whether the Bush Administration did enough to prevent the invasion of Kuwait in the first place.

By July 28, five days before Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait, U.S. reconnaissance satellites had spotted the logistical preparations for an offensive. The CIA and Pentagon quickly changed their estimates of an attack from possible to highly likely. The White House and State Department, however, clung to the view that Saddam was only trying to frighten Kuwait into territorial concessions and refused to accept that intelligence judgment.

On Capitol Hill last week, Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, reminded Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly that he had defended the Administration's conciliatory policy toward Saddam as late as July 31, two days before the invasion. Kelly had also said the U.S. was not bound by a defense treaty with any gulf state. "You left the impression," said Hamilton, "that it was the policy of the U.S. not to come to the aid of Kuwait."

At the State Department there were suspicions that the Administration's preferred scapegoat might be Ambassador April Glaspie, who left Baghdad for Washington the day before the invasion. At a meeting with Saddam on July 25 she told the Iraqi President that George Bush "personally wants to expand and deepen the relationship with Iraq." She assured him that "we don't have much to say about Arab-Arab differences, like your border differences with Kuwait. All we hope is that you solve those matters quickly."

Some in Washington have argued that Glaspie's enunciation of U.S. policy might have seemed a nod and a wink in the Middle East style, giving a green light to Iraqi action. But Saddam indicated that he had already formed a judgment on the limits of U.S. power. "The nature of American society," he told her, "makes it impossible for the U.S. to bear tens of thousands of casualties in one battle."

Saddam probably based his opinion as much on U.S. actions over the past decade as on anything Glaspie said. He had watched the U.S. withdraw from Lebanon after its embassy and Marine barracks were truck-bombed in 1983, benefited from Washington's tilt toward Iraq in the war with Iran, and noted the relative lack of outrage against his use of chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds. He apparently concluded that he could invade Kuwait and face little more than formal protests from the U.S.

The Iraqi leader was encouraged in that belief by an American policy toward Baghdad that Democratic Representative Tom Lantos of California last week called "obsequious" and "based on fiction and fantasy." The fiction, as Bush concedes, was that "there was some reason to believe that perhaps improved relations with the West would modify his behavior." Bush and Baker, neither of them expert in Middle East affairs, were advised to pursue that course by their moderate Arab friends, especially Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Hussein.

The policy of stroking Saddam was, until this year, popular in Congress as well. Representatives from farm states pushed for billion-dollar commodity credits for Iraq, and many leaders on the Hill supported the theory that Saddam could be wooed into gentility. Senators flew to Baghdad to chat with him. Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, advised him that his problem was simply his bad image in America's "haughty and pampered press." Howard Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, told Saddam, "I am now aware that you are a strong and intelligent man and that you want peace."

In light of the invasion, Bush says, it can be argued that U.S. policy did not "make much sense." It is painfully true, as Kelly put it, under intense congressional questioning last week, that "it did not succeed." But that does not necessarily mean it was illogical. There are only two basic ways to deal with a rogue nation -- isolation (the stick) or involvement (the carrot) -- and the argument over which path to pursue is unending.

During the early days of detente, Henry Kissinger argued that wrapping the Soviet Union in a web of agreements and exchanges would drain off its belligerence. Ronald Reagan believed in "constructive engagement" to break down the apartheid regime in South Africa. Bush refused to freeze contacts with China even after the massacre of students in Beijing.

None of those choices was an unmixed success. But the effort to pull hostile governments into cooperative relations is still under way. Washington is trying to find common ground with Syria and Iran. It is a good bet that one day there will be postmortems on the wisdom of those attempts.

With reporting by William Dowell/Cairo, Dean Fischer/Dhahran and Christopher Ogden/Washington