THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100382
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: My Turn
SOURCE: BY STEVE YETIV
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
In a ``Frontline'' special on the Gulf War, Britain's Margaret Thatcher wondered aloud who really won the Gulf War.
In reality, the past five years show that the war, while producing some messy and unfortunate results, succeeded in many respects that need to be understood.
Operation Desert Storm and post-war United Nations inspections of Iraqi nuclear and military sites accomplished otherwise unachievable tasks.
Prior to the war, the International Atomic Energy Agency consistently rated Iraq's nuclear compliance as ``exemplary.'' Recent information, however, confirms that Baghdad was far closer to producing nuclear weapons than imagined.
The 1991 Gulf War and post-war U.N. inspection teams stopped all known activities toward the production of such uranium, and derailed Saddam's crash program to build a bomb by April 1991. Had economic sanctions against Iraq been extended one more year, Desert Storm troops may well have faced a nuclear-armed Iraq.
Furthermore, we now know that Saddam had loaded anthrax and botulin on nearly 200 bombs and warheads and began dispersing them to bases during the war. Botulin alone is 10,000 times more powerful than the agent used in the subway attacks in Japan.
While Iraq retains the intellectual infrastructure to mass-produce biological weapons, its program is under permanent monitoring, a result of the Gulf War.
Iraq also lost an estimated 2,633 tanks of 5,800, 2,196 artillery pieces of 3,850, and 324 fixed-wing combat aircraft of an estimated 650-700.
A U.N. resolution mandates full disclosure of all of Iraq's ballistic missile stocks and production facilities (over 150 kilometers' range), all nuclear materials, chemical and biological weapons and facilities, and cooperation in their destruction. Saddam's post-war efforts to rearm have been stymied.
At the international level, Desert Storm clearly enhanced American regional credibility - the currency of regional power politics. While the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and the Iran-Contra scandal, seriously undermined American credibility, Desert Storm made clear that America could protect regional security.
Desert Storm also stripped Arab nationalist and radical states of a logical military alternative to the peace process. And, for the first time since Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser's threat against Yemen in the 1960s, Israel and key Arab states had a common enemy. This bizarre commonality of interests helped bring them together.
Without the war, Iraq would probably now be nuclear-capable, and politically and militarily threatening, as it was prior to the war, and the region would not be enjoying a peace process. Observers who argue that the war failed need to explain how such a Middle East would be better than the one we see today.
While Saddam may or may not be on the ropes, he is certainly constrained by them.
Despite the pressures of some of its allies, the Unites States should insist that the U.N. ban on Iraqi oil, which deprives Iraq of an estimated $7 billion to $20 billion a year, remain in place. This will help ensure that Saddam does not once again get into the military business big-time and that the Gulf War continues to haunt him into the future.
Otherwise, the Iraqi dictator will probably return to fight another day and Hampton Roads will again be called on to play a big role on the other side of the globe. MEMO: Steve Yetiv is an assistant professor of political science at Old
Dominion University, and a research affiliate at Harvard's Center for
Middle Eastern Studies. His first book, ``America in the Persian Gulf,''
was published last year.
by CNB