Iraq blinds Bush to world picture

By PAUL G. BUCHANAN

Ye shall reap what ye have sown" goes the saying. In the case of United States foreign policy, there is a significant possibility that what is harvested will be bitter fruit.

The desire of the Bush Administration to recast the global political landscape in an image more favourable to the US, using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the justification for unilateral military intervention against hostile states, has blinded it to some of the complexities of the current world scene.

Consider three areas of US foreign policy concern: Venezuela, North Korea and Iraq.

Clearly enough, the US has had its fill of Saddam Hussein and sees his removal as a priority.

Amid the bellicose bluster coming out of Washington, the justification for his forced ouster resides in the belief that the intersection of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism is a matter of when, not if, and that it is most likely to occur sooner rather than later in Iraq if Saddam is not removed from power.

Hence, whether or not the UN weapons inspectors find evidence of WMD stockpiling in Iraq (and many believe that they will not, since intelligence analysts believe these were moved to Syria well in advance of recent UN security council resolutions), the US is determined to show Saddam the door at the point of a bayonet in order to install a pro-Western secular regime that will open up its oil reserves to the US and its allies.

That will allow the US to move troops from Saudi Arabia to Iraq to buffer against Iran while simultaneously reducing tensions over the infidels' presence near Islamic holy sites such as Mecca (as well as reducing Saudi control over Opec price-fixing). Whether or not this is a pipe dream, the pre-positioning of troops and materiel suggests that the assault on Iraq will begin in mid-February at the earliest.

But complications have risen as a result of US policy towards two other countries. In April the US supported an abortive coup against the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, whose major crime was to employ populist rhetoric and to rail against the petroleum oligarchy that controlled political power from 1958 until 1998. Although that coup failed and left the US embarrassed and exposed, the coup-plotters were encouraged by the US support and in early December 2002 began a general strike to force Chavez from office that is now into its sixth week.

This has crippled Venezuelan oil exports, of which 13 per cent go to the US market. Without that supply, US retail prices have increased sharply, and worse yet, the US may have to dip into its strategic oil reserves if it is to prosecute the war on Iraq while the Venezuelan crisis remains unresolved.

The irony is that it is a US-backed disloyal opposition that is complicating US strategic calculations, and its nemesis Chavez who would like to resume normal oil production and exports.

For its part, the timing of the North Korean decision to resume plutonium reprocessing and withdraw from the International Atomic Energy Association was brilliant. A year ago it was named part of the Axis of Evil even though it had no provable links to al Qaeda and in fact was engaged in a delicate rapprochement with South Korea on normalising relations between the two states.

Seeing that the US was using a variety of justifications to force regime change in Iraq over UN objections, the North Koreans undoubtedly calculated that they would be next on the US hit list.

Rather than wait for such an eventuality, the regime in Pyongyang took the opportunity of recent South Korean elections that saw a US critic elected to the presidency, as well as of the fact that the US was fully occupied with its war preparations in Iraq, to announce its renewed nuclear aspirations.

Caught off-guard, the US has seen its hypocrisy on weapons of mass destruction rendered transparent, since North Korea is a far worse weapons proliferator and nuclear menace than Saddam. (Recall that about a month ago a shipment of North Korean missiles destined for Yemen was intercepted by Spanish and US forces and then let go.)

Moreover, the US bluff was called to the point that it has been forced to negotiate a nuclear weapons for economic aid swap rather than threaten the North Korean regime with war. Since North Korea and Iraq are trading partners in weapons as well as other goods, the North Koreans may well have done Saddam a favour by complicating the picture.

More importantly, it exposes the lack of thought and contingency planning in post-September 11 US foreign policy planning.

The larger issue is that most of this mess is of the US' own making.

In not working through multilateral channels, in ignoring or bypassing the UN and the requisite diplomatic niceties of protocol and sovereignty, it has produced a backlash as well as worldwide unintended results.

In the meantime Osama bin Laden remains at large and al Qaeda is undefeated.

With the future of Iraq very much an open question even if Saddam is ousted (since both Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis have expressed desires for partition and independence, much to the dismay of Iraq's neighbours), the entire thrust of the US approach to international affairs needs a major review before, rather than after, the assault on Saddam is launched.

* Paul G. Buchanan is a former US defence department analyst and consultant who lectures at the University of Auckland.

Herald feature: Iraq