War with Iraq: the US position

By RUPERT CORNWELL

WASHINGTON - The bellicose talk in Washington about a pre-emptive strike to topple Saddam Hussein masks a furious debate inside the Republican party.

Its outcome will determine the fate not just of the Iraqi dictator but, most likely, of the system of managing international relations which has operated for half a century. It boils down to this: can America act unilaterally, or must it first win the support of key allies and the blessing of the United Nations?

That Saddam should be removed is accepted on all sides. The question is how – and the argument lays bare the familiar fault line within the Bush administration.

It divides the unilateralist hawks, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, from more cautious moderates, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell and embracing the military brass and a host of Republican foreign policy mandarins, among them James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser respectively to the first President Bush when he launched the war to drive Saddam from Kuwait.

The Cheney/Rumsfeld school bases its argument on America's overwhelming military might. On its own, the US can defeat Iraq with no trouble; and once it makes clear it is going to do so, other countries will have no choice but to fall into line. Going through the UN and trying to secure the return of weapons inspectors just plays into the hands of Saddam the master-prevaricator.

Don't worry about the doubters, says Mr Rumsfeld – they wobbled in similar fashion before the 1991 Gulf War, before the 1999 Kosovo war, and before last year's campaign to overthrow the Taleban. Yet each time, US power swept all before it, with minimal casualties. The same will happen in Iraq, sending beneficial shock waves throughout the Arab world and beyond.

The moderates share the basic premises of the hawks. They agree Saddam is a menace to his region, that he is in violation of a clutch of UN resolutions, that he has used weapons of mass destruction before, that is he pursuing them now and that, should he obtain a nuclear weapon, he will employ it as a means of blackmail. While it is hardly likely Saddam would commit suicide by attacking the US directly, they acknowledge the danger he could quietly make chemical, biological or nuclear weapons available to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

What worries them is the aftermath if the US goes it alone. Mr Baker frets about the damage to America's traditional alliances and its international image. Gen. Scowcroft warns of a tide of anti-Americanism, more damage to the dwindling prospects of an Arab-Israeli settlement, and a possible unravelling of the anti-terror coalition.

Both insist a new mandate from the United Nations, or at the very least a sincere effort to obtain one, is the minimum requirement before the US goes to war. Gen. Powell shares these concerns though he has yet to voice them in public.

Which leaves the man who must make the fateful decision – President Bush himself. There can be scant doubt his instincts are with the hardliners. He never wastes an opportunity to call for 'regime change', the euphemism for military intervention in Iraq. He knows that war has been the reason for his sky-high approval ratings, lower now but still healthy for a President in mid-term. He knows also that to climb down now would damage his credibility and hand a moral victory to Saddam. If the sabre is rattled without effect, it will have to be unsheathed.

But even Mr Bush's tin ear for what he scornfully dismisses as "the nuances" must be alive to the problems that would follow even a successful US intervention: a new surge of anti-Americanism, fuelling the hatred of Islamic extremists and would-be terrorists, the need for not just the "nation-building" that Mr Bush detests in Iraq, but for a physical American presence in Baghdad, probably for years.

And can the sputtering US economy withstand the surge in oil prices certain if, as President Mubarak of Egypt warns, the entire Middle East descends into chaos? Reassurances on oil supplies indeed were almost certainly Mr Bush's top priority in his talks last week with the Saudi government.

Against the odds, the moderates may yet win the argument and prevail upon Mr Bush, for once, to eschew black-and-white and accept the world for the grey thing it is.

- INDEPENDENT