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| MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? | |
 December 21, 1998 
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MARGARET WARNER: The combined U.S. and British bombing campaign was designed to cripple Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf said today that their warplanes had hit most of the strategic sites targeted in advance. For what the mission has accomplished in broader terms we turn to Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Adviser for President Carter. Welcome, gentlemen. Secretary Kissinger, what do you think was accomplished by this bombing campaign? |
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The recent bombing campaign. |
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MARGARET WARNER: But are you saying, from your own experience, you find these sort of bomb damage assessments and so on should be taken, what, with a grain of salt, or that it's very hard to really tell? HENRY KISSINGER: Well, they said they hit - or they destroyed the targets they set themselves. But I don't know what these targets were and I don't know what the strategic objective was. I, for example, have always believed one should go after the Republican Guard divisions, which are the basis of Saddam's rule. And I cannot believe that they could have been destroyed in three days. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think the campaign should have gone on longer? HENRY KISSINGER: If we undertook a campaign, it should have gone on long enough to achieve a politically definable objective. MARGARET WARNER: What's your sense, Dr. Brzezinski, of what this has achieved?
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| Bombing: the best alternative? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think that's better than the other alternatives. It's not a perfect policy, and we're going to have increased problems in doing that because I suspect that the international community is not going to be altogether sympathetic, probably increasingly critical. But just consider what our policy was until recently. One, it was to find every last weapon using the inspectors, and to construe the inability to find them as evidence that they exist, and we could never resolve that problem. And secondly, it was allegedly to remove him from office. And we can't do that without decisive action either to kill him or invading him by land. If, instead, our objective is defined as a degradation of his capacity to wage aggressive war, his capacity to wage aggressive war, then we can do that, and we can do it by a policy which I will describe as a containment plus compulsion, containment plus compulsion. MARGARET WARNER: What about that, Secretary Kissinger, do you see that emerging as a different kind of containment, containment plus compulsion? I assume you mean military compulsion?
MARGARET WARNER: What about that point? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Oh, I think it's a good point. And, as I have said, it's going to be increasingly difficult to sustain that policy, but the question is what is a better alternative - simply providing money to exiles in London to overthrow him is not going to work. Are we prepared to wage a land war to overthrow him? That's highly unlikely. It seems to me that containment, which means that if he strikes out against anyone, he's destroyed, has some credibility. It worked against the Soviet Union for many decades, a much more powerful country; it worked against China. Secondly, compulsion - compulsion means that if he starts building up his forces, we will try to destroy them -
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That may also give him an incentive after a while that if he doesn't, we begin to gradually lift the embargo. The point to make that important is that I think we have lost our sense of balance and proportion regarding Iraq. We talk of Iraq as if it was Nazi Germany. It's a poor, 22-million people country devastated by the embargo and the strikes. It is a problem and a nuisance; it's not a major world threat. MARGARET WARNER: Secretary Kissinger, do you agree with that point, that perhaps we've made too much of Saddam Hussein as a threat? |
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| Iraq as a threat. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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HENRY KISSINGER: They are not a major world threat; they're a major threat in the Gulf. They have attacked all their neighbors in various stages - not all simultaneously but at various stages - and the significant impact on world politics is the interpretation of the Gulf states, of the capability of Saddam, and, therefore, he doesn't have to threaten the United States directly to represent a major problem to us. As it is now, whatever mistakes may have been made, Saddam is symbolic of the inability of the United States to dominate the situation in the Gulf, and the longer he stays, the surer it will be that the other countries in the region will gradually lose confidence in the American ability to protect them. MARGARET WARNER: Let me go back to a question that Mr. Brzezinski raised. What is the alternative, in your view, to this containment policy?
MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Brzezinski, how troubling do you find the lack of support by many of our allies on the Security Council - the disagreements that have broken out - the French saying we have to review the sanctions we're seeing - the Russians pulling their ambassadors? |
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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, I'm not really troubled, let's say, by the criticism from China or from Russia because it's more related by other concerns. They don't like American global hegemony; they would welcome any opportunity to cut it down. I am much more troubled by the fact that our policy is likely to be resented intensely and increasingly so by the Arabs and the Muslims more generally, and by the Europeans, with the exception of the British. I take their concerns and their judgments somewhat seriously. I am also somewhat inclined to feel that their criticism of our hysterical approach towards Iraq, viewing Iraq as another Nazi Germany, Saddam Hussein as another Hitler is not without merit. I think we have lost our sense of proportion.
MARGARET WARNER: Secretary Kissinger, your take on the allied reaction both allies and other members of the Security Council and also in the region. HENRY KISSINGER: Let me say in reference to something as big as that, I think the Gulf states are sufficiently scared of Iran so that we don't have to preserve Saddam to maintain their friendship to the United States. Nor do I think this is this basis for a relationship. My take on the relationship between the European approach and our approach is the French in the way are taking a free ride on us. They would like to appeal to Arabs to not be satisfied. The other Europeans, I think, are reassured by our having taken a strong stand, but they probably don't like our tactics, but they've been nagging at us for 20 years on these - on these subjects.
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you. Secretary Kissinger, Mr. Brzezinski, thanks very much. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Thank you. |
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HENRY
KISSINGER, Former Secretary of State: Well, I find it difficult to judge,
not knowing what the targets were. I would be amazed if a three-day
campaign made a decisive difference, or if we can even precisely define
what we meant by weapons of mass destruction that we were going after,
so I think no doubt, Saddam was damaged. In the long-term, I consider
what was done inconclusive. 
ZBIGNIEW
BRZEZINSKI, Former National Security Adviser: Well, first of all, I
think it has reinforced American credibility. That credibility was at
stake because Saddam went up to the edge more than once; we went up
to the edge more than once; but we weren't willing to do something decisive.
This time we did. And I think that was important. Now, to be sure, we
cannot in a single strike destroy totally his war-making capability,
but we can certainly set it back. I was struck by the fact that the
British chief of staff in his summary report asserted that Saddam's
capacity for the reduction of weapons of mass destruction, for their
acquisition was set back several years. This may be an exaggerated claim,
but supposedly it was set back by six months. That's probably more than
these inconclusive inspections were achieving. In that respect, I think
it was important. It also permits us, I think, gradually now to define
more realistic goals. My problem has been that our goals towards Iraq
were unrealistic, unattainable. One was to find every single last weapon.
Well, how can you ever be sure of that? And secondly, it was to remove
him from office. And you can't do that without killing him or invading
him. If we concentrate on degrading his war-making capability, we are
achieving something. And I think in that respect it was a useful, though
not a conclusive, reaction to the problem that we confront. 
MARGARET
WARNER: And by degrading his - when you say that that's a useful exercise,
then would you - do you agree with, for example, Secretary Cohen and
other members of the administration have said, we're going to keep our
forces in the Gulf; we may go back and hit him again as the need seems
to be - would you support that? Do you think that's a wise move? 
HENRY
KISSINGER: I want to make clear that I supported the attacks when they
were launched, so the principle I have been in complete agreement with.
I have my doubts that this idea that we can go back periodically to
attack targets - on which intelligence - it's going to be extremely
fussy - it's going to be an unsustainable foreign policy for any length
of time, and, therefore, I tend to assess this operation as one shot
we had at the problem and that it was not - done with sufficient determination.
We have now given up the inspection system; we have committed to a kind
of containment that I think will be very difficult to maintain for any
length of time. And we did not do, in my view, enough damage to degrade
it for six months. It doesn't make any significant difference because
in six months to a year they will be back to where they are and we cannot
keep repeating these attacks. It's virtually on the basis of the evidence
that we will have - absent an inspection system. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Well, what about - 
HENRY
KISSINGER: Well, I think if we - I believe that once we resorted to
military force we should have planned a campaign that would last long
enough to at least impose some specific conditions on Saddam. For example,
a return of an inspection system under Saddam, ironclad guarantees,
it might have been degraded again over a period of months, but I think
the mere fact that he was forced to return the inspectors would have
been a humiliation. But I would have also hoped that if the campaign
were conducted long enough and if it were targeted on the ground forces
with which he maintains his rule, that sensible Iraqis might have concluded
that he's the obstacle to coexistence with us. Now we are sort in-between.
We did a three-day campaign, which no doubt did a lot of damage. But
I do not - I think we lost the opportunity we had three times during
the year to do something decisive, or at least to try to do something
decisive. 
It
is true that Saddam is a regional threat. But, in fact, we have already
punished him several times for attempting aggression. He's lost several
times, and we have the capacity to keep deterring him and punishing
him. And, in fact, to some extent he's even useful to us because it
enhances the dependence of the Gulf states and of Saudi Arabia and others
without protection, so it reinforces our position in the region; whereas
otherwise, the Arabs might be turning against us, in part because of
the Israeli conflict and so forth. So there's even some limited negative
utility in where he is. But I would insist on a policy of credible containment
and compulsion, because I don't think anyone has come up with an alternative
and indefinite bombing is simply not sustainable, especially once it
begins to inflict massive population casualties. 
At
the end of the day what will be decisive is what the situation in the
Middle East will be two to three years from now. If Saddam is still
there, if he's rearming, if the sanctions are lifted, we will have lost,
no matter what spin we put on it. If there is a - if there is a different
government in Baghdad, if it is living in some degree of coexistence
with its neighbors, then we will have achieved our objective, but it's
not something we can throw big phrases around. In my view, the most
likely outcome is that Saddam - sanctions will be lifted, Saddam will
gradually re-arm, and we will desist from carrying out repeated bombing
campaigns because the pressures will become too great. We should have
used the opportunity we had when we - when we had it.