Show business: the Administration's show of force in Iraq may turn out to be a show of something else

National Review, March 9, 1998 by Peter W. Rodman

Mr. Rodman, an NR senior editor, is director of National Security Programs at the Nixon Center in Washington and a former White House and State Department official.

IN his news conference February 6 with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Clinton deliberately narrowed the political objective of any military campaign (at that point hypothetical) against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. A military effort, he said, could realistically seek to "substantially reduce or delay" Saddam's programs for building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. More ambitious objectives, however, like toppling Saddam's regime or even compelling him to halt his obstruction of the UN inspection team, were not realistic, Mr. Clinton's aides explained. Desirable, but probably not within the reach of a military strike.

One reason for this, unstated by the White House, was that the scope of the planned military blow was being scaled back. Disgruntled U.S. military sources complained to the Washington Times that the White House was planning only a three-day air campaign targeting suspected sites related to Saddam's chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs (including some of the notorious presidential "palaces"), as well as other military facilities, and tanks and armored vehicles of the elite Republican Guard. The White House had ruled out targets where attacks could inflict greater pain, such as the barracks of the Republican Guard or of Saddam's large security detail, or the headquarters and homes of the political leadership. Cruise missiles launched from ships or B-52s would be used, as well as F-117 stealth fighters, but not the heavier-payload B-2 stealth bombers.

"The White House is only interested in putting on a show," grumbled one military source. Said another, "This is turning into a political, not a military option."

The inhibition is not an accident, but a matter of doctrine. The Clinton team has consciously revived the idea that limited, "political" uses of force are an effective instrument of policy. Liberal academics during the 1960s had developed a philosophical rationale for limited and incremental uses of force, which they believed would convey determination to an adversary while minimizing the dangers of escalation in the nuclear age. This theory of "graduated pressures" and "controlled escalation" was notably tested in Lyndon Johnson's 1965 bombing of North Vietnam -- with abysmal results. The real lesson -- indeed, one of the most important lessons of Vietnam -- was that incrementalism conveyed hesitation rather than determination, inhibition instead of implacability.

But Les Aspin, Clinton's first Secretary of Defense, rejected this lesson. On a Sunday talk show in March 1993 he explained his idea of how military power should be used: "You take the thing one step at a time, you pursue the policy. If that doesn't work . . . well, then, you have to look at the issue again. . . . [W]e take it a step at a time and see where we end up." In his confirmation hearings, Aspin had said straight out that with the end of the Cold War, the critique of incrementalism no longer applied. With the Soviets gone, he said, we need not fear a loss of global credibility if we backtrack after a tentative step.

Of course, the critique of incrementalism had very little to do with the Soviets. It had much more to do with the resilience, stamina, and sheer bloodymindedness of Third World dictators like Ho Chi Minh (or, more recently, Mohammed Aidid in Somalia, or Radovan Karadzic in Bosnia). Having come up through a tougher school than Harvard, these thugs were not impressed by the subtleties of escalation theory. They easily figured out that the limited application of American force probably meant a limited American commitment. (Fear of provoking the Soviets may well have been one of LBJ's excuses for hesitation in Vietnam -- an excuse now removed by the Cold War's end.)

Though Les Aspin has passed on, the Aspin Doctrine is still alive. If Saddam rebuilds his deadly weapons, "we would be prepared to act again," said national security advisor Sandy Berger on February 8 --intending to show determination. But the present policy so far looks like a reassertion of the traditional liberal-Democratic impulse to use military force on the cheap. It is the Bay of Pigs syndrome, the syndrome of Jimmy Carter's Desert One raid that had to be aborted for want of helicopters. It is the dream of accomplishing military objectives "surgically." Just as in 1965, whatever the analytical patina, we are seeing a liberal-Democratic Administration that is still psychologically uncomfortable with the use of force.

Whether to send Americans into combat is the most anguishing decision that a President ever has to make. But the real choice is either to do it, or not to do it. As Henry Kissinger often remarked, doing it hesitantly -- and magnifying the risks of failure --doesn't take the moral curse off it. On the contrary, we are committed, our only imperative -- moral as well as strategic -- is to prevail. For airstrikes to sway Saddam, they must shock him; their power and brutality must far exceed his expectation. Otherwise, he'll just treat it as a cost of doing business.