Tribune, 25 January 1991
It was unnecessary to go to war to secure Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Sanctions would have worked had they been given more time, and the United States and Britain should not have closed the door to a negotiated settlement.
But now that war has started, there is little point in rehearsing last week's arguments. The priority now is to bring the war to an end as soon as possible.
How, though, should this be done? The government, the Labour leadership and most of the media believe that the best way is a vigorous military campaign against Iraq until Saddam Hussein withdraws from Kuwait.
And, because of the apparent success of the initial American-led air bombardment, achieved with few casualties among allied forces, a large majority of the public agrees with them.
But Desert Storm has not been quite the success it was at first claimed to be. The allied onslaught has failed to destroy Iraq's airforce, airfields, chemical and biological warfare capability, Scud missiles and launchers, crack ground troops or command-and-control infrastructure. (The corollary is that it is now difficult to believe that the bombardment did not cause many civilian casualties.) Iraqi forces are well dug in and have started a scorched earth defence of Kuwait, setting fire to the first of the country's several hundred oil-wells.
It is likely that, far from being an easy and painless business, securing military victory against Saddam Hussein will be protracted, bloody and environmentally disastrous even if the conflict conti nues to involve only its current protagonists and does not go chemical or nuclear.
The longer the war goes on, the" more likely it is that Iraq will use chemical and biological weapons. If radicals in Iran have their way, Saddam could fmd himself with a powerful ally. If he drags in nuclear-armed Israel, the prospects for death and destruction are almost beyond rational contemplation.
Politically, the war has already had profound consequences, nearly all of them grim. Now that the Americans owe Hafez Assad a favour in return for participation in the anti-Saddam alliance, the Syrians can look forward to hegemonY in the Lebanon for the foreseeable future.
Similarly, the Israelis can expect substantial rewards from the Americans in return for refraining from immediate retalliation against Iraqi Scud attacks.
Meanwhile, Saddam has become a hero of the dispossesed (and a role-model for the politically ambitious) in the Arab and Islamic worlds, the first leader in years to dare to stand up to the United States and Israel.
Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise. In this context the fact that some form of peace conference on Israel and Palestine after hostilities have ceased is now almost inevitable is not without its problems.
So is getting Saddam out of Kuwait by force worth the cost? He is a brutal, criminal despot.
His invasion of Kuwait was an act of aggression which the international community was absolutely right to seek to reverse.
It is irrelevant at this stage to point out that Britain and America have refused to enforce international law, against Saddam or any other aggressor, when it was not in their economic interests, or that Saddam was armed and aided for years by the world's major powers. Past failure to deal with despotism and aggression does not justify abstention today.
It is, however, an entirely different matter to argue that liberating Kuwait justifies the slaughter of thousands, environmental catastrophe or spreading war to the whole of the Middle East – particularly if there is a chance, however slim, of securing Iraqi withdrawal and averting death and destruction.
At present the chances are slim indeed. On Monday, Saddam rejected a Soviet proposal for a ceasefire followed by withdrawal from Kuwait, arguing that the Americans were the aggressors and should be made to agree to a ceasefire first. America and Britain have repeatedly rejected all calls for a ceasefire.
But diplomatic efforts have not ceased. A ceasefire plan from the Non-Aligned Movement, currently being put together frantically by Iran, Yugoslavia, Algeria and India, just might have a different fate.
Such an initiative should not be dismissed out of hand as allowing Saddam time to regroup and resupply: a ceasefire need not necessarily be permanent, and even if he has weathered Desert Storm better than the Americans hoped, he knows that the allies are serious about removing him from Kuwait and that he must lose any war.
Not to explore the possibility of a ceasefire is to risk a massive human, political and ecological disaster. It is extraordinary that the Labour leadership is prepared to take the risk.
