Calculating an escalation's implications
By Peter G. Gosselin and Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff, 08/08/1990
ith his decision to order US warplanes and ground troops into Saudi Arabia, President Bush yesterday substantially raised the political and economic stakes in the West's faceoff with Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Bush, in ordering the deployment of US forces, is backing up the message he has been sending to Saddam Hussein since last week: The United States considers its national security at stake and is prepared to go to war to defend it. If US forces enter the Persian Gulf nation without a hitch, the move could ultimately tilt events in the West's favor, and force Saddam Hussein to retreat.
But if the move leads to armed conflict in which vulnerable oil installations and pipelines are destroyed, the results could be cataclysmic, even if the United States ultimately defeats the Iraqi forces.
"There is a high-stakes poker game going on here," said William J. Taylor, director of Political-Military Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And the president is hoping" that Saddam Hussein "will see the United States is willing to call his hand, whether he's bluffing or not."
If Bush has miscalculated, the action will likely result in the Iraqi president deciding to send his troops across the Kuwaiti border into Saudi Arabia.
Military officials are divided over whether the US air power dispatched to the scene would be able to repel the Iraqi drive before Saddam Hussein's battle-hardened troops establish control over the major population centers and much of its oil production facilities and fields.
Saddam Hussein is expected to be a far tougher foe than any other that US forces have met since the Vietnam War.
"This isn't Panama or Grenada here," said William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Much as he cast Panama's Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega as a drug lord and a threat to law enforcement, Bush has set up Saddam Hussein as a severe danger to the long-range economic and strategic security of the United States, as well as the rest of the world.
As with all military confrontations, the face-off with Saddam Hussein will provide a defining moment for George Bush's presidency. With his favorability ratings flagging in recent weeks, Bush's standing with the American public faces a severe test if the crisis turns into a long military confrontation.
And with the Arab world long suspicious of US intervention, Bush needs the support of the international community in order to confront Saddam Hussein. By getting the Saudis to allow US forces to establish a defense force there and by persuading the Egyptians and Moroccans to lend military assistance, Defense Secretary Richard Cheney was able to provide a veil of Arab assistance.
One factor that figured prominently in the decision to deploy US fighter planes and troops was a two-hour meeting that Saddam Hussein held Monday with the US charge d'affaires, John Wilson.
The Iraqi president, State Department sources confirmed, told Wilson that he intended to retain control of Kuwait. The meeting apparently helped convince Bush that direct action against Saddam Hussein was needed.
What Bush intends to do if Saddam Hussein does not invade Saudi Arabia but remains in Kuwait remains an open question. Bush has stressed that he is committed to restoring Kuwait's independence, but its viability is of far less strategic and economic importance to the United States than Saudi Arabia, and in the end Bush may have to seek some compromise with Saddam Hussein over it.
Of even graver significance to Bush is the safety of the 500 American civilians living in Iraq and 3,000 others in Kuwait. Bush has said twice during the crisis that the safety of American citizens was an issue of highest magnitude for him.
In addition to allowing the presence of a US force in their country, analysts said, the Saudis have almost certainly given their commitment to shut off a pipeline across their country, and to boost their production to help make up for the loss of Iraqi oil. The pipeline carries about half of Iraq's oil exports.
If the United States can make the agreement stick, analysts said, that it will drastically undercut Saddam Hussein by showing that Western nations can sustain a boycott of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil with relatively little economic dislocation.
An effective boycott of both Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil, which Saddam Hussein now controls, would stop the flow of 4 million barrels of oil day of crude oil to the West, or about eight percent of the world's daily consumption.
Saudi Arabia has enough excess capacity to make up about about 2 million barrels of that shortfall by increasing production, according to analysts. The United Arab Emirates, which is likely to follow the Saudi lead, can add another 300,000 barrels a day, and oil producers outside the Middle East, especially Venezeula, can add as much as 700,000 barrels.
Since the world had plenty of excess oil before the Iraqi invasion, analysts said that it could probably survive the remaining 1 million barrel shortfall without substantial dislocation.
In such circumstances, Saddam Hussein, whose nation is dependent on oil for 95 percent of its foreign exchange earning, would be under considerable pressure to seek a compromise.
"It would put us within striking distance" of rolling back the Iraqi invasion, said G. Henry M. Schuler, an energy specialist with the center for Strategic and International Studies.
However, Schuler and others warned that if US plans go awry, the results could be severe economic hardship both for the Persian Gulf and the rest of the world.
If, for example, Saddam Hussein reacts to news that US troops are on the way to the region by attacking Saudi Arabia, he could inflict severe damage on Saudi oil fields, which now produce more than 10 percent of the Western world's oil.
If the United States then retaliates with attacking Iraqi and Iraqi-held Kuwaiti oil fields, the result could be the loss of 10 million barrels a day of oil or 20 percent of the world's supply.
