by John J. Schulz and Ehsan Ahrari
Knight Ridder-Tribune
BOSTON - As every graduate of the U.S. armed forces command and staff schools or the more advanced and selective war colleges knows: It is easy to get into wars, and darn hard to end them.
More important, at the badly misnamed National War College in Washington, D.C., where students are taught to think long and hard about how to avoid war by first considering all the other instruments of statecraft (and how to most wisely advise national political leaders in times of crisis), the key questions endure: What are the ends you hope to achieve? What means to you have to achieve those ends? What are the consequences?
As President Bush builds a crescendo of national and international consensus for its plan to topple Saddam Hussein, he seems to be ignoring these critical questions.
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For one thing, the most ominous similarity between post-Taliban Afghanistan and Iraq after Saddam is the high potential for both to disintegrate into smaller entities along ethnic or factional lines. This would create chaos of unimagined proportions in the surrounding areas.
The Kurds are known to have aspirations for an independent or semi-independent territory of their own, which is a highly unacceptable to Turkey. The central part of Iraq would emerge as a stronghold of Sunni Muslim Arabs. Shiite Muslims in the areas contiguous to Iran would either seek a separate state or try to integrate with fellow Shiites in Iran. Iraq's Arab neighbors would intensely oppose both options.
The United States could occupy Iraq until all these complications are sorted out.
But the American people might not support that, especially as the bills for that mount. Also, no one seems to have found an acceptable alternative to Saddam.
Besides, America's role as a "kingmaker" is likely to create automatic opposition in Iraq - who wants a puppet ruler? That aside, once Saddam is removed, the United States will be faced with the major task of "nation-building," for which the Bush administration has very low regard.
Thus, there is no guarantee that the United States would want to hang around in Iraq to "nation build" once Bush's cherished objective of toppling the much-hated current regime was achieved. Strategic consequences and ramifications aside there are grave global economic consequences.
Translation: O-I-L.
Bush officials are not oblivious to this issue, nor are American oil entrepreneurs - and neither is Saddam. If he is certain of his imminent removal or demise, in all likelihood, Saddam's "Samson option" will be to destroy a big chunk of his oil reserves, or lob missiles toward the Kuwaiti or Saudi oil fields, especially if one or both support America's military action.
The immediate outcome will be oil shortages. President Bush last November ordered that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to be filled to its full 700-million-barrel capacity. This reserve is billed as our "first line of defense" against curtailed oil supplies in a crisis.
The total current SPR inventory is 578.4 million barrels, as of August 2. Now, as the public rhetoric makes war against Iraq almost a certainty, a full-capacity SPR would create a major cushion against any U.S. supply shortfall - but only in the United States. Bush's decision of last November was clearly aimed at avoiding the mistake his father made in the 1991 Gulf War, when he waited until that January 1991, as we launched our offensive, to announce his intention to fill the SPR.
The oil market reacted to the loss of Kuwaiti oil, and prices temporarily shot up to $40 per barrel. This time, potential shortfalls are being addressed to minimize potential psychological shocks to the U.S. economy. But our economy is not in great shape, and even "minimal" jolts could have major effects.
Perhaps it is time for President Bush to have a long discussion with a graduate of the elite National War College. His name is Colin Powell. He knows the right questions, and about alternative instruments of statecraft, and why they matter. His wise counsel might save us much in blood, treasure, regional chaos, and our relations with reluctant allies all over the world.
John J. Schulz, international communication professor at Boston University, taught two years at the National War College. Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst.
