The new war strategy against Iraq stems from the realisation that neither covert action nor regional proxies could transform the political geography of West Asia to suit U.S. and Israeli needs.
PERHAPS the worst-kept secret about the United States' intended war of destruction against Iraq is Israel's responsibility in setting a large part of the agenda. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose prosecution for war crimes under "universal jurisdiction" laws has just been cleared by a court in Belgium, recently made his wish list very public and very explicit. The occasion was a meeting in Tel Aviv with the visiting U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton. As one who has never hesitated to express his contempt for the very notion of multilateralism, Bolton's appointment to a high diplomatic position dealing with arms control is one of many unintended jokes played by the Bush administration.
Clearly delighted to be in the company of a kindred soul, Sharon was unconcerned about compromising the Arab regimes that are rendering logistical and material support to the U.S. war plans. Once the mission in Iraq had been achieved, he said, the U.S. should turn its attention to Iran, Libya and Syria. "These are irresponsible states," said Sharon, "which must be disarmed... , and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve." Bolton for his part, assured Israel that the U.S. would most certainly attack Iraq, after which it would turn its attention to Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Like the U.S. administration, which has differed publicly and fundamentally on the nature of the threat from Iraq, Israel also has heard a chorus of discordant voices recently. Just last August, the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), General Moshe Ya'alon, dismissed the threat from that quarter in an almost offhand manner: "Iraq's capabilities are shallow compared to what they were in the Gulf war. They are not capabilities which give me sleepless nights." There could always be a worst-case scenario of Iraq launching a "missile or a plane" in the direction of Israel, he said, "but we have good answers to that and the threat itself is limited".
The professional military assessment in Israel obviously was at variance with that of the political establishment. Just weeks earlier, Sharon had, in a testimony before a committee of the Israeli Knesset, described Iraq as "the greatest danger facing Israel".
Beyond the paranoiac fantasies of Sharon, the true dimensions of the threat facing Israel were identified by the Israeli National Security Council in 2002. In a classified report submitted to the government, the Council recommended that it was time for Israel - 54 years since its creation - to define its boundaries. The day is not far, it warned, when the area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean would be predominantly Arab. Rather than persist with a state of indecision, the Israeli government should opt for any one solution: a two-state situation where boundaries would be mutually agreed upon, a unilateral separation on the basis of Israel's own definition of its boundaries, or a single state of "Greater Israel".
The IDF chief had, as recently as August 2002, spoken of the demographic problem as one threatening the existence of Israel. "There is an existential threat to us. They (the Palestinians) feel they have the backing of a quarter-of-a-billion Arabs and they believe that time is on their side and that, with a combination of terrorism and demography, they will tire us out... " The ongoing Palestinian intifada, General Ya'alon said, was the most "important confrontation" that Israel has faced and victory would be achieved only when it is "burned" into the Palestinian consciousness that Israel would not be defeated by violence.
In an extended interview with The Jerusalem Post in September 2002, Sharon himself spelt out the directions in which he saw the solution emerging. Despite two years of the Palestinian uprising, which showed little signs of ebbing, he was "optimistic" and his foremost priority was to increase aliyah or the immigration of Jews from across the world. "We view it as our goal to bring another million Jews here in the next 10-13 years," he said. The states of the former Soviet Union, Sharon said, contained a million potential immigrants. But in dealing with a pointed question about the religious identity of the target population, Sharon fell back on a technicality: "They are Jews by definition of the Law of Return. I wish you had seen two days ago I hosted 80 soldiers ... They were absolutely Israeli. They came from all the units of the IDF... They are all from families without a Jewish mother. And they are now undergoing conversion." Put another way, Sharon's formula for dealing with the "demographic threat" involves the large-scale transfer into Israel of foreign populations of ambiguous religious affiliations, based on little else than - in his own words - "their spirit, and respect and patriotism and feeling of right for the land of Israel". It should occasion no surprise that Sharon accords these foreign elements rights superior to those enjoyed by the people settled for millennia on the "land of Israel". More germane in a practical sense is the fact that Israel's formula for dealing with the demographic threat is little else than a recipe for growing ethnic conflict and turmoil, even within those who nominally profess the Jewish faith. Territorial conquest would seem the only antidote for these ills of the Jewish nation.
THE whole strategy had been drawn up for Israel by a group of right-wing zealots in the U.S. as far back as 1996. A report prepared by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in July 1996 entitled `A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", has recently become an indispensable part of the effort to understand the U.S. war plans. Prepared as a briefing paper for the incoming Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the document also laid out certain well-rehearsed lines for publicly articulating the new policy directions. Thus, Netanyahu was advised to repudiate the Oslo peace accord and stake his claim to all of the land of Palestine in the following words: "Our claim to the land ... is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, ... is a solid basis for the future."
The malaise afflicting Israel as also the possible antidotes, were clearly identified by the authors of "A Clean Break". "Notable Arab intellectuals have written extensively on their perception of Israel's floundering and loss of national identity. This perception has invited attack, blocked Israel from achieving true peace and offered hope for those who would destroy Israel... Israel's new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by re-establishing the principle of pre-emption, rather than retaliation alone," the report had said.
There clearly are hints here of the U.S.'s new doctrine of "pre-emptive war". But more important is the manner in which Israel is advised to rearrange the political geography of West Asia: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which (then Syrian President Hafez) Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilise the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signalled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam."
Clearly, Syria is the main target. But rather than commence a frontal assault, Israel was advised to adopt a flanking manoeuvre through Iraq, since a "natural axis' with "Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the centre" would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi peninsula. This in turn would threaten the territorial integrity of Syria. The fundamentals of the approach to Iraq were outlined with remarkable clarity: "Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East (West Asia) profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites (of Jordan) in their efforts to redefine Iraq."
When "A Clean Break" was written in 1996, the U.S. was committed to extensive covert operations, some under the cover of the United Nations Special Commission supervising Iraqi disarmament. An uprising in Iraq's northern region failed spectacularly in 1995. And the following year, a coup attempt was uncovered and crushed by Iraqi intelligence.
Hussain, the Hashemite King of Jordan, lost much of his sheen following the collapse of the peace process with Netanyahu's assumption of power. And shortly before his death, Hussain's disinheritance of a brother and his anointment of a son as heir, further split the dynasty. "A Clean Break" was written as a guide to Israeli strategy until 2000. By the time the Palestinian intifada began in September 2000, it was evident that neither covert action nor regional proxies could quite transform the political geography of the region as required.
In November 2000, George Bush won the U.S. Presidency and brought three of the eight authors of "A Clean Break" into senior positions in the administration - quite apart from several others who found their way in from elsewhere in the same ideological fraternity. Sooner, rather than later, the U.S. had to re-enter the fray with its full arsenal of coercion and destruction. That moment has come now. And it is not Iraq alone that has reasons to be worried.
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