UNDER HEAVY pressure from the United Nations and its Arab neighbors, Iraq pledged on Monday to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors immediately and without conditions. Although Iraq's newfound desire to cooperate with the United Nations is certainly a welcome development, weapons inspections alone are unlikely to resolve the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. If Hussein is indeed a reckless leader with destructive intentions, the threat he poses will be resolved only through his removal from power.
In the face of growing international support for war, Iraq's readmittance of the inspectors is less likely a good faith effort to comply with the United Nations than an attempt to forestall conflict with the United States. If Iraq's true intention was to reassure the world that it possessed no weapons of mass destruction, it would have allowed U.N. inspectors to finish their work years ago, rather than persistently defying the United Nations and suffering crippling sanctions as a result. That Iraq has resumed cooperation only under threat of war suggests that it has weapons to hide and will offer only as much cooperation as is necessary to avoid war.
Iraq's readmittance of U.N. inspectors is more likely a calculated attempt to divide the United States from its allies and preempt the passage of a more comprehensive U.N. resolution which would authorize war in the event of Iraqi non-compliance. Many nations acknowledge the threat posed by Hussein's regime, but are reluctant to support war against him. The resumption of weapons inspections will provide these nations with an illusion of security and allow them to avoid the difficult decision to support America in its bid for regime change.
Iraq's cooperation also may be designed to convince the Security Council that a forceful new resolution demanding the return of the inspectors is unnecessary. Such a resolution, discussed last week by several Security Council members, likely would demand the inspectors' unfettered access to suspected weapons sites and authorize war in the event of non-compliance. By agreeing independently to the return of the inspectors, Iraq can control the terms of inspections and avoid the threat of immediate violence should it decline to cooperate in full.
But even if Iraq's intentions could be trusted, it's unlikely that renewed inspections would prove conclusively that its weapons programs have been dismantled. The four-year absence of inspectors from Iraq has given Hussein ample time to conceal his weapons programs and it is doubtful that even a thorough inspection team now could search enough sites to confirm their destruction. The inspectors' task will be further complicated by the fact that some weapons programs (particularly biological) are inherently difficult to locate, as they require little infrastructure and rely largely on equipment with legitimate civilian uses.
But the most significant barrier to the success of renewed inspections likely will be Iraq's insistence, articulated in a letter to the Secretary General, that inspectors respect its "sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence." These conditions seem reasonable at first glance, but inevitably will hinder inspections which are, by their very nature, infringements on Iraq's sovereignty and political independence. Iraq likely will use these provisions to restrict inspectors' access to sites deemed important to national sovereignty, rendering the whole project useless.
Inspections, then, likely will not disarm Iraq completely and conclusively. But even if they did, they would not resolve the threat posed by Hussein's regime. Factories and laboratories are an important part of Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, but the most significant part of any weapons program is organization and technical expertise. Unless inspectors plan to arrest the scientists and administrators involved in Iraqi weapons programs, they can delay, but not prevent, Hussein's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
Still more disconcerting is the possibility that inspectors might certify the disarmament of Iraq and allow the lifting of sanctions which have thus far prevented Hussein from fully reconstituting his weapons programs. With vastly increased oil revenues and easy access to previously forbidden equipment, Hussein could rebuild his weapons programs and pose a renewed threat to his neighbors or perhaps the United States.
If Hussein is truly the reckless aggressor we believe him to be, his destructive capabilities are less important than his destructive intent. A one-time dismantling of his weapons programs, however comprehensive, will not be sufficient to resolve the Iraqi threat if Hussein retains the desire and ability to reconstitute those programs.
If we believe that Hussein poses a serious threat to international security, the only immediate solution is his removal from power. Such a project is not without its risks, but must be undertaken if Iraq is ever to rejoin the international community without threatening it.
(Alec Solotorovsky is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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