WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE

[Rich Winkel]

** Written 7:50 am Aug 4, 1991 by nytransfer in cdp:mideast.gulf **

Via NY Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683

GULF WAR COSTS & CONSEQUENCES

WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE
by Nic Maclellan and David Spratt

The following is the text of a booklet `Winning the war, losing the
peace: Costs and consequences of the Gulf war' which will be published
as a 36pp A4 booklet on 21 June 1991 by Alternate News Service, PO Box
275, Carlton South 3053 Australia. Copies are available at $A5.00
(single) inc. postage or $A4.00 (inc postage) for ten or more. David
Spratt tel:61-3-4811507 fax:61-3-4822008 peg:dspratt

PREFACE

Popular support for the war against Iraq was founded on the most
extensive media control and disinformation system yet constructed to
justify a war. And it worked. Some of those who had been active in the
antiwar movement were confused or immobilised; some embraced UN
sanctions and collective security; others jumped the fence to welcome
George Bush's rhetorical `New World Order' and have not been heard of
since.

The propaganda onslaught, a general lack of information and
understanding about the Middle East, and the orientalist discourse about
Arabs in the West, were significant problems for the popular movement
that rose in opposition to war against Iraq.

At the horrific conclusion to the conflict, many in that movement
seem dazed, even politically paralysed, by the speed and totality of the
American victory. This is partly due, even some time after the war's
end, to the lack of detailed information about what happened in the
lead-up to and during the war.

This booklet is an attempt to bring together such information. It
does not deal in any detail with the processes of information control,
Australia's involvement in the war, the public debate in Australia, or
the role of the antiwar movement. Nor does it discuss the historical
roots of the conflict except in a cursory manner. Instead we have nar
rowed our focus to documenting aspects of the build-up to the war, the
war itself, and its aftermath.

We hope that by so doing, some who may have felt disempowered at the
war's end may feel less so. The antiwar movement did not stop the war,
but the costs and consequences of the conflict reaffirm that we were
right in our opposition.

INTRODUCTION

`Isn't it great to be an American in these wonderful times.'
George Bush

The much vaunted `liberation of Kuwait' ushered in the `New World
Order' of peace and stability, respect for national rights and
international law, underpinned by a new-found faith in human rights and
the democratic way. Or so say the military victors of the war, an unholy
coalition led by the United States and including Australia, with the
diplomatic sup port of states including the Soviet Union and China.

Early in the conflict, President George Bush told us that `United
States forces are in the Gulf to defend American values'. In his State
of the Union address, the US President proclaimed, `What is at stake
is... a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in a
common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and
security, freedom and the rule of law'. But the rhetoric of victory, of
liberating Kuwait, of order on the international stage, cannot mask the
enormous human, political and environmental consequences of this con
flict.

Kuwait has returned to the feudal monarchs, Iraq's civilian and
military infrastructure has been deliberately destroyed, the Kurds are
the victims of superpower cynicism, burning oil wells pour millions of
tons of carbon into the Greenhouse layer and the Palestinians remain
hidden victims of the war. The fundamental problems of the Middle East
-- the regional arms race and Western intervention, the Arab-Israel
conflict, and the legacies of colonialism -- remain unresolved. The war
and its consequences will cost, directly and indirectly, up to one
thousand billion dollars (1).

The simple, indeed simplistic, themes put forward by Western
propagandists to justify military intervention in the Gulf were not
subject to fair public analysis during the war. In the postwar victory
euphoria, little has changed.

A UNITED NATIONS WAR?

`The US has a new credibility. What we say goes.' George Bush,
speaking at a US military base, 2 February 1991.

The crisis brought together an international coalition opposed to
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The invasion was condemned as a breach of the
principles of the United Nations Charter, and the coalition went to war.
Coalition leaders claimed that this was a United Nations war, sanctioned
by the UN Security Council after a series of twelve resolutions that
included the imposition of economic sanctions on Iraq. The imposition of
sanctions on 6 August allowed no space or time for a regional peace
process, and ignored Chapter VIII and Article 52.3 of the UN Charter(2).
The sanctions and naval and air blockade of Iraq were steps in an
escalating drive towards war, rather than peace, and for this reason
were opposed at the outset by a minority in the antiwar movement,
including the authors of this paper.

The moves initiated by the Bush administration culminated in
resolution 678 of the UN Security Council, which set the deadline of 15
January for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, and opened the way for the
use of `all necessary means' to enforce the Security Council
resolutions. Resolution 678 was passed without reference to Article 42
of the UN Charter, which calls for a consideration of the effectiveness
of sanctions before the prospect of military intervention is invoked.

The United States prevented, for an extended period, any serious
consideration of the issues, or other forms of mediation, by the
Security Council, especially in the period from the passing of
resolution 678 on 29 November 1990 to the passing of the ceasefire
resolution on 3 April 1991. The United States refused, at any time, to
discuss the UN flagging of the intervening military forces, insisting
that they remain under American command. In effect, the UN resolutions
allowed the USA to claim legitimacy under international law for a war it
constructed and commanded, for its purposes and according to its
strategic and regional doctrine. It is not the first or the last time
that the UN has been used in this way. The USA was determined to go to
war -- an Iraqi backdown or withdrawal before 15 January was seen by the
Bush administration as `the worst case scenario'(3) -- and effectively
prevented any peaceful resolution inside or outside the UN. The war was
not a UN war, rather a UN-sanctioned war.

When the war began, it was US President Bush, not UN Secretary-
General Perez de Cuellar, who announced to prime-time television
audiences that military operations had begun. As fighting escalated, it
was clear that the United States, not the United Nations, was running
the show. The UN Secretary-General stated clearly: `This war is not a
classic United Nations war in the sense that there is no United Nations
control of the operations, no United Nations flag, blue helmets, or any
engagement of the military staff committee. What we know about the war,
which I prefer to call hostilities, is what we hear from the three
members of the Security Council involved -- Britain, France and the
United States - which every two or three days report to the Council
after the actions have taken place.'(4)

The UN Charter sets out procedures for the peaceful resolution of
conflicts, which were not followed. Neither were the systems required to
be established if the UN is to be involved in military operations:
Article 46 of the Charter stipulates that `plans for the application of
armed force shall be made with the assistance of the Military Staff
Committee', but there was no UN military command established. Some
analysts also suggest that China's abstention in the crucial vote on
resolution 678 fails to fulfil the requirement of Article 27, which
states that `decisions... shall be made by affirmative vote of 9
members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members'.

Almost all members support the view that the UN should intervene in
only international disputes because most would be seriously embarrassed
by scrutiny of their own human rights records. When the Kurds of
northern Iraq fled from the civil war, nations including the USA argued
that they should not intervene because it was an `internal' question.
Not only was this hypocritical in the light of CIA incitement calling on
the Kurds to overthrow the Iraqi regime(5), it also ignored the
geographical reality that the Kurds are an oppressed minority in five
adjoining countries, and are thus very much an international issue. But,
led by Britain, the coalition then used military forces to create a
`safety zone' within Iraq for the Iraqi Kurds, whilst conveniently
ignoring the even worse treatment of Kurds in neighbouring states,
particularly Turkey, a strategic Western ally. Further, during
discussion of UN `peace-keeping forces' being sent to the `safety
zones', Britain argued forcefully that such an action did not require a
formal Security Council resolution, since such a resolution may set an
unfortunate precedent!

It is ironic that those arguing for a new, expanded role for the
United Nations are those who have spent so much time undermining it.
Those most vocal in their support of sanctions against Iraq -- Britain
and the USA -- were those who did most to undermine sanctions against
South Africa, arguing that such sanctions would have too great an effect
on the civilian population! Indeed, throughout the 1970s and 1980s,
successive American and other Western governments tried to cripple the
United Nations, especially when Third World member countries began to
use UN institutions to challenge Israel, apartheid and the global
economic and information order.

During the 1989-90 session of the United Nations Security Council,
the only three vetoes were cast by the United States. Two of the
resolutions were condemnations of the US invasion of Panama, and the
third criticised human rights abuses by Israel. In December 1989, the UN
General Assembly voted on a resolution opposing the acquisition of
territory by force. The resolution was passed by 151 votes to 3. The
three dissenting countries were Israel, the United States and Dominica.

Now many in the Third World are fearful that the New World Order will
turn out to be very much like the old world order of the nineteenth
century, whereby the imperial powers, unencumbered by the counterbalance
of the Soviet Union, will freely intervene to ensure unimpeded access to
markets and cheap resources and labour.

Hopeful predictions of a more effective UN also ignore structural
problems. The decisions of the UN Security Council are dominated by the
views of the five permanent members -- the nuclear powers who hold veto
power over decisions by the body and are the world's largest five arms
exporters -- and who demonstrate no preparedness to relinquish their
stranglehold. Security Council opinion does not accurately reflect that
of the bulk of nations represented in the UN General Assembly, and
during the war there were attempts to close Security Council debate to
public scrutiny. When Britain moved that the Security Council go into
closed session, Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, Cuba's ambassador to the UN,
declared, `The war is not the property of the fifteen states around this
table. War is a legitimate concern to all member states, to the peoples
of the entire world, who have a right to know what this council
thinks.'(6)

Confidence in any law, including international law, can derive only
from a well-held belief that such law will be upheld consistently and in
an even-handed manner. Those advocating the sanctity of the UN must
explain why it is right to liberate Kuwait but betray Timor; why
numerous resolutions on the Middle East and other international
questions have been ignored by the same countries that proclaim the
crucial role of the international forum; and why countries that
supported the war effort, declaring opposition to the acquisition and
occupation of territory by force, are in breach of UN resolutions on
this very issue: Turkey in Cyprus; Syria in Lebanon; Morocco in Sahara;
Israel in Palestine.

WAS SADDAM HUSSEIN A `NEW HITLER'?

`Saddam was less a Hitler than he was Frankenstein's monster, with the
US playing the role of Dr Frankenstein.'(7)

As well as claiming the sanctity of the United Nation's actions,
another key justification for supporters of the war was concern over the
nature of the Iraqi state, and doubt over the possibility of a
negotiated solution based on the claim that `you can't deal with
dictators'.

Much of this was supported by a crude demonisation of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein as `a new Hitler' or the `Butcher of Baghdad'. Australian
Prime Minister Bob Hawke repeatedly made comparisons between Iraq's
aggression and Hitler's actions in the 1930s: `Just as in the 1930s
appeasement was wrong and the world paid a terrible price for it, so
would appeasement be wrong in the 1990s... History shows that you don't
hang around and condone aggression by inaction. Kuwait today, Saudi
Arabia tomorrow. Who next? And if the lessons of the thirties tell us
anything, they tell us the disastrous nature of that concept.'(8)

Perhaps we will now witness a decade of struggle against `new
Hitlers' and `terrorists' or `nationalists' and `radicals' as anti-
communism falls from grace as an acceptable ideological prop for Western
intervention. Little matter that Iraq bore few of the economic hallmarks
of Nazi Germany, and that Saddam Hussein was far from capable of
overrunning the Middle East (in eight years of war he made little
progress against an Iran without an air force and with inferior
equipment). The characterisation of antiwar forces as `appeasers' was
widespread and effective.(9)

Another aspect of the rhetoric cast Saddam Hussein as an Islamic
fundamentalist. But in spite of his use of Islamic rhetoric and calls
for a jihad (holy war) against foreign intervention, his regime is, by
Middle East standards, secular and nationalist.

While sections of the Left were willing to criticise the regime's
human rights record, some distilled their support for Saddam's pro-
Palestinian and anti-intervention policies (which won popular support in
the Arab world) in a call for military victory to Iraq.

But Saddam Hussein's posture as a champion of the Palestinian cause
belies Iraq's inconsistent and erratic position on this issue. From time
to time Iraq has supported peripheral anti-PLO Palestinian elements and
fringe terror groups more interested in assassinating PLO officials than
anything else; it has vacillated in its political and material support
for Palestinian self-determination, and its own military adventures have
undermined the Palestinian struggle. The Arab world spent most of the
1980s divided over the Iran-Iraq war rather than united behind the
Palestinian struggle; the invasion of Kuwait and the war have undermined
the momentum of the Palestinian intifada.

Iraq's claim to be the champion of Arab nationalism against
imperialism belies the strategic support given to the Ba'athist regime
during the later part of the Iran-Iraq war by the major Western powers,
including the USA. During that war, conservative think-tanks in the
United States and sections of the Reagan administration actively
supported the Iraqi regime as a protector against perceived Iranian
fundamentalism: `The fall of the existing regime in Iraq would
enormously enhance Iranian influence, endanger the supply of oil,
threaten pro-US regimes throughout the area and upset the Arab-Israeli
balance.'(10)

The USA supported the Saddam regime economically from the mid-1980s
until the invasion of Kuwait. In 1984, the Reagan administration removed
Iraq from its list of `terrorist' nations, as it did with Syria when it
joined the anti-Iraq coalition in 1990. US sales to Iraq rose from
$US400 million in 1985 to $US1.5 billion in 1989. From 1985 to 1990, the
US Import-Export Bank financed $US260 million of US exports to Iraq,
including spare parts and raw materials. At the start of the war, the US
Department of Agriculture had $US2.2 billion exposed in agricultural
credits under the Credit Commodity Corporation (CCC) program, designed
to encourage the export of US rice, wheat and corn. In 1987-89, Iraq was
the CCC's largest country program, with the US Department of Agriculture
providing credits worth $US1.1 billion in 1989 alone. The US Government
also guaranteed a loan to Iraq of some $US3 billion from the Banca
Nazionale de Lavoro in Atlanta.

Active lobby groups such as the US-Iraq Business Forum also helped
stop sanctions against Iraq in the late 1980s (especially congressional
moves when the regime used chemical weapons at Hallabja in 1988). In
June 1989, Saddam Hussein welcomed a delegation of the Business Forum to
Baghdad, including representatives of General Motors, Occidental
Petroleum, Bell Helicopters, Textron, Caterpillar, other US-based
transnational corporations, and a senior member of Kissinger Associates,
the business consulting firm headed by the former US Secretary of State.
(This company has also provided key players for the Bush administration,
such as National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary
of State Lawrence Eagleburger.)

Under the Ba'athist regime, Iraq built up its military forces through
a combination of arms purchases and development of local military
technology. Between 1981 and 1988, Iraq purchased an estimated $46.7
billion worth of arms and military equipment from foreign suppliers,
including the Soviet Union, France, Britain and the United States. (The
period of the Iran-Iraq war was a bonanza for the international arms
trade, as 26 countries sold arms to both sides during the war!) This
economic and military support for Iraq made it a major player in the
Gulf region -- but by international standards the country was still a
Third World nation, reliant on one resource for export earnings and
dependent on foreign trade and technology. Ironically, some sections of
the Left fell into the trap of believing the propaganda about Iraq's
massive arsenal, lulling them into the call for a military victory for
Iraq.

It was not surprising that at the war's end, coalition military
leaders admitted that they had overestimated Iraq's military strength,
and particularly the strength of its forces in Kuwait.(11) General
Richard Neal noted, `We might have created a picture that they had a
better capability than they really possessed.' Given the massacre that
had taken place, it was not credible to believe otherwise. But that had
not stopped them from grossly and deliberately overestimating Iraq's
capabilities during the massive intervention and build-up of Western
forces. That Iraq was the world's fourth-largest military power was
always a fabrication: by far the most powerful and effective military
force in the region is Israel, as numerous wars have demonstrated. But
Saddam the Hitler with a massive army was effective propaganda. Only a
few analysts documented the truth.

One was Professor Robert Springborg, who argued correctly that most
of Iraq's army had little training or battlefield skills, that most of
its tanks were obsolete, only eighty aircraft were anywhere near modern,
and that its missile threat was hollow in terms of capacity to deliver
large payloads systematically. Further, Iraq had no access to satellite
intelligence, so that `were a war to erupt, the US would be able to
monitor even the smallest of Iraqi military moves, whereas the Iraqis
would essentially be fighting in the dark'. Springborg concluded, `In
sum, if there is a war, Iraq will be decisively defeated. That some
western leaders and elements of the media have vastly overestimated the
capacity of the Iraqi military raises questions about their motives. It
smacks of justification for a military strike against what is in reality
a typical Third World country with a relatively low per capita income
($US1500), high dependency on the West, and a military that is simply no
match for a modern, well equipped fighting force.'(12)

WAS PEACE POSSIBLE?

`The Opposition firmly believes that the outcome of the War is a
vindication for all men and women who value basic human rights, the rule
of law and the right of nations to live in peace and security.'(13)

Having committed itself to the military `liberation of Kuwait', the
United States ensured that there would be no negotiated settlement. On 3
August, foreign ministers of the Arab League met to discuss Iraq's
attack of the previous day. At that meeting an official resolution was
adopted that condemned Iraq's invasion, called for an Arab-regional
settlement and `categorically reject(ed) any foreign intervention'.(14)
Reports also suggest that an informal agreement was reached -- Iraqi
withdrawal, an Arab peace-keeping force, and a resolution of the
disputes between Iraq and Kuwait -- and a full Arab League meeting was
scheduled to ratify the agreement. However, at that meeting on 10
August, just after the commitment of American ground forces to Saudi
Arabia, a coalition of states led by Egypt (which received $US7-9
billion in debt relief for its cooperation) and Saudi Arabia as head of
the Gulf monarchies refused to discuss the draft agreement. Instead they
proposed a motion, apparently drafted by the Americans, which dropped
all mention of regional peace processes and supported the US military
intervention. This act ensured the destruction of the Arab League in its
present form.

The importance of the Iraq-Kuwait disputes in determining Iraq's
policy should not be underestimated: historical aberrations, which gave
Bubiyan and Warba Islands to Kuwait, had denied Iraq deep-sea access to
the Gulf; Kuwait had clearly exploited the joint Rumailah oil field;
Kuwait had consistently exceeded its OPEC quota and driven down oil
prices in an effort to undermine the Iraqi economy; and there were
disputes on both sides about Kuwaiti funding of the war against Iran. In
addition, Kuwait had refused to negotiate the issues seriously, an
attitude that was later criticised by the Kuwaiti opposition, who
believed this act largely contributed to Iraq's invasion.(15)

By demanding unilateral Iraqi withdrawal, the United States hoped,
successfully, that Iraq would find such a proposal unsatisfactory,
leading to a hardening of Iraq's position and ensuring that the scene
would be set for a military showdown. Only a complete Iraqi backdown,
involving `loss of face' and the end of any opportunity to resolve the
Iraq-Kuwait dispute, could have prevented the war. Instead Saddam
Hussein, totally misunderstanding American policy, dug his troops into
the sand (a strategic disaster when facing an enemy with overwhelming
air power) and engaged in a game of bluff and brinkmanship, believing
that George Bush would back down. His total misreading of the
circumstances played perfectly into American hands, allowing not only a
military massacre, but the destruction of civilian Iraq and a political
victory for Israel.

The Saudis, initially jubilant over American support, soon showed
signs of concern over the size of the US build-up. The royal family was
divided over policy, and some of those opposing the coming war,
including the crown prince, were subject to house arrest. The Saudi
Defence Minister declared on more than one occasion that Saudi Arabia
would not be troubled by `territorial compromise' if that were necessary
for a negotiated settlement between Iraq and Kuwait.

But a peaceful settlement was not on the agenda: `The President and
his men worked overtime to quash freelance peacemakers in the Arab
world, France and the Soviet Union, who threatened to give Saddam
Hussein a face-saving way out of the box that Bush was building. Over
and over, Bush repeated the mantra: no negotiations, no deals, no face
saving, no reward, and specifically no linkage to a Palestinian peace
conference.'(16) Thomas Friedman and Patrick Tyler reported in the New
York Times that the offensive strategy and commitment were already in
place on 2 August.(17)

There were at least two occasions after August when a negotiated
settlement could have been achieved. Just before the 15 January
deadline, France and Algeria reached an agreement with Iraq that could
have prevented war, but the Americans were simply not interested. The
Algerian-French deal was to be all but finalised with a trip to Baghdad
by French Foreign Minister Chevenement, formerly a leading member of the
Franco-Iraqi Friendship Society. This plan was undermined by the USA,
which organised for Peres de Cuellar to go instead, having directed him
to read the Security Council resolutions to the Iraqis and do no more.
Certainly, he was not to negotiate. Again, Soviet attempts to prevent
further bloodshed after Iraq was clearly defeated by the air war were
downplayed by the Americans, who were determined to destroy Iraq.

In addition to international initiatives, a number of proposals were
also made by Iraq and ignored by the United States.

Saddam Hussein proposed a settlement on 12 August, offering to
withdraw completely from Kuwait if others too would withdraw from
occupied Arab lands: Syria from Lebanon, and Israel from the territories
it conquered in 1967. In London, the Financial Times felt that, although
his offer did not reduce the imminent dangers, it `may yet serve some
useful purpose', offering `a path away from disaster... through
negotiation'. In official US responses and general commentary, there was
no thought that the proposal might be explored to find a peaceful
resolution to a very serious crisis.

Saddam Hussein proposed on 19 August that the matter of Kuwait be
left an `Arab issue', to be dealt with by the Arab states alone, without
external interference, in the manner of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon
and Morocco's attempt to take over Western Sahara. The proposal was
dismissed at once.

On 23 August, according to documents and sources involved, Iraq
offered to withdraw from Kuwait and allow foreigners to leave in return
for the lifting of sanctions, guaranteed access to the Gulf, and full
control of the Rumailah oil field... Other terms of the proposal were
that Iraq and the USA negotiate an oil agreement `satisfactory to both
nations' national security interests', `jointly work on the stability of
the Gulf', and develop a joint plan `to alleviate Iraq's economical and
financial problems'. There was no demand that the US withdraw from Saudi
Arabia, or other preconditions. An administration official who
specialises in Middle East affairs described the terms of the proposal
as `serious' and `negotiable'. The New York Times quoted White House
sources as saying the proposal `had not been taken seriously because Mr
Bush demands the unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait'.

According to PLO sources, Jordan and the PLO advocated a plan under
which the UN would introduce a peace-keeping force and coordinate talks
on the future government of Kuwait, possibly calling for a plebiscite in
which Kuwaitis would vote on the return of the emirate or a new
political system. This and other proposals for a `diplomatic track' were
either ignored or quickly dismissed by the White House, Congress, and
the media.(18)

US STRATEGIC POLICY IN THE GULF

`The Middle East situation is all the outcome of what is known as the
Eisenhower Doctrine, which provides that the United States of America
will move in to the aid of any Middle East country that asks for
assistance if it is threatened by indirect or direct aggression,
providing the threat is by a Communist country, and not by a Fascist
country or a country under any other form of totalitarian rule. It does
not matter how corrupt is the government that seeks the assistance. It
does not matter how poorly fed are the people of the country concerned;
it does not matter if 90 per cent of them are suffering from
tuberculosis, as in the Sheikdom of Kuwait. As long as the United States
is requested by the corrupt rulers to come in and defend them against
the wrath of the people they rule, the United States will come to the
assistance of those corrupt rulers.'(19)

These sentiments were expressed in the Australian Parliament in 1958
at the time of the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq and the consequent
foreign intervention in the region. The 1990 intervention had a
chillingly similar context.

The military intervention and war in the Middle East had more to do
with oil and strategic concerns than liberating Kuwait. For the United
States a key objective was to deploy military forces to the Gulf and
Middle East, to reinforce its position as the world's premier military
state, and to overcome popular opposition to the deployment of US ground
troops in the Third World.

Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, many Americans would not
accept a repetition of US intervention in Indochina -- an attitude
dubbed the `Vietnam syndrome' by opinion makers, as if opposition to
interventionism is a disease.

Under the Reagan and Bush administrations, short military
interventions using elite regular forces became possible (e.g. Grenada
and Panama), as was the funding of rebel forces in Nicaragua,
Afghanistan and Angola. But Iraq's invasion of Kuwait provided an
opportunity to mobilise hundreds of thousands of reserve troops, and
deploy forces to an area where the USA had been unable to establish
permanent military bases.

By the war's end, President Bush could proclaim, `By God, we've
kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.'(20) Bush's message was
also passed to US troops on Armed Forces Radio: `The first test of the
New World Order has been passed'; and the troops have contributed `a
renewed sense of pride and confidence here at home... The spectre of
Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian
peninsula.'(21) Such boasting may not accurately reflect the depth of
opposition to the war: within hours of military operations commencing in
January, thousands of protests and rallies sprang up in cities across
America and internationally. Within weeks, major rallies in Washington
brought together hundreds of thousands of people, many active in
campaigns around social justice or against intervention in Central
America; coalitions like those that took years to build during the
Vietnam era were mobilised in days and weeks. The Gulf crisis
remobilised disarmament groups that had often been inactive in the
period of US-Soviet detente that followed the 1987 INF treaty, and the
fall of the Berlin Wall.

The 1991 war is integrally linked to the military build-up of the
1980s, when the Reagan administration and the Western alliance spent
millions on new high-technology weaponry intended for the European
battlefield, but which was instead turned against Iraq. The Tomahawk
sea-launched cruise missiles, precision laser-guided bombs, and Stealth
aircraft were unveiled to be `battle proven', in the language of the
arms bazaar. The creation of the US military Space Command underlines
the increasing role of space and satellite technologies in modern
warfare (particularly important in monitoring missile launches during
the war). New military doctrines flowing from the Rapid Deployment Force
(RDF) strategy were tested, including: an increased role of air and
missile power; the AirLand Battle 2000 policy (which emphasises high
fire-power and rapid manoeuvring of forces); and new roles for the US
Marine Corps. (Although the marines did not get to fight in Kuwait City,
they are being trained in urban rather than jungle warfare, reflecting
the demographic shift of Third World populations to urban centres.)

The massive deployment of over half a million troops to the Gulf was
possible only because the Pentagon had established a global network of
supply bases, linking its Pacific and European military commands with
the Gulf and Middle East. Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan
administration spent $US14 billion expanding this network of bases and
installations, from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Mombasa in Kenya
and Masirah in Oman, with access to air bases in Europe and the Middle
East. Prepositioned ships carrying food, ammunition, fuel and other
military supplies were anchored off Egypt, Somalia, Kenya, Oman and
Diego Garcia. Concurrently, Saudi Arabia had spent nearly $US50 billion
on an air defence system built to US and NATO specifications.(22) (In
October 1981 following the overthrow of the Shah and Iraq's invasion of
Iran, President Reagan stated that `we will not permit Saudi Arabia to
be an Iran'. The Reagan administration overrode congressional opposition
to send $US8.5 billion in arms to the Saudis, including five AWACS
aircraft, as part of larger air defence, control and communications
network established for the region.)

While the invasion of Kuwait provided a pretext for the mobilisation
of military forces, US officials had long been concerned about the need
for strategic interventions in the affairs of the region, especially
after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. In 1982, former US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, `The countries of the Gulf have
to understand that we are prepared to protect both their domestic
structure and their frontiers, and they need to be given confidence in
the means which we will use. We must generate a credible capacity for
rapid support against internal upheaval.' The creation of a new military
command, Central Command (CENTCOM), in January 1983 was an extension of
the RDF created by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s to provide
an interventionist force that would be moved quickly to crisis spots.

Throughout the 1980s, the United States was unable to get support
from the Gulf states to base ground forces in the region, even though
military bases and supply dumps were created in Saudi Arabia, Oman and
other Gulf states. In the aftermath of the Gulf crisis, the United
States is hoping to move its Central Command (currently based in
Florida) to the Middle East. The Bush administration is now manoeuvring
to establish permanent basing for US forces in the region: an increased
naval presence in the Gulf, with port facilities in Bahrain; special
forces military training teams; and even the possibility of some regular
ground forces. Weapons bunkers have been built in Israel to store US
military equipment as a stockpile for future conflicts in the region. As
early as September 1990 the Bush administration had committed itself to
an indefinite military presence in the Gulf as part of new security
arrangements to be negotiated after the resolution of the Iraq-Kuwait
affair.(23)

Permanent bases will not, however, guarantee `stability' in the Gulf.
The American ruling elites was divided on strategy towards Iraq. Having
supported Iraq in its war against Iran, many believed they could `ride
the tiger', that Iraq could be a firm ally in bringing stability to the
area, a bulwark against `fundamentalism' and against a fracturing of
existing state-to-state relations. The Bush administration had actively
encouraged close relations, including a push for Iraq to pursue higher
oil prices, a policy that would both help Iraq repay its massive foreign
debt and help the ailing Texas oil industry.(24) Right up to 2 August
1990, the administration had shown no interest in Iraq's internal or
external actions. In February 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker
attempted to have a State Department record critical of Iraq's human
rights record suppressed, and President Bush vetoed a congressional
resolution that would have imposed trade restrictions on Iraq because of
its use of chemical weapons, particularly against the Kurds in Hallabja
in 1988.

Only weeks before 2 August, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, April
Glaspie, had told the Iraqis, `We don't have an opinion on inter-Arab
disputes such as your border dispute with Kuwait, and we have directed
our official spokesman to reiterate this stand.' And, `I have a
directive from the President, personally, that I should work to expand
and deepen relations with Iraq.'(25) No wonder Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein believed, in the words of Sadoun Hammadi, that `the US will not
do anything' (if Iraq invaded). What he had neglected to understand,
however, were differing views from the Pentagon (anxious to implement
the RDF strategy and undermine proposed defence budget cuts) and the
powerful Zionist lobby (determined to keep a qualitative military
superiority for Israel over the Arabs states).

Some have suggested that an elaborate trap was set for the Iraqis.
`At best, it seems, the US lack of response to Iraqi threats against
Kuwait was an official misreading by the Bush administration of Iraq's
intentions. At worst, it may have been a trap. By enticing Iraq to
invade Kuwait the US created an excuse to make war against Iraq. A
National Security White Paper prepared in May 1990 describes Iraq and
Saddam Hussein, in the words of Michael Klare, as `the optimum contender
to replace the Warsaw Pact' as rationale for major military
expenditure'. This may have been a statement of fact, rather than a
statement of desire. Iraq would be a convenient target for a war.(26)
Indeed, Glaspie gave a candid postwar interview to the New York Times in
which she said, `We never expected they would take all of Kuwait' --
suggesting that the Americans were indeed expecting some military action
by Iraq.(27)

The CIA also had been active in supporting moves by Kuwait to
undermine the Iraqi economy. On 14 November 1989, leaders of American
and Kuwaiti intelligence had agreed to an eight-point plan for closer
cooperation, including `exploiting Iraq's deteriorating economic
situation in order to pressurise the Iraqi Government into agreeing to
the demarcation of the boundaries'. Brigadier Fahad Ahmed al Fahad, the
Director-General of State Security of Kuwait, reported to the Emir, `The
CIA has provided us with its own ideas as to the right methods through
which pressure could be exerted in a manner that would initiate
cooperation on a wider scale between the CIA and us, provided that the
coordination of these activities should be done on a high level.'(28)
(Emphasis added.)


A NEW WORLD ORDER?

`A two-year-old covert policy by the United States to destabilise the
regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with US-trained Libyan commandos has
ended in failure. The US government is now going to extreme lengths to
find a safe exile for hundreds of dissident fighters it once supported
and trained.'(29)

The crisis following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was not limited simply
to the rights of the people of Kuwait. The crisis spread throughout the
Middle East and internationally, and involved a number of overlapping
questions, including: * a crisis in the Arab world, between the
nationalist bloc (including Iraq) and a pro-American bloc (led by Saudi
Arabia and Egypt) extending to involve the non-Arab nations of the
region; * international relations in the wake of the crisis of `actually
existing socialism', highlighted by the Beijing massacre, the fall of
the Berlin Wall and reintegration of Germany, and the crisis of Soviet
economic and foreign policy; * attempts by leaders of the major
capitalist nations (in Europe, North America and Japan) to reconcile
conflicts between the key international trading blocs over trade, debt
and economic competition, and the burden of military expenditures and
intervention in the Third World.

The question of national boundaries in the post-Cold War period is
also a crucial factor in the debate over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Without condoning Iraq's aggression, much popular opinion in the Middle
East has long viewed many of the existing, colonially imposed boundaries
as not representing Arab history or Arab aspirations. Non-coercive
attempts to redress this problem have met with mixed success -- from the
union of Syria and Egypt in 1958 to the successful unification of north
and south Yemen.

Debate over the maintenance of national boundaries created after the
two world wars is not limited to the Arab world. The reunification of
Germany is the clearest example of post-Cold War shifts, but the debate
extends to Asia (with the potential for reunification of Korea), China
and the Soviet Union (with moves to independence by Tibet, the Baltic
states and other Soviet republics), and within Western Europe (with
increasing debate within a united Europe over the future of nationalist
campaigns in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Corsica, the Basque country and
other areas).

While there was justifiable international criticism of Iraq's
actions, the particular conjuncture in international relations that
allowed the creation of the allied coalition is unlikely to be repeated.
The Soviet Union, desperate for international trade and investment
following the economic failure of perestroika, was willing to support
both sanctions and the 15 January war deadline at the UN (though it
subsequently got cold feet and attempted to negotiate a ceasefire at the
height of the coalition offensive). China too, desperate for
rehabilitation after the 1989 Beijing massacre, used the crisis to
rebuild diplomatic and economic links. Both these states abandoned their
traditional, if inconsistent, defence of the Third World against Western
intervention, instead capitulating to US strategic and regional policy.
Britain faithfully modelled its policy on the United States, but other
key European allies were less enthusiastic about the conduct of the war;
even France and Italy, which contributed troops to the coalition,
participated in prewar diplomatic initiatives to avoid conflict. The
European Community, engaged in a trade war with the coalition leader,
may take up different positions to the USA, especially on the question
of Israel and Palestine.

European relations with Arab and Muslim countries placed constraints
on their willingness to support US policy towards the region. France has
an immigrant population of over 4 million from the francophone Maghreb
(especially Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), while Germany and other
Western European countries rely on guest workers from Turkey and other
Muslim nations.

Reliant on oil imports from the Middle East, and eager to invest in
the newly open economies of Central and Eastern Europe, there were also
significant sectors of European business that were reluctant to enter
too deeply into the conflict with Iraq. The creation of the ecu
(European currency unit), and the potential for international
competition with the yen and US dollar, mean that some European
corporations are reluctant to accept US hegemony over the Middle East.

Recent GATT decisions to reject Washington's attempts to stop
subsidised agricultural trade exacerbated American panic over its loss
of global strategic and military power, and the Gulf alliance became a
means for dragging reluctant partners back into line. Mark Solomon,
professor of history at Simmons College, has argued, `Much US global
power hangs on the slender thread of the dollar. Despite the fact that
the dollar is a ghost-like remnant of its former self, it is still used
to settle international accounts and to store liquid assets in US
government bonds. But world trade is shifting to more dynamic currencies
-- marks and yen.' Walter Mead of the World Policy Institute points out
that the greatest single support of the dollar today is OPEC's policy of
setting oil prices in dollars. He notes, `Should the Middle East leave
the American orbit, and the oil business leave the dollar, the American
Century would, surely, quickly, draw to an end.' The United States would
have to earn foreign exchange (with little to sell) to pay for its oil.
It would become a soft-money debtor in a hard-money world.

`Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait was a god-send to
Washington. It opened the door to binding the oil states and their
dollar-priced oil more tightly to the United States through the dispatch
of enormous military power to the Gulf. It offered the unanticipated
chance to realign the Middle East dollar zone through destruction of
Iraq (a goal shared by Israel and the Saudis, and perhaps Syria), and to
fill an ensuing power vacuum with permanent US bases.'(30)

It is therefore not surprising that American policy makers have been
keen for Germany and Japan to take a greater role in international
defence spending -- and change the massive imbalance between the debt of
the American economy and Japan's and Germany's trading surpluses. But
this `burden sharing' will not be achieved easily: Japan's constitution
forbids the use of military forces internationally (although the country
maintains large armed services under the guise of Self Defence Forces).
Germany is prohibited from deploying its forces outside of the NATO
area, although Chancellor Helmut Kohl and other conservative politicians
used the Gulf crisis as an opportunity to push for changes to the
policy, even sending German military aircraft to NATO airfields in
Turkey.

There is strong opposition in both countries to an expanding military
role. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in cities across
Germany against the war while political opposition in Japan, against
sending Self Defence Force units to the Gulf, has grown. (During the
war, the Kaifu government planned a $US9 billion package to support the
allied effort, funded by taxes on cigarettes, a 10 per cent
parliamentary pay cut, and increases in corporate taxes(31). But the
government was forced to adapt the package to please the Komeito party,
and the tobacco lobby blocked the cigarette tax. The government
moderated petrol and company taxes, and decided to cut $US1 billion from
1991's defence budget (though increases over next four years will mean
essentially the same level of defence spending for the five year
plan!(32)).

Whilst the United States was overjoyed with its ability to deploy
such massive forces in the Gulf and `win' so convincingly, it is
unlikely that the scale of mobilisation could be repeated in other parts
of the globe. The declaration of the end of the `Vietnam syndrome' may
yet prove premature. The US-led coalition relied on funding from
capital-rich states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany, and Japan. The
willingness of these states to pay for a similar deployment in Asia or
the debt-ridden countries of Latin America in the future cannot be
assumed.

Those countries who paid the bill repeated the rhetoric of
`liberating Kuwait' and `maintaining international order'. But this
masked their own material national interest in maintaining access to oil
supplies and civilian and military trade with the region. This weighed
heavily on their decision to provide tens of billions of dollars to
support the US deployment and safeguard the undemocratic pro-Western
ruling elites of the Gulf.

Even with allies reluctant to increase defence spending, pledges
during the war will cover many of the costs of the military operation
for Britain and the United States -- some commentators have suggested
that the USA may make a profit from its involvement! In early March,
White House Budget Director Richard Darman estimated the war cost at
less than $US70 billion (combat costs of $US31.5 billion and non-combat
costs of $US38 billion). Foreign contributions make up $US54.5 billion,
leaving the USA a tab of only $US15 billion.(33) The US Government's
General Accounting Office estimated the war cost at $US34.4 billion on
the day George Bush suspended hostilities, and the Congressional Budget
Office estimated $US45 billion. Darman estimates that the Americans
spent $US11.1 billion more than they'd have spent on peacetime
deployments!

The gross cost of Britain's deployment was estimated at $US2.5
billion, but the net total excluding normal costs of peacetime
deployment was $US1.6 billion. Britain was promised $US1.3 billion by
Kuwait; $US500 million by the United Arab Emirates (UAE); $US600 million
by Germany; $US50 million by Japan and $US30 million by Hong Kong.(34)
Of the major allies, France will not be receiving significant foreign
payments: French costs of $US1.4 billion will be met by budget cuts,
placing further burdens on the taxpayer.

Australia also faces major expenses. The first six months of naval
deployment were estimated to cost $50 million, but the final cost is
likely to be closer to $A150 million.(35) Defence Minister Robert Ray
said costs would be $A96.4 million: $A68.88 million allocated by the
government to the 1990-91 budget for costs, and $A27.47 million over
next two years to replace stores and to repair equipment.(36) The major
cost blowout arose because the Royal Australian Navy had to draw on
supply agreements with the USA to arm and equip ships, due to a shortage
of missiles.

`LIBERATING' KUWAIT

`It is not true that this is a fight to guarantee to the West a supply
of oil... for the good and sufficient reason that the Arab states have
to sell their oil to the Western Powers, or not sell at all... This is a
fight to see who is going to get the profits from the oil.'(37)

When American troops first arrived on Saudi soil, their presence was
justified by the need to defend Saudi Arabia from a possible Iraqi
attack. This claim was false and appears to have been part of a
disinformation campaign `orchestrated by the US to justify intervention.
If so, it would be equivalent to the concocted Gulf of Tonkin incident
in 1965 which paved the way for massive military intervention in
Vietnam.'(38)

Indeed it seems that the agreement between Saudi Arabia and the USA
was for a quite limited deployment -- with the presence of a small force
standing as a symbol of American willingness and determination to stand
by its staunch ally. As the deployment escalated to tens and tens, and
then hundreds of thousands of troops, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia
remarked, `This is not what we expected.'

On 8 November, two days after the mid-term US elections, George Bush
announced additional forces would be sent to provide `an adequate
offensive option'. Defence of Saudi Arabia (`Operation Desert Shield')
was transformed into a project to `liberate Kuwait' (`Operation Desert
Storm'). Removal of Iraq's occupation force from Kuwait remained the
stated objective till the war's end, but the cat had already been let
out of the bag well before 15 January. Air Force General Richard
Duggan's public revelations that US war plans called for massive air
strikes against Iraqi civilian targets led to his removal from office,
but his predictions were accurate. As the war proceeded, the United
States deliberately destroyed Iraq's economic and civil infrastructure
by massive air bombing, reducing it to a pre-industrial state.

As late as 10 February, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke told
interviewer Laurie Oakes, `The aims of this war are quite limited. They
are firstly to get Iraq out of Kuwait and to restore stability in the
region. It is no part of the war aim to destroy Iraq or punish the Iraqi
people.' (Emphasis added.) Quite clearly, this was not true.

While it was vital to call for Iraq's withdrawal from occupied
Kuwait, and to end human rights abuses by Iraqi forces, the end of the
war has not meant liberation for the people of Kuwait, stability for the
region, or a New World Order for the Palestinians or the Kurds.

The Emir of Kuwait was always reluctant to open the way for
democratic rights for residents in Kuwait, and his return to power has
reinforced the gap the between state and civil society. Before the war,
Kuwait under the feudal rule of the al Sabah family was hardly a
democratic state. Only literate males over the age of 21 whose families
lived in Kuwait before 1922 (so-called `first category' citizens) were
eligible to vote, and this limited franchise meant that only 60,000
residents from a population of 1.6 million were eligible to vote in the
1985 Assembly elections! And the Assembly had only an advisory role,
with all power, and the right to dismiss the Assembly, residing with the
Emir. Kuwait, like other Gulf states, was reliant on exploited foreign
guest workers from the Middle East and Asia to work and administer the
economy.

In exile, the al Sabah family promised a return to the 1962
constitution and new elections, although the last Assembly elected in
1985 was suspended by the Emir a year later, and elections planned in
1990 were boycotted by the opposition because one-third of members would
be appointed by Emir. As the al Sabah family planned its return to
Kuwait, 750 opposition delegates met in October 1990 to plan for the
future, fearful that the al Sabahs would block democracy after Iraqi
forces left Kuwait. In December, 16 executives of the Kuwait Investment
Office resigned in protest at al Sabah control.(39)

Strong contradictions have long existed within the Kuwaiti elite,
especially since the royal family appropriated all oil revenue, rising
in economic fortune above the traditional financial elite, the
mercantile class, who now strongly support the opposition.

Soon after the withdrawal of Iraqi troops, a key opposition leader
was shot in Kuwait City, and there were widespread allegations of al
Sabah involvement. Kuwait's Crown Prince Sheik Saad al Abdallah al Salem
al Sabah declared, `If I believe the security of my country needs to
have some troops from foreign countries, I will not hesitate to say
yes,' and `I am one of those people who will not hesitate to impose
martial law.'(40) While Kuwaiti citizens were waiting for the return of
basic services, hundreds of workers, supported by the US Corps of
Engineers, worked to restore the Emir's palace to its former glory. (The
Engineers complained bitterly that reconstruction and the return of
services was proceeding slowly, mainly because the Kuwaitis, accustomed
to being waited on hand and foot by guest workers, seemed either unable
or uninterested in working even to help themselves!)

Human rights violations by Iraqi forces have received wide publicity,
but returning Kuwaiti troops have also been implicated in acts of
torture and violence. Kuwaiti soldiers and royalist vigilantes attacked
Palestinians after the retaking of Kuwait City and fire-bombed the Fateh
headquarters. (The 400,000 Palestinians made up the largest foreign
community in prewar Kuwait.) Journalist Robert Fisk reported that US
Special Forces troops were with Kuwaitis during beatings of Palestinian
youths. When Fisk tried to intervene, a US officer told him, `You having
a nice day? We don't want your sort around here with your dirty rumours.
You have a big mouth. This is martial law boy. Fuck off.'(41) Amnesty
International has documented widespread violations by state forces in
postwar Kuwait, and particularly the arrest, torture and disappearance
of civilian Palestinian workers.(42) These acts have been carried out by
vigilantes organised by members of the royal family. The Kuwaiti
Government ordered a series of show trials of alleged collaborators.
International observers and diplomats based in Kuwait were shocked by
the lack of due process for those brought before the courts. Sentences
handed down for Palestinian and Iraqi-born defendants were especially
severe. One youth was given a 15 year jail sentence for wearing a
T-shirt bearing the portrait of Saddam Hussein!

DESTROYING IRAQ

`Militarily, it (the ground war) was not necessary, it was a political
sideshow. The Iraqis were defeated a week before the ground war
began.'(43)

Claims of `surgical strikes' and `precision bombing' that dominated
media projection of the war came to an abrupt end when a UN fact-finding
mission toured postwar Iraq, and the International Committee of the Red
Cross and Physicians for Human Rights reported first hand on postwar
Iraq.

The UN mission's report to the Security Council on 20 March 1991
declared, `...nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for
the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country.
The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the
economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather
highly urbanised and mechanised society. Iraq has, for some time to
come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the
disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy
and electricity.'

Former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark toured Iraq on 2-8 February,
and reported, `In all areas we visited and all the other areas reported
to us, municipal water processing plants, pumping stations and even
reservoirs have been bombed. Electric generators have been destroyed.
Refineries and oil and gasoline storage facilities and filling stations
have been attacked. Telephone exchange buildings, TV stations and radio
stations, and some telephone relay stations and towers have been damaged
or destroyed.

`Many highways, roads, bridges, bus stations, schools, mosques and
churches, cultural sites and hospitals have been damaged...

`Ambassadors of UN Member States should ask themselves whether, if
their capitals, major cities and towns were similarly destroyed and
damaged by such bombing, they would consider the targets to be
permissible under the International Law of Armed Conflict...

`The economic effect of the bombing, if continued, will be the
destruction of much of the physical and economic basis in Iraq. The
purpose of the bombing can only be explained rationally as the
destruction of Iraq as a viable state for a generation or more.'(44)

Jessica Mathews, vice president of the World Resources Institute,
reflected, `We are beginning to be able to attach some meaning to that
macabre new phrase: to bomb a country "back to the pre-industrial age".
If it meant that destructive technology could be smashed with little
loss of innocent life, most Americans seemed to feel that was just,
though harsh. Now what should have been obvious from the start will
become inescapable. Reducing a country overnight to pre-industrial
conditions is not an antiseptic exercise involving merely infrastructure
but an individual human experience as horrible as it sounds. The real
meaning of high-technology warfare says Dr Geiger (president, Physicians
for Human Rights) is "bomb now, die later".

`Iraqis are worse off now than if Iraq had been a typical developing
country before the war. Their intestinal systems are unaccustomed to
untreated water. They have few emergency generators. Their high-tech
systems require expensive, complex and time-consuming repairs and
replacements. Improvisation is difficult. Above all, everything depends
on energy. "The energy vacuum," says the report of the UN
secretary-general's envoy, "is an omnipresent obstacle to the success of
even a short-term, massive effort to maintain life-sustaining
conditions."

`The Red Cross warns that unless governments urgently muster a
massive effort, the situation will become "a long-term disaster". The
secretary-general's mission expects "a catastrophe... at any time".'

Mathews concluded, `With whom were we at war, Saddam Hussein or all
Iraqis? If not all Iraqis, which? If the goal of getting rid of Saddam
Hussein has failed, at least for the time being, should geo-political or
humanitarian concerns take precedence? Specifically, if epidemics and
starvation take hold before the terms of the ceasefire's 120 day
schedule are met, which is more important? How far does our and other
coalition members' responsibility extend for Iraq's suffering? If Iraq
cannot pay for what its people need while also repaying reparations,
what should be done? Finally, unavoidably, was it worth it?'(45)

This deliberate destruction of Iraq's economy and civil
infrastructure was much more than a necessary prerequisite to
`liberating Kuwait'. It ensured that Iraq would remain weak;
reconstruction will take decades. It was a clear warning that any truant
Third World state could expect the same treatment. And there was
perhaps, also, an element of reprisal: paying back the Arabs for their
defiance; the humiliation of US marines being driven out of Lebanon in
1983 after a lone bomber killed 243 of them in an attack on their
barracks in Beirut; Arab opposition to Israel's military expansion and
dominance; and even a settling of scores for the Iranian embassy hostage
episode.

HIGH-TECH MASSACRE

`I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised
tribes. It is simply the application of modern science to warfare, and
we cannot deny ourselves any weapon that might be used to put down the
disturbances on the frontier.'(46)

This was the response by Winston Churchill to a Royal Air Force
request in 1920 to authorise use in Mesopotamia (Iraq) of chemical
weapons `against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment'. It represents the
long- established Eurocentric view of the East, and particularly the
Middle East, as uncivilised and inhabited by people unworthy of concern.
Throughout this century military powers have tested and used weapons of
mass destruction against those less deserving and less precious. The
language of scientific warfare dehumanises the enemy and makes easy the
case for military intervention.

The media's demonisation of Saddam Hussein largely ignored the impact
of the conflict on the Iraqi and Kuwaiti populations, and the many tens
of thousands of third-country nationals who lived as guest workers in
the Gulf states.

Above all, the human costs of Iraq's invasion and the subsequent
military assault on Iraq and Kuwait have been downplayed in the censored
and sanitised reporting of this conflict, and in the postwar period,
when media preoccupation with the plight of the Iraqi Kurds left little
space to explore the effects of the war on all of Iraq's population.

While some commentators drew comparisons with Vietnam or Grenada,
they often ignored the different time frames and scales of these
operations. (The Vietnamese revolution lasted for decades after the
Second World War, and although US and allied military forces in the Gulf
matched similar levels to those deployed in Vietnam, US intervention in
Indochina lasted more than a decade whereas the conflict in Iraq lasted
only weeks.)

The scale of aerial bombardment was beyond previous military
interventions in the Third World. With some 110,000 sorties by coalition
aircraft plus naval bombardment, the tonnage of bombs dropped on Kuwait
and Iraq was equivalent in explosive power to more than one Hiroshima
bomb a day. In 43 days, Iraq absorbed half as many bombs again as
Vietnam did in eight years of war.

But talk of `precision bombing' is misleading. During the war, United
States military briefers used videotapes to show successful attacks by
precision guided missiles, and much of the media coverage talked about
the lack of `collateral' (i.e. civilian) damage. But this propaganda was
a conscious misrepresentation of the nature of the air war. Barely 7 per
cent of the tonnage of bombs dropped on Kuwait and Iraq (only 6520 out
of 88,500 tons) were so-called smart bombs or precision guided
munitions. The other 81,980 tons of unguided bombs had an accuracy of
only 25 per cent.(47)

Wartime coverage of the new high-technology weaponry also included
propaganda from the manufacturers, eager to promote their hardware at a
time when defence budgets were facing reductions. (The manufacturers of
Patriot missiles, used to destroy Scud missiles fired at Israel and
Saudi Arabia, promoted their weapon in the media but without
highlighting that the antimissile destroyed the rocket but left the
warhead to fall!) Pierre Sprey, an arms specialist formerly working for
the US Assistant Secretary of Defence noted in congressional testimony;
`The country has been poorly served by the shamelessly doctored
statistics and hand-selected video clips of isolated successes that were
pumped out to the media during the war in order to influence postwar
budget decisions.'(48)

US superiority in satellite and electronic intelligence and the
destruction of much of Iraq's air defences and air force early in the
conflict gave the coalition forces a free hand to bomb targets on the
ground. But the slow pace of attacking crucial targets (such as mobile
Scud missile launchers and dug-in military emplacements) led to the use
of indiscriminate `carpet' bombing using high-flying aircraft including
B-52 bombers. In repeated attacks, fifty B-52 aircraft dropped 72,000
bombs, which constituted one-third of total bombing tonnage during the
war.

Chemical weapons, including both napalm and fuel-air bombs, were used
widely in the carpet bombing of Iraqi defences along the southern Kuwait
border, contributing to huge Iraqi losses. Between 60,000 and 80,000
antipersonnel cluster bombs, totalling ten million bomblets, were a
major contributor to the death toll.

Occasionally, US and allied air-crews gave a commentary on this
one-sided massacre from the air, reflecting at the same time the
dehumanisation of the enemy. American fighter pilot Captain Richard
`Snake' White described bombing missions over Iraq as a `turkey shoot',
adding, `It's almost like you flipped on the light in the kitchen at
night, and the cockroaches started scurrying, and we're killing them.'
Another pilot gloated, `There's more stuff up there than I'd see in
twenty lifetimes. Targets everywhere. It's like an amusement park,
except they're shooting back at you.' Iraqi army positions were
described as `a target-rich environment. The more time we have, the
better. We're seeing mainly tanks and artillery pieces, we're seeing
hundreds of them.'(49) (The targets, tanks and bunkers described were of
course crewed and staffed by human beings!)

Inevitably, such aerial bombardment had an impact beyond military
targets. Some studies indicate that only 60 per cent of laser-guided
bombs dropped in Operation Desert Storm hit their targets, with many
missing by thousands of feet.(50) Media briefings with video showings of
precision guided attacks were not sufficient to quell all doubts, as
indicated on rare occasions in media reports: `Schwarzkopf reeled off
impressive figures last week: 33 of 36 bridges hit on the supply lines
between Iraq and Kuwait... But one or two of his claims might raise a
skeptical eyebrow. The number of sorties flown against bridges divided
by the number of bridges hit works out at almost 24 sorties per damaged
bridge, which seems to indicate that a lot of `precision guided'
missiles and bombs are missing.'(51)

These attacks caused numerous civilian deaths. In one week of the war
in February, several such incidents were documented: * On 12 February,
over 30 Jordanians were killed when US warplanes attacked a bus with 60
people aboard. * 47 were killed and 102 wounded when coalition bombers
hit a bridge crowded with pedestrians at al Nasiriyeh in southern Iraq,
according to eyewitness Dr Rabi Faroon. * An RAF Tornado fighter
attacked the town of Fallouja. While some of its bombs hit the targeted
bridge, one missed, killing an estimated 50 people in the nearby market.
* On 13 February, an estimated 400 civilians were killed when US Stealth
fighters attacked an air-raid shelter in the Baghdad suburb of al
Ameireh. US spokesperson Brigadier General Richard Neal stated, `I have
no idea why there were civilians in the bunker at 0400 in the morning...
it belies logic.' Why civilians should shelter during an air raid in a
concrete bunker designed for that purpose seems beyond the general's
comprehension! In a perverse propaganda coup, US officials attempted to
blame Saddam Hussein for using civilians as a shield, yet there were a
few reports in Western journals suggesting the attack was not
accidental, but a premeditated attack on the families of Iraqi military
leaders and officials.(52)

The strafing and bombing in this air war culminated in the massacre
of Iraqi conscript forces as they attempted to flee Kuwait at the end of
the war, resulting in up to 25,000 deaths, and leaving burnt-out
military vehicles scattered along exit routes from Kuwait City,
popularly portrayed as the `highways to hell'.

At times, coalition forces used their enormous fire power
indiscriminately, even causing casualties amongst their own troops:
throughout the war, more US and British troops died in accidents or by
so-called `friendly fire' than were killed by Iraqi forces! In one
incident, US Apache helicopters fired over 100 laser-guided Hellfire
antitank weapons at lightly armed Iraqi infantry in trucks. In the
process, the attack killed two US soldiers and wounded six. US Commander
General Norman Schwartzkopf subsequently sent a message to commanders
calling for more discriminating attacks! `You use a fly swatter on a
fly. You save your best ammo for the appropriate targets,' stated
Colonel James Riley of First Armoured Division.(53)

The enormity of this air war led to a rapid Iraqi collapse, and cut
short the predicted ground war, which had threatened to cause thousands
of coalition casualties. Saddam Hussein, fearing the subsequent
rebellion by Kurdish, Shi'ite and communist groups, kept the Republican
Guard and other elite troops in reserve, allowing them to withdraw and
largely survive the war.

In all, the US military forces' technological superiority and the
nature of Iraq's conscript forces in Kuwait led to a massive imbalance
of casualties. Only 121 US troops were killed in combat; 78 died of
disease or non-combat related accidents; 106 died in the six months'
build-up to conflict (therefore more died from accident and disease than
combat). Iraqi casualties remain unknown, largely because both Iraq and
the USA had good reasons not to release such figures. Chairman of the US
Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell said, `I know there is a
great interest in this subject. I don't have a clue, and I don't really
plan to undertake any real effort to find out.'(54) During the Vietnam
war the Pentagon used the `body count' as a measure of political
success; now the opposite policy holds true. The Iraqi regime seemed
unwilling to admit the extent of its defeat: in 43 days of intense
conflict more Iraqis died than in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

One feature of postwar media coverage in Australia is that detailed
military casualty figures are available for US and British soldiers, but
not for forces deployed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and even France!
Moreover, the tallying of battleground casualties ignores the long-term
impact of postwar psychological traumas and neuroses for combat troops.
In the decade after the Vietnam war, more US combatants in Indochina
committed suicide after returning to America than were killed in the
whole war.

HUMAN COSTS

`It costs a lot of money, but when you look at the precious savings of
lives, I think the dollars are well invested.'(55)

The reduction of Iraq to a preindustrial state has caused a human
disaster for all its citizens. For months after the war there was little
electricity, clean water or sanitation. UNICEF officials in Iraq pre
dicted `massive epidemics -- cholera, typhoid, meningitis and even
polio', which will spread beyond Iraq. In mid-April, the Red Cross
warned of a `public health catastrophe of immense proportions'. Dr Jack
Geiger said he would not be surprised if the postwar nationwide toll
caused by health and sanitation problems would run to `many tens of
thousands'.

A Harvard University medical team reported, `Throughout Iraq
gastroenteritis, cholera and typhoid are now epidemic. Contrary to the
statement of both the Iraqi Government and Western journalists that the
health situation is stable and will continue to improve, the study team
finds that the state of medical care is desperate and - unless
conditions change substantially - will continue to deteriorate in every
region and at nearly every provider level.'

The report found that child mortality soared in the first four months
of 1991, and calculated that 55,000 more children died between January
and April 1991 than in the comparable period the previous year. The
medical team concluded that the child mortality figure was likely to
increase to at least 170,000 additional deaths by the end of the year.

The report said there was a direct correlation between the bombing of
most of Iraq's electrical generating plants and the subsequent breakdown
in public health and medical care.(56)

There are also the ongoing health-care costs for victims in countries
devastated by bombing. For example, there are only about 500 beds
available for burns victims in the Middle East -- Iraq has 100; Israel
120; Oman 50; Saudi Arabia less than 100; Jordan 24; Egypt 98; and
Kuwait 20, probably inactive.

Additional health problems have been caused by the bombing of
military-industrial plants. The Environment News Service Worldscan
Summary of 11 February 1991 reported the spread of an unknown and
rapidly progressing disease after a bacteriological weapons production
plant near Baghdad was bombed: `Fifty out of one hundred servicemen
guarding the plant died in a Baghdad hospital shortly after being
admitted... (a doctor said) the guards had lung damage and injuries to
their circulatory systems... (and) efforts to contain the disease were
unsuccessful.'(57)

The consequences of bombing nuclear, chemical and biological weap ons
plants has not yet been fully established. On 23 January, General Colin
Powell declared that Iraq's `two operating reactors... are both gone.
They're down, they're finished.' General Schwartzkopf stated that 31
such plants had been attacked and that `we have destroyed all of their
nuclear reactor facilities.'

The number of civilian and military deaths in Iraq is difficult to
establish, but most researchers and commentators believe that the total
is more than 100,000 and may be as high as 300,000. On the high side, a
May 1991 estimate suggested about 150,000 military deaths and 135,000
civilian deaths. There is no verification of these figures. The London
Sunday Times on 3 March 1991 estimated that `as many as 200,000 Iraqis
may have died in the Gulf war, according to senior Pentagon officials.'
A Greenpeace International report on the war by William Arkin concludes
that between 151,000 and 183,000 people died by the beginning of May
1991, including: 100,000 to 120,000 military deaths, of which half
occurred during the ground war; 5000 to 15,000 Iraqi civilians who died
during the war and a further 4000 to 6000 civilians who died later from
wounds, malnutrition and lack of medical care; 20,000 Iraqis killed
during the repression of the uprisings following the war; and 15,000 to
30,000 Kurds and other refugees who died on the roads or in camps.

The destruction of industry will cause widespread unemployment and
social dislocation. Iraq faces an impossible set of economic parameters:
low oil income for months and years due to the destruction of that
industry's infrastructure; a massive international debt; the added drain
of paying war reparations to Kuwait according to the UN ceasefire
resolution; imperatives to replace at least some of the destroyed
military equipment; the costs of providing emergency assistance to
displaced persons within Iraq; the cost of addressing health, sanitation
and immediate food and shelter needs; and the huge cost of rebuilding
the civil and industrial infrastructure. This equation can only add up
to one thing: a continuing bleak prospect for most Iraqis, with little
likelihood of Iraq's economy returning to even its prewar level for
decades to come.

The human costs have been just as great for the millions of Arabs and
Asians who previously lived in Iraq and Kuwait as guest workers. Their
flight from the war caused an enormous refugee problem, and the loss of
foreign currency to their home economies is irreplacible. (Up to
December 1990, media coverage focused on Iraq's holding of Westerners in
Iraq, yet 98 per cent of those trapped came from Third World countries.)

Following the August invasion, Jordan received 850,000 refugees from
Iraq and Kuwait (equivalent to 25 per cent of Jordan's population), as
well as the return of 200,000 Jordanian guest workers and 40,000 school-
age children. Some 400,000 Egyptians fled the early stages of fighting
and, during the war, refugees continued to leave, with tens of thousands
crossing into transit and refugee camps in Iran, Turkey, Syria and
Jordan. Funding the refugee aid program in these countries drained funds
urgently needed for refugee assistance in Africa, Asia and Central
America. The first day of the war was estimated to have cost more than
the total annual budget of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to care
for all the refugees in the world.(58)

By late January, more than 160,000 migrant workers had been
repatriated to developing countries. Over 85,000 Sri Lankans lost their
jobs in the Gulf, and their remittances made up almost half of their
country's foreign income. Sri Lankan exports to the Middle East
collapsed, forcing the country to take additional IMF loans, adding to
an already massive foreign debt.(59)

A memorandum to the US congressional foreign affairs committee by six
international aid agencies concluded, `At least forty low and lower-
middle income developing countries, are facing the equivalent of a
natural disaster. The impact of the crisis exceeds 1 per cent of their
GNP, an established UN criterion for defining a natural disaster used in
assessing relief needs. For many, the impact is considerably worse - for
Yemen over 10 per cent, and for Jordan over 25 per cent of their GNP.'
Even Papua New Guinea, far distant from the Middle East, experienced a
1.8 per cent decrease in GNP as a result of the crisis and war.

In the case of Jordan, the memorandum conclude, `Jordan has borne the
greatest relative costs, estimated... at least $1.8 billion, corre
sponding to 25 per cent of GNP and 75 per cent of Jordan's exports of
goods and non-factor services. Loss of remittances is estimated at
around $US150 million per annum, while loss of savings and investment
could be as high as $US8 billion. The returning 300,000 workers
represent some 10 per cent of the labour force. A large number of the
returnees were Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship. Increased
hostility in the Gulf states towards Palestinians will in all
probability lead to a sharp reduction in the numbers of Palestinians
employed in future.'(60)

The loss of income from returning guest workers and reductions in
exports has reduced Yemen's national income by more than 10 per cent. A
similar pattern has occurred in Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, the
Philippines and Sudan. The Bangladesh Finance Minister estimated the
total loss to his country at $US400-500 million. The oil price rises
from August 1990 threatened many Third World countries, in some making
even emergency drought aid transport prohibitively expensive.

The World Bank estimates that the build-up in the Gulf cost the Third
World $US30 billion in diverted assistance: 60 per cent of the total
annual aid budget to the Third World.


ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER

The war `may be the most environmentally destructive conflict in the
history of warfare,' according to the Washington-based Worldwatch
Institute.(61)

The environmental disaster is symbolised by Kuwait's burning oil
wells, which have produced smoke so thick that there are regional
`nuclear winter' effects. As the sun failed to shine through the smog,
daytime temperatures in Kuwait City had dropped from 70 to 40 degrees
Fahrenheit at the war's end, and visibility was so poor the military
needed torches to read maps in the middle of the day. More than 800 out
of 950 oil wells were burning at the war's end, with approximately six
million barrels of oil a day (twice Kuwait's prewar production level)
burning at an annual cost of $US40 billion.(62) Each well fire will take
about two weeks to extinguish, involving 100,000-150,000 tonnes of
water, which will have to be pumped from the Persian Gulf to cool each
fire, and (assuming up to ten teams operating) it could be five years
before all fires are out. The heavy smog is affecting the elderly, the
young, and people with lung and heart conditions living in Kuwait City.
Some Kuwaiti doctors believe that many subject to long-term exposure to
the smog will develop cancers and other diseases: Kuwait is now not a
livable zone. Was it necessary to destroy the country it in order to
save it?

The burning wells are estimated to add about 100 million tons of
carbon to the atmosphere before all fires are extinguished, adding
substantially to the Greenhouse effect. Clouds from the well fires
contain sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and hydrocarbons, and Kuwait
remains clouded in a poisonous black mist. `Black rain' has been
reported in southern Turkey, Iran, Qatar, and as far away as the
Himalayas.

There is a fear of climatic changes which could affect monsoons and
agriculture in Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and parts of South Asia.(63) Dr Carl
Sagan and other experts have said that when the fires burn into the
northern spring, solar radiation will carry the smoke high into the
atmosphere, where it cannot be rained out and may darken an area of
unknown proportions.

Pentagon officials stated that the oil wells may have been torched to
stop coalition attacks or as revenge once the war was clearly lost, and
conceded some of the fires were started by allied bombing: `There is an
advantage from their point of view of starting a fire. It creates smoke,
some would obscure the ground, make it difficult for us to find targets.
There's also some possibility that some of our strikes may have had some
collateral damage to start a fire.'(64) The US military also said that
the bombing of some oil installations in Iraq and Kuwait was part of its
military strategy.

The US Government has attempted to curtail discussion of the effects
of the oil-well fires. On 25 January it issued an order to restrict
discussion on the environmental impact of the war. The order was
rescinded on 22 March. US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
researchers were ordered to withhold satellite images on the Gulf region
after the war had ended. John Cox, an environmental engineer and vice
president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain suggested
that satellite images would reveal that the bombing of Iraqi refineries
and oil reserves had `created an appalling smoke cloud' comparable to
the one generated by the Iraqi sabotage of Kuwait's oil fields. Cox
speculated that the USA would lift its restrictions only after the smoke
from coalition bombing raids had dissipated.

Before the war, the United States tried to make light of the possible
environmental effects of burning oil fields. Fires in the Gulf region
might produce a cloud of pollution, `about as severe as that found on a
bad day at the Los Angeles airport'. Warnings of possible worldwide
climatic effects were dismissed as abusing science to promote an antiwar
political agenda.(65)

At least four oil slicks in the Gulf have affected fisheries, coral
and water desalination plants on the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti coasts
(which provide water for 18 million people). The shrimp industry is
reported to be ruined for the foreseeable future. Saudi authorities
estimate the spills variously at 400,000 gallons, 126 million gallons
and 450 million gallons, of which about 30 per cent was the result of
coalition bombing. These disasters are the world's worst oil spills. By
March only 5.4 million gallons had been recovered, and some 66-250
million gallons sank to the floor of the Gulf, causing further harm to
marine life and habitats. Anticlockwise currents in the Gulf normally
take three years to flush it out through the Straits of Hormuz.
Thousands of birds have already been killed, and many more are expected
to die or fail to reproduce. Extensive damage has been caused to coral
reefs, sea turtles, marine animals and sea grasses.(66)

Other environmental consequences are yet to be realised: the effects
on the fragile desert ecology of the military colossus that lived on,
and rolled over, it; the effects of carpet, napalm and other chemical
bombing; and the consequences of the possible leaks from bombed Iraqi
chemical, nuclear and biological weapons plants.

Whilst no-one can excuse either Iraq or the coalition forces for
their contribution to what Greenpeace has described as an `environmental
black hole', it is also true that this likely outcome was known well
before the war started, and particularly after Iraq made it clear that
such destruction would be part of its strategy should it lose the war.
It was only the environmental and peace movements who pointed to this
now tragic scenario as one more good reason not to go to war.(67)

RECONSTRUCTION

`Don't look to Uncle Sam to make any real contribution. We simply
don't have the money.'(68)

During the war, Secretary of State James Baker stated that the USA
would not help any international effort to rebuild Iraq if Saddam
Hussein or the Ba'ath Party remained in power after the conflict.(69)
But unless money can be found from assets hidden overseas, Iraq has
little capacity to pay war reparations, one of the key demands of
coalition leaders during the conflict.

Prewar Iraq had a foreign debt of $US75 billion ($US14 billion owed
to Kuwait), and imported $US2.5 billion worth of food each year. Some 70
per cent of imports came from, and 47 per cent of exports went to,
countries belonging to the coalition. Before the war, over 90 per cent
of foreign revenues came from oil exports, and all indications suggest
that the UN-imposed blockade had been effective in grinding the
industrial and export sectors of the economy to a virtual halt.

Iraqi oil production will not come on stream soon: the station that
pumps crude oil through Turkey has been knocked out, and offshore
loading facilities at Umm Qasr have been bomb-damaged. Over 80 per cent
of total

refining capacity, including refineries at Basra, Dora and Salah al
Din, has been knocked out and will cost $US10-20 billion to rebuild.
Bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have been destroyed,
disrupting transport and production, and power generation has either
been shut down or blown up. Iraqi officials have estimated the total
reconstruction cost at $US250 billion. This does not include the cost of
replacing destroyed military equipment.

Structural changes to the economy before the war will also determine
the progress of rebuilding. In recent years, Iraq's Ba'ath party has
been privatising the economy, often giving key industries to Saddam
Hussein's cronies. Those coalition leaders who called for the overthrow
of his regime face the dilemma that key sectors of the private industry
are in the hands of members of the regime, while public infrastructure
(including roads, power stations and government buildings) have been
destroyed in the bombing.

The cost of rebuilding Kuwait's infrastructure is estimated at $US100
billion, equal to the Kuwait Investment Office's overseas assets at the
start of war, and more than the $US70 billion cost in 1990 dollars of
the post-Second World War Marshall plan! The Kuwaiti Government has
issued contracts to coalition countries for rebuilding: in early
January, the US Army Corps of Engineers received a $US46 million
contract to assess damage. Kuwait's Ambassador to the USA, Saud Nasir al
Sabah stated, `The policy of the lowest price or lowest bidder will not
be followed. Our policy is not to forget our friends who stood with us
in times of need.'(70) About 70 per cent of contracts signed in the
aftermath of the fighting went to US corporations (including Bechtel,
Fluor and others) and 22 per cent to British firms.

In contrast, some other coalition members have not done as well from
the conflict. France has lost at least 25 billion francs ($A6.25
billion) for bills unpaid at the start of the war (14 billion francs for
military equipment, another 11 billion francs for construction projects,
airports etc.); with interest, the total is 29 billion. State-guaranteed
loans to Iraq amounted to 15 billion francs ($A3.75 billion), plus
another 3 billion in interest. Australia also faces the possible loss of
markets in the region, affecting wheat, live sheep and other
agricultural products that will be taken up by subsidised export
programme from the United States and the European Community (EC).

A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES?

`The British Government, in consultation with the United States,
considered the possibility of a post-Suez invasion and occupation of
Kuwait, turning the controversial state into a Crown colony. The drastic
action was mooted in 1958 -- three years before the agreement on
independence -- as part of an Anglo-American plan to maintain Western
control over the Gulf oilfields.'(71)

As Bob Hawke farewelled HMAS Darwin on 13 August 1990, he told the
ship's crew that `it's important for Australia that the world
understands big countries cannot invade small countries and get away
with it'. It was the New World Order principle, but it took little time
to realise that this principle would be applied only selectively.
Consider the following exchange with journalists aboard HMAS Darwin
(after Hawke had told journalists there is no analogy between Iraq's
occupation of Kuwait and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip): Journalist: Well... pick another analogy, Mr Hawke, the
occupation of East Timor. Hawke: I'm sure you can. Journalist: Surely
East Timor didn't make a threat to Indonesia. Hawke: Well, mate, I'm not
here to have an argument with you. I mean, if you were really interested
in asking objective questions I'd deal with you.(72)

Subsequently, Cabinet Minister Brian Howe, formerly a vocal advocate
of self-determination for East Timor, argued privately to a number of
critics that the New World Order principle did not apply to Indonesia's
invasion of East Timor, since the latter had never been recognised as an
independent state!

As the coalition's postwar strategy to bring `stability' to the
Middle East foundered on the Palestinian and Kurdish questions, the call
for a New World Order came to haunt the coalition leaders. Henry
Kissinger noted at the war's end that such an order was unattainable and
the suggestion of democracy everywhere was a dangerous one.(73) Right-
wing columnist Michael Barnard pointed out that the New World Order was
`never more than a sop for the left-liberal chattering classes' and that
`the reality of power remains that the UN as a vehicle for enforcing
order or repelling danger is for the most part next to useless, a
political talkfest', because `throughout the entire episode it was
always US, not UN, power that counted.'(74)

The question of democracy was posed for Iraq. During the war, Western
leaders including President Bush called for the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein's regime, yet after the war they supplied little overt support
for groups that took up their call! Opposition to the Iraqi regime is
divided between communist, liberal and a range of national and religious
groups. (55 per cent of the population are Shi'ite rather than Sunni
Muslims, and 15 per cent are Kurdish rather than Arab.)

In the aftermath of the war, opposition groups began military
campaigns to control key towns. Kurdish groups moved to take control of
north-eastern cities like Kirkuk, Arbil and Sulaymaniya. In early March,
Shi'ite and rebellious army groups tried to control Basra, al Amarah and
other southern cities. The Supreme Assembly of the Iraqi Revolution in
Iraq (SAIRI) claimed control of Nassiriya (a strategic town on the
Euphrates River) and Shuyukh, al Tar, al Fuhoud, and the holy cities of
Najaf and Karbala. The Iranian Government had quietly backed Shi'ite
leader Muhammad Baqir al Hakim in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. By
April, however, forces loyal to Saddam Hussein had regained control, at
the cost of hundreds of civilian casualties. Thousands of Kurdish
refugees fled across the border to Iran, and into the mountains
bordering Turkey, only to be turned back by the Ozal government, which
feared that the question of Kurdish national rights would be spread to
Turkish Kurdistan. Iraq faces a future similar to Lebanon, divided along
sectarian and national lines, an outcome that will not displease
neighbouring states such as Turkey and Iran, who oppose the creation of
an independent Kurdistan.

Having at first argued that the Kurdish question was `internal' to
Iraq, Bob Hawke later changed tack, arguing, `There is a broader area of
responsibility and we'll certainly be prepared to be part of an
international effort to try and bring some sort of justice to these
people.'(75) George Bush had said, `There are things worth fighting
for... brutality and lawlessness (must not be) allowed to go unchecked.'
Further, he had urged Iraqis to `take matters into their own hands' and
force Saddam Hussein to `step aside'. But when Iraqi opposition groups,
encouraged by Bush's backing, rebelled and were defeated by the Iraqi
army, the United States looked the other way. `We don't intend to
involve ourselves in the internal conflict in Iraq,' White House
spokesperson Marlin Fitzwater said. (Ironically this was precisely when
US forces were very much involved in Iraq's `internal affairs',
controlling the skies and occupying 15 per cent of Iraq's territory!)
Commentator Thomas Friedman of the New York Times argued that `the
administration's position... is morally indefensible and may not produce
the stability in Iraq or the Persian Gulf region that the White House
says its policy is designed to encourage.'(76)

Under enormous international pressure, the coalition members
proceeded to construct a number of transparent measures to atone for
their cynical manipulation and betrayal of those Kurdish leaders who
took Bush's statements at face value. The political responsibility of
the West was lost under a chorus of concern about humanitarian and
refugee issues, as if these were the cause, rather than the effect, of
Bush's call to overthrow the Iraqi Government. In desperation,
everything from a `no fire' to a `safety zone' inside Iraq were mooted,
but underneath it all the West was faced by the logic of its regional
strategy.

International media attention on the desperate plight of the Kurds
often ignored previous cynical manipulation of Kurdish desires for self-
determination. Maniupaltion of the Kurdish movement in the interests of
foreign states is not a new phenomenon.

Beginning in 1972, the US Government, in co-operation with the Shah
of Iran, supplied $US16 million in secret aid to the Kurds to support
their struggle against Iraq. The report of a subsequent congressional
inquiry into CIA misdeeds, the Pike Committee, found `this project was
initiated primarily as a favour to our ally (the Shah of Iran) who had
co-operated with US intelligence agencies and who had come to feel
menaced by his neighbour (Iraq)... Documents (given to the Pike
Committee) clearly show that the President, Dr Kissinger and the foreign
head of state (the Shah) hoped that our clients (the Kurds) would not
prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a
level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's
neighbouring country. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who
were encouraged to keep fighting.'

The Pike Committee noted that `even in the context of covert action,
ours was a cynical enterprise'. This is somewhat of an understatement
given that the Shah and the USA cut off the aid in March 1975 after the
signing of the Algiers treaty between Iraq and Iran. The subsequent
Iraqi repression of the Kurds led to thousands of casualties and 200,000
refugees. When Kurdish leaders appealed to the USA for humanitarian
assistance, an unnamed US official told the Pike Committee that `covert
action should not be confused with missionary work'. The head of the CIA
when the matter was being investigated was George Bush.(77)

US policy is based on a complex web of alliances with Middle East
states, including Syria and Turkey, who have oppressed the Kurds just as
violently as Iraq. It is in the interests of, and necessary for, all
regimes to undermine stated American support for self-determination,
human rights and democracy. Kurdish success, or full recognition of the
Kurds' right to self-determination in all the states presently occupying
Kurdistan, would directly threaten the pro-American Middle East
alliance. In the end, the United States opted for a continuation of
Saddam Hussein's regime rather than full human and national rights for
the oppressed Kurds.

Self-righteous governments who had excessively armed Iraq and indeed
the whole Middle East climbed onto the moral high ground, declaring that
the New World Order would mean an end to this cynical arms trade. It was
time, they said, for an end to the process that saw the Arab states
spend $US80 billion dollars a year on arms imports.

Australian Defence Minister Robert Ray echoed the new view: `A major
lesson for the future relates to the need to control and reduce the
international arms trade. Major powers have been ready to supply
military equipment to just about anyone who asks... What is obvious is
how self-defeating the result is for both the vendor and the
purchaser... Priority will have to be given to controlling the trade in
weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.'(78)

Indeed, elimination of Iraq's store of weapons of mass destruction
and associated delivery systems was included in the ceasefire resolution
adopted by the UN Security Council, and accepted by Iraq. However, no-
one even mentioned Israel's nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

But talk of arms control only masked a new arms build-up in the
Middle East. The Arab coalition partners and Israel only had to ask, and
they received. The US Government stated explicitly that it would not
limit sales of sophisticated conventional weapons to its allies in the
region. Since 2 August 1990, arms imports and orders have included: *
French sales to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. * US sales to
Egypt of aircraft worth $US1.6 billion. Egypt has also asked for Hawk
anti-aircraft missiles, F-16 jets and upgrading of M-60 tanks. *
Purchase by Syria of Soviet arms, paid from a grant of $US2 billion from
Saudi Arabia. * Supply of Patriot missile systems to Israel and the Gulf
states. Israel has also asked for hand-held battlefield navigation
systems, and upgrading of F-15 fighters and M-109 artillery. * A Saudi
Arabian order in the USA worth $US20 billion. The Pentagon has approved
the sale of F-15 war planes, Patriot missiles, up to 50 Apache antitank
helicopters, 400 M1-A1 main battle tanks and 500 Bradley armoured
fighting vehicles.(79)

`Cash on the barrel-head will determine who gets the arms,' according
to Abdallah Bishara, the Kuwaiti Secretary-General of the Gulf
Cooperation Council.

The war against Iraq had shown how well the weapons worked, and now
it was time to make good. `The next big push in the defence industry
will be to exploit the Middle East... This is not arms control, this is
an arms opportunity,' a lobbyist for one American weapons manufacturer
declared.(80)

THE ARAB WORLD

`The perception of many Arabs today is that the modern Arab political
order has failed virtually all Arab individuals, states, or the broader
Arab world of some 200 million people. The failure has been almost total
in scope, covering domestic politics, human rights, social and economic
development, regional integration, and pan-Arab national challenges such
as Israel and relations with the superpowers.'(81)

From the very beginning, opponents of Operation Desert Shield argued
that it would solve few, if any, of the problems of the region. Whilst
the war has forever changed Arab and Middle East politics, the fundamen
tal contradictions remain.

In the first instance, those countries allied with the United States
have benefited: with new defence equipment; financial assistance; the
construction of new security arrangements to support the existing ruling
elites; and a blind eye turned to their domestic human rights and
political abuses.

Payments from the USA, Japan and the Gulf States were designed to
compensate for the cost of military deployments, loss of economic
revenue from the sanctions campaign, and on occasions to cushion the
costs when there was widespread public opinion opposed to involvement in
the coalition: * Turkey will lose $US7 billion for the year following
the invasion because of the oil embargo. The EC, Japan and Arab
countries had given $US900 million by mid-February, with EC promises to
extend $US236 million in credits; * Egypt had $US14 billion in debts
written off by the USA and Gulf monarchies; * Pakistan, which sent
11,000 troops, had its forces armed, housed and paid by the Saudis, who
agreed to provide 50,000 barrels of crude a day to Pakistan at no cost,
a deal worth $US100 million annually. Pakistan's losses due to lost
guest-worker remittances, higher oil prices and loss of income are
estimated at $US1.5-2 billion. * Syria sent 21,000 troops and 270 tanks
to the Gulf war in support of the US-led coalition and was temporarily
removed from the US list of states `sponsoring terrorism'. In return,
the Ba'athist regime of Hafez al Assad, with a human rights record as
bad as that of Saddam Hussein, regained political favour: Britain
resumed diplomatic relations, and a November 1990 visit by George Bush
improved relations with America. By the end of the year, the Saudis had
helped to rearm Assad, supplying $US500 million of aid. After the war,
the Syrian regime faced little international criticism as they moved
troops into Lebanon and consolidated their effective rule over that
country, and received a shipment of long-range Scud-C missiles from
North Korea. With the war out of the way and the coalition's deeds done,
Syria was reinstated by the US administration in May 1991 to its list of
states `sponsoring terrorism'.(82)

Israel, by not responding to Iraq's Scud missile attacks,
strengthened its special relationship with the USA. There was no
American criticism of Israel's even more repressive policies in the
occupied territories. A blind eye was turned to round-the-clock curfews,
renewed expulsions and the introduction of an apartheid-style pass
system for Palestinians. No effective pressure was placed on Israel to
join an effective Middle East peace process leading to Palestinian self-
determination, despite endless assurances to the contrary in late 1990
as the USA battled Iraq's linkage between its withdrawal from Kuwait and
Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But the victory was hollow for some; none more so that Kuwait itself.
The country is largely destroyed, the oil industry will not resume
significant production before 1993, its bureaucracy is in a shambles,
particularly due to decisions not to re-employ the Palestinians, who
virtually ran industry before August 1990; and much of the accumulated
wealth of the country, including massive investments in the West, will
be redeemed to finance reconstruction. Many Kuwaitis and their capital
have resettled in Europe, and confidence in the banking system in Kuwait
and the Gulf will never fully return.

Those states who opposed the war have paid the price, not only from
the costs of coping with new refugees, the return of guest workers and
the loss of their income, but also from the cutting of US and Gulf aid,
as happened to a number of states including Jordan. In early February,
King Hussein made a speech aligning Jordan with `brotherly Iraq', saying
the war was `against all Arabs and all Muslims and not Iraq alone', to
assert 'foreign hegemony' over the region: the West's true intentions
are to `destroy Iraq and reorganise the area in a manner far more
dangerous to our people than the Sykes-Picot treaty'.(83) In response to
Jordan's policy, Washington suspended a $US55 million 1991 aid package,
and the Saudis refused to resume preferential oil sales. When Yemen
voted against US-sponsored resolutions at the UN Security Council, one
unnamed US official was quoted as saying, `That was the most expensive
vote you'll ever make.'

A key element of prowar propaganda was the claim that a number of
Arab and Muslim nations had rallied to the Western war effort. But it is
striking that those countries that did send troops, including Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Morocco, Senegal, and Pakistan are amongst the
least pluralist and democratic of the Arab and Muslim world!

There was widespread popular disaffection in many Muslim countries
that sent troops, especially Pakistan, Sudan and Morocco. Opposition to
Western military intervention in the Middle East and Gulf was most
clearly seen in those countries that are moving away from absolute
monarchy (for example, Jordan), or have multiparty systems (Yemen and
Algeria). Popular and democratic forces in the Arab world, including the
Palestinian and Kurdish movements, also actively criticised Western
intervention, and even a mixture of Iraqi opposition groups opposed the
bombardment of their country. All called for Iraq's withdrawal from
Kuwait, even though Western propaganda tried to suggest that any group
opposed to military intervention supported Saddam Hussein's policies.

Whilst there will be domestic pressure on those governments who
supported the war, the Gulf conflict has strengthened the role of
conservative Arab regimes within regional institutions like the Arab
League and Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). One of
the often ignored causes of the conflict was Iraq's desire to increase
oil prices to alleviate severe economic problems, and stop
overproduction by Kuwait, including exploitation of the reserves of the
Rumailah oilfield which lies beneath both countries, but mostly under
Iraq. Kuwait and Iraq were amongst the largest producers of crude oil
before the war, but have now been sidelined, leaving Saudi Arabia in a
key position within OPEC. Oil analyst Peter Bogin noted, `The Saudis
need a market to sell their oil and therefore they need to sell it at a
reasonable price and the Americans need to buy it at a reasonable price
for their economy. But the US is the second largest oil producer in the
world. They don't want prices of $US14 a barrel because it kills off the
Texas oil industry. So in the end, we get back to the situation we were
in before the war, except that one extremely militant country is no
longer there to force the price up.'(84) The international oil market
was under pressure in early March because of fear of an oil glut. At the
end of the war, world oil stocks were at historically high levels
because economic recession has hit consumption in the industrialised
world, and OPEC countries were pumping at full capacity during the war.

The Saudis, in collaboration with Mexico and US oil producers, have
moved to stabilise prices to keep US consumers (and the floundering
Texas oil industry) happy, holding the price at about $US21 a barrel.
The manipulation of prices has caused concern amongst smaller oil
producers, who fear that OPEC will become a tool of large oil nations --
a concern raised soon after the war by OPEC's President, Algeria's Oil
Minister Sadek Boussena: `If it so happens that some wish to transform
its nature to make it an instrument in the service of interests other
than those of its members, then each of us will have to reassess his
position. In other words, OPEC must not change either its role or its
mission.'(85)

The gross economic inequities between the oil-rich elites of the Gulf
and the peasant poor of the non-OPEC states have not been addressed at
all. The poor Arab states lack balanced economic growth, with priorities
set by large domestic and foreign capital, the requirements of
international debt authorities, and the distortions produced by
bureaucratic military elites intent on building up their military
strength. Economic and class differences, raised by Iraq as a popular
rallying call to the Arab masses, are now more out in the open than they
were before the war. The feudal families of the Gulf are politically now
more fragile and public antipathy towards them has sharpened.

Reinforcement of the Arab coalition partners -- through new aid and
regional defence alliances -- will not bring either stability or
legitimacy to these regimes. They are seen by their populations as more
dependent than ever on the very power -- the United States -- that has
uncritically supported and armed Israel. The USA has consistently
pursued a policy that has divided and weakened progressive and
nationalist Arab forces, and helped to ensure that Arab popular
sentiment and historical aspirations will not be realised.

The dominant questions of the Middle East -- the Arab-Israel conflict
and the struggle for Palestinian national rights, the economic and
political legacies of colonialism, the quest for Arab renewal and unity,
problems of development, and the `north-south' issues within the region
-- remain unaddressed.

But changes have occurred at a number of levels. The Arab League, as
it has functioned in recent years, is finished. The pan-Arabist
undercurrent, that Arab states should not engage directly with each
other in armed conflict, was one of the League's practical foundations
and has now been swept away. The League will slip to the sidelines as
new alliances and arrangements are made. Arab politics will become more
regionalised, and an overall Arab political inertia will reflect the
general weakness and political illegitimacy of most Arab regimes, and
the lack of a political `centre' in the region.

Attitudes and capacities to influence events in Israel/Palestine and
Lebanon have changed. Many of the Arab coalition members are again
trying to impose a non-PLO leadership on the Palestinian people, the
better able to manipulate events to suit their own state interests.
Israel has built up political capital with its American backers that it
will use to prevent any settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute that would
grant full Palestinian self-determination. A campaign has been waged
against the PLO, based on the false allegation that the PLO supported
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.(86)

During the war, Syria's foreign affairs minister stated that
recognition of the state of Israel would be possible in the post-Gulf
period, opening the way for a new Camp David-style agreement that would
again betray the Palestinians. Just as Egypt signed a separate peace
with Israel and regained the Sinai, so Syria could strike a deal with
Israel, achieving the return of the Golan Heights and the withdrawal of
Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, in return for recognition of
Israel. Such an agreement, ignoring the rights of the Palestinians and
Lebanese, would improve state-to-state relations but would not provide a
comprehensive settlement of long-standing problems in the Middle East,
nor a lasting peace, just as the Camp David Accords left the way open
for Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Palestinians have become the hidden victims of the war in three
senses. Many Palestinians who provided the professional backbone of the
Gulf oil industry have been expelled, and their loss of income, which
was traditionally repatriated to the Israeli-occupied territories, has
caused further hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Innocent
Palestinians remaining in Kuwait have been terrorised, tortured and
murdered in a campaign of revenge by Kuwaiti nationals. The PLO is under
unprecedented attack, and Palestinians living in the occupied
territories face even harsher conditions, a rapidly declining standard
of living and the accelerated destruction of their own economy. Round-
the-clock curfews during the war, further restrictions on their capacity
to work in Israel, and the increasing settlement program, driven by the
influx of Soviet Jews to Israel, place new burdens and stresses on the
intifada (uprising).

It is ironic that Saddam Hussein, the self-styled outspoken advocate
of the Palestinian cause, has done so much to divert the Arab world's
attention from the Arab-Israel dispute, and has paved the way for a
period of unprecedented American hegemony in the region, and all that
entails for progressive, nationalist Arab forces.

AN INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIAN NAVY?

`All we do is launch a few missiles towards the coast and watch the
planes go by.'(87)

Throughout the 1980s, the Hawke government developed a military
strategy which, in theory, focused on the Asia Pacific region and the
need for a self-reliant defence strategy. Without consultation and
without waiting for an invitation from the Americans, Bob Hawke sent the
frigates HMAS Darwin and Adelaide and the supply ship Success to the
Gulf. In November 1990 they were replaced by the HMAS Brisbane and
Sydney and the supply ship Westralia. The government sent 23 naval
divers to clear mines and a medical team to work on the hospital ship
USS Comfort. In addition, ten Australian military intelligence
specialists worked with US forces in Saudi Arabia from early January and
twelve other officers served on exchange with British and American
military units.

On 4 December the Australian Government announced that naval ships
were placed on a war footing, and HMAS Brisbane and Sydney, spent the
latter part of the war in the northern Gulf under the operational
control of the US Navy. The Australian Government announced that they
had permission to fire if necessary, and were assigned to support the
aircraft carrier USS Midway, protecting it from enemy air attacks.

The two Australian warships did not fire a shot in anger, and media
coverage of the war often focused on the aerial bombardment that
devastated Iraq and Kuwait, and the dramatic land battles involving
coalition forces. But warships from the US Seventh and Third Fleets,
based in the Pacific, were at the forefront of the military campaign.
The participation of Australian Navy warships with ships of the US
Seventh Fleet in a combat zone highlights the increasing integration of
allied navies, in spite of the Australian Government's statements about
our self-reliant defence policy!

HMAS Sydney was called home from its world tour in August when Iraq
invaded Kuwait, and later sailed for the Gulf in November to join the
Midway battle group. At the outbreak of the crisis, Australia's naval
attach in Washington flew to San Diego, California, where the ship was
visiting, and ordered it home, declaring, `The interoperability with US
forces is very much the keystone of our defence policy.'(88) After the
war, the Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Charles
Larson, endorsed the close working arrangements between the US and
Australian navies: `Members of the US Seventh Fleet tell me that because
we work together so often, their operations with the Australians were as
smooth as ops with the US Sixth Fleet from the Mediterranean!'(89)

Other ships homeported at Yokosuka in Japan formed part of the USS
Midway carrier task force. The aircraft carrier Midway was supported by
the Aegis-class cruiser USS Bunker Hill and the destroyer USS Fife (both
armed with sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles which can carry a
conventional or nuclear warhead). The carrier battle group also included
the destroyer USS Oldendorf and the missile frigate USS Curts from
Yokosuka, and the USS Sterrett, based at Subic Bay in the Philippines.
The Yokosuka-based Aegis-class cruiser USS Mobile Bay also served in the
Gulf.

The USS Midway can carry nuclear weapons, and the destroyer USS Fife
can carry 45 Tomahawk cruise missiles, two with nuclear warheads.
Aegis-class missile cruisers can carry up to 26 Tomahawk missiles each,
6 with nuclear warheads. (The Aegis-class missile cruisers include the
USS Vincennes, described as `Robocruiser' because of its computer air
defence system. While deployed in the Gulf in July 1988 in support of
Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, the Vincennes shot down an Iranian
civilian airliner, killing over 200 innocent passengers.)

When the Tomahawk-armed warships were first deployed to Yokosuka over
the last two years, Japanese disarmament groups were worried that they
would become the core of a naval strike force for Third World
intervention. The Japanese-based ships became a crucial naval component
of the war against Iraq.

The Seventh Fleet flagship, USS Blue Ridge, which is based at
Yokosuka, became the first US flagship to arrive in the Middle East in
August 1990. It served as the US Navy's command centre for the war for
nine months, with Vice Admiral Stanley Arthur as the commander. It was
the longest continuous deployment of any US Navy vessel.

The ships of the Midway battle group played a crucial role in the
bombardment of Iraq and Kuwait in January and February. The USS Bunker
Hill was the first ship in the Gulf to launch ship-to-shore Tomahawk
cruise missiles at Iraq when the war started on 17 January, and served
as the air defence command ship for all the forces in the Gulf. The USS
Fife was also crucial in the initial stages of the conflict. In the
first week of the war, the Fife fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at
targets in Iraq, more than any other ship. The USS Mobile Bay also fired
Tomahawk missiles, which can manoeuvre over terrain under computer
guidance, to strike a target accurately hundreds of miles away.

During the war, US ships fired 291 Tomahawks at targets in Iraq and
Kuwait, over two-thirds being fired in the first two days of the war.
The Tomahawk missile has been touted by US officials as one of the
`glamour' weapons of the Gulf war: Vice Admiral Stanley Arthur
commented, `This "reach out and touch someone" weapon proved a real
plus.'(90) As a long-range, low-flying weapon that can be armed with
cluster munitions or a conventional or nuclear warhead, the missile has
been deployed on US warships since 1984 to increase the number of ships
that can launch long range attacks (a role previously played by carrier
-based aircraft). But critics have questioned the US Navy's claims of
accuracy, as eyewitness accounts showed that some Tomahawks did not hit
the designated targets. Some missiles crashed into apartment buildings
and, in one case, a swimming pool!(91)

US Navy and Marine strike aircraft flew nearly one quarter of combat
missions during the war. Jets from the aircraft carrier USS Midway also
struck airfields, defence positions, port facilities and other targets
in Iraq in the opening hours of the war, and continued flying combat
sorties throughout the conflict. Planes from the Midway flew over 3300
combat sorties, dropping four million pounds of munitions on Iraq and
Kuwait. (This was more missions than any of the five other US aircraft
carriers that took part in Operation Desert Storm!)

This aerial bombardment has been criticised in the aftermath of the
war: `While air force F-117 Stealth fighters dropped precision-guided
weapons down carefully photographed Iraqi chimneys, the Navy's pilots
were saturating Basra and Kuwait with iron bombs and cluster munitions
that brought charges of brutality and unnecessary slaughter of civil
ians. In early efforts to target bridges in the theatre, many of the
Navy's unguided iron bombs failed to hit the mark and the Air Force was
sent in to finish the job.'(92)

The deployment of US warships armed with nuclear weapons and Tomahawk
cruise missiles can only occur because allied nations such as Australia
and Japan provide political and material support, especially forward
basing, refuelling and transit facilities.

US and coalition warships co-ordinate their operations through
participation in military exercises and war games. Four Australian Navy
vessels that were deployed to the Gulf -- HMAS Darwin, Brisbane,
Adelaide and Success -- joined US, Japanese, Canadian and south Korean
warships in the RIMPAC biennial military exercise held off Hawai'i in
June 1990. During RIMPAC 90, the allied warships practised joint
operations against a carrier task force led by the USS Independence, and
a mock Grenada-style `rescue' exercise, with participation by US Army
and Marine forces. The exercise culminated in the bombardment by US and
Canadian vessels of the island of Kaho'olawe, a site of cultural and
religious significance for the Hawai'ian people.

Much attention has focused on Japan's $US9 billion donation to the
coalition's war effort, but this ignores the existing contribution from
Japanese taxpayers in the form of payments for US forces based in Japan.
Maintenance of some Tomahawk-armed ships is carried out by Japanese
technicians, with contributions to their salaries from the Japanese
government. During the war, the US Navy wanted to send Japanese
electronics engineers to Bahrain to assess repair work on the Seventh
Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge, until formal protests from unions and
local government authorities scuttled the plan.

Aircraft from the Midway which bombed Iraq day and night perfected
their techniques with night landing practice at Atsugi, Iwakuni, Misawa
and Yokota air bases in Japan. (1990 marked the worst aircraft noise
recorded in history, in the region of the Atsugi base.) Electronic
attack aircraft, such as the EA6B Prowlers which flew from the Midway,
practised their low-level flights for electronic warfare deep in the
mountains in Totsugawa. US Navy crew and their families are housed at
Yokosuka outside Tokyo in houses built by Japanese Government funds, and
local citizens are currently campaigning to stop the destruction of the
Ikego forest to make way for more housing if the ageing USS Midway is
replaced by the larger carrier USS Independence later this year.

US Seventh and Third Fleet warships based in the Pacific often visit
Australia and the Philippines on their way to and from the Indian Ocean
and Middle East, for `rest and recreation'. The USS Louisville, the
first US attack submarine to launch a cruise missile in wartime against
Iraq, called at Fremantle in Western Australia on 7 March 1991 on its
way home to port in San Diego. The Tomahawk-armed battleship USS
Missouri called at Australian ports in early April 1991 as it returned
from the Gulf. The USS Okinawa and five other ships of Amphibious Group
3 arrived at Subic Bay in the Philippines with 5000 sailors, returning
from nine months in the Gulf, to spend three days in the bars and
brothels of nearby Olongapo City before returning to home port in San
Diego.

The US Navy, overshadowed by acclaim for the role of air and ground
forces in the war against Iraq, is eager to promote its achievements
during the war in bidding for funds in the postwar budgetary scramble.


CONSEQUENCES FOR AUSTRALIA

The war against Iraq signified new dynamics in international
relations. It also focused attention on a number of defence and foreign
policy issues within Australia. The cost of the deployment of
Australian ships to the Gulf, and suggestions that further resources
should be expended on arming them with cruise missiles, has an obvious
effect on the federal budget and on the government's capacity to respond
to the deepening economic crisis. But there are other economic
consequences: the loss of the Iraqi wheat market; Iraq's likely
incapacity to repay existing trade debts; and the difficulties of
maintaining market share with Arab coalition partners politically
indebted to the United States. The war hit many industries hard,
particularly tourism and international travel. Rising oil prices in the
December 1990 quarter added to the inflation rate.

Australia reasserted its primary allegiance to the USA, and thereby
scuttled the Hawke government's `new' foreign affairs and defence
policies, which had placed greater emphasis on the region. Strategic
analyst Dr Des Ball descended from the ivory tower to take a strong
public stance against the war, partly because he saw that the 1986 Dibb
Report and subsequent defence White Paper, which had argued that defence
needs should be based on national and regional concerns and should move
away from intervening in faraway wars, was being thrown out the door.
The Hawke government's commitment to the Southeast Asian and Pacific
regions looked shallow when Australia was the only country in either
region to commit forces to the Gulf. The decision to deploy Australian
forces was taken without reference to regional sentiment, reinforcing
the popular view in Asia and the Pacific of Australia as a European
enclave.

Domestically, Arab and Muslim Australians came under unprecedented
(even physical) attack, with conservative commentators and organisations
engaged in a vicious and racist public campaign against them.(93) Pro-
war sentiment guided the editorial policy of most media organisations,
and conservative and Zionist lobby groups combined in an all-out attack
on the ABC because of its impartiality.

Conservative forces celebrated the victory over Iraq as marking the
end of the `Vietnam syndrome'. Coalition leaders proudly pointed to the
lessons they had learnt in Indochina and applied so successfully:
avoiding long, drawn-out ground wars; muzzling the media; building
coalitions to legitimise intervention; and maximising the use of
technological superiority to minimise their own casualties and inflict
maximum damage to civilian and military targets of the enemy.

However, the Vietnam syndrome is not over. The peace movement was
reinvigorated, and the largest expressions of antiwar sentiment seen for
many years echoed around the streets of all capital cities. In Melbourne
and Sydney, some 40,000 people in each city joined in mass rallies on
the days following the outbreak of war on 17 January. But euphoria at
the strength of the movement was dissipated by the nature of the war,
and many were left feeling disempowered as both major political parties
and most major public institutions uncritically supported the war's
progress.

The war against Iraq revived popular sentiment against military
intervention, and reflected many of the issues raised by the nuclear
disarmament movement of the early and mid-1980s: the presence of US
satellite, command and communications bases in Australia; the transit of
American warships through our ports; the sale of uranium into the
nuclear fuel and weapons cycle; and the overarching ANZUS alliance,
which ties Australian defence and foreign policy to the dictates of
American strategic interests.

All of these links drew Australia into the war against Iraq. However,
this war was not a simple rerun of Vietnam, and analogies drawing a
direct link between the two were simplistic. Nor was this war foreseen
by those who expected an outbreak of peace around the world following
the INF treaty in 1987 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the
cheer-squad which heralded Gorbachev as the prophet of peace and a new
era of international cooperation.

It is popular to proclaim the end of the Cold War and all that it
entailed. But the Cold War was not fought out simply in Europe.
Political, economic and military rivalry between the USA and the USSR
overlaid many local and regional conflicts in the Third World. Detente
between the superpowers does not guarantee peace and security for the
peoples of the Third World; if the war against Iraq is any indication,
it signals precisely the opposite.

In the euphoria over the liberation of Kuwait, the history of the
Cold War, superpower relations and the role of the United Nations is
being rewritten. The view that Soviet and Chinese `intransigence'
stopped the effective functioning of the UN as a mediator of conflict
denies the real role of the UN Security Council. This body has, as a
matter of course, protected the interests of the five veto powers and
their client states, and has never applied international law in an even-
handed and systematic way.

The question of the role of the UN was central for the antiwar
movement, and produced heated debate. Those who supported the UN
resolutions and sanctions now longingly look to a `reformed' UN as the
way forward. Some `left-wing' supporters of the war advocate an
`ethical' New World Order based on `the United Nations having the
willpower and the firepower to stand up for international law.'(94)
Others denounced the UN as a den of thieves.

But making reform of the United Nations a central concern is
misplaced. While some UN institutions have contributed to an ethos of
decolonisation, human rights and international law through the
proclamation of conventions and charters, these documents have been
largely ignored by the nuclear powers and the Security Council. There is
no indication, nor can we expect any, that the permanent members of the
Security Council will give up the veto powers that allow them to
dominate questions of peace, war and security.

Some posed political choices over Iraq's invasion and the US
intervention in the starkest terms: either military defeat for
imperialism or total opposition to Iraq's brutal regime and its denial
of national rights for Kuwaitis. For others, opposition to Iraq's human
rights practices necessitated support for the military build-up, even
when it was clear that this was inevitably leading to war.

Such approaches ignored the military realities that Iraq was bound to
lose any war against the coalition, and that it was possible, indeed
necessary, to actively oppose both the imperialist buildup and Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait and its human rights record.

Support for democratic rights, for the rights of nations for self-
determination and freedom from imperial intervention must be consistent
and sustained. The notion of what constitutes effective international
solidarity work is far from clear, but uncritical support for every
Third World bandit with anti-American rhetoric does not provide the
answer.

Solidarity movements should provide practical and tangible support,
whether it be material assistance, education, or campaigns that provide
national liberation movements with increased democratic space and in
creased opportunities to achieve their aims. Campaigns around the
consistent application of the Geneva Conventions concerning war and
occupation, and UN declarations on human rights and decolonisation are
not to be dismissed as merely `democratic' in nature: they are certainly
more effective than empty polemics or hand-ringing about the plight of
the Third World.

Many groups in the antiwar movement have been quick to `draw the
lessons', often through rose-coloured glasses. Although there was a
large public mobilisation against the war, there is little agreement
about future directions for the peace, antiwar and anti-intervention
movements. The debate about the war exacerbated contradictions within
the Labor Left, and by the war's end, the stocks of Labor governments
were at an all-time low with the peace movement. But the alternatives
remained illusive.

FOOTNOTES

1. Whilst it is not possible to quantify all the costs and
consequences of the war (for example, environmental and human
destruction), the following `back of the hand' figures are a starting
point: Coalition war costs $US60b; Iraqi war costs and destruction of
hardware $US60b; Destruction of infrastructure in Iraq $US255b;
Destruction of infrastructure in Kuwait $US100b; Private sector losses
in Kuwait $US150b; Lost economic production in Iraq and Kuwait $US90b;
Losses due to burning oil $US80b; Arms re-supply, aid and debt reduction
to the Middle East $US40b. There are also additional defence
expenditures, the effects of loss of income to Third World states, etc.
It should also be noted that Sheik Salam al Sabah, governor of Kuwait's
central bank, is quoted as saying that reconstruction costs for Kuwait
could cost as much as $US500 billion if private-sector losses are
included. Australian Financial Review, 1 March 1991)

2. Erskine Childers, `The use and abuse of the UN in the Gulf crisis',
Middle East Report no.169.

3. Pentagon officials admitted privately that a pullout from Kuwait on
Hussein's terms and initiatives would be a `nightmare scenario'. Norm
Ornstein of American Enterprise Institute noted, `Bush's biggest
problem... is that Saddam may withdraw before his military machine is
destroyed. He (Bush) has got to be a little bit worried that there may
be a victory before he wants it.' (`The case of April Glaspie', on
Pegasus computer network, Mideast.Forum, 19 April 1991.)

4. `UN not in charge of war, says chief', Melbourne Age, 12 February
1991.

5. `Kurdish leaders say CIA incited uprising', Age, 10 April 1991.

6. Age, 15 February 1991.

7. Robert Springborg, `Selling the war in the Gulf', in After the Gulf
War: For Peace in the Middle East, Pluto Press, Sydney 1991.
Via NY Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683
8. Australian Society, November 1990.

9. For an analysis, see Belinda Probert, `Is the anti-war movement
guilty of appeasement?' in Gulf Information Papers 2., Rainbow Alliance,
Melbourne, February 1991.

10. Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie, `Back Iraq', New Republic, 27
April 1987.

11. See for example, `Iraqi numbers overestimated, says Pentagon',
Age, 16 March 1991.

12. Robert Springborg, `The myths and realities of Iraq's intentions
and military might', background paper, September 1990.

13. Australian federal Opposition Leader John Hewson, letter, 5 April
1991.

14. `Arab League Ministerial Council, Resolution on the Gulf Crisis,
Cairo, 3 August 1990', Journal of Palestine Studies no. 78 (Winter
1991), pp.177-8.

15. For further discussion see, for example, Walid Khalidi, `The Gulf
Crisis: Origins and Consequences' Journal of Palestine Studies no.78
(Winter 1991).

16. Fortune, 11 February 1991, p.46.

17. Joseph Gerson, `The Gulf war and George Bush's "New World Order"',
Pegasus, Mideast.Forum, 5 May 1991.

18. This summary of Iraq's peace proposals was prepared by Judy Reed,
New Haven Campaign for Peace in the Middle East.

19. Clyde Cameron MP, Hansard, 7 August 1958, speaking on the
intervention of American and British troops into Lebanon and Jordan
following the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq.

20. Time, 11 March 1991.

21. Age, 4 March 1991.

22. Joe Stork and Martha Wenger, `From rapid deployment to massive
deployment', Middle East Report no. 168.

23. `Bush commits US to permanent presence in Gulf', Australian
Financial Review, 6 September 1990.

24. `US oil plot fuelled by Saddam', London Observer, 21 October 1990.

25. Ambassador Glaspie, in congressional testimony on 20 March 1991,
said that her strongest statements had been deleted from the Iraqi-
released transcript of her meeting with Saddam. The US Government has
refused to release its transcript of the meeting. After her testimony,
some commentators suggested that Glaspie had not been as forceful with
Saddam Hussein as she subsequently claimed, whilst others thought she
was a scapegoat for US diplomatic infighting. `The new official line is
a transparent lie,' commentator William Safire wrote.

26. Penny Johnston, `The case of April Glaspie', Pegasus,
Mideast.Forum, 19 April 1991.

27. New Left Review no.186, p.96.

28. Transcript of document found in the files of Kuwaiti intelligence,
and released publicly in Washington by the Iraqi ambassador. The
substance of the document was not refuted by the Bush administration or
the CIA.

29. Age, 13 March 1991.

30. `Economic reason for war', Pegasus, Mideast.Forum, 22 January
1991.

31. Australian Financial Review, 18 February 1991.

32. Age, 18 February 1991.

33. Australian Financial Review, 7 March 1991.

34. Australian Financial Review, 14 February 1991.

35. Australian Financial Review, 30 January 1991.

36. Australian Financial Review, 13 February 1991.

37. Clyde Cameron, op. cit.

38. Robert Springborg, `Selling the war in the Gulf', in After the
Gulf War: For peace in the Middle East, Pluto Press, Sydney 1991.

39. Australian Financial Review, 8 February 1991.

40. Age, 22 February 1991.

41. Age, 5 March 1991.

42. Age, 20 April 1991.

43. (Ret.) Col David Hackworth, `The price of peace; The mother of all
defeats', TV10, 25 March 1991.

44. Ramsay Clark, letter to the UN Secretary General, 12 February
1991.

45. `Catastrophe looms as disease ravages Iraq', Sunday Age, 21 April
1991.

46. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, `The New World Order', Open Magazine
Pamphlet Series No.6, March 1991.

47. Figures given by US Air Force Chief of General Staff Merrill A.
McPeak in congressional testimony after the war, and reported in
Guardian Weekly, 24 March 1991.

48. Age, 24 April 1991.

49. Australian Financial Review, 13 February 1991.

50. Boston Globe, 29 January 1991.

51. Time, 11 February 1991.

52. Newsweek, 28 February 1991.

53. Australian, 22 February 1991.

54. USA Today, 23 March 1991.

55. US Senator Sam Nunn, New York Times, 18 January 1991.

56. Patrick Tyler, `Health crisis said to grip Iraq in wake of war's
destruction', Pegasus, Mideast.Forum, 22 May 1991.

57. Pegasus, Mideast.Gulf, 13 February 1991.

58. Australian Council for Overseas Aid, `The Gulf war and the Third
World', Parliamentary Brief, 25 January 1991.

59. Community Aid Abroad, `The Gulf crisis: the fatal impact on the
Third World', Melbourne, February 1991.

60. `The economic impact of the Gulf crisis on Third World countries',
Pegasus, Mideast.Gulf, 25 March 1991.

61. John Miller, `Environmental casualties yet to be counted', New
York Guardian, 20 March 1991.

62. It is possible that there has been a gross and deliberate
underestimation of the losses from the oil-well fires and the likely
consequences. The number of wells alight has been estimated at 500 to
950. Oil consumed by each well fire is estimated at 20,000 to 60,000
barrels per day (bbl). The lowest of these figures (500 wells at 20,000
bbl) gives a daily rate of 10 million bbl, the highest (950 wells at
60,000 bbl) gives a staggering rate of 57 million bbl. ABC TV news on 6
May 1991 reported that total oil losses in Kuwait could total 20 per
cent of total reserves (20 billion bbl).

63. New Scientist, 12 January 1991.

64. Age, 14 February 1991.

65. Pegasus, Mideast.Gulf, 21 May 1991.

66. `Gulf War Environment Service: Impact on the marine environment',
Pegasus, Mideast.Gulf, 9 February 1991.

67. For a more detailed discussion of this area, see `War in the Gulf:
An environmental perspective', Political Ecology Group, San Francisco,
January 1991.

68. Marvin Feuerwerger, senior strategic fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, Age, 6 March 1991.

69. Australian Financial Review, 11 February 1991.

70. Australian Financial Review, 7 March 1991.

71. `British leaders had a 1958 plan to invade Kuwait', Age, 14
September 1990.

72. Transcript provided by Prime Minister Hawke's Press Office.

73. Henry Kissinger, `Why the US needs to be more selfish', Weekend
Australian, 4-5 May 1991.

74. Age, 16 April 1991.

75. Sydney Morning Herald, 6 April 1991.

76. Age, 5 April 1991.

77. CIA: The Pike Report, Spokesman Books, London 1977, pp.195-8.

78. Speech to National Press Club, 6 February 1991.

79. Guardian Weekly, 17 March 1991.

80. Newsweek, 9 April 1991.

81. Rami G. Khouri, `The post-war Middle East', The Link, Vol.24 No.1,
January-March 1991.

82. `Syria a sponsor of terrorism, says US report', Age, 2 May 1991.

83. Australian Financial Review, 8 February 1991.

84. `Saudis will now call the tune in OPEC', Australian Financial
Review, 7 March 1991.

85. Australian Financial Review, 5 March 1991.

86. For further discussion, see Frans Timmerman, `Israeli tales and
the PLO', Arena 93, Summer 1990.

87. Seaman William Huff aboard the USS Mobile Bay, quoted in the
Washington Post, 19 January 1991.

88. San Diego Tribune, 6 August 1990.

89. Age, 14 May 1991.

90. Proceedings, US Naval Institute, May 1991.

91. Times Colonist (Canada), 23 April 1991.

92. `Navy riding out storm of criticism in Gulf war role', Los Angeles
Times, 28 April 1991.

93. For more detail see, for example, David Bowman, `Crisis in the
Gulf, and another veil slips', Australian Society, December 1990.

94. Mark Hannam, `The New World Order', Arena no.95, 1991, p.50.


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

After the Gulf War: For peace in the Middle East, StJohn Kettle &
Steph anie Dowrick (eds), Pluto Press (Sydney) 1991.

Background to the Gulf War by Malcolm Booker, Left Book Club (Sydney)
1990.

Beyond Oil: Unity and development in the Gulf by Muhammad Rumaihi, Al
Saqi (London) 1986.

Middle East Report (formerly MERIP Report) (Washington), especially
nos. 132 (`The future of the Gulf'), 143 (`Nuclear shadow over the
Middle East'), 148 (`Reflagging the Gulf'), 155 (`The Middle East after
Reagan'), 167 (`On the edge of war'), 168 (`The Gulf crisis: No place to
hide') and 169 (`War in the Gulf').

New Left Review articles by Fred Halliday (no.184), Robert Brenner
(no.185) and Christopher Hitchens (no.186).

Oil and Class Struggle, Petter Nore & Terisa Turner (eds), Zed
(London) 1980.

The Persian Gulf and the West: The dilemmas of security by Charles A.
Kupchan, Allen & Unwin (Boston) 1987.

Power and Stability in the Middle East, Berch Berberoglu, Zed (London)
1989.

Republic of fear: Saddam's Iraq, Samir al Khalil, Pantheon (New York)
1990.

Unholy Babylon: The secret history of Saddam's war by Adel Darwish and
Gregory Alexander, Victor Gollancz (London) 1991.


Source: 12:11 am Jun 19, 1991 by dspratt in cdp:mideast.forum

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