Containing Saddam - No time to go wobbly.

The containment of Iraq has underpinned the stability of the Middle East these last ten years. The world can be grateful that the United Nations imposed sanctions, braked Iraq's military expenditure by blocking its petro-dollars (except for humanitarian purposes), and policed the skies over Baghdad in order to prevent Saddam Hussein from further assaulting his own people or the neighbors. The man is a brutal tyrant, and nobody believes otherwise. But the world has grown bored and indulgent. The United Nations no longer has the will to contain Iraq. In practical terms, the United States has taken over almost sole responsibility for doing so, and unpopularity comes with it. A decision has to be made soon about how policy should now evolve towards Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Colin Powell floats the idea that the moment has come for "smart sanctions," that is to say, selectively targeted ones. Whatever he may have in mind, the qualifying adjective "smart" conveys the ominous suggestion that containment will slide smoothly into appeasement.

Arguments for appeasing dictators are triumphs of hope over reality. There are always some people who say that reason is the only weapon, and the trouble and expense of taking action are far too great, a better opportunity must arrive, and peace-in-our-time is a supreme moral absolute. However high-minded such sentiments may sound, they are misplaced. Ask the Israelis. The Oslo peace process was widely considered to be an almost equally important plank underpinning regional stability. In the course of this process, continual Israeli appeasement led Yasser Arafat to assume that more was still not enough, and his expectations and demands rose accordingly, to end on the streets in a test of strength. It is a classic example of how appeasement promotes the very violence it is designed to ward off.

Sanctions against Iraq were bound to be difficult to maintain in place. It is relatively straightforward to quarantine Fidel Castro, because he rules a small island and has only cigars and sugar to offer potential traders. North Korea has virtually nothing to sell except reconditioned Soviet weaponry. But Iraq occupies a strategic position in the Gulf, and floats on oil, which is smuggled out and sold to a variety of eager international buyers through channels that cannot easily be stopped up, providing Saddam with illicit funding on a gigantic scale. Since his ambitions for power have priority over every human consideration, he is immune to the suffering of his people, though willing and able to exploit it for propaganda against sanctions. As for the Iraqis themselves, in common with Arabs everywhere, they are conditioned by an unbroken history and culture of absolutism. Resenting and fearing oppression as they certainly do, they also acknowledge that Saddam is dictator over them because he has an exceptionally ruthless will. Powerless to liberate themselves, they applaud if he wins. The day he loses, they will rejoice and trample on the corpse.

In these perilous circumstances, Saddam has maneuvered with skill and assurance, setting up a vicious spiral working to his benefit. The richer he has become through evasion of sanctions, the more he has had to offer other rulers or governments, the better to reduce the coalition against him. The United Nations with its successive commissions has become an institutional fig leaf. There is no prospect of the return to Iraq of United Nations weapons inspectors. Everybody likes to be on a winning side, especially if the losing side looks as though it will be the United States. So in the Security Council, Russia and China favor lifting sanctions while already supplying Saddam with armaments of all kinds, paid for with the profits of smuggled oil. France pays lip-service to its "international responsibilities," as one of her ambassadors puts it in a defense of French policy towards Saddam, while making no secret that its real appetite is for profiteering financially from the situation.

Reports from the German Economics Ministry, and intelligence sources as well, confirm that Iraq once more has a ...