Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

Target Saddam Hussein

By Robert Satloff
Washington Post, 02 December 1997

From Paris to Cairo, from Moscow to Riyadh, virtually all of America’s Gulf War allies have
refused to support the idea of military force to compel Saddam Hussein’s compliance with U.N.
resolutions. Is this because:

(a) They do not want to be associated with an adventure that may tarnish their ability to cash in
on the commercial appeal of Iraq’s vast oil resources?

(b) They know from experience that the Clinton administration is likely to opt for a limited strike
that might cause some marginal damage but won’t seriously threaten Saddam’s regime?

(c) They believe that acting against Saddam in the absence of progress in the Arab-Israeli peace
process would be morally inconsistent and politically costly?

If you chose (c), go directly to the White House. As President Clinton said the other day in
discussing the difficulties in building “a community of shared values” in confronting Saddam, “we
will never, ever do that until there is peace between Israel and her neighbors.” The absence of
peace, he said, “undermines our ability to seek a unified solution.”

Sadly, this line of thinking is wrong. Blaming the peace process impasse (diplo-speak for blaming
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu) for the weakening of the anti-Saddam coalition
sidesteps the crass greed that motivates some, such as the French and the Russians, while it avoids
facing up to America’s own inadequacies that have turned off many others in the Arab world. One
thing is certain — for both Western and Arab allies — the state of the peace process has almost
never been a determinant of their willingness to follow America’s lead vis-a-vis Iraq.

As far as the former are concerned, the French and Russians stopped being coalition members in
any meaningful sense at the very height of the Oslo process. It was in June 1993, three months
before the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, that the U.N.
Security Council last found Iraq in “material breach” of U.N. resolutions. Not once during the
halcyon days of the peace process — from September 1993 to the Rabin assassination two years
later — did the French or Russians support any stiffening of U.N. spine on Iraq.

The Arab coalition partners have also been straying for quite some time. Some examples:

  • Soon after the Gulf War, the United States asked the Saudis to provide Jordan with oil at
    cut-rate prices to match Saddam’s offer and thereby free King Hussein to take a more active
    anti-Saddam posture. In spite of Jordan’s emerging peace with Israel, the Saudis refused
    because they wanted to punish King Hussein for his wartime sympathies with Iraq.

  • In 1995, when Saddam’s son-in-law defected to Amman, U.S. officials toured Egypt and the
    gulf to seek support for an emboldened Iraqi opposition effort. Again, the Arab allies refused
    the U.S. request, largely because of inter-Arab jealousies and the fear that Washington’s
    muscle was not truly behind the idea.

  • Just last year, shortly after Netanyahu’s election in Israel but before the Jerusalem tunnel
    episode — i.e., during his brief honeymoon period with peace partners Egypt and Jordan — the
    United States launched a cruise missile strike on Iraq in response to Saddam’s invasion of the
    Kurdish-held city of Irbil. Virtually all our old Gulf War allies criticized the attack.

Perhaps the best example of the lack of linkage between the peace process and the gulf dates
to the original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. At the time, there was no peace process, the
uncompromising Yitzhak Shamir was Israel’s prime minister, and no Israeli leader — Labor or
Likud — would even contemplate shaking hands with Yasser Arafat. Nevertheless, all but a few
Arab leaders supported the U.S.-led coalition.

If Washington is truly interested in building a coalition against Saddam, then it shouldn’t
obfuscate the central issue — the fate of Saddam Hussein — by mixing it with Arab-Israeli politics.
With the Europeans, America still has a chance to win the day. After all, these ever-pragmatic
allies may come to recognize the fact that Saddam himself is the main obstacle to exploiting the
riches of Iraq. But the Arab complaint against the administration’s diminishing resolve is more
serious.

When the president first took office, his senior aides routinely dismissed Saddam as irredeemable,
and the administration supported initiatives to indict Saddam as a war criminal, to back the Iraqi
opposition movement and to fund at least two covert operations (in Jordan and northern Iraq)
targeted against Saddam himself. All that is history. Today, the principal source of pressure
against Saddam is the sanctions regime and the related U.N. inspection system, both of which rely
on the lowest-common-denominator decision-making of international consensus.

Arab members of the Gulf War coalition — many of whom remain attractive targets for Saddam’s
ambitions — read the writing on the wail. With the United Nations as the only arrow in the
anti-Saddam quiver, no wonder that countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are covering their
bets by distancing themselves from U.S. policy.

For Arab leaders, the peace process stalemate is, at best, an excuse. The truth is that many aren’t
buying U.S. policy because it only treats the symptoms of the gulf crisis (the U.N. inspection
team, sanctions, the coalition) rather than the cause (Saddam Hussein himself). If the
administration decided to pursue a new policy using all available political, military, economic and
clandestine means to compel Saddam’s compliance or precipitate his demise — whichever came
first — most Arab leaders would fall in line and do their part.

But instead of rethinking policy, the administration is trying to shift the blame. In practice, this
throws the spotlight onto Netanyahu and the need for Israeli concessions as the key to
kickstarting a stalled negotiation with the Palestinians.

This is not to suggest that the president — who has rightly earned the title of the most
Israel-friendly chief executive in history — should relegate the peace process to the back burner. It
remains a vitally important issue, and America retains an intense interest in preventing its collapse.
But 20 years after Anwar Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem, one must remember that the peace
process takes time. Confronting Saddam Hussein — whose access to weapons of mass destruction
was characterized by President Clinton as posing a threat to “all the children of the world” — can’t
wait.

The writer is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

IS CLINTON HIDING EVIDENCE OF SADDAM’S CHEMICAL WARFARE ATTACKS ON U.S. TROOPS IN ORDER TO SELL THE C.W.C.?

(Washington, D.C.): In the course of
Bill Clinton’s address to the UN General
Assembly yesterday, the President
announced that — despite the U.S.
Senate’s refusal to approve ratification
of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)
two weeks ago — he “will not let
this treaty die.” A report published
last week by the New York Times
engenders suspicion that Mr.
Clinton may, however, be prepared to let
American military personnel suffer
grave illnesses, and perhaps in the
future actually die, rather than
disclose evidence of past chemical
weapons attacks against U.S. forces —
evidence that might prove inconvenient to
the Administration’s sales job on the
CWC.

The Times’
Revelations

On 20 September 1996, the Times
gave front-page treatment to a superb and
quite lengthy piece of investigative
reporting by Philip Shenon entitled,
“Many Veterans of the Gulf War
Detail Illnesses From Chemicals.”
Under the subheadline “Soldiers
Stories at Odds With Pentagon
Account,” appeared, among others,
the following, disturbing revelations:

“While the Pentagon
continues to insist that it has
no evidence that American troops
were made sick from exposure to
Iraqi chemical weapons during the
Persian Gulf war in 1991, more
than 150 veterans of a Naval
reserve battalion have come
forward with details of what many
of them describe as an Iraqi
chemical attack that has left
them seriously ill.”

“Members of the unit, the
24th Naval Mobile Construction
Battalion, say something exploded
in the air over their camps in
northern Saudi Arabia early on
the morning of January 19, 1991,
the third day of the gulf war. In
minutes, many say, their skin
began to burn, their lips turned
numb and their throats began to
tighten. Several say
chemical alarms began to sound as
a dense cloud of gas floated over
their camps.”

“Pentagon officials continue
to insist that they have no
evidence of other large-scale
exposures. They said they had
reviewed the incident involving
the 24th Battalion in Saudi
Arabia and found no sign of
unusual illnesses.”

“In a statement prepared in
response to a reporter’s
questions, the Pentagon
confirmed that a review of its
battle records showed that the
loud noise heard by members of
the 24th Battalion on Jan. 19,
1991, was probably the explosion
of an Iraqi Scud missile.
That contradicts initial reports
from battalion officers who
insisted in 1991 that the noise
had been a sonic boom produced by
a jet fighter or bomber passing
overhead.”

“Chemical weapons
were detected in the camps in
northern Saudi Arabia on January
19, in the areas around the city
of Jubail, where the 24th
Battalion was stationed. Newly
declassified combat logs
maintained by an officer working
for Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
the American commander in the
war, reported a ‘chemical
attack at Jubail’
early on the morning of January
19. A separate entry shows that a
British soldier reported that
night that chemical-detection
paper had registered ‘mustard
positive,’ a reference to mustard
gas.”

“Harold J. Edwards, a
reservist who was a member of the
24th Battalion, remembered using
three chemical detection devices,
which are known as M-256 kits, to
measure the air after he heard
the explosions that morning. Two
of the three tests, Mr. Edwards
said, showed that mustard
gas was wafting over the
reservists. ‘It’s damn
hard to mess up those tests,’ he
said.”

“Mr. Edwards said he
immediately reported the
mustard-gas detection to his
superiors in the camp. But the
next morning, he said, the word
came back from the officers that ‘nothing
had happened, forget it, don’t
say anything.'”

“Other members of the
battalion say they quickly came
to suspect that the military was
trying to hide the truth of what
had happened that morning. Their
suspicions began, they said, when
officers in the 24th Battalion
told them that the blast that
morning had been caused by a
sonic boom from a jet fighter of
bomber passing overhead. The
reservists said they were ordered
not to discuss the matter
again.”

If commanders deliberately misled
their troops about the nature of the
threat they faced, that action might be
understandable, if not justifiable, in
the interest of preventing wholesale
panic under enemy attack. It is an
altogether different thing, however, if
civilian and military authorities persist
in misrepresenting the facts years
afterwards for any reason whatsoever.

There Goes a Pillar of the
Clinton Case for the CWC

Particularly insidious is the
possibility that the motivation for such
misrepresentations may be the Clinton
Administration’s high priority effort to
sell the Chemical Weapons Convention.
After all, the CWC’s proponents have long
argued that Desert Storm proved that it
was not necessary to have an in-kind
deterrent in order to dissuade chemically
armed adversaries from using toxic agents
against American forces. While the
rationale for this contention varied —
with some arguing that an overwhelming
conventional capability did the trick
while others maintained that the threat
of nuclear attack was the U.S. hole card
in deterring chemical attack — the
bottom line was consistent: Saddam
Hussein’s forces did not use chemical
weapons against Coalition personnel.

This spring, the party line began to
crack. Five years after the end of
Operation Desert Storm, the
Administration was obliged to acknowledge
that American forces were inadvertently
exposed to chemical agents in the course
of destroying Saddam’s bunkers and
stockpiles. This admission was itself
something of a problem for the Chemical
Weapons Convention: It established that
the sorts of covert chemical arsenals
that will abound, with or without the
CWC, will pose a threat to U.S. personnel
— even if such weapons are not used
offensively against U.S. forces.
That danger will only be compounded as
the CWC creates a false sense of
security, encouraging reduced investment
in chemical defensive equipment and
technology.

Disclosure of the fact that
chemical weapons were actually employed
in attacks on American forces,
however, would be a body blow to CWC.
Specifically, it would undercut claims by
the treaty’s advocates that the
effectiveness of other forms of
deterrence permit the United States
safely to deny itself the right to
maintain a modest chemical retaliatory
capability.

In light of the latest evidence, an
honest debate should be held to consider
whether or not an in-kind deterrent
provides the only reliable means of
dissuading first-use of chemical weapons
against American and allied forces.
Such a debate may well conclude that the
decision to liquidate the entire
U.S. chemical stockpile must be
revisited. The very fact that such a
debate is now in order, however, is a
further argument against a Chemical
Weapons Convention that would permanently
deny the U.S. a chemical retaliatory
deterrent.(1)

The Bottom Line

President Clinton’s stated
determination to resume the fight over
the CWC suggests that, if he is
reelected, this issue will be back before
the Senate next year. Against that
eventuality, the Senate would be
well-advised to get to the bottom of the
emerging story of offensive chemical
weapons use against U.S. forces in the
Gulf War — and the implications of that
story for the Chemical Weapons
Convention. In the process, it
should determine whether a
deliberate effort has been made to
suppress information directly relevant to
an evaluation of the wisdom of this
accord, and hold fully accountable any
and all government officials deemed
responsible.

– 30 –

1. For detailed
discussions of other arguments against
the CWC — including its unverifiability,
lack of global coverage, ineffectiveness
and unjustifiable costs to U.S.
businesses — see, for example, ‘Inquiry
Interruptus’: Will the Senate Get to the
Bottom of the Chemical Weapons
Convention’s Fatal Flaws? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-P_83″>No. 94-P 83,
19 August 1994) and Center-Sponsored
Debate Helps to Illuminate the Chemical
Weapons Convention’s Fatal Flaws
(No. 96-P 77, 1
August 1996).

YESTERDAY DHAHRAN,
TOMORROW PEARL HARBOR II?

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of Tuesday’s horrific
terrorist bombing of the U.S. military compound in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia, America’s leaders and people alike are wondering: How
could this have happened? As the initial shock and
anguish subside, they are sure to be replaced with recriminations
over warnings disregarded and precautionary steps neglected.

The Start of the Blame Game

Last night’s broadcast of ABC News’ World News Tonight
With Peter Jennings gave a taste of what is, inevitably, in
store:

Pentagon Correspondent David Ensor:
“There have been plenty of warnings,
Peter. In fact, in the last six months, the State Department
has issued these six advisories warning Americans that they
had evidence that they might be targeted, that American
targets might be hit in Saudi Arabia. The last one warned
that there was an anonymous telephone threat of retaliation
against Americans if four Saudis charged with a previous
bombing were executed. And they were, at the end of last
month. So steps were taken, about 20 different steps, to
upgrade security at this one location, including those cement
barricades. But it clearly wasn’t enough.”

* * *

Peter Jennings: “…Can we now
anticipate that people are going to want to make
changes?”

Ensor: “There’s an urgent
worldwide review underway, Peter, of security at
military installations and, for that matter, at embassies and
consulates. And there are going to be some changes,
I am told.”

Jennings: “Okay….A very senior
Saudi Arabian who knows this compound well asked us today,
‘Why do the Americans live in a building right on the
perimeter?’ This was a 400-building complex, he said. Why do
the Americans not live deeper inside? ABC’s Jim Wooten
tonight on how this had happened.”

Jim Wooten: “We’ve seen
these pictures before — the Beirut embassy and the Marine
barracks; New York’s World Trade Center; Oklahoma City;
Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Hundreds of Americans injured and
killed by bombs hidden in trucks or cars. And now this.”

[Footage of] William Perry, Secretary of Defense:
“If it were not for the fence and the security barrier
around these apartments, there would have been many, many
more casualties.”

Wooten: “But Secretary Perry and
others in the government, by now quite familiar with this
nightmare, know 100 feet is no protection against two
and a half tons of high explosives. So why was this
truck that close to the apartment? In these times, in that
place, how could this be? The perimeter was a chain link
fence, eight feet high and topped with concertina wire and
one set of heavy concrete barriers on each side. No way to
penetrate that, yet for these terrorists no need. They simply
parked their truck and their bomb just beyond the perimeter,
only 35 yards from the target. Most kids can throw a football
that far.”

[Footage of] Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA
Chief, Counterterrorism: “To have a
35-yard security perimeter in light of the history of attacks
against U.S. military facilities in the Middle East, is
absolutely reprehensible.”

Wooten: “By the end of the day, the
country’s top military officer, General Shalikashvili, was
saying it’s time to take a new look at security.”

[Footage of] General John Shalikashvili: “We
certainly have to take into consideration a very different
threat than we had in the past.”

Jim Wooten: “This is Pennsylvania
Avenue. The White House is down there. The street has been
closed for some time now in an effort to keep terrorist
vehicles at least this far away — 300 yards.
So any inquiry into what happened yesterday will surely have
to focus on whose idea it was to let them get any closer than
that to American troops in Dhahran.”

The Fire Next Time

The truth of the matter is, of course, that this crime
— heinous as it was — will appear quite trivial compared to the
acts of terror about which the United States is now being
warned and against which the Clinton Administration is
determined to remain inadequately defended: the danger of attacks
involving ballistic missile-delivered weapons whose destructive
power immensely exceeds the 2 tons of high explosive used in
Dhahran.

An impressive array of qualified intelligence professionals,
defense experts, strategic analysts and other specialists have
concluded that the threat of such attacks is growing, not only
against U.S. forces and allies in places like Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere around the world, but also against the American people
themselves. The Administration, nonetheless, is determined to
disregard these warnings. Instead, as George Will put it in a
nationally syndicated column appearing in today’s Washington
Post (see the attached):

“…The Clinton Administration suggests wagering the
Nation’s safety on a sanguine prediction that seems
to have been produced by a premise designed to induce
complacency. The premise is that at least fifteen
years will elapse before a ballistic missile threat to the 48
contiguous states can be developed indigenously
by a rogue state such as Iraq or North
Korea.” (Emphasis added.)

This purposeful manipulation of the National Intelligence
Estimate(1)— and the
failure to put into place even the most modest missile defenses
(the functional equivalent, at least, of the concrete barriers
and security fence in Dhahran) has produced extremely sharp
criticism from R. James Woolsey, the Clinton Administration’s
first Director of Central Intelligence. In congressional
testimony last month, Mr. Woolsey declared:

“The key issue is that off Taiwan this past March, as
well as in the streets of Tel Aviv and Riyadh in early 1991,
we have been given an important insight into the future of
international relations. It is not an attractive vision. Ballistic
missiles can, and in the future they increasingly will, be
used by hostile states for blackmail, terror and to drive
wedges between us and our friends and allies. It is my
judgement that the administration is not currently giving
this vital problem the proper weight it deserves.“

So serious are Mr. Woolsey’s concerns about the
Administration’s dereliction of duty in failing to respond
appropriately to available warning about the threat of missile
attack that they evidently contributed to his decision yesterday
to endorse former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole for
President — a man who has unequivocally pledged to defend
America against ballistic missile attack if elected.

Negotiating Away Even The ‘Concrete Barriers’

Matters have just been made worse by the announcement that the
Clinton Administration has negotiated changes to the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that are likely — indeed, seem
designed — to impede efforts by Congress, by a President
Dole or by anyone else to begin building effective missile
defenses. According to an Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency press release, “preliminary agreement” has been
reached on the texts of two documents: 1) a Memorandum of
Understanding that will “multilateralize” the ABM
Treaty and 2) an Agreed Statement “relating to
demarcation” between defensive systems limited by that
Treaty and those that are not.

The purpose — privately acknowledged by
Administration officials — of expanding the number of parties to
the ABM Treaty to include at least Ukraine, Belarus and
Kazakhstan (and possibly virtually every successor state to the
Soviet Union) is to make it more difficult to liberalize that
Treaty’s restraints on missile defenses. In place of the
one veto now exercised by Russia over needed U.S. programs, there
will be four, six, eight or more.

The effect, if not the object, of the
demarcation agreement will be to purchase the opportunity to
develop and deploy the least effective anti-theater ballistic
missile (ATBM) systems at the expense of encumbering development
and deployment of more capable ATBMs. Such programs as
the Navy Upper Tier and growth options for the Army’s THAAD
system — utilizing missiles with interceptor velocities in
excess of 3 kilometers per second — will almost certainly be
deemed henceforth to require Russian approval to proceed. At a
minimum, agreement has been reached on yet-to-be-announced
“confidence-building measures” which could effectively
impose geographic, numerical and/or other limitations on the
deployment of such promising anti-missile systems.

Most striking of all, these amendments to the ABM
Treaty — which could well have the effect of denying
the United States the equivalent in missile defense terms of the
modest protection in place in Dhahran before this week’s fatal
attack — have been constructed in such a way as to deny
the Senate its constitutionally mandated role in treaty-making.
Presumably, this reflects the Administration’s expectation that
they would not secure the needed two-thirds majority support
there.

The Administration’s willful disregard of the Constitution is
made more egregious by the fact that its approach would also
violate the FY 1996 Defense Authorization Act. Insult is added to
injury, moreover, by the pivotal role played in such machinations
by Robert Bell, the National Security Council’s Director for Arms
Control. It was, after all, Mr. Bell who in 1986-87 as a
staffer for Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) authored for the Senator a
series of impassioned denunciations of executive branch efforts
to alter the scope and nature of duly ratified treaties without
seeking the explicit consent of the Senate!

The Bottom Line

The latest mortal terrorist incident ought to be a wake-up
call for every American. As James Woolsey observed last night on
CNN:

“…It’s important…for everyone to be aware that
these types of incidents, whether it’s our own domestic
terrorists…or those from overseas, such as with the World
Trade Center, or some combination, we could see more
of this in the next months and years in the States.”

It would greatly exacerbate the present tragedy — and
defile the memory of those who were needlessly murdered in its
course — were we to worry now exclusively about the dangers of
future truck bombs packed with high explosive. If the
next act of terror, or the one after that, involves ballistic
missile-borne weapons of mass destruction, woe be to those who
will be held responsible for having ignored the myriad warnings,
obstructed prompt deployment of the necessary defensive measures
and otherwise betrayed their responsibility to the American
people to provide for the common defense.

– 30 –

1. For more on this travesty, see the
Center’s Decision Brief entitled Smoke
and Mirrors: Even by Clinton Standards, the President’s
Misrepresentations on Missile Defense are Scandalous
(No. 96-D 56, 12 June 1996).

WHEN SADDAM SPEAKS, WILL THE SENATE LISTEN?

(Washington, D.C.) The U.S. Senate is poised to take up
several initiatives of the utmost strategic sensitivity following
its return from the August recess. These include amendments to
pending defense authorization and appropriations measures that
would: perpetuate the United States’ present vulnerability to
ballistic missile attack; endorse the utopian delusion of ridding
the world of chemical weapons through an unverifiable arms
control agreement; and affirm President Clinton’s decision
permanently to suspend nuclear testing — an important milestone
toward his self-declared goal of “denuclearization.”

Enter Saddam

Fortunately, an unlikely source has just provided powerful
arguments to Senators opposed to such dubious initiatives. In the
wake of the defection to Jordan of two of his key lieutenants,
Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein has felt compelled to part the veil
of secrecy on his weapons of mass destruction programs to an
unprecedented degree. While the full significance of some 147
boxes and two large containers filled with documentation in
Arabic remains to be assessed, a briefing last Friday to the
United Nations Security Council by Rolf Ekeus — the chairman of
the UN’s Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) — has already
established a number of important insights that should be
relevant to Senate deliberations.

The most important of these is that, in violation of Iraq’s
treaty obligations and contrary to all previous Iraqi assurances,
Hussein amassed a huge biological warfare (BW) capability
which was available for use against allied forces in the Gulf War.(1) Some of this deadly
arsenal involving highly virulent botulinum toxin and anthrax
virus was actually uploaded on Iraqi ballistic missiles
(as well as bombs and artillery shells) prior to the start of
Operation Desert Storm. If these agents had been unleashed
against U.S. and allied forces, the losses could have run to the
hundreds of thousands. Worse yet, had coalition forces used
Patriot missiles — the only American anti-missile defense system
deployed at the time (and, for that matter, even today),
successful intercepts might have had the effect merely of
dispersing the deadly biological materials more efficiently and
over a larger area.(2)

Deterrence Worked, Despite the USG’s Best Efforts

Why, if such enormous military potential was in hand, did
Saddam Hussein not unleash his biological weapons during his time
of need? According to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz,
Baghdad feared that the United States would retaliate with
nuclear weapons. In other words, nuclear deterrence worked
against Saddam — even though the U.S. government had formally
renounced the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear Iraq.

These findings have a number of implications for the coming
debates on: (1) a so-called “bipartisan compromise”
that would reverse earlier Senate votes in favor of promptly
deploying anti-missile protection for the American people; (2) an
amendment to be offered by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) that would
endorse the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC); and(3) an amendment proposed
by Sen. Jim Exon (D-NE) that would affirm President Clinton’s
recent decision to forego all nuclear testing for the foreseeable
future. (The Exon amendment would also require the Senate to
recant a vote taken on 5 August that authorizes preparations for
low-yield testing critical to maintaining an effective, reliable
nuclear stockpile.)

Unreliable Threat Assessments

First, the Iraqi BW operation obliterates the
principal argument currently offered against building missile
defenses, i.e., the assertion that there is no imminent threat of
long-range missile attack against the United States. In fact,
the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General
James Clapper, has been repeatedly cited by Senators as saying
that he believes that no country (other than the purportedly
peaceable Russia and China) has the means or even the
intention to acquire such capabilities for at least the next
decade. Accordingly, the Clinton Administration and its allies in
Congress argue that the U.S. does not need to worry about
deploying anti-missile systems for years to come.

Unfortunately, U.S. intelligence is not omniscient. It did
not know for sure at the time of Desert Storm that Saddam Hussein
had uploaded biological weapons on ballistic missiles capable of
attacking Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel. For that matter, it
cannot say whether Saddam is once again lying when he claims to
have destroyed his entire BW arsenal shortly after the Gulf War
ended.

Even in cases where at least some intelligence officers
correctly assess threatening situations, there is no guarantee
that the policy-making community will act appropriately — take,
for instance, the accurate warnings given in July 1990 of an
imminent Iraqi attack on Kuwait. Today, thoughtful analysts
recognize that the opportunity to buy intercontinental-
range ballistic missiles on the world market (rather than develop
them indigenously) could change the picture practically
overnight. Opponents of missile defenses in both the executive
and legislative branches are determined to ignore such
inconvenient estimates.

Still, it is only prudent to expect that Saddam Hussein —
and his totalitarian counterparts in Iran, Libya, North Korea,
Syria and elsewhere — will strive to complement their present,
shorter-range missile capabilities with longer-range systems
capable of delivering biological, chemical or even nuclear
payloads to the U.S. Clearly, the Senate should stick to its
guns: It is time to begin defending America against these
predictable threats.

Dangerous Arms Control Delusions

Second, it is of great import that Saddam Hussein
successfully hid evidence of his massive biological weapons
program for four years — despite the presence in his country of
the most intrusive international inspection regime imaginable.
At that, it was defections, not inspections, that
“broke the code” on Iraqi BW capabilities circa Desert
Storm. And no one yet can say when, if ever, Iraq will be
correctly found to be free of all biological weaponry.

This is relevant because Iraq is a party to the 1972
convention banning biological and toxin weapons from the face of
the earth. Like too many other nations to name, including
Russia and China, Iraq has responded to this utopian, but utterly
unverifiable, accord by systematically violating its prohibitions
on the manufacture and stockpiling of BW agents.

It defies credulity to believe that the new Chemical
Weapons Convention will not meet a similar fate. To be sure,
the CWC has an array of verification provisions and monitoring
arrangements where the Biological Weapons Convention has
essentially none. But the CWC’s authorized inspection activities
do not begin to compare to UNSCOM’s powers; if a major, covert
weapons of mass destruction program could be successfully
concealed from UNSCOM, the likes of Saddam Hussein can
confidently violate the CWC with impunity. The Senate would look
foolish endorsing such a convention in the wake of the latest
Iraqi revelations.

The Abiding Importance of a Credible U.S. Nuclear
Deterrent

Finally, the success of U.S. nuclear forces in
deterring Saddam from using biological weapons against the Gulf
War coalition is a reminder of the importance that attends
preserving the credibility of the American nuclear arsenal. This
is all the more true insofar as the United States remains
unprotected against missile attack and may have to confront
adversaries equipped with illegal stocks of weapons of mass
destruction.

While the Clinton Administration, which is bent on
“denuclearizing” the United States, glibly asserts the
Nation can retain a credible nuclear stockpile without ever
conducting another underground test detonation, the truth is
otherwise. Nuclear testing remains critical to the preservation
of a safe, reliable and effective deterrent.(3) If the Senate had
good reason to challenge President Clinton’s denuclearization
policy by preserving the option for low-yield testing before last
Friday’s disclosures, it surely has cause to do so now.

The Bottom Line

With his most recent, almost certainly incomplete, admissions
about an illegal biological warfare program, Saddam Hussein has
provided the United States with a sorely needed wake-up call. Whether
the Senate hears the alarm — and responds appropriately
by rejecting any “bipartisan compromise” that would
postpone deployment of national missile defenses, the Levin
amendment lauding the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Exon
amendment foreclosing nuclear testing — will be critical for the
national security and a real test of leadership for Senator Dole
and his colleagues in the Republican majority.

– 30 –

(1) For more on the nature and
implications of the Iraqi biological warfare program, see the
Center’s recent Decision Brief entitled Guess What?
Saddam is Still Lying, Preserving a Biological Warfare Capability
That is a Risk to the U.S. (No.
95-D 56, 24 August 1995).

(2) To avoid such unintended and
undesirable effects, the U.S. can and should deploy defensive
systems capable of performing exo-atmospheric and/or boost-phase
intercepts of attacking ballistic missiles.

(3) For more on the essential role nuclear
testing plays in maintaining the credibility of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Vive
La France! French Determination to Perform Necessary Nuclear
Testing Should Be Wake-Up Call to U.S. (No.
95-D 47, 14 July 1995).

GUESS WHAT? SADDAM IS STILL LYING, PRESERVING A BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CAPABILITY THAT IS A RISK TO THE U.S.

(Washington, D.C.): For the third time since April, the Iraqi
biological warfare (BW) onion has been peeled back, establishing
indisputably that Saddam Hussein amassed an immense arsenal of
deadly viruses and toxins for use as weapons of mass destruction.
On 10 April, the United Nations reported that at least 17 tons of
material used to breed bacteria and believed to be associated
with an Iraqi BW program could not be accounted for. The official
line in Baghdad, however, was that Iraq had no biological
weapons and never had a program for acquiring them.

Then, in early July, Iraq informed Rolf Ekeus — the chairman
of the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) — that it did
have a secret facility involved in biological warfare activities,
after all. It was located in the desert at Al Hakam and utilized
technical know-how obtained from German companies in the
mid-1980s. According to Iraqi scientists, this facility was used
to produce some 5,500 gallons of the most deadly viruses ever
contemplated for biological warfare purposes: botulism and
anthrax. Iraq told the UN, though, that all such materials had
been destroyed prior to Operation Desert Storm.

Now, in the wake of the defection to Jordan of General
Hussein Kamel Hassan Majid — a former deputy to Saddam Hussein
who was intimately involved in the Iraqi military build-up —
Iraq has served up enormous quantities (147 boxes and two large
containers-worth) of BW-related information to UNSCOM. This
information once again gives lie to the regime’s previous
disclosures and paints a frightening picture of the Iraqi
biological warfare program.(1)
According to today’s Washington Post:

  • Iraq actually had a large biological warfare
    capability available for use against allied forces in the
    Gulf War, including germ- or toxin-filled artillery
    shells, aircraft-delivered bombs and ballistic missile
    warheads.     This means, at a minimum, that Saddam can
    rein deadly viruses on Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
    targets of past Iraqi aggression.

  • Five sites — not the single facility Iraq had
    earlier acknowledged — were involved in producing a
    larger quantity of anthrax virus than had been previously
    admitted.

  • In addition to anthrax and botulism, Iraq had
    manufactured a third, as yet unannounced, toxin (a
    chemical agent produced through biological techniques).
    The Post notes that “only some of the U.S.
    soldiers to the region were given innoculations — and
    the shots covered only two of the three highly lethal
    biological and toxin weapons that Iraq has now admitted
    it produced.”

Although Iraq now acknowledges that it did not destroy all
its biological warfare stocks before Desert Storm, it maintains
that it did so afterwards, in 1991. What is more,
according to Mr. Ekeus, “the Iraqi leadership declared to me
that its policy from now on is 100 percent implementation”
of the 1991 and 1992 UN resolutions authorizing the destruction
of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. While he has
hastened to add that this and accompanying Iraqi “statements
must be verified” and “cannot be taken at face
value,” Mr. Ekeus has indicated that, if judged correct —
presumably on the basis of a lengthy and detailed analysis of the
latest Iraqi documents (which are in Arabic) — the UN Security
Council “without exception” would have to agree to lift
sanctions against Iraq.

Hold Everything

That had better not be the case. After all, Saddam’s track
record gives no basis for believing that he is not lying now. In
particular, there is no reason for accepting as fact his
regime’s contention that it no longer has any capacity to conduct
biological warfare.

To the contrary, recent threats by senior Iraqi officials
and/or official outlets strongly suggest that biological warfare
against the West and its allies in the Middle East remains a very
real option for Saddam Hussein. As Dr. Laurie Mylroie — a
renowned Middle East expert, best-selling author and
distinguished member of the Center’s Board of Advisors – – noted
in a 28 March 1995 op.ed. article in the Boston Globe,
these threats included the following: “When people reach the
verge of collective death, they will be able to spread death to
all….When one realizes that death is one’s inexorable fate,
there remains nothing to deter one from taking the most risky
steps to influence the course of events.”

Dr. Mylroie observed that:

“Such threats appeared daily in Iraq’s
government-controlled press from 27 September through 12
October 1994. The last such threat spoke explicitly of the
use of biological and chemical agents, ‘if the Iraqi regime
realizes that the United States is after its head.’ That
threat appeared in an Arabic paper in London, affording
plausible deniability. But it is unlikely that the paper, al
Quds al-Arabi — funded by and close to the Iraqis —
would have raised such a possibility without official
direction.”

Then on 15 June 1995, the same paper published an editorial
entitled “Iraq and Sampson’s Only Option.” It said, in
part:

“Iraq, to put it very concisely, still has options
— destructive options. Continuing to press it into a corner,
a corner of hunger, disease, humiliation and internal
subversion…could lead them to resort to the option of
bringing down the temple on everyone.”

Sanctions Must Stay On Until Saddam & Co. Are Removed

Even in the unlikely event that Saddam actually did get rid
of his biological warfare arsenal in 1991, does anyone really
believe that the end of sanctions — and the infusion of funds it
would precipitate as a result of resumed large-scale oil sales —
will not put this and every other Iraqi covert weapons of mass
destruction program back on track? The same people whose
technical expertise made it possible for Iraq to amass vast
chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, operationalize a
large ballistic missile force and nearly acquire a nuclear weapon
remain in-country. Given the necessary resources and direction,
it is predictable that such threats will not be empty ones in the
future.

The Bottom Line

Consequently, the Center for Security Policy continues to
believe that — even if the Iraqi regime actually has
stopped lying — there can be no end of the present economic
sanctions until Saddam and his clique are removed from power.
And, as Gen. Hussein Kamel’s defection clearly reminds us, there
is no question of allowing one of the Butcher of Baghdad’s
henchmen to supplant him.

The Center believes the latest revelations about Iraq’s once
— and future, if not present — biological warfare capabilities
underscores a point it has made repeatedly in the past: The
Clinton Administration must accord vastly greater priority to
defending the American people against biological warfare.
This will entail giving more resources and attention to such
activities as BW-related intelligence collection, reconnaissance
and detection, individual and collective protection, inoculation
and treatment, etc. It will also demand an end to foolish utopian
delusions about verifiably banning biological or chemical weapons
from the face of the earth.

With regard to the latter point, as the Center concluded on 7
July 1995 (2):

“…It should be obvious that Saddam’s success to
date in concealing thousands of gallons of BW viruses is
evidence of the utter impossibility of securing
effective, verifiable and global bans of easily manufactured
and concealed substances like those used in biological and
chemical warfare. It is a snare and delusion to promise
such a result. If, moreover, in the interest of promoting
such a canard, the United States compounds its present
vulnerability — whether by failing to provide adequate
defenses or by unilaterally denying itself in-kind deterrents
— it may actually invite the use of such heinous
weapons against America and its citizens and interests.”

– 30 –

(1) Unfortunately, Western estimates of
the maturity and status of Iraq’s other weapons of mass
destruction programs also have to be revised upwards. New, but as
yet unspecified admissions have also been received about the
status of Iraq’s ballistic missile program. On the basis of
recent disclosures, it is believed that Saddam Hussein was far
closer to acquiring nuclear weapons than had been estimated
heretofore.

(2) See the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled What Iraq’s Biological Warfare Revelations Really
Mean: There Can Be No Accommodation With Saddam ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_44″>No. 95-D 44, 7 July 1995).

BLINDSIDING CONGRESS ON THE SYRIAN DEAL: CLINTON HOPES TO GO NON-STOP FROM ‘IT’S PREMATURE TO DEBATE’ TO ‘IT’S TOO LATE’

(Washington, D.C.): With the completion of Secretary of
State Warren Christopher’s latest diplomatic mission to the
Mideast, one thing is indisputable: It is clearly no longer
“premature” for Congress to debate the role the Clinton
Administration proposes to have the United States play in a peace
agreement between Syria and Israel.

While the official U.S. and Israeli government line continues
to be that such a debate should wait until all the details are
worked out, enough is already known about the nature of the
“security arrangements” and other particulars that Mr.
Christopher is brokering to permit informed and decisive
congressional deliberations. More to the point, if they do not
occur now, Congress will — as a practical matter — be
denied a voice in the matter.

‘Stonewall Me Once…’

This would not be the first time that the Clinton
team has tried to render Congress irrelevant to the conduct of
U.S. foreign policy. Consider the recent record: Last year, the
Administration purposefully accelerated its “invasion”
of Haiti so as to present the legislative branch — which was
overwhelmingly opposed to such an action — with a fait
accompli.

It has also attempted to finesse opposition on Capitol Hill
to the deal it struck with North Korea by averring that that
accord is not a “treaty” requiring ratification.
(Indeed, the accord is now not even called an
“agreement”; it is said, instead, to be an
“agreed framework.”) And, in recent days, the
Administration has served notice that it has no intention of
submitting to the Senate for its formal advice and consent the
results of yet another diplomatic gambit that would further limit
U.S. missile defense options by amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty.

The good news is that the Congress has shown increasing
unwillingness to put up with such cavalier, if not
unconstitutional, treatment. Notably, this week, Senate Majority
Leader Robert Dole — at the urging of the chairmen of the Senate
Foreign Relations, Energy and Natural Resources and Intelligence
Committees — has challenged the Clinton Administration’s
position on the legal status of the North Korean accord. And, in
part due to the Senate’s experience with the Pyongyang deal,
Senator Dole and twelve other ranking Republicans last week took
preemptive action on the ABM front. They wrote President Clinton
that changes to the scope of and signatories to the ABM Treaty
now being negotiated by his Administration “would be subject
to the advice and consent of the Senate.”

The question occurs: Does Congress want to be put in the
position vis á vis an Israeli- Syrian agreement where it
is once again “informed” after the fact, rather than
genuinely consulted before it? Can it afford to be
presented in this especially sensitive and politically volatile
area with a “done deal” that it will find exceedingly
difficult to alter, particularly since such alterations will be
portrayed as a mortal threat to the entire “peace
process.” (A small taste of the vehemence of the criticism
such congressional “meddling” will encounter was
evident in the harsh response from the Clinton Administration and
various Mideast governments to recent actions by the House
Appropriations Committee on debt relief for Jordan.{1})

What Clinton Is Wreaking

The following are among the more troublesome aspects of the
deal the Clinton Administration seems determined to present to
Congress as a fait accompli:

  1. Removal of Syria from the list of terrorist-sponsoring
    and drug-trafficking nations:     Of course, such a step
    cannot be justified on the merits. The Syrians continue
    to be the hosts, backers, logistical supporters and
    protectors of most of the world’s terrorist
    organizations. Damascus is also still actively involved
    in the international drug trade.{2}

    2. The Administration clearly appreciates that it must,
    nonetheless, stop stigmatizing Damascus for ongoing,
    malevolent Syrian behavior if the U.S. is to take other
    steps on Assad’s behalf. According to a report circulated
    by COMPASS-Middle East Wire Service on 15 March,
    President Clinton authorized the Saudi Foreign Minister,
    Saud Al-Faisal, during a recent Washington meeting to
    communicate to Assad Mr. Clinton’s “personal
    promise” to “help remove Syria from the State
    Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism and
    involved in drug trafficking.” He reportedly did so
    despite efforts by his Middle East coordinator, Dennis
    Ross, to hedge on that point.

    It goes without saying that — in the absence of a genuine
    end to Syrian sponsorship of terrorism and the drug-trade
    — such a step would represent a new and potentially
    quite dangerous corruption of the standards by which the
    United States maintains relations with foreign
    governments. As the chairman of the Senate Foreign
    Relations Committee, Sen. Jesse Helms, recently observed:
    “The Syrian government has American blood on its
    hands. Tell me how peace with Israel will cleanse those
    hands?”

  2. Providing Syria with Financial Assistance: Just
    how much money President Clinton is prepared to promise
    Hafez Assad as a lubricant to the peace process is not
    clear at this point. That he intends to do so, however,
    is not in doubt. After all, this accord is being
    explicitly modelled on the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David
    accords — a deal that has translated into tens of
    billions of dollars for Cairo. Syria has made clear that
    it expects to profit no less than Egypt has from the
    peace process.

    3. Several avenues for providing Syria with financial
    assistance are evidently being pursued. The donor of
    first resort is, of course, Saudi Arabia. After
    all, the Bush Administration persuaded the Saudis to pay
    the Syrian dictator $2 billion as a reward for joining
    the U.S.-led coalition — something that was very much in
    his interest to do anyway since the coalition’s objective
    was to wage war against Assad’s worst enemy, Saddam
    Hussein. The Clinton team believes that it has now
    induced the Saudis to signal a willingness to provide
    further financial support to Damascus if Syria comes to
    terms with Israel. It is portraying the Saudi Foreign
    Minister’s meeting with Assad last week as evidence of
    such a willingness.{3}

    A second avenue is debt relief. Syria
    apparently expects that the United States will help
    arrange for the cancellation of its foreign debt.
    According to the February 1995 edition of the
    London-based periodical The Middle East:

    “Syrian analysts say that the country’s ‘only’
    foreign debts to Russian and Eastern bloc countries will
    be canceled once a peace deal is concluded. ‘Why should
    Egypt and Jordan have their debts written off and Syria
    be expected to pay theirs (sic)?’ asks one analyst. ‘It
    will be part and package of the deal.’ Syria owes some
    $14 billion to the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc
    countries, mostly for arms.”

    Since the holders of such debt are themselves broke,
    it seems likely that the United States will have to offer
    the Russians and others at least partial payment in
    dollars if the latter are to wipe the slate clean for
    Syria.

    Such is his eagerness for a deal that President
    Clinton may be making commitments in a third area:
    promising that at least hundreds of millions, if not
    billions, of U.S. taxpayer dollars will flow to
    Syria — in the form of indirect assistance (e.g.,
    via multilateral financial institutions), if not directly
    from the U.S. Treasury. There is, however, little
    realistic prospect that American financial assistance
    will be forthcoming for Syria. According to the
    Associated Press, on 15 March, Rep. Sonny Callahan,
    the chairman of the House Foreign Operations
    Appropriations Subcommittee:

    “warned the Clinton Administration that he
    would oppose providing any aid to Syria as part of a
    future peace agreement with Israel….He is concerned
    that Syria would seek the ‘annual entitlement’ of
    foreign aid that Egypt and Israel have received since
    they signed a peace treaty in 1979. ‘There is no money,’
    Callahan said.”     (Emphasis added.)

  3. Deployment of U.S. “monitors” on the Golan
    Heights:     Another explosive aspect of the incipient
    Syrian-Israeli agreement is the Clinton Administration’s
    commitment to place American personnel on the Golan as
    Israel withdraws from this strategic high-ground. The
    details of the proposed deployment have yet to be
    publicly disclosed.

    4. It is, nonetheless, clear that such a deployment will
    be fraught with serious risks: for the Americans who will
    likely be the targets of terrorist attacks on the Golan;
    for Israelis who may, wrongly, be induced by the presence
    of those personnel to believe that the danger associated
    with surrendering the Golan to Assad’s Syria has been
    alleviated; and for the U.S.-Israeli relationship if the
    deployment has the effect of transforming the United
    States from Israel’s closest and strongest ally into a
    “neutral” party.{4}

    There is, simply put, no resemblance between the
    desolate, unpopulated and isolated Sinai — where U.S.
    forces have been performing monitoring functions under
    the Camp David accord for well over a decade — and the
    Golan Heights. It is grossly misleading, therefore, to
    suggest that just because the United States deployed
    monitors to the Sinai it safely can, not to say that it must,
    deploy them on the Golan.

  4. Aiding Syria’s Arms Build-up: On the face of it,
    it seems preposterous that the United States would even
    consider helping a dangerous actor like Hafez Assad to
    upgrade the lethality of his arsenal. And yet, such a
    step would also be consistent with the Egypt-Israeli
    model. Generous sales of advanced U.S. weaponry,
    technology transfers, co-production arrangements and
    military training have flowed to Cairo in the wake of
    Camp David.

    5. More recently, along with debt-relief, President
    Clinton promised Jordan last October that “We will
    meet Jordan’s legitimate defense requirements.” At a
    minimum, given the fungibility of money, American cash
    infusions to Syria will free up other resources. They
    will, therefore, effectively help Assad continue his
    efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and other
    offensive arms.

    In this regard, it is worth noting that Syrian Vice
    President Abdul-Halim Khaddam said on 8 March: “We
    have to make building our national shield a national
    responsibility which we should approach without
    hesitation. Despite the accords Israel has struck with
    three Arab parties, it is going ahead with promoting its
    fighting ability in spite of its current arms arsenal and
    huge military industries.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that those who hope
to promote a just and durable peace between Israel and Syria have
a responsibility to ensure that an agreement between the parties
is not based on an unsustainable foundation. If the foregoing
commitments — undertakings that are apparently being made by
President Clinton on behalf of the United States to secure Syrian
agreement to a deal with Israel — will not enjoy congressional
support, all the parties are better off knowing that now.
That reality can then be taken into account in the negotiations
and alternative security and other arrangements made accordingly,
with minimum disruption caused to the peace process.

Unfortunately, apart from a few legislators like Sen. Helms
and Rep. Callahan, the Congress has not yet been heard from
concerning Mr. Clinton’s Syrian initiatives. Before any more time
elapses and any more insupportable commitments are made to Hafez
Assad, the rest of the congressional leadership must become
engaged in two respects: 1) by holding hearings at once to ensure
an informed public and congressional debate on these commitments;
and 2) by objecting formally to the Administration’s approach, at
a minimum by dispatching the sort of letter Sen. Dole and his
colleagues sent the President last week opposing the ABM
negotiations now underway.

– 30 –

(1) See the Center for Security Policy’s
recent Decision Brief entitled, Warning:
Congress Must Spike U.S. Commitments on Dollars, Troops for Syria
Now or Invite Peace Process Melt-Down ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_13″>No. 95-D 13, 3 March 1995).

(2) Although the Clinton Administration
sought to put the best face on Syrian involvement in the
international drug trade in a recent report to Congress on such
trafficking, it was obliged nonetheless to note that
“Neither the Syrian nor the [Syrian-controlled] Lebanese
authorities moved successfully against cocaine or heroin
laboratories operating in either country.”

(3) On 15 March, the Jerusalem Post
reported that an unnamed “senior U.S. official” said in
Damascus: “When Saud Faisal arrived on a rare visit to
Damascus, he did not nor does he have to say ‘If you make peace
with Israel, we will give you this set amount of money.’ Rather,
it is sufficient for him to say, ‘We support the direction of
making peace with Israel.’ The Syrians get the message. This is
what the Saudi foreign minister did.”

(4) For a detailed analysis of these
potential dangers, see the Center for Security Policy’s href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=00-golan94″>blue-ribbon study entitled U.S.
Forces on the Golan Heights: An Assessment of Benefits and Risks
(24 October 1994).

U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights: An Assessment of Benefits and Costs

By:

GENERAL JOHN FOSS (USA, Ret.)
Commanding General, Training and Doctrine Command 1989-91; formerly responsible for U.S. forces in the Sinai.

GENERAL AL GRAY (USMC, Ret.)
Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps 1987-91.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN S. PUSTAY (USAF, Ret.)
President, National Defense University 1981-83.

GENERAL BERNARD SCHRIEVER (USAF, Ret.)
Commander, U.S. Air Force Systems Command
1959-66.

ADMIRAL CARL TROST (USN, Ret.)
Chief of Naval Operations 1986-90.

ADMIRAL ELMO R. ZUMWALT, JR.(USN, Ret.)
Chief of Naval Operations 1970-74.

DOUGLAS J. FEITH
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense 1984-86; Middle East specialist, National Security Council 1981-82.

FRANK J. GAFFNEY, JR.
Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense 1987; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense 1983-87.

RICHARD PERLE
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy 1981-87.

EUGENE V. ROSTOW
Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 1981-83; Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs 1966-69.

HENRY S. ROWEN
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs 1989-91; Chairman, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency 1981-83.

——————————————————————————–

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

This study concludes that a deployment of American troops to the Golan Heights as monitors or peacekeepers in the event of a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement would entail costs and risks for the United States that would substantially outweigh any benefits.

There are three categories of benefit — or mission or function — that one can imagine for such a deployment: (1) monitoring, (2) deterrence, and (3) demonstrating U.S. support.

I. MONITORING

Military Intelligence: Collection and analysis are essential national security functions and will continue to be done “in-house.” U.S. troops are not required — and would not be relied upon — to provide the parties with military intelligence and early warning.

Treaty Compliance: U.S. personnel could be invited to mediate on a case by case basis. The United States need not undertake an expensive, risky and open-ended troop commitment to carry out the relatively minor (and not inherently military) task of serving occasionally as a third-party referee.

II. DETERRENCE

A. Military Deterrence

    Effective Military Barrier: No one has suggested a U.S. force with the numbers and types of men and equipment that would allow it to serve as military barrier against Syria’s large armored forces.

    Tripwire: The U.S. government could not responsibly or constitutionally deploy troops to the Golan as “peacekeepers” or “monitors” if the actual purpose were to create a tripwire — that is, to ensure that a future Syrian aggression would trigger a substantial U.S. military intervention. Given its interest in the credibility of its commitments, the United States should actively disabuse any Israelis who believe that U.S. peacekeepers could function as a tripwire in the absence of a formal treaty commitment.

    Israel can now defend itself without the use of U.S. troops. The United States should not undertake now to enter into a future war if its intervention may not be necessary. In any event, it is not likely that the United States could make a necessary intervention in a timely fashion.

    Were a future attack to injure or kill U.S. peacekeeping forces, the U.S. government may remove the peacekeeping force altogether rather than reinforce it.

B. Political Deterrence: Syria would know that renewed aggression will antagonize the United States whether or not U.S. troops are stationed on the Golan. At most, such troops could affect Syria’s calculations marginally.

C. Increased Reliance on Preemption: If Israel withdraws on or from the Golan, it will have to increase its reliance on preemption, for it will lack a buffer. A U.S. Golan force would increase the likelihood of U.S. opposition to Israeli preemptive military action, no matter how urgent or well-advised. Hence, the effect might be the opposite of that intended: To reduce fear of Israeli preemption among potential Arab aggressors. This would tend to undermine any Syrian-Israeli peace agreement, decrease regional stability and increase the risks of war.

III. DEMONSTRATING U.S. SUPPORT FOR THE SYRIAN-ISRAELI PEACE PROCESS: The United States should not commit U.S. troops to a dangerous mission of indefinite duration for symbolic purposes, when the necessary symbolism can be supplied amply by other means.

IV. MULTILATERAL FORCE: None of the major problems inherent in a U.S. Golan peacekeeping force would be solved through the use of a multilateral force umbrella. In fact, this would give rise to additional difficulties regarding command structures and international politics, especially if that force is under U.N. auspices. If the Clinton Administration agrees to contribute to such forces, it may insist on a U.N. umbrella. Multilateral peacekeeping contingents tend to feel constrained to try to appease those who pose the greatest threat to peace.

V. COSTS AND RISKS OF DEPLOYING U.S. FORCES ON THE GOLAN

Danger to U.S. Troops: U.S. troops on the Golan would face threats of terrorism and also the possible outbreak of war. They would be operating close to a substantial and potentially hostile population and within range of Hezballah and other terrorist organizations based in south Lebanon. Even if Syria chose not to stimulate terrorist attacks against the U.S. troops, Iraq or other states could find it convenient to do so, because the logistics of targeting U.S. forces on the Golan, would be far easier than those required to hit U.S. forces elsewhere.

Drawing on U.S. Defense Resources: A small force of around 800 U.S. troops would be more vulnerable than an armored brigade. The United States may not be able, however, to sustain the commitment of a larger force to a long-term Golan deployment. To employ a brigade would require commitment of three times as many troops (i.e., a division). The Administration’s “Bottom-Up Review” plan contemplates only 10 active-duty divisions in the entire U.S. Army force structure. It is difficult to imagine that such a substantial part of the Nation’s total combat capability would be allocated to this purpose.

Unreliable Commitments: Peacekeeping operations, including a deployment on the Golan, would have to be judged expendable if international crises arose and required reallocation of units and resources. The United States has an interest in ensuring that its Israeli allies realize that U.S. peacekeepers on the Golan might not be present in a future crisis if required to fill a gap elsewhere.

Strained Relations: The potential for the U.S. Golan force to strain relations between the United States and Israel would create an incentive for Syria to manufacture situations of tension. With U.S. troops on the Golan, the United States would be reluctant to respond to Israeli intelligence collection requests if doing so increased the possibility of Israeli preemption against Syria. And in any event the United States would be inclined to withhold information from Israel if providing it would lead Syria to accuse the United States of favoring Israel or of functioning on the Golan effectively as an arm of the IDF.

Adverse Repercussions with Syria: Syria would want to use strains in its relations with the United States to induce U.S. officials to offer concessions to “keep Syria in the peace process.” Syria can be expected: 1) to exploit its position vis a vis U.S. forces on the Golan to dilute the U.S.-Israeli relationship, insisting that the United States act “even-handedly” between Israel and Syria and 2) to press the United States to wipe the slate clean regarding such bilateral problems as Damascus’ continuing support for terrorism and drug-trafficking.

Damage to U.S. Public Support of Israel: Insistence on a dangerous deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan can be expected to damage Israel’s standing with the U.S. public. If those forces suffer casualties — from terrorism, for example — there will be U.S. public pressure to end the Golan mission and Israel’s image as a self-reliant ally would be tarnished. Israeli anxieties about the reliability of the United States as a “peacekeeper” on the Golan would intensify, and with good reason. U.S. credibility would be at stake.

VI. THE SINAI MFO AND THE GOLAN MISSION

The risks of a Golan deployment are significantly greater than those attending U.S. participation in the Sinai peacekeeping mission of the Multilateral Force and Observers (MFO) created under the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.

The Sinai — approximately 120 miles wide with no appreciable population — constitutes strategic depth for Israel even if not under Israeli control. The narrow Golan Heights (approximately ten miles wide) could be rapidly remilitarized by Syrian forces. The Golan contains and is accessible to substantial local populations. Risks of terrorism, under cover of the local population, exist on the Golan that do not exist in the Sinai. Secondly, the Golan abuts south Lebanon, a major base for terrorist groups. There is no analogous threat in the Sinai. Thirdly, the Golan’s special strategic significance as a watershed can give rise to Israeli-Syrian conflicts, as in the past, that could lead to violence endangering U.S. peacekeepers. No similar problem exists in the Sinai. Fourthly, the political relationship between Israel and Egypt is of a different nature from what exists now — or can be foreseen — between Israel and Syria. Assad’s peace diplomacy has been grudging, not confidence inspiring. His record of compliance with international agreements is in general poor. Treaty or no, tensions between Israel and Syria will remain high for the foreseeable future and any Golan peacekeeping forces will be squeezed into a narrow area flanked by two heavily armed parties that remain hostile and mutually suspicious. Lastly, the relationship between the United States and Egypt is entirely different from that existing or foreseeable between the United States and Syria. Israel aside, the United States has a list of grievances against the Syrian government that would create dangers for U.S. forces on the Golan that do not exist for U.S. forces in the Sinai MFO.

VII. THE NEW FACTOR

Israeli officials have for decades opposed Israel’s relying on U.S. troops for its security. They now apparently believe, however, that U.S. troops on the Golan will help assuage the fears of their public regarding an Israeli withdrawal from there. They evidently believe that such influence on public opinion takes precedence over the longstanding substantive policy of opposing such a role for U.S. troops. Whether U.S. troops on the Golan would, in fact, significantly affect Israeli public opinion regarding an Israeli withdrawal is not clear.

Is it wise to make an indefinite commitment of U.S. troops to a dangerous and ill-defined mission in order to attempt, in the short term, to influence Israel’s domestic debate? However much the U.S. government favors the peace policy of the Israeli government, there are strong grounds for resisting this kind of misapplication of U.S. military resources. It is not in the U.S. interest that the Israeli public mistakenly believe that U.S. Golan peacekeepers will enhance Israeli security.

CONCLUSION

There is no mission or rationale for a U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan that would justify the resulting costs and risks. Indeed, the net effect could be negative for Israel’s security and regional stability, while the consequences could include the loss of U.S. lives and, possibly, a credibility-damaging retreat of the U.S. forces under terrorist fire. In any event, such a deployment would increase the danger of direct U.S. involvement in a future Middle East war and undermine Israel’s standing with the U.S. public as an independent and self-reliant ally.

If Israel withdraws on or from the Golan Heights, it will be required to adopt measures to compensate to the extent possible for the military risks inherent in relinquishing the territory. All such measures entail large costs — political and societal as well as financial. A U.S. force deployment to the Golan will not significantly reduce those costs. One of the dangers of such a deployment is that it may create a false sense of security in Israel and discourage the investments necessary to address such risks. This would not serve U.S. interests, much less Israel’s.

If this subject is debated now and Congress and the executive branch decide to oppose a deployment of U.S. troops on the Golan, Israel and Syria could take this into account in their negotiations and devise alternative security arrangements accordingly. Such a decision would be far less disruptive if made now than if deferred until after a Syrian-Israeli deal is concluded.

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INTRODUCTION

As part of its search for a “comprehensive” peace, Israel is negotiating an agreement with Syria that is expected to entail Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and possibly, over time, the complete return of the Heights to Syria. Relinquishment of this territory is a sensitive military and political issue not just in Israel but also in the United States, because Israel expects that compensatory security arrangements will include the deployment of American troops to the Golan as monitors or peacekeepers. A 4 October 1994 Washington Post article reported that Prime Minister Rabin announced to the Israeli parliament his plans to request U.S. troops to monitor the peace accord being negotiated with Syria.

This study evaluates the benefits and costs to the United States of such a Golan mission for the U.S. armed forces. The benefits — that is, the rationale for such a deployment — divide into three categories: monitoring, deterrence, and support for a Syrian-Israeli peace. The study concludes that the costs — undertaking of risks, commitment of resources and transformation of the U.S. role in the region — would substantially outweigh any benefits. It concludes that the United States should not deploy its troops on the Golan Heights and that the cause of peace would not in fact be served by such a deployment. This study does not attempt to weigh the merits of the Arab-Israeli negotiating process or the resulting or anticipated accords. Nor does it purport to judge whether Israel should withdraw from the Golan Heights in pursuit of peace with Syria. Indeed, the signatories to this study represent a range of opinions regarding Israel’s peace policies and the issue of Israeli territorial concessions to Syria.

Israel is a sovereign state and does not require leave from outsiders, even its friends, to make its own national security calculations regarding peace opportunities and military risks. The issue of U.S. forces on the Golan, however, does not lie solely within Israel’s sovereign prerogatives. It involves the lives of Americans and the national interests of the United States. Americans have a right and duty to evaluate this issue independently.

As important as this issue is, it has received little attention to date in the press and in Congress. It is not evident that the Clinton Administration has analyzed the issue rigorously, even though its officials have clearly signaled a willingness to commit U.S. troops to provide some kind of a security guarantee within an Israeli-Syrian agreement. According to The Jerusalem Post of 9 December 1993, Secretary of State Christopher, when asked whether U.S. troops should be deployed on the Golan as part of an Israeli-Syrian deal, responded “absolutely.” On 14 June 1994, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Robert Pelletreau told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “It’s envisaged by both [Syria and Israel] and I think there is a large expectation that the United States would be part of [an] international presence [on the Golan Heights], although we haven’t gotten to that degree of specificity there.”

This study does not exhaustively examine the policy considerations relating to a U.S. troop deployment on the Golan. In the absence of more detailed information about the size, nature, responsibilities, level of armament, rules of engagement, mission definition and other characteristics of the U.S. peacekeeping force, this study aims only to identify major considerations that will apply irrespective of the specific form of the deployment.

The Center for Security Policy, the sponsor of this study, hopes it will stimulate thorough executive branch and congressional deliberations, hearings and public debate. The issue of U.S. troops on the Golan should be analyzed before the United States makes such a commitment. Congress is often handed a fait accompli on U.S. military interventions or deployments, but it can make a timely contribution to U.S. policy on the Golan — if it acts now.

BACKGROUND

The Golan Heights

The Golan is a semi-mountainous escarpment of some 400 square miles, ranging in height from 400 to 3,000 feet. It rises steeply from the eastern and northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, runs the length of the Huleh Valley, and overlooks the coastal plains of the Galilee and northern Israel.

At the end of World War I, during the division of the defeated Ottoman Empire, the Golan Heights were included in the territory of British Mandate Palestine. In 1923 they were transferred to French Mandate Syria under a Franco-British agreement delineating the boundary between Mandate Syria and Mandate Palestine. After Israel declared independence in 1948 and defeated the Syrian and other Arab forces that invaded to destroy the new state, that boundary became the basis for the Syrian-Israeli armistice line negotiated in 1949.

For the next eighteen years, until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Syria used its position on the Heights to shell Israeli farms and settlements in the Galilee below and to attack Israeli water projects in the Huleh Valley. Syrians on the Golan attempted to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River, which would have severely curtailed Israel’s water supply. Israel used military force to oppose the diversion.

Israeli soldiers captured the Heights in the Six Day War of 1967. Six years later, at the outbreak of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syria mounted a massive armored attack into the territory. In a costly stand, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stopped the Syrian thrust across the Golan and then counter-attacked, driving a fifteen mile bulge into Syria. Israel later withdrew from this bulge, but stayed on the Heights. In December, 1981, Israel enacted legislation extending its civil law and administration to the Golan, replacing the military authority which had ruled there for 14 years.

Since 1967 and the subsequent attempt in 1973 to retake the Heights, Syria has used various means, including terrorism and diplomacy, to press Israel to relinquish the Golan. Successive Israeli governments, under both Labor and Likud, have characterized the Golan Heights as essential to Israeli security.

The Strategic Importance to Israel of the Golan Heights

First, holding the Heights gives Israel strategic depth. The Golan territory is roughly 10 miles by 40 miles. All of Israel, including the Golan and the West Bank, is only approximately 45 miles wide by 270 miles. (First-time visitors to Israel almost invariably remark on how small the country is.) Thus, in the north, the Golan Heights makes the territory under Israel’s control nearly fifty percent wider than it would be otherwise. This buffer zone, this extension of territory where Israel faces its most formidable enemy, is an important military asset for Israel. This remains true even in the age of missile warfare. It bears noting that, in the summer of 1990, all of Kuwait’s valuable assets were in easy reach of Iraq’s forces, which took them quickly. But Saudi Arabia’s key assets lay across wide stretches of desert, which made an Iraqi conquest far more difficult. Though Iraq had Scud missiles, Saudi Arabia’s strategic depth spared it the fate of Kuwait.

Second, control of high ground on the Golan gives Israel direct line-of-sight surveillance and warning of threatening Syrian movements in the plains below or in south Lebanon. Early warning is important to a defense posture that relies, in the event of war, upon a thin line of active forces to hold while reserves mobilize to meet the kind of attacks that Syria’s large and well-equipped standing army might mount.

Third, modern technology has by no means eliminated altogether the disadvantages of having to fight uphill, a reality acknowledged by military commanders everywhere. The operational planning of the U.S. military, for example, still places great emphasis on command of the high ground as a critical force multiplier.

Fourth, possession of the Golan puts the IDF within easy striking range of Damascus. This contributes to Israeli deterrence against Syria. If deterrence fails and war occurs again, Israel’s Golan position enables it to mount spoiling attacks against likely staging areas. And its proximity to Damascus can help deter especially heinous actions — for example, missile attacks on Israel’s cities.

Finally, the Golan highlands are a major watershed. In that arid region with its growing population increasing the demand for water, control of water resources can have strategic consequences. The significance of this point is often overlooked in military and political analyses, especially those not produced locally. Control of the Golan permits control of Lake Kinneret (the “Sea of Galilee”) which supplies roughly thirty percent of Israel’s consumption.

Control of the Golan watershed and the Kinneret basin will further increase in importance if Israel makes concessions regarding its other main source of water, the watersheds of the West Bank. Water sources there now satisfy more than thirty-three percent of Israel’s needs. These are at issue in Israel’s negotiations with the PLO.

Demilitarization

One of the key security arrangements envisioned for a Syrian-Israeli agreement involving Israeli withdrawal on or from the Golan is demilitarization of the territory from which the Israeli forces are withdrawn. Some analysts expect Israel also to insist that additional Syrian land beyond that territory be demilitarized or made subject to force limitations, perhaps in return for Israel’s agreement to limit its own forces on the Israeli side of the border.

IDF Reserve Major General Moshe Bar-Kochba has noted, “The Syrians are now able to shift the main body of their military force against Israel within one night. Demilitarization must be such that it does not allow them to marshall their forces so fast; that is, they must be removed to north of Damascus.”1

Other military officers sympathetic to the Rabin government’s general diplomatic policy toward Syria have made similar arguments. According to Major General (Res.) Avigdor Ben Gal, “It is important that in reality a buffer zone emerge, without any armies, and this zone must include two elements — the Golan Heights and all of South Syria.”2 And Major General (Res.) Abraham Tamir, who had responsibility for designing the security arrangements for the Sinai in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, has called for “a buffer consisting of: a demilitarized Golan; the Horan [the area of Syria immediately to the east of the Golan Heights] in which there will not be more than a mechanized division; and South Syria, the Golan, and the Horan demilitarized from military aircraft and missiles.”3

Notwithstanding any demilitarization arrangement, it would be far easier for Syrian forces in a war to remilitarize the Golan from the plateau behind the Heights than for Israel to return from below. The Syrians could move two to three divisions unhindered into the Golan overnight from their staging area around Damascus, even if Syria accepted an additional 40 km demilitarized zone extending beyond the Heights. If Syria seized control of a demilitarized Golan, it would be difficult and costly for Israel to move armor up the Heights under fire. The IDF would have to fight its way up the steep, almost sheer cliffs that face the Israeli side.

Demilitarizing a large portion of south Syria beyond the Golan Heights would mitigate but not eliminate altogether the risks to Israel of withdrawal from the Golan. Demilitarization agreements between adversaries are inherently brittle. The history of Germany’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 illustrates the point. Pledges by democratic states to respond promptly and forcefully to any violation of an arms control arrangement with a non-democratic state have often proven hollow when the time for action came. This was true for the Allies after World War I, for the United States during the Cold War and for Israel after signing the peace treaty with Egypt. So, as desirable as the actual demilitarization of south Syria might be, Israel cannot be expected to rely heavily on a demilitarization accord. Ultimately, Israel’s security depends not on a demilitarization arrangement that Syria may or may not respect indefinitely but on the IDF’s ability to prevail over Syrian forces if Syria renews military hostilities — and on the costs of such a victory.

While the Golan’s most difficult and most elevated terrain faces Israel, the topography on the northern and eastern sides facing Syria also constitutes a defensible barrier to massed armored attack. During the 1973 Yom Kippur war, control of the Golan’s rocky highlands enabled two brigades of the IDF to hold off an attack of over 1,000 Syrian tanks.

Israel’s current Chief-of-Staff, Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, has recently reiterated that, even under conditions of peace, the IDF must remain deployed on the Golan. Maj. Gen (Res.) Yossi Peled, the previous commander of the IDF Northern Command which has operational control of the Golan, warned in December, 1993 that an Israeli withdrawal from the Heights would constitute “national suicide.” If Israel found itself at war again with Syria, General Peled doubted that Israel could ever retake the Golan as it did in the 1967 War, because of the changes since then in the balance of forces.4

Strategic Depth in the Age of Missiles

Even in the missile age, land — strategic depth — still matters. The Syrians have missiles. But they are still investing heavily in their ground forces. Major General Uri Sagi, head of the IDF Intelligence Branch, noted in April 1993:

“…In the conventional field, Syria has improved and is improving its tank fleet in a very impressive manner. If and when Syria will complete its procurement transactions that it has already signed, all of its armored divisions will be equipped with the latest model T-72 tanks. Today Syria has over 4,000 tanks and 300 self-propelled artillery tubes that provide it with an enhanced offensive capability in land battles.”(5)
Many Middle Eastern nations are working to acquire ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and many of these nations maintain a longstanding hostility toward Israel. Nevertheless, the principal threat to Israel’s existence for the foreseeable future will remain the danger of a physical invasion and occupation by heavily armored forces. 5

Simply stated, even though missiles can fly over the highest terrain feature, including the Golan Heights, they do not negate the strategic significance of territorial depth. The military value of missiles depends on their accuracy — on their ability to strike specific military targets. Inaccurate missiles like the Scuds used by Iraq in the Gulf War can terrorize large urban areas. But they are not reliable against military targets — airfields, command and control centers, bridges — where precision is required.

If, however, the Syrians — by violating a demilitarization regime, for example — were able to move heavy artillery up to the edge of the Golan escarpment overlooking the Galilee and northern Israel, they could use their relatively accurate artillery against military targets within a range of approximately 25 miles, depending on their ability to observe and correct fire. Artillery munitions, of which Syria has large quantities, are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to missiles. Destroying significant military targets within this range would be a matter, in essence, of firing enough rounds.

On the other hand, if Israeli control of the Golan ensures that Syrian artillery is confined to the plateau behind the Heights, few targets in Israel would be within range of the Syrian artillery. Syria could attempt to strike those targets with ballistic missiles, but then they would encounter the problem of inaccuracy, not to mention the prohibitive cost and limited number of weapons in inventory. Also, the United States and Israel both have programs to develop defenses against ballistic missiles. Given adequate resources, these programs may substantially limit the military effectiveness of offensive missiles. There are, however, no defenses available against artillery other than counter-fire to destroy the artillery pieces themselves, which is a task of great difficulty, especially in rugged terrain like that of the Golan Heights.

What is more, succeeding with missile attacks on distant military targets would be nearly impossible in part because the essential function of damage assessment would not be possible for Syrian missileers well behind the Golan. (Targeting and damage assessment abilities would, however, be enhanced if Syria gained access to high quality, real-time satellite imaging.6) In short, possession of intermediate-range ballistic missiles does not give Syria a capability to fight Israel as effectively from behind the Golan Heights as it could from the Heights themselves.

Achieving military success in a war requires more than lobbing a few score (or even a few hundred) missiles of limited accuracy at soft targets. Iraq fired approximately forty Scuds at Israel in the Gulf War, killing fewer than ten civilians and no soldiers and achieving nothing of military significance. To win a war against Israel, Syria must move armor, infantry and artillery forward and down into Israeli proper, and then destroy Israeli forces on the ground. This was true in 1948, it was true in 1967 and 1973, and it remains true in today’s Age of Missiles.

Land for Peace

Proponents of a Golan withdrawal commonly state that “peace is a better basis for security than territory.” That assertion is essentially a political, not a military judgment. If a military officer, for example, makes this assertion, his opinion on the reliability of a peace treaty with the Assad regime carries no special weight because of his military status. No military expert in Israel (or anywhere else) argues that, in the event of war, Syrian possession of the Heights would not matter. The argument that “peace is better than territory” is valid only as long as there is peace. But if war were to break out again, no one can seriously suggest that Israel would be better off holding a treaty signed by Assad than holding the Golan Heights.

Israel would, of course, be more secure if it actually enjoyed peace — that is, if its neighbors no longer aspired to destroy it. Indeed, having peaceable neighbors is a safer and more desirable basis for securing one’s country than retaining various military assets. This is simply another way of saying that one is better off not having to defend oneself than being able to defend oneself effectively.

Whether it is likely that Israel, through a peace agreement with the Assad government, can achieve a permanent end to hostility with Syria is a question beyond the scope of this study. Nor does this study assess whether the chances of achieving peace with Syria at present outweigh the military risks (discussed above) inherent in Israel’s relinquishment of Golan territory.

ANALYSIS OF THE U.S. MISSION ON THE GOLAN

A military commander on a mission — whether combat or peacekeeping — requires a clear statement of the nature of the mission: What is supposed to be accomplished? The commander also must know the criteria by which success is measured and when the mission is deemed completed — that is, when the troops can come home. Regarding the possible deployment of U.S. troops on the Golan, the mission or rationale has never been spelled out by Israeli or American officials with any precision. There are three categories of mission or function that might apply to a deployment: (1) monitoring, (2) deterrence, and (3) demonstrating U.S. support.

Examining each in turn, we ask what U.S. forces on the Golan can realistically be expected to accomplish, whether the mission is feasible without a commitment of U.S. forces (i.e., can it be done at less cost and with less risk), and what are the likely but unanticipated harmful consequences of assigning such a mission to U.S. troops.

I. MONITORING

A monitoring mission might focus either on (a) the monitoring of military activity for purposes of early warning and military intelligence or (b) monitoring the parties’ compliance with the peace agreement.

A. Military Intelligence

Neither Israel nor Syria would in fact look to U.S. monitors or those of a multinational force to provide early warning of the other side’s significant military activities. That kind of military intelligence collection and analysis is an essential national security function. Neither country would shift such a function to outsiders. Although a country might, under certain circumstances, choose to rely to some extent on another country for military intelligence, this is less likely to be the case when the second country is doing its monitoring not as an ally, but as an impartial or neutral observer, as would be the status of any U.S. forces deployed on the Golan under an Israeli-Syrian agreement.

Israel would not look to “peace monitors” for military intelligence because its margins of safety are thin and its defensive military doctrine and security hinges on accurate and timely intelligence, unfiltered by foreign interests, and, most especially, on prompt warning of military threats. Syria would not because its relations with the United States will remain cool and mutually distrustful for the foreseeable future even if the Assad government signs a peace agreement with Israel.

FINDING: U.S. troops on the Golan are not required — and would not be relied upon — to provide military intelligence and early warning.

B. Treaty Compliance

The U.S. troops could help perform the function of monitoring the parties’ respective compliance with an agreement. This is a realistic function of some value. But it can be performed effectively without the permanent stationing of U.S. troops on the Heights, with all the attendant costs and risks of such a deployment (as set forth below). If a compliance issue arises and a party wants American personnel to serve as “honest brokers” to mediate the issue or monitor specific treaty conditions, that party could invite those personnel in on a case by case basis. The best U.S. personnel for that function, moreover, may not be military.

FINDING: There is no need for the United States to undertake an expensive, risky and open-ended commitment of troops to carry out the relatively minor (and not inherently military) task of serving occasionally as a third-party referee on compliance issues.

II. DETERRENCE

Some commentators suggest that U.S. forces on the Golan could help deter Syria from violating a peace agreement and attacking Israel militarily in the future. How might the U.S. forces fulfill this function? Are they to serve as a deterrent on the military level — i.e., the forces themselves would be a military factor in the calculations of a Syrian military commander — or are they to serve simply as a contribution to deterrence on the political level?

A. Military Deterrence

There are two ways the forces could function as a military deterrent: either 1) the U.S. deployment would be large enough to serve as an effective military barrier to a future Syrian military offensive or 2) the U.S. deployment would serve as a “tripwire” to ensure that such a Syrian offensive would trigger a large American military intervention to oppose it.

1. Effective Military Barrier

    No one has suggested that the United States deploy to the Golan a force with the numbers and types of men and equipment that would allow it to serve as a military barrier against Syria’s large armored forces. As noted above, Syria has over 4,000 tanks and 300 self-propelled artillery pieces. A fully-equipped U.S. brigade is probably the maximum force that might be used here. Much of the talk in press and policy circles has been of an even smaller deployment — perhaps as few as 800 lightly-armed troops.

    Washington’s own decision-making mechanisms could preclude U.S. forces in any event from playing an active role in a crisis in the narrow Golan theater of operations. Dr. Dore Gold, Director of the U.S. Foreign and Policy Project at Israel’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies and author of the monograph, U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights and Israeli-Syrian Security Arrangements, has observed:

    “By far the most complex and sensitive element involved in the deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan Heights is the decision-making process on the U.S. side, in the event that a real Syrian threat is created. Would the U.S. really order its force to open fire on the Syrians? How much time would the American political system require to make this decision? Given the narrow confines of the Golan theater, the American reaction time has to be especially rapid. Yet American forces would almost certainly not be allowed to react virtually automatically. Israel will be dependent upon political decision-making in Washington.”7

2. Tripwire

    Some commentators have spoken of the contemplated U.S. deployment as a “tripwire” — that is, a device to ensure that a future Syrian aggression would more or less automatically trigger a substantial U.S. military intervention to defend Israel. This is an idea of enormous strategic importance. It is the concept most likely to affect Israeli public opinion about the security risks of territorial withdrawal in favor of Syria. The concept deserves the most intense scrutiny, for it represents the gravest danger to U.S. interests.

    If U.S. forces on the Golan are intended to be a tripwire, this connotes that Israel would become, like South Korea and the NATO states, an ally dependent to some extent on U.S. armed forces for its security. An attack on Israel by Syria would be treated as an attack on the United States, which would be obliged, legally or practically, to enter the war. This would be a radical departure from the traditions of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the traditions of U.S. Middle East policy in general.

    A major element of Israel’s reason for being, a key source of Israel’s national pride and a principal basis for U.S. popular support for the U.S.-Israeli relationship has always been the self-reliance of the Israeli Defense Forces. Though outside material support has been important to it, especially since 1967, Israel has never requested or desired U.S. forces to risk their lives in its defense. In addition to the metaphysical reasons for Israeli military self-reliance, there are practical grounds for Israel’s preferring not to rely on outside commitments that, in a crisis, may not be fulfilled or fulfillable. These practical grounds should give U.S. policy-makers pause about offering such commitments:

    • As noted, a tripwire arrangement would create, in essence, a mutual defense alliance between Israel and the United States. Such an alliance, however, cannot be built on a trilateral peacekeeping agreement including Syria. It would require a formal defense treaty between Israel and the United States, duly ratified with the approval of the U.S. Senate. It would be reckless for Americans or Israelis to suppose that U.S. forces on the Golan could in fact function as a tripwire in the absence of such a formal treaty commitment. The United States has an interest in preserving the credibility of its commitments, so it should actively disabuse any Israelis who think of U.S. peacekeepers on the Golan as a tripwire.
    • The question arises: Is a U.S. tripwire force on the Golan in the U.S. national interest, assuming the commitment could be duly formalized? If this question were posed directly to Israeli or American officials, their answer would undoubtedly be negative. The chief reason is that Israel can now defend itself without the use of U.S. troops. There is no reason for the United States to undertake now to enter into a war if its intervention may not be necessary. Moreover, if intervention by U.S. forces were necessary to defend Israel in the event of renewed Syrian aggression, it is not likely — given current constraints on U.S. military capabilities, especially in the field of sea- and air-lift — that the United States could make the necessary intervention in a timely fashion. Months were required to get U.S. forces in place and ready for action in the recent Persian Gulf conflict. As a former Israeli Prime Minister observed, when asked about U.S. security guarantees for Israel: “By the time you get here, we won’t be here.”
    • Might U.S. peacekeeping forces on the Golan serve a useful tripwire-like function even in the absence of a formal U.S. defense commitment to Israel? It has been suggested that, even if a U.S. military response to renewed Syrian aggression against Israel were not legally mandated or automatic, the probability of such a response would increase if U.S. troops were placed in harm’s way (i.e., in the path of the Syrian forces) on the Golan.

Here again, the United States has an interest in discouraging its Israeli friends from harboring unrealistic expectations. Israel should not count on a peacekeeping force functioning as a mechanism that can be relied upon to engage the United States deeply on Israel’s behalf in the event of another war with Syria. Were a future Syrian attack to injure or kill U.S. peacekeeping forces on the Golan, the U.S. government may decide to remove the peacekeeping force altogether rather than reinforce the troops. Recall the history of the Marines in Lebanon in 1983 and U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993, where the killing of American personnel forces triggered a hasty withdrawal rather than a deepening of the United States’ commitment.

FINDING: It would be irresponsible and unconstitutional for the U.S. government to deploy troops to the Golan as mere “peacekeepers” or “monitors” if the actual purpose is to create a tripwire. And it would be irresponsible to allow our Israeli friends to think that that is what U.S. forces on the Golan will constitute.

B. Political Deterrence

Even if U.S. troops on the Golan do not contribute to military deterrence — as a tripwire or otherwise — might they not be justified as a contribution to deterrence at the political level? In other words, will they not make it less likely that Syria would renew hostilities with Israel, given the added danger of confrontation with the United States?

In the event 1) Israel and Syria sign a peace agreement, 2) Israel withdraws from the Golan under that agreement and 3) Syria, at some point in the future, decides to launch an attack on Israel to capitalize on that Israeli withdrawal, Syria would know that its aggression will antagonize the United States whether or not U.S. troops are stationed on the Golan. At most, such troops could serve as a marginal factor in Syria’s calculations.

The real political deterrent to Syrian aggression is not U.S. troops on the Golan, but the strength of U.S. ties to Israel and the certainty of U.S. support for a swift and effective Israeli response to such aggression. This deterrent requires no U.S. troops on the Golan.

FINDING: Stationing U.S. troops on the Golan would be buying an item of little or no deterrence value at a very high price.

C. Increased Reliance on Preemption

In 1967, Israel did not control “the territories.” In the face of intense threats from the Arab side, and following Egypt’s act of war in blockading the Straits of Tiran at the mouth of the Gulf of Eilat, Israel’s leaders felt compelled to preempt the anticipated military attack against it. In 1973, however — with “the territories,” including the Golan, under its control — Israel reacted to intelligence of Syrian and Egyptian war preparations by choosing to forego preemption and to absorb the first blow. If Israel withdraws on or from the Golan, it will have to return to its old posture and increase its reliance on preemption, for it will have no buffer permitting absorption of a first blow.

The problems inherent in this development would be exacerbated by the presence of U.S. troops on the Golan. Such troops would be more likely to deter Israeli military action — action required for the defense of common U.S. and Israeli interests — than Syrian military aggression.

If Israel, having withdrawn from Golan territory, receives serious “indicators and warnings” (I&W) of Syrian aggression and decides it must strike Syria preemptively, the presence of U.S. troops on the Golan would necessitate its soliciting the U.S. government’s consent. American officials can be expected to treat the I&W reservedly, even skeptically, and to counsel patience and additional diplomacy. The United States is never quick to launch a war or flash an ally a green light to do so. If Israel believes that immediate preemption is required for its security, it will face the choice of 1) overriding its own armed force’s judgment on the military necessity of immediate preemption out of deference to its U.S. ally, whose Golan peacekeeping forces would be endangered in a war, or 2) rejecting the U.S. government’s counsel of delay and thereby risking antagonism of its key ally (and endangerment of the U.S. Golan peacekeeping forces) at precisely the moment — the start of a war — when close bilateral cooperation is crucial.

In the absence of U.S. troops on the Golan, the difficulty of this choice and the risks of bilateral tension would be substantially less. If those troops suffered casualties in a war initiated by Israeli preemption, this would damage the U.S.-Israeli relationship, notwithstanding that Syria may be legally culpable for provoking the war.

In this regard, it is worth recalling an Israeli military preemption that occurred in 1981: the aerial attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor outside Baghdad. The Israeli government properly viewed that facility as an integral part of Saddam Hussein’s effort to develop nuclear weapons. Israel had worked closely with the United States for years to block Iraq’s nuclear weapons program through diplomacy with Iraq’s suppliers, and Israeli and U.S. officials agreed that Iraq’s nuclear facility created a grave threat. Nonetheless, at the time, the United States condemned Israel’s action as dangerously provocative, and joined in formal criticism of Israel by the U.N. Security Council. If Israel had asked for U.S. consent before the raid, it would not have received it. Ten years afterward, however, on 28 October 1991, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney acknowledged that the United States benefited greatly from that Israeli action: “There were many times during the course of the build-up in the Gulf and the subsequent conflict that I gave thanks for the bold and dramatic action that had been taken [by Israel] some ten years before.”

FINDING: The presence of U.S. troops on the Golan would increase the likelihood of U.S. opposition to preemptive military action by Israel, no matter how urgent or well-advised. The standard American tendency to disapprove military action would be reinforced powerfully by solicitude for the U.S. peacekeepers. Hence, the effect of the U.S. deployment might be the opposite of that intended: It could reduce fear of Israeli preemption among potential Arab aggressors. By tending to embolden rather than deter those contemplating renewed aggression against Israel, this would tend to undermine any Syrian-Israeli peace agreement, decrease regional stability and increase the risks of war.

III. DEMONSTRATING U.S. SUPPORT

Even if U.S. peacekeeping forces on the Golan are not justified by their monitoring function or their contribution to deterrence of aggression, would they not serve as a symbolic demonstration of America’s commitment to the Syrian-Israeli peace process?

Perhaps, but such a use of U.S. armed forces would make a point that no one doubts anyway. And it would make it in an extravagantly costly fashion. How important is it that the U.S. government offer another visible sign of its desire for Syrian-Israeli peace? The United States has championed the idea for decades. It has invested diplomatic capital in it. The United States was the prime mover behind the Madrid Talks, which built on the American-led military success in the 1991 Persian Gulf war to inaugurate the first open and direct peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. If there is to be a peace treaty between the parties, it is likely to be signed at the White House. And U.S. financial resources will undoubtedly be tapped to shore up the peace arrangements. Under the circumstances, one cannot reasonably contend that U.S. forces on the Golan are required to demonstrate symbolically U.S. support for peace in the region.

FINDING: As a general proposition, it is not sensible for the United States to make a commitment of indefinite duration to put U.S. troops on the Golan for symbolic purposes, when the necessary symbolism can (and undoubtedly will) be supplied amply by other means. Such a commitment would not be sensible even if the troops were to be stationed in a stable and safe environment. Given the dangers of terrorism in the region, and the political instabilities and risks of war, it would be very irresponsible to deploy those troops as symbols.

IV. MULTILATERAL FORCE

It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that none of the major problems inherent in a U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan would be solved through the use of a multilateral force in which U.S. troops would form a part. In fact, U.S. participation in a multilateral force would give rise to additional difficulties regarding command structures and international politics, especially if that force is under U.N. auspices. Israeli government officials have said that they do not want U.N. auspices for multilateral peacekeeping forces on the Golan, but, if the Clinton Administration agrees to contribute to such forces, it may insist on a U.N. umbrella.

FINDING: As the experience of UNPROFOR in Bosnia has demonstrated, multilateral peacekeeping contingents tend to become part of the problem. They feel constrained to try to appease those who pose the greatest threat to peace — if only to reduce the risks to their own personal safety as they operate in dangerous situations under severe force and firepower limitations. Frequently, such “peacekeepers” wind up tacitly allied with the aggressors, promoting a false moral equivalence between the latter and their victims. Such units simply cannot be relied upon to deter or defeat attacks against the more vulnerable party — in this case, Israel.

V. COSTS AND RISKS OF DEPLOYING U.S. FORCES ON THE GOLAN

A. Danger to U.S. Troops

U.S. troops on the Golan Heights would face threats of terrorism and also the possible outbreak of war or low-level conflict. As Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres observed on 5 October 1994:

“Syria is likely to attack Israel even if a peace agreement is reached, if extremist elements in Damascus are disappointed by it. It is likely that leaders will arise in Syria who will deploy anew their tanks and planes, and therefore we must be careful.”

Because of the Golan’s compact area and terrain, those troops would be operating close to a substantial and potentially hostile population. They would be within range of Hezballah and other terrorist organizations based in south Lebanon. The Syrian government has influence over Hezballah and other active terrorist groups, but so do Iran and other states hostile to the United States. Even if Syria chose not to stimulate terrorist attacks against U.S. peacekeeping troops on the Golan, Iran, Iraq, Libya or other states could find it convenient to do so, because the logistics of targeting U.S. forces on the Golan, in the immediate vicinity of south Lebanon, would be far easier than those required to hit U.S. forces elsewhere.

Also, U.S. forces on the Golan would have large, heavily equipped Syrian and Israeli armies, respectively, on either side of them and would be close (less then fifty miles) to Syria’s capital, Damascus. (In contrast, U.S. elements of the Multilateral Forces and Observers (MFO)8 in the vast and virtually unpopulated Sinai are not stationed near cities, known terrorist bases, or likely lines of attack in any future Arab-Israeli wars.)

The history of American deployments in Lebanon and Somalia suggests to hostile local forces that, by killing some U.S. peacekeeping forces, one might compel the withdrawal of the U.S. contingent altogether. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, explained the syndrome on 12 April 1994: “Unless your vital interest is at stake, you are not going to be able to take American casualties for very long — nor should we.”9 This has created an incentive for attacks on U.S. troops.

FINDING: Placing U.S. forces in proximity to Syrian population centers and to the south Lebanon base areas of various terrorist organizations would enable hostile forces to attack those forces without Syria having to take responsibility. When U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Rich Higgins, serving in a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, was killed in 1988 by terrorists there, the United States was unable to hold anyone in particular responsible — a point not lost on those who might threaten U.S. personnel deployed to the region in the future.

B. Drawing on U.S. Defense Resources

It has been speculated that a U.S. peacekeeping deployment on the Golan might entail a token force of 800 or so troops. Experienced military officers appreciate, however, that any such contingent should be large enough and well enough equipped to be able to defend itself effectively in the event of renewed hostilities. According to this view, if there is to be an American contingent on the Golan Heights, it should be a functioning unit, specifically an armored brigade — roughly 5,000 troops and their heavy equipment.

The size of the U.S. deployment thus represents a dilemma. A lightly armed token force of approximately 800 troops would be more vulnerable in various respects than an armored brigade. If such troops were to suffer casualties, questions will inevitably arise as to whether a stronger force could have prevented the casualties. On the other hand, the United States may not be able to sustain the commitment of an armored brigade to a long-term Golan deployment.

To have a brigade in place on the Golan at all times would require commitment of three times as many troops: At any given time, one brigade would be on site for a tour of approximately six months’ duration, one would be training and preparing to deploy, and one, having just rotated home, would be recovering and retraining for other missions. In other words, the equivalent of a full division would be required to sustain a brigade-size force on the Golan for any length of time.

FINDING: The Clinton Administration’s “Bottom-Up Review” plan, even assuming that there are budget resources adequate to implement it, contemplates maintaining only 10 active-duty divisions in the entire U.S. Army force structure. It is difficult to imagine that such a substantial part of the Nation’s total combat capability would be allocated to this purpose.

C. Unreliable Commitments

U.S. peacekeepers or monitors would not necessarily be maintained on the Golan during a crisis. As the Administration’s Bottom-Up Review states:

“If a second Major Regional Conflict (MRC) breaks out shortly after the first, we will need to pull together and deploy another building block of forces to assist our allies in the threatened area in halting and defeating the second aggressor. The force for that effort would come from a further reallocation of overseas presence forces, any forces still engaged in smaller-scale operations and most of the remaining forces based in the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

The Administration’s National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, on 6 February 1994, implied that even a single major regional conflict could trigger such dislocation: “We [would not] hesitate to end our engagement in a peace operation if that were necessary to concentrate our forces against an adversary in a major conflict.”

The open-ended nature of a commitment of U.S. troops for peacekeeping or monitoring is inherently problematic. Such a mission is never completed. U.S. flexibility to use those troops for another mission elsewhere would be constrained by vulnerability to the accusation that we have abandoned a commitment — and perhaps endangered the peace thereby.

FINDING: Peacekeeping and other “smaller-scale” operations, including a deployment on the Golan Heights, would have to be judged expendable if international crises arose and required reallocation of units and resources. A misunderstanding or lack of clarity on this point would damage U.S. credibility. The United States has an interest in ensuring that its Israeli allies realize that U.S. peacekeeping forces on the Golan might not be present at a time of tension in the future should they be required to fill a gap elsewhere.

D. Deterring Friend or Foe?

There is danger that a U.S. Golan deployment might deter the wrong party. As discussed in section II.C. above (“Increased Reliance on Preemption”), the United States could harm its own interests and damage regional stability by deploying peacekeeping forces whose effect would be to deter defensive Israeli military action rather than aggressive military action by Syria.

Yet, senior Clinton Administration policy-makers seek to appeal to Arab interlocutors in the Middle East on precisely this score — by stressing America’s singular ability to deter Israeli use of force. For example, Dennis Ross, the Administration’s Special Middle East Coordinator, has written:

“What has been overlooked for too long in America, but not in the Arab world, [is] that we are the only ones who can stop the Israelis in wartime. The specter of war may be lower now, but it has surely not disappeared, and the Arab world — especially the confrontation states — knows well that it has been the U.S. that pressured the Israelis to stop in every war. This alone provides a certain baseline in our relations with states like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt….”10

FINDING: It would be neither in the U.S. interest, consistent with Israel’s security nor conducive to genuine stability in the Mideast to have U.S. forces serving in such a way as to deter not Syrian aggression but Israeli defense.

E. Strained Relations

A U.S. “honest broker” role as provider of peacekeeping forces on the Golan will likely strain relations between Israel and the United States in the event of tension between Syria and Israel. The United States and Israel are unlikely to react harmoniously to signs that Syria may be violating its treaty obligations or preparing an aggression. The presence of U.S. troops in the region would give the United States (1) an added incentive to urge restraint (perhaps undue restraint) upon Israel, (2) a greater claim for deference from Israel and, therefore, (3) greater potential for a bitter falling out in the event that Israel deems it necessary to act inconsistently with U.S. wishes.

Such U.S. troops would have the effect of limiting the freedom of action of both the United States and Israel. Both allies derive benefits from the ability of each to take independent action for which the other need not bear responsibility. These benefits would be compromised by a U.S. deployment on the Golan. The obvious potential for the U.S. Golan force to strain relations between the United States and Israel would create an incentive for Syria to manufacture compliance crises and other situations of tension.

In connection with this point, we should recall the 1970 ceasefire agreement between Egypt and Israel which the Nixon Administration brokered to end the so-called War of Attrition. Immediately after agreement was reached, Israeli military intelligence detected that Egypt was violating it by moving SA-2 and SA-3 air-defense missiles to the Suez Canal. U.S. intelligence clearly confirmed the violation. Nevertheless, after ten days of silence on the subject, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, announced that it was “impossible to prove or disprove Israeli charges about the missiles.” Israel was dissuaded from taking military action against the new missile sites. After further study, the State Department confirmed “forward deployment of missiles by the Egyptians around the time the cease-fire went into effect” but stated that the evidence of continued missile movements after the deadline was “inconclusive.” These missiles, which had been moved in violation of the ceasefire agreement, nevertheless remained in place. Three years later, they played an important role in denying the Israeli air force control of the skies over the Canal when Egypt crossed it as part of the surprise attack that launched the Yom Kippur war.

The United States would find it difficult to be both an “honest broker” and honest in monitoring Syrian compliance. With U.S. troops on the Golan, the United States would be reluctant to respond to Israeli intelligence collection requests if doing so increased the possibility of Israeli preemption against Syria. And in any event the United States would be inclined to withhold information from Israel if providing it would lead Syria to accuse the United States of favoring Israel or of functioning on the Golan effectively as an arm of the IDF.

As a “honest broker,” will the United States deem itself obliged to provide early warning data to both parties. This would represent a quantum improvement in Syrian intelligence collection capabilities, and negate a factor in Israel’s “qualitative edge.”

FINDING: Given their different interests and responsibilities, U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials can be expected to disagree about the conclusions to be drawn from data supplied by U.S. peace monitors. Policy-makers will similarly be likely not to see eye-to-eye. Such disagreements are most likely to occur — and be most intense — during periods of crisis, as was evident during the Gulf War.

F. Adverse Repercussions with Syria

U.S. troops on the Golan are likely to give rise to additional problems in the U.S. relationship with Syria. Syria can be expected to believe that Israel is benefitting disproportionately from intelligence produced by U.S. monitors. This may lead to terrorist or other attacks on U.S.-manned early warning facilities.

Since such facilities also play an important part in providing combat command, control and intelligence necessary for effective battle management, they are routinely targeted in the opening phases of any armed conflict. For example, the Syrian army in 1973 attacked Israeli early warning sites on the Golan at the outset of the Yom Kippur War. It must be expected that they would do so again in the event of another war with Israel — particularly if the Syrians believe that the U.S. personnel associated with these facilities are providing information to the IDF.

Syria would want to use strains in its relations with the United States to induce U.S. officials to offer concessions to “keep Syria in the peace process.” A skillful Syrian leader like Hafez Assad would play upon U.S. eagerness to preserve that process in order to strain the relationship between the United States and Israel. Dr. Dore Gold believes Assad’s desire to advance this objective may explain his apparent willingness to accept the substitution — at least temporarily — of American forces for Israeli forces on the Golan:

“The Arab states have aspired for years to weaken the ‘special relationship’ between Israel and the United States. The stationing of a significant American force on the Golan is likely to serve as an efficient political instrument in the hands of Syria, to try to convert the U.S. from a close partner of Israel to an external superpower obligated to follow an evenhanded policy in order to protect its soldiers. This neutrality could find expression in the form of harsh American reactions to IDF actions in Lebanon (to the extent that peace did not entirely remove the security threats from this sector). And over time, American neutrality could also influence more central aspects of strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, such as the supply of advanced weaponry.” (Emphasis added.)11

FINDING: Syria can be expected: 1) to exploit its position vis vis U.S. forces on the Golan to dilute the U.S.-Israeli relationship, insisting that the United States act “even-handedly” between Israel and Syria and 2) to press the United States to wipe the slate clean on such bilateral problems as Damascus’ continuing support for international terrorism, drug-trafficking, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counterfeiting of U.S. currency.

G. Damage to U.S. Public Support of Israel

Israel has always opposed relying on U.S. troops for its security. Its reasons have been sound, including a spirit of independence, an unwillingness to overburden an important ally, and the realization that U.S. troops would arrive to a war too late to save Israel, given its small size. Another reason is the essence of Zionism itself — Jewish self-reliance — combined with the lessons of the Holocaust, which showed that in the ultimate life-and-death crisis Jewry could not depend on salvation by others. All of this has served to win the admiration of Americans who appreciate an ally that does not desire or expect U.S. forces to defend it.

Two decades ago, Mr. Rabin stated the case against Israel’s relying for its security on American forces. His remarks related to proposals for an American deployment in the Sinai:

“An Israel that got American soldiers involved in the Middle East would stand out in U.S. public opinion in a negative light…I feared that when the time comes for a comprehensive arrangement in the Middle East, the Americans will propose their own military presence in exchange for extensive concessions on our part in the territories on the basis of the interim agreement. No army is a substitute for the I.D.F. for the protection of Israel’s security.” (Emphasis added.)12

Admiration for Israel’s military self-reliance became a major strategic asset, which facilitated U.S. appropriation of substantial economic and military aid for Israel. There is importance in U.S. public support for Israel and danger in undermining it. If Israel insists upon a dangerous deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan, it can be expected to damage its standing with the U.S. public.

FINDING: If U.S. forces on the Golan suffer casualties — from terrorism, for example — there will be U.S. public pressure to end the Golan mission and Israel’s image as a self-reliant ally would be tarnished. Israeli anxieties about the reliability of the United States as a “peacekeeper” on the Golan would intensify, and with good reason. U.S. credibility would be at stake.

VI. THE SINAI MFO AND THE GOLAN MISSION

It has been suggested that U.S. peacekeeping forces on the Golan mission would create no more difficulties than has the U.S. contingent in the Multilateral Force and Observers in the Sinai. The risks of a Golan deployment, however, are significantly greater than those attending the Sinai mission.

First of all, there are important differences in geography, topography and demography between the Golan and Sinai. The Sinai is approximately 120 miles wide and has no appreciable population. As such it constitutes strategic depth for Israel even if it is not under Israeli control. By contrast, in the event of Israeli withdrawal, the narrow Golan Heights (approximately ten miles wide and forty miles long) could be rapidly remilitarized by Syrian forces. It also contains and is accessible to substantial local populations that Syria has said it will augment after Israeli withdrawal. This means that risks of terrorism, under cover of the local population, exist on the Golan that do not exist in the Sinai.

Secondly, the Golan abuts south Lebanon, a major base for terrorist groups hostile to the United States. There is no analogous threat in the Sinai.

Thirdly, the Golan, as discussed above, has special strategic significance as a watershed. This can give rise to Israeli-Syrian conflicts, as in the past, that could lead to violence endangering U.S. peacekeepers. No similar problem exists in the Sinai.

Fourthly, the political relationship between Israel and Egypt is of a different nature from what exists now — or can be foreseen — between Israel and Syria. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was based on a profound shift in Egypt’s strategic orientation. Then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat persuaded Israel’s government and public that his government (or at a minimum, Sadat himself) intended to make peace with Israel a cornerstone of Egypt’s national security policy. He completed Egypt’s transition from the Soviet camp to the Western camp in global affairs and made Egypt a friend of the United States and a recipient of large amounts of U.S. aid. All of this tended to increase Israel’s confidence in the security of its border with Egypt. It kept the Sinai largely free of tension and preserved the MFO from crises or dangers.

No one can reasonably assert that Assad has demonstrated a strategic reorientation similar to Sadat’s. Assad’s peace diplomacy has been grudging, not confidence inspiring. Even if he ultimately signs a peace treaty, ample grounds will remain for doubting his sincerity. His record of compliance with international agreements is in general poor. He may view a treaty with Israel as nothing more a tactical maneuver to free Syria from isolation and other difficulties created for it by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Treaty or no, tensions between Israel and Syria will remain high for the foreseeable future and any Golan peacekeeping forces will be squeezed into a narrow area flanked by two heavily armed parties that remain hostile and mutually suspicious.

Lastly, the U.S.-Egyptian relationship is entirely different from that existing or foreseeable between the United States and Syria. Israel aside, the United States has a list of grievances against the Syrian government relating, for example, to support for terrorist organizations, the illicit narcotics trade, the occupation of Lebanon, subversion of the Republic of Turkey, strategic cooperation with Iran and gross abuse of human rights in Syria. Tensions between Syria and the United States will not end simply because Syria signs a treaty with Israel, even if the United States sponsors the treaty-signing and works to improve its ties with Syria afterward. The many and deep issues that divide Syria and the United States would create dangers for U.S. forces on the Golan that do not exist for U.S. forces in the Sinai MFO.

FINDING: The differences between the Golan and Sinai situations are very substantial. U.S. troops on the Golan would have a truly dangerous mission in a high-tension region. They would face threats from terrorists in Syria and Lebanon and would be caught in the middle of heavily armed forces in the event of renewed hostilities. None of these dangers face U.S. troops in the Sinai MFO.

VII. THE NEW FACTOR

For decades, the Israeli government has opposed the idea of Israel’s relying on U.S. troops for its security. This position has been formulated categorically and held virtually universally in politically relevant circles. It has always been based on the arguments set forth above: Israel is more secure, its enemies more effectively deterred, its relationship with the United States stronger — if Israel relies solely on the IDF for its defense.

Why then does the Israeli government now propose to have U.S. troops stationed on the Golan? Does it no longer subscribe to its longstanding analysis of the virtues of self-reliance? Have Israel’s leaders changed their minds on the substance of the issue?

Israel’s leaders do not appear to have changed their minds fundamentally on the virtue and necessity of national military self-reliance. What is new is that Israel’s leaders are planning to do something which only few previously could ever have imagined: Relinquishing Golan territory to the Assad government at a time when the Israeli public is profoundly split on the issue.

For many Israelis across the political spectrum, Israeli withdrawal from the Golan has been unthinkable since 1967. Even those who considered it “thinkable” must have imagined that it would happen only if a dramatic Sadat-in-Jerusalem type of breakthrough occurred in Syria’s relationship with Israel. But no such breakthrough has occurred and Israeli public opinion is skeptical.

Israeli officials who favor a U.S. troop presence on the Golan after an Israeli withdrawal believe it will help assuage the fears of their public. They evidently think that such influence on public opinion takes precedence over the longstanding substantive policy of opposing such a role for U.S. troops. Whether U.S. troops on the Golan would, in fact, significantly affect Israeli public opinion regarding an Israeli withdrawal is not clear.

FINDING: The U.S. government must give serious thought to whether it is wise to make an indefinite commitment of U.S. troops to a dangerous and ill-defined mission in order to attempt, in the short term, to influence Israel’s domestic debate about the risks and opportunities relating to a peace agreement with Syria. However much the U.S. government favors the peace policy of the Israeli government, there are strong grounds for resisting this kind of misapplication of U.S. military resources. The U.S. troops might not influence the risk assessment of the Israeli public appreciably. And, in any event, it is not in the U.S. interest that the Israeli public mistakenly believe that U.S. peacekeeping troops on the Golan will enhance Israeli security.

CONCLUSION

There is no mission or rationale for a U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan that would justify the resulting costs and risks. Indeed, the net effect could be negative for Israel’s security and regional stability, while the consequences could include the loss of U.S. lives and, possibly, a credibility-damaging retreat of the U.S. forces under terrorist fire. In any event, such a deployment would increase the danger of direct U.S. involvement in a future Middle East war and undermine Israel’s standing with the U.S. public as a self-reliant ally.

If Israel withdraws on or from the Golan, it will be required to adopt measures to compensate to the extent possible for the military risks inherent in relinquishing the territory. It will have to consider: Investment in more surveillance assets, higher sustained readiness for air and other forces, a larger standing army, and means and methods to increase the speed of military mobilization. All such measures entail large costs — political and societal as well as financial. A U.S. force deployment to the Golan will not significantly reduce those costs. One of the dangers of such a deployment is that it may create a false sense of security in Israel and discourage the investments necessary to address such risks. This would not serve U.S. interests, much less Israel’s.

A U.S. deployment on the Golan Heights deserves immediate, serious consideration by U.S. policy-makers, legislators and the public. If such consideration is delayed until all the details are set — until after the United States is committed formally as part of an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement — U.S. options will be severely constrained. Critics of the deployment would then be portrayed as “enemies of the peace process;” any effort to change the agreed arrangements would be criticized for risking scuttling of the Syrian-Israeli peace.

On the other hand, if the subject is now debated and Congress and the executive branch decide to oppose a deployment of U.S. troops on the Golan, Israel and Syria could take this into account in their negotiations and devise alternative security arrangements accordingly. Such a decision would be far less disruptive if made now than if deferred until after a Syrian-Israeli deal is concluded.

1Hadashot, 9 August 1991.

2Ha’aretz, 6 October 1992. Emphasis added.

3Yediot Ahronot, 30 January 1994.

4Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies Bulletin, No. 13, April 1994.

5Yediot Ahronot, 5 April 1993.

6This is one reason why strong concerns are being expressed about the proposal now being considered by the Clinton Administration to allow one of Syria’s some-time allies, Saudi Arabia, to acquire access to — and control over — one-meter resolution satellite imagery.

7Dr. Dore Gold, U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights and Israeli-Syrian Security Arrangements, the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum No. 44, August 1994, p. 31.

8The MFO is the multilateral peacekeeping force stationed in the Sinai peninsula under the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

9National Journal, 23 April 1994.

10Dennis Ross, Acting With Caution: Middle East Policy Planning for the Second Reagan Administration, (Washington DC, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy), 1986, p.29.

11Gold, op.cit., p. 29.

12From Yitzhak Rabin’s memoir, Pinkas Sherut, Volume II, pp. 484-485.

‘I.S.O. JIMMY CARTER’: BEST CASE, SADDAM EXPECTS TO BE REWARDED FOR NOT INVADING KUWAIT; WORST CASE, IT’S WAR

(Washington, D.C.): Saddam Hussein’s threatening moves
of the past few days — and the renewed threat they pose
to Kuwait — should be a cold shower for President
Clinton and his national security team. After all, it
demonstrates in the most graphic way imaginable the
contempt with which the world’s despots now hold America
and its leadership.

Like the other members of what the Center for Security
Policy has called the Radical Entente(1) — folks like
Somalia’s Aideed, Serbia’s Milosevic, Haiti’s Cedras,
North Korea’s Kim dynasty, China’s gerontocracy, and the
Russian imperialists — Saddam has clearly read Mr.
Clinton’s policies: The United States is no
longer seen as a deterrent to aggressive agendas; to the
contrary, its hapless policies are now inviting and
rewarding them.

Clinton’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

Let there be no mistake about it: The combined effect
of presidential disinterest in security policy, the
dismantling of vital defense capabilities and
institutions and the chronic inability to define and
adhere to a principled course of action in international
affairs have left American interests and allies around
the world dangerously exposed.

Saddam Hussein’s latest military moves may signal the
imminent resumption of hostilities with Kuwait and its
allies. Alternatively, they may be a calculated move to
secure the immediate lifting of economic sanctions
against and other concessions to Iraq — a response he
has reason to expect, notwithstanding the Clinton
Administration’s initial bluster, given its own past
practice and that of its diplomatic subcontractor, Jimmy
Carter.

So Learn the Lessons, Already

Either way, a few lessons that should have been
learned long ago are now painfully clear:

  • The United States could very well find
    itself engaged in two simultaneous regional
    conflicts in distant parts of the globe.
    Thanks to the draconian cuts in Pentagon
    investment, operations and maintenance in recent
    years — cuts that go well beyond those
    contemplated by the Bottom-Up Review, a plan that
    itself would not permit the United States to
    fight two wars at the same time — the United
    States would be unable to cope with any
    appreciable problem in Haiti and mount a
    concurrent major operation in the Persian Gulf.
    It should go without saying that this situation
    also makes transparently obvious why it is absurd
    to contemplate further overtaxing the U.S. force
    structure by deploying American troops on the
    Golan Heights.

  • The need for America to be able to
    project power quickly to distant parts of the
    world is only increasing, not waning.
    The United States currently lacks the in-theater
    capability credibly to attack and defeat a
    renewed Iraqi attack against Kuwait. It needs,
    for example, to be able to exploit the unique
    potential of the B-2 bomber to strike swiftly,
    decisively and anywhere in a country like Iraq.
    It also needs to have troops in the region
    capable of constituting a defense on the
    ground     — not just at sea. The folly of past
    — and continuing — decisions deferring
    acquisition of greatly enhanced airlift and
    sealift capabilities is painfully obvious.

  • The importance of timely intelligence and
    the will to respond to early warning.
    According to press reports, the Iraqi troop
    build-up has been occurring for a week. If so,
    the fact that the United States has only begun to
    respond to this threat is a powerful reminder of:
    the continuing need for effective strategic and
    tactical intelligence in the post-Cold War world;
    the necessity for human sources and methods as
    well as sophisticated technical intelligence
    means; and the readiness to initiate
    long-lead-time actions necessary to respond —
    even if that requires doing so on the basis of
    preliminary or inconclusive information.

  • It was a gross strategic error to allow
    Saddam Hussein to remain in power at the end of
    the Gulf War    .(2)
    The United States has only itself — and some of
    its more short-sighted regional allies — to
    blame for making this mistake. No effort should
    be spared now to bring Saddam’s reign of terror
    to a swift end.

  • The prospect that Saddam Hussein was
    close to getting international sanctions lifted
    — and may yet do so — is further evidence of
    the recklessness of dismantling the United
    States’ limitations on the overseas sale of
    strategic technologies and the multilateral
    export control regime.     There is already
    abundant evidence that Saddam Hussein is
    successfully rebuilding his military-industrial
    complex.(3)
    In the absence of a complete policy reversal by
    the Clinton Administration, the danger posed by
    Iraqi capabilities and those of other tyrants
    exploiting vanishing Western strategic export
    controls will become infinitely greater.

  • Last, but hardly least, the United States
    can no longer tolerate a situation in which it,
    its forces overseas and its friends in the Middle
    East (like Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) and
    beyond remain utterly vulnerable to missile
    attack.     Saddam Hussein did not
    effectively exploit that vulnerability the last
    time. There is no guarantee that he — or his ilk
    — will not do so in the future. In fact, there
    is every reason to believe one or more of them will,
    with devastating consequences for American
    interests and allies.

The Bottom Line

The only way to deal with the present crisis
is to mobilize and deploy significant ground forces to
the Persian Gulf at once. Saddam is believed to
be moving some 26,000 troops toward Kuwait. At least
one-third that number should be dispatched immediately to
the Gulf. Such forces are critical to restoring
deterrence and giving the United States the wherewithal
to defeat Saddam’s forces should it be necessary to do so
once again.

Under no circumstances should the United
States try to “buy off” Saddam — with or
without Jimmy Carter’s meddling. This policy in
North Korea, China, Bosnia and Haiti has already
contributed to the present crisis. It will be infinitely
worse if the U.S. now agrees, in the face of Saddam’s
latest blackmail, to lift sanctions, allowing oil sales,
imports of sensitive technology, etc. The mind reels at
what further outrages such a policy would inspire in the
Persian Gulf and beyond.

– 30 –

1. For more on the Radical
Entente, see the Center for Security Policy’s Decision
Briefs: Will the Senate Give
Russia A Subsidy To Serve As the Radical Entente’s
‘Fed-Ex’ Service? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_79″>No. 93-D 79, 15 September
1993) and A Good Week for the ‘Radical
Entente’: Outlaw Nations Likely Emboldened By Ineffectual
Western Responses ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_28″>No. 93-D 28, 2 April
1993).

2. In this regard, see the Center
for Security Policy’s recommendations contained in such
products as: ‘Wake-Up Calls’ on Terrorism:
Saddam’s Plot, Clinton’s Response Reveal Shape of Things
To Come (No.
93-D 54, 28 June 1993); Clinton’s New
Mideast ‘Containment’ Strategy: Start By Punishing Saddam
for Trying To Kill George Bush ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_41″>No. 93-D 41, 21 May 1993);
Saddam’s ‘Cheating,’ Who’s ‘Retreating’? End of His
Tyranny is Only Hope for Compliance ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_83″>No. 92-D 83, 27 July
1992); Wanted: Saddam Hussein, Dead or Alive
(No. 91-P 49, 12 June
1991); On To Baghdad! Liberate Iraq
(No. 91-P 16, 27
February 1991) and Don’t Let Saddam Get Away
With Murder (No.
91-P 11, 14 February 1991).

3. See for example an article
entitled “CIA: Iraq Dodges U.N. Monitoring,” in
today’s Washington Times.

RECKLESS ABANDON: CAN EITHER ISRAEL OR THE U.S. AFFORD RABIN’S BID TO ‘BET THE (GOLAN) FARM’?

(Washington, D.C.): In the face of the
palpable failure of his first
peace-making gamble with the PLO, Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is making
the sort of mistake that keeps casinos
around the world profitable: He
is recklessly putting all his chips on an
even wilder bet — a peace treaty with
Syria.

Regrettably, in so doing, Rabin is
playing with loaded dice against one of
the most notorious hustlers on the
international stage. Worse yet, the
“chips” he is now playing fast
and loose with are nothing less
than the future survival of the Jewish
state and — in the hopes of mitigating,
or at least sharing the risk —
the lives of American
“peacekeeping” troops he
apparently wants to install on the Golan
Heights. In fact, without the
prospect of such an ostensible U.S.
safeguard, it seems unlikely that the
majority of Israelis would tolerate any
further risk-taking by the Rabin
government.

Consequently, American Jews
and others committed to the security of
Israel will shortly be asked to support
Prime Minister Rabin’s bid to “bet
the (Golan) farm” in this manner.
They will be told that the deployment of
a U.S. military tripwire there is a
critical ingredient to both the future
defense of Israel and the preservation of
close U.S.-Israeli ties. Unfortunately,
neither of these contentions is likely to
prove true. To the contrary,
enmeshing the United States in a Golan
peacekeeping mission may translate into
immense new vulnerabilities for Israel
and add a highly corrosive element in
this vital bilateral relationship.

Assad — A Man Who Cannot
Be Trusted

A central tenet of the Rabin gamble on
Syria is the proposition that its
despotic ruler, Hafez Assad, is a man of
his word. If he enters into a deal with
Israel, so this reasoning goes, he can be
relied upon to honor his commitments and
he will have the power to ensure that his
constituents do so as well. The Rabin
government seems to believe that a new
land-for-peace deal with a man who
putatively exhibits these qualities is
the only way to recover from the
political costs of having made such a
deal with Yasser Arafat, a man virtually
everyone agrees does not.

In fact, the record of
Israeli-Syrian agreements demonstrates
that Assad is can be as unreliable as
Arafat. Indeed, Syria’s dictator has
repeatedly shown himself willing to
violate his solemn commitments — or to
allow them to be violated by his proxies
— when it suits his purposes.
Consider the following examples:

  • Syrian terrorist and military
    attacks against Israel increased
    after Assad’s Ba’ath Party came
    to power in 1963, leading
    ultimately to Syria’s involvement
    in the 1967 Six Day War in
    violation of the 1949 armistice
    agreement between the two states.

  • Major violations by Syria of the
    cease-fire and disengagement
    agreements occurred after the
    1973 Yom Kippur war. Between
    October 1973 and May 1974, for
    example, Assad’s violations of
    the cease fire on the Golan
    heights resulted in the deaths of
    54 Israeli soldiers and six
    civilians killed and 176 soldiers
    wounded.(1)

  • Shortly after the 31 May 1974
    cease-fire was replaced by a
    disengagement-of-forces accord,
    Assad took a number of steps that
    deliberately violated the terms
    of that agreement. These included
    sealing the border and stationing
    larger numbers of weapons in a
    “reduced forces zone”
    on the Golan than were permitted.
    Ironically, it fell to
    then-Defense Minister Shimon
    Peres to reveal the latter
    violation.(2)

  • In the following year, terrorists
    crossed the ostensibly
    “sealed” Syrian border
    to murder Israeli civilians and
    Syria beefed up its military
    presence and capabilities on the
    Golan plateau: For example, it
    paved a road on the Mount Hermon
    ridge; it declined to relocate
    civilians to the abandoned town
    of Quenitra in favor of increased
    troop deployments there; and it
    installed mortars and tanks in
    excess of the levels allowed by
    the disengagement agreement.(3)

  • In March 1976, Assad reached an
    understanding with Israel
    limiting Syrian forces in
    Lebanon, then engulfed in civil
    war. It included: a ban on the
    deployment of Syrian combat
    aircraft, naval vessels,
    surface-to-air missiles, tanks
    and aircraft anywhere within
    Lebanese territory; a ceiling of
    one Syrian brigade there; and a
    complete ban on Syrian troops in
    South Lebanon.(4)

    • Within two months, Syria had
    160 tanks and 6,000 troops —
    substantially more than a brigade
    — in northern Lebanon. Today, it
    has an estimated 30,000 troops
    there.

  • In January 1977, Syrian forces
    moved south of the
    “redline,” retreating
    only after Israel threatened
    military action. Later that year,
    Assad reneged on a commitment to
    support the Christian Lebanese
    community against the PLO,
    encouraging the latter not only
    to attack the former but also to
    conduct strikes against Israeli
    civilians. Such behavior
    eventually precipitated Israel’s
    “Operation Litani” in
    the spring 1978.

  • From early 1979 until June 1982
    when Israel once again was
    compelled to strike at terrorists
    based in Lebanon, Assad’s forces
    repeatedly violated the
    “redlines”: Syrian
    warplanes began mixing it up with
    Israeli fighters over Lebanon;
    Syrian helicopter-backed army
    units launched devastating
    attacks against the Christian
    Lebanese community of Zahle;
    Syria deployed surface-to-air
    missiles in the Bekka Valley and
    elsewhere in Lebanon; Syrian
    ground and air units also engaged
    Israeli forces during the
    latters’ 1982 incursion into
    Lebanon.

  • As recently as July and August
    1993, Syria violated the
    “redline” agreements
    when it aided and abetted attacks
    against Israeli forces and
    civilians by assisting in the
    shipment of Iranian Katyusha
    rockets to terrorist
    organizations based in Lebanon.

Israel Is Not The Only
Victim of Assad’s Duplicity

What is more, Hafez Assad’s
untrustworthiness is not limited to his
dealings with Israel. He has
proven no more faithful to his
commitments to fellow Arabs made
in September 1989 concerning respect for
Lebanese sovereignty and the redeployment
of Syrian forces.(5)
These agreements were reached in Taif,
Saudi Arabia under Arab League
sponsorship and with the active support
of the Bush Administration.

In fact, Syria continues to violate
the obligation freely assumed in those
accords to withdraw its troops from all
but the eastern Bekaa Valley by 22
September 1992. The government of
Hafez Assad has, instead, continued to
refuse to fulfill its commitment to
relinquish physical control over Lebanon.

Even if Hafez Assad has somehow been
transformed from a thoroughly
unscrupulous, devious individual into a
model of integrity and dependability, one
natty problem remains: He is an old man,
reportedly afflicted with cancer. There
are serious doubts about succession
arrangements; there can be no certainty
that the next Syrian despot will chose to
honor this one’s commitments, even if —
against all odds — Assad chooses to do
so.

U.S. Forces on the Golan
Are No Hedge Against Assad’s Cunning

Against this backdrop, it is obvious
why the Israeli people are reacting with
considerable skepticism to the idea of
giving up the Golan in exchange for yet
another set of promises from Hafez Assad.
Even many of those who were willing to
make a leap of faith concerning Rabin’s
September deal with Yasser Arafat —
something increasing numbers of Israelis
have already begun to regret(6)
— are much more cautious about any deal
with Assad’s Syria.

Consequently, the difficulties of
selling an agreement that would return
Golan to effective Syrian control may
lead Rabin to ask that U.S. peacekeeping
troops be deployed there. Little good is
likely to come of such a deployment,
however: Should Hafez Assad
and/or his Iranian allies and their
terrorist cadres decide — once the
strategic high ground of Golan has been
regained — that they have little use for
the peace the Americans are supposed to
“keep,” it is doubtful that a
U.S. human “tripwire” will keep
new blood from being shed there. In
all probability, some of it will be that
of the American forces.

Consider the following, serious
problems with such an American deployment
on the Golan Heights(7):

  • Terrorist Attacks Against
    U.S. Forces on the Golan:
    The Golan Heights exceedingly
    limited road system would mean
    that U.S. troops operating there
    would be at considerable risk of
    ambush or violent harassment from
    a hostile population — a sort of
    Intifada or Somalia on the Golan.
    Even though that population would
    likely be comprised predominately
    of Syrian military personnel and
    their dependents (as was the case
    prior to the Six Day War),
    Damascus can be expected to
    disavow any responsibility for
    such attacks.

  • Attacks From Lebanon
    Precipitating Israeli Retaliation
    There:     Should Israel be
    compelled once again to respond
    to Katyusha rocket strikes or
    other terrorism in South Lebanon,
    geography dictates that it would
    have to use two lines of attack:
    the coastline road and the Hula
    Valley road at the foot of the
    Golan Heights. Mobilization along
    the latter could arguably pose a
    threat to Syrian forces on the
    Golan and be seized upon as a
    pretext for Syria to build-up its
    armored forces in the vicinity.
    An outbreak of hostilities in
    areas where U.S. forces are
    deployed could easily ensue.

  • Syrian Threats to Jordan:
    In the absence of Israeli control
    of the Golan Heights — offering
    Israel the inherent capacity for
    a swift armored move against
    Damascus — Syria may see fit to
    threaten Jordan yet again. The
    Syrian Black September operation
    in 1970 and military pressure on
    Jordan a decade later in
    connection with Assad’s campaign
    against the Muslim Brotherhood
    were properly seen as posing an
    existential risk to Israel. A
    repetition of such aggressive
    behavior in the future would
    surely be viewed the same way,
    possibly precipitating conflict
    on the Golan and elsewhere.

  • Israel Would Be Obliged
    to Rely Upon the U.S. for Early
    Warning:     Today, Israeli
    facilities atop the Golan’s Mount
    Hermon provide critical early
    warning of attack from Syria. The
    loss of these assets would
    increase Israel’s reliance upon
    the United States for such vital
    intelligence. Even if such
    monitoring stations were not
    liquidated altogether and were
    instead turned over to American
    personnel to operate, this
    dependency — which the Gulf War
    suggests can be dangerous for
    Israel — would grow even as
    Israel would be obliged to rely
    ever more on preemptive
    strategies for its security.

  • U.S. Peacekeepers Would
    Have a Disproportionate Impact on
    Israeli and Syrian Options,
    Calculations:     Short of a
    full-fledged U.S.-Israeli mutual
    security pact — which, for good
    reasons, is not under
    consideration by either the
    United States or Israel — it is
    probable that a deployment of
    U.S. forces on the Golan Heights
    will have marginal influence on
    Syrian decisions to attack
    Israel. After all, if Syria
    violates a peace treaty with
    Israel it will have accepted, and
    discounted, the risk of U.S.
    displeasure.

    • Should Israel, on the other
    hand, conclude that — by virtue
    of its exposed position (akin to
    that it was in prior to the 1967
    war rather than that it enjoyed
    in 1973) — preemption of
    threatening Syrian movements is
    necessary, the Jewish State is
    likely to find the presence of
    U.S. troops in the path to be a
    much more formidable deterrent
    consideration. Not only will
    going to war almost certainly
    mean ignoring American appeals
    for further diplomatic activity,
    it will mean endangering U.S.
    military resupply and other
    support that may be required to
    secure victory.

    As Mark Langfan notes in his Security
    Affairs     article:

    “The obvious goal of
    any peace agreement between
    Israel and Syria would be to
    create ‘greater stability.’ It
    appears that any
    Syrian-Israeli ‘peace’
    arrangement which requires
    U.S. peacekeeping forces to
    be placed on the Golan
    Heights would in fact be more
    ‘destabilizing’     than the
    current status quo.
    Given the high risk to U.S.
    troops…U.S. policy-makers
    would be well-advised to
    thoroughly and slowly work
    through future difficulties
    on paper before U.S. troops
    are risked on the
    ground.” (Emphasis
    added.)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
strongly believes that the dangers
American troops would face were they to
be deployed as human trip-wires on the
Golan Heights have assuredly not been
“worked through” by U.S.
policy-makers. To the contrary, Washington’s
amateurish and ad hoc
decision-making on Bosnia appears the
very model of deliberation and careful
strategic planning compared with that the
Clinton Administration has exhibited to
date in planning for a United States
presence on the Golan.

The Center is gravely concerned that,
in the course of a trip to the Middle
East this week that is expected to focus
on advancing the Israeli-Syrian
“peace process,” Secretary of
State Warren Christopher intends further
to commit the United States to providing
peacekeeping forces for the Golan. Should
he do so — and should that commitment be
reflected in a new Arab-Israeli agreement
— several results are predictable:

  • Americans will lose their
    lives on the Golan.     When
    that occurs, U.S.-Israeli
    relations will ultimately pay the
    price. Inevitably, enemies of
    Israel will seize upon such a
    development to contend that
    American soldiers are being
    obliged to die for Israel’s
    defense — something successive
    Israeli governments have properly
    and assiduously resisted.

  • Israel will be more
    vulnerable     to attack — not
    less — and increasingly
    dependent upon the United States
    for its security.     Sixty
    years ago, Winston Churchill
    warned against the practice of
    weakening one’s friends; it is no
    more prudent a policy today than
    it was then. The truth of the
    matter is that the United States
    is ever less able to fulfill
    whatever security guarantees it
    might make to Israel.
    Unfortunately, it must also be
    noted that Washington has shown
    itself unreliable when asked to
    honor past security commitments
    to Israel (and, for that matter,
    to other allied nations).(8)

  • Syria is increasingly
    capable of exploiting Israel’s
    vulnerability and ever less
    susceptible to U.S. pressure.
    With its ongoing build-up in
    conventional arms and weapons of
    mass destruction — including a
    recent $500 million purchase from
    Russia — Syria is eliminating
    what remains of the Israeli
    military’s “qualitative
    edge.” With its drug trade,
    strategic relationship with Iran,
    growing oil revenues and
    counterfeiting of U.S. currency,
    moreover, Syria is more and more
    insulated from U.S. economic
    suasion.

Under such circumstances, an
Israel-Syria “peace agreement”
built upon the return of the Golan
Heights to Hafez Assad and deployment of
U.S. peacekeepers is a formula for
disaster. As a result, it is incumbent
upon those committed to both
American and Israeli security and to
strong relations between the two nations
to refuse to go along with Yitzhak
Rabin’s reckless Syrian gamble.

– 30 –

1. See, Alan
James, “The United Nations on Golan:
Peacekeeping Paradox,” International
Relations, Vol. IX, No. 1, May 1987,
p.66.

2. See the New
York Times, 18 December 1974, p.16.

3. James, op.cit.,
p.74.

4. Yair Evron, War
and Intervention in Lebanon, Johns
Hopkins University Press: Baltimore,
1987, pp. 46-47.

5. In this
connection, see the Center’s Decision
Briefs entitled Will
Lebanon Ever Escape Syrian Imperialism?
Don’t Hold Your Breath!“,
(No. 92-D
122, 2 October 1992) and Syria’s
Terrorism, Hegemony in Lebanon Makes
Mockery of Mideast Peace Process,
(No. 92-D
136, 2 November 1992).

6. According to
today’s New York Times,
“[Israelis’ displeasure], greatly
deepened by a steady stream of violent
attacks against Israelis by Palestinians,
is reflected in Mr. Rabin’s shriveled
ratings in opinion polls, which are the
lowest they have been since he took
office in 1992.”

7. The first three
of these problems have recently been
discussed in a thoughtful article
entitled “U.S. Troops on Golan
‘Quicksand,'” which appeared in the
January-March 1994 edition of Security
Affairs. Its author is Mark Langfan,
a specialist in the implications of
Israel’s geography for her security.

8. For a thorough
accounting of this odious record, see
Irving Moskowitz’s monograph entitled,
“Should America Guarantee Israel’s
Safety?” Americans for a Safe
Israel, 1993.

‘The Triumph Of Hope Over Experience’: Israeli Weariness Begets Strategic Peril

The agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization formalized at a White House ceremony today amounts to a phenomenon Samuel Johnson once described in connection with second marriages: "the triumph of hope over experience." Unfortunately, this hope appears to be the product principally of a democratic society’s understandable weariness with the relentless violence and other costs of occupying territory critical to its security.

In light of the Jews nine decades of bitter experience with Palestinian enmity, however, unflinching realism — and not possibly misplaced hope born of Israeli desperation — must be applied by both Israel and the United States to the strategic implications of this deal. The Center for Security Policy believes that the following are among the ominous implications that suggest the Israeli-PLO deal will prove to be in neither the interest of Israel nor of other nations, notably the United States, that have a stake in Israel’s security and stability in the Middle East:

Who Will Fill the Vacuum? Under the terms of this accord, Israel will in short order be ceding effective control over most of the West Bank to Palestinians. In the first instance, they will be represented by the PLO. Indeed, a major impetus behind this deal was the Israeli government’s belief that it needed to shore up the putatively "moderate" PLO against the ascendant forces of radical, Iranian-sponsored Islamic extremists, including Hamas.

This presumes that there is an appreciable difference between the two groups. In fact, while its rhetoric is more bellicose, Hamas has to date actually been responsible for fewer attacks on Israelis than has the PLO. A more realistic approach would dictate adoption of the sort of "dual containment" strategy enunciated by a senior American official last May in describing U.S. policy toward Iran and Iraq:

 

"The Clinton Administration’s policy of ‘dual containment’ of Iraq and Iran derives in the first instance from an assessment that the current Iraqi and Iranian regimes are both hostile to American interests in the region. Accordingly, we do not accept the argument that we should continue the old balance of power game, building up one to balance the other."(1)

 

Even if the PLO’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, has been miraculously transformed from a terrorist thug into a democratic statesman committed to peace with Israel, what happens if he is removed from the equation — as his opponents in the Palestinian movement have sworn to do? There is no succession arrangement or identified successor that would assure continuity of peaceful policies.

In any event, elections to a "Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority" (read, parliament) are to be held within nine months. If the results of recent Arab election in the region are any guide, in the absence of genuine democratic institutions (e.g., a free press, freedom of expression and assembly, etc.), such elections tend to amount into "one man/one vote/one time." The well-organized and -disciplined campaigns of Islamic extremists financed by Iran and other state-sponsors make it likely that the most dangerous elements will prevail. This clearly would have been the case, for example, in Algeria if the military-backed government had not intervened in the midst of that countries elections and declared a state of emergency.

Repercussions Elsewhere in the Region: As a practical matter, a new Palestinian entity on the West Bank — particularly one under unabashedly radical leadership — will also have the undesirable effect of destabilizing the neighboring kingdom of Jordan. After all, the Palestinian majority on the eastern side of the Jordan River can be expected to seek an end to the Hashemite dynasty and association with Palestinians on the western bank. Such a development would, in addition, send shock waves through other, relatively moderate regimes in the region — notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and the Emirates, nations already under siege from Iranian-sponsored Islamic extremism.

What is more, the fall of Jordan to Palestinian radicals aligned with the new entity on the West Bank would mean that a land-bridge to Israel’s borders would be restored. As a result, such populous, well-armed and unreconciled adversaries as Iraq and Iran could theoretically get into position quickly to move troops and materiel into dangerous proximity to Israeli cities. At a minimum, Jordan’s small but modern and sophisticated military would be at the disposal of the Palestinian regime.

An Existential Threat to Israel from the West Bank? Under these circumstances, serious doubts would arise about the Rabin government’s confident prediction that no threat to the existence of the State of Israel could be mounted from what might be called the "de-occupied territories." Notwithstanding obligations to demilitarize Gaza and the preponderance of the West Bank that will shortly fall outside Israeli control, the Palestinian authorities would, as a practical matter, be able to import whatever weaponry, "advisors" and other threatening capabilities they wished via ports and airfields under their exclusive control.

Nations like Iraq, Iran and Libya will surely be only too happy to underwrite such steps. For that matter, the infusion of vast, undisciplined sums from the United States, other nations and multilateral institutions may make it possible for the initial — or subsequent — Palestinian ruling cliques to do so on their own.

In short, given the proximity of West Bank areas that will be under de facto Palestinian control to major Israeli population centers (10 miles from Tel Aviv and 2 miles from the Israeli parliament and other government buildings in Jerusalem) and the strategic value of the Judean and Samarian high ground being ceded to them, it is perfectly possible that threats to the very survival of the Jewish State could once again emanate from the "territories."

Consequently, the failure of the Rabin government to give its military authorities an opportunity to review the proposed deal prior to its consummation is nothing short of reckless and irresponsible. As a result, the Chief of Israel’s Military Staff, Gen. Ehud Barak, was obliged to tell his Parliament that he does not know how he is going to handle the security situation that will ensue. Such a statement should give serious pause to all Israelis and their friends elsewhere.

What Will Israel Be Able to Do If the PLO Does Not Comply or Today’s Strategic Circumstances Radically Change? Unfortunately, the probable answer is: Not much. First of all, if past experience with international agreements between democratic and non-democratic governments (notably, U.S.-Soviet arms control deals) is any guide, the tendency is for the former to ignore — or seek to play down — unpalatable evidence of violations by the latter. For their part, other nations and multinational institutions seize on any ambiguity to argue that punitive responses are not warranted and must be precluded.

This outcome is all the more likely if, as some Palestinians are now proposing, international monitors are installed along the borders of Israel and the Palestinian entity. As in Bosnia, such monitors (or "peacekeepers") tend to become shields protecting the aggressors from retaliation rather than instruments for assuring the safety of the targets of such aggression.

In any event, it is fatuous nonsense to assert — as Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres are doing — that Israel will be able to restore its former control over the region if its trust in Arafat and the PLO proves misplaced. In the absence of a clear-cut casus belli and in the face of international insistence that the new status quo be preserved at all costs, Israel will confront the Hobson’s choice of nonetheless acting militarily — and subjecting itself to universal condemnation and perhaps stiff sanctions — on the one hand and being effectively precluded from taking corrective action on the other.

Is it Realistic to Expect the Palestinians To Settle Only for What They Get Under This Accord?"This is the Phased Plan we all adopted in 1974. Why should you oppose it now?" Since the Phased Plan was a devious two-step strategy for destroying Israel — first, thr As recently as 1 September, Yasser Arafat told Palestinian critics of the agreement that ough the creation of a Palestinian state on any territory vacated by the Israelis and second, through the use of that state to mount a final campaign against a diminished Israel — such a statement gives lie to Arafat’s ostensible conversion to a man of peace.

At the very least, it seems reasonable to expect new demographic pressures will create intense pressure for additional Israeli territorial concessions. Quite apart from the contribution made to such pressures by the Palestinians’ high birth-rate, a further population surge in the "de-occupied territories" will come if Palestinians exercise their long-declared "Right of Return." This may involve upwards of 800,000 Arabs who will insist on establishing new residences and associated communities and infrastructure throughout the West Bank with financial assistance from the European Community, the United States and elsewhere. A further factor may be the likely desire of concentrations of Arabs in Israel-proper to join the new Palestinian entity.

Jerusalem is a case in point. While Israel formally maintains that the city will remain united and under Israeli control, the Palestinians have made no bones about their intention to establish Jerusalem as the capital of their new state. As Arafat put it on 2 September, "ThePalestinian state is within our grasp. Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem."(2)

Even though the Declaration of Principles defers to the future discussions about the status of Jerusalem, it nonetheless establishes an ominous precedent in allowing Palestinians in Jerusalem to vote for representation in the new Palestinian "council." No less ominous is Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin’s statement to a Labor Party group last week to the effect that consideration should be given by Israel to turning an unspecified sector of Jerusalem over to Palestinian self-administration.

What Are The Implications of This Deal for the United States? President Clinton has already pledged additional — as yet undisclosed — security guarantees to Israel in the wake of this agreement. Israel has traditionally, and properly, endeavored to rely upon its own military capabilities for the Jewish State’s security. If she returns to the pre-1967 borders and faces on the West Bank far more formidable adversaries than in the past, the temptation to look to external sources of protection may be as irresistible as is the American government’s apparent willingness to make such commitments.

As a practical matter, however, Golda Meir’s famous comment in response to similar offers from President Richard Nixon — "By the time you get here, we won’t be here" — is, if anything. Even setting aside the United States’s abysmal performance in living up to a number of security guarantees in the past (notably, to South Vietnam), concerted attacks against a state of Israel’s tiny dimensions could do incalculable harm to the Jewish State before significant U.S. force might be brought to bear. Under present and foreseeable circumstances, the question arises: Is it any more responsible more true today for Israel to rely upon such American guarantees than it is for the United States to make them?

Another implication of the Israeli-PLO agreement concerns expectations of sizeable new U.S. financial support intended to help assure its success. While the precise size of these commitments is not yet clear, the World Bank is said to be discussing $4.5 billion in assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — 20 cents of every dollar of which will come from U.S. taxpayers. In addition, hundreds of millions of dollars are expected to be sought directly from Washington’s foreign aid accounts. Where will these funds come from and at what cost to other priorities? Even more important, given recent experiences with abuses of foreign aid by such recipients as Iraq and the former Soviet Union, what confidence can the United States have about the uses to which such funds will be put, possibly by very different Palestinian actors than those involved in today’s accords?

Finally, it is extremely unclear what are the implications of this accord for the war against international terrorism. Are all those who have perpetrated heinous crimes in the name of Palestinian liberation supposed to have the slate wiped clean? What will be the status of nations, for example Syria, whose support for such movements has caused them to be listed as state-sponsors of terrorism and denied certain benefits of relations with the United States?

The Bottom Line

The foregoing identify only a few of the serious, as yet unaddressed, and possibly fatal flaws of the Israeli-PLO accord. The Center for Security Policy believes that such liabilities cannot responsibly be ignored or minimized in the present euphoria about the completion of the Declaration of Principles. Doing so will only exacerbate the already considerable security risks for Israel and her friends associated with this latest "triumph of hope over experience."

At the end of the day, Israel may well discover that there are worse things than contending with the wearying burden imposed by the intifada.(3) The costs of having Israel’s back once again against the wall and of fighting terrorists — or worse — from such a position could vastly exceed those involved in occupying and maintaining control over strategic territories between the Jordan River and the sea. Unfortunately, if the attendant elimination of any margin for error causes Israel to rely more heavily upon preemptive strategies (perhaps including nuclear weapons), the whole world may have occasion to rue the Israeli decision to take such enormous risks in the hope of securing an elusive peace.

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1. From a speech by Martin Indyk, Special Assistant to the President for Near East and South Asian Affairs, 20 May 1993.

2. This formulation bears a frightening resemblance to a phrase found in a leaflet disseminated in Gaza by Hamas on the same day: "We are announcing a war against the sons of apes and pigs which will not end until the flag of Islam is raised in Jerusalem."

3. In this regard, see the brilliant column by Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a distinguished member of the Center for Security Board of Advisors, in today’s Washington Post, entitled: "A Deadly ‘Deal.’"