STATEMENT
OF
MICHAEL O'HANLON
"WAR AGAINST SADDAM'S REGIME:
WINNABLE BUT NO CAKEWALK"
BEFORE
THE
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OCTOBER
2, 2002
Thank
you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and
other members of the Armed Services Committee
for the opportunity to testify today on the
critical issue of future U.S. policy towards
Iraq, particularly its military dimensions. I will summarize my thoughts briefly in the first pages of my
prepared statement and opening remarks, and
include more detailed analysis in the
following pages of my statement.
Among the main subjects I examine in
this testimony are postwar challenges after a
possible invasion of Iraq, estimates of U.S.
and Iraqi casualties during combat itself, and
the military feasibility of overthrowing
Saddam while continuing the war against al
Qaeda.
I
support the strategy laid out in the
president's September 12 U.N. speech.
By that strategy, Saddam is to be
presented with a final, tough, multilateral
ultimatum on the need to accept U.N.
inspectors and disarm; only if he refuses the
ultimatum or fails to comply with his
disarmament obligations would war then be
undertaken.
The historical track record suggests
strongly that such a policy of containment
would protect American national security
interests.
However, it is a strategy that Congress
needs to remind the administration to sustain,
since both Vice President Cheney and Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld have appeared to question
its basic conceptual underpinnings over the
past two months, and since the
administration's proposal for a
Congressional resolution authorizing force did
not reiterate the basic 9/12 approach.
It is also a strategy that requires
straight talk to the American people about
what war against Iraq could be like.
Much of the public debate of the last
year has been driven by those who believe such
a war would surely be easy.
I believe such talk is not only
unfortunate, but irresponsible, especially
since much of it has been carried out by
members of the quasi-official Defense Policy
Board.
The
broad themes of my remarks include the
following:
n
There
is no plausible way by which, militarily
speaking, Iraqi forces can prevent the United
States from quickly seizing control of the
country away from Saddam Hussein's Tikrit-based/Ba'ath
Party regime.
n
That
said, such an operation would surely require
well over 100,000 U.S. troops and probably
twice that number or more, given the
difficulties of fighting in cities and the
desirability of intimidating and quickly
overwhelming Iraqi forces so that their
resistance is as limited as possible.
Although such an operation would be
demanding, and place strains on certain
military capabilities such as special
operations forces and intelligence assets,
there is no military reason it cannot be done
even as we continue operations against al
Qaeda.
n
If they fight hard, Iraqi Republican
Guard forces in particular could make the
military operation difficult and rather
lethal.
U.S. combat losses could exceed 1,000,
and perhaps even approach 5,000, in contrast
to Desert Storm losses in the low hundreds.
n
A
greater strategic threat to U.S. forces is the
likelihood that large numbers of Iraqi
civilians could perish in the fighting, given
the nature of urban combat and perhaps also
the deliberate actions of Saddam Hussein.
This possible outcome, shown
graphically on television around the region
and the world, could put considerable pressure
on the United States and any coalition
partners to curtail combat operations
prematurely.
n
Iraqi
use of chemical or biological agents on the
battlefield could cause additional casualties.
Even more worrisome, perhaps, it could
slow and complicate U.S. operations.
Historical data and combat simulations
suggest that casualties could mount anywhere
from 10 percent to 50 percent as a result,
broadly speaking.
n
Civilian
casualties in Iraqi Kurdistan, Kuwait, Israel,
the United States, or elsewhere from Iraqi use
of weapons of mass destruction could reach
into the hundreds and perhaps even the
thousands.
Such attacks would probably be most
serious if conducted by Iraqi special agents
or Iraqi-aided terrorists, as opposed to SCUD
missiles or airplanes.
The
remainder of my testimony is organized into
six main parts, essentially in reverse
chronological order for when they would occur.
I begin by examining several of the
challenges in any postwar occupation effort.
I then estimate U.S. and Iraqi
casualties during an urban war to overthrow
Saddam. The
next sections deal with the question of
whether we can invade Iraq while also fighting
al Qaeda, and with the likely size and scale
of any invasion effort.
Finally, I ask two other questions:
can inspections work inside Iraq, and
can deterrence work?
I.
AFTER THE WAR-OCCUPYING IRAQ AND
"NATION BUILDING"
As my
colleagues Philip Gordon and Martin Indyk and
I have recently argued in the journal Survival, in an article from which much of this section is derived,
removing Saddam from power represents only the
first step in the effort to remake Iraq as a
non-threatening factor in the Middle East.
In the aftermath of Saddam's overthrow,
ethnic and communal rivalries could well erupt
into internal conflicts.
The Sunnis in central Iraq will be very
concerned that their interests will be
subordinated to Kurdish and Shia demands.
The Kurds in the north will not easily
accept a diminution of the substantial
autonomy they have enjoyed in the last decade.
And the Shias, representing the largest
of the ethnic groupings, will insist on a
degree of power hitherto denied them under
Sunni regimes.
These tensions could easily undermine
the interim government and generate
considerable instability.
Neighbors would be tempted then to
meddle for fear of the consequences or because
Iraq is such a rich prize.
The region that Iraq inhabits is so
critical to U.S. interests that we cannot just
go in, remove Saddam, and leave the clean-up
to others.
So a large stability mission led by the
United States would be needed, with the
overall force most likely requiring up to
100,000 personnel if not twice that number, at
least at first.
This would not be a short-term
commitment.[i]
The United
States has not traditionally proven very good
at making long-term commitments to regional
reconstruction.
America did it with enormous success in
Europe and Japan after World War II, using
large forces during the occupations of Germany
and Japan, but its more recent track record is
to want to use its powerful military forces
for combat and then leave the reconstruction
job to others.
U.S. staying power and willingness to
remain on the ground is being tested right now
in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the Bush
administration's inclination is to reduce
U.S. engagement as soon as possible in both
places. But
no one should underestimate the difficulty of
putting a stable regime in place in Iraq once
Saddam Hussein is gone, especially at a time
when U.S. attention and resources will already
be burdened by nation-building efforts in
these other places (and possibly Palestine as
well). And
to fail to meet that challenge would not only
be irresponsible but could lead to the same
sort of instability and hatred of the United
States that produced the Taliban.
If President Bush starts the job of
transforming Iraq, he will owe it to
America's strategic interests to finish it
as well.
The first
challenge is to prepare the ground for a
post-Saddam government in Baghdad.
Trying to organize the Iraqi
opposition-in-exile into a credible
government-in-waiting is proving as daunting
to the Bush administration as it was to the
Clinton administration.
The Iraqi dissidents who have gathered
in London over the past decade have lost touch
with the Iraqi people and cannot agree amongst
themselves.
And Saddam has made sure to execute any
potential rivals who stayed in Iraq.
The Iraqi military is likely to be
quick to put forward a candidate and any
generals who have turned against Saddam and
helped the American effort to remove him will
naturally be first in line.
Arab leaders are also likely to support
a Sunni general as the candidate for
Saddam's replacement fearing the
consequences of greater Shiite and Kurdish
representation in Baghdad as well as the
potential influence on their own authoritarian
systems of a more pluralistic government in
one of the most important regional capitals.
The United
States will need to resist these pressures
while distinguishing between self-promoters
and leaders with genuine credibility among the
Iraqi people.
By definition these leaders will not be
identifiable in advance, since anyone
courageous enough to stand up under Saddam's
regime would have been immediately eliminated.
But the United States can take a number
of other steps in advance: to articulate a
clear vision of a democratic Iraq that will
ensure fair representation for all
ethnic/religious groups, autonomy for the
Iraqi Kurds, respect for the rule of law and
protection of civil rights, including
women's rights; to support the drawing up by
Iraqis of a new constitution; and to train a
cadre of Iraqi professionals who can work with
the U.S. Army to lay the groundwork for a
functioning interim administration.
This is a
complicated undertaking but by no means
impossible.
Unlike much of the Arab world, Iraqis
are secular and have an educated middle class
that has suffered greatly under Saddam and
sanctions.
Iraq also has considerable economic
resources, a consequence of its abundant oil
reserves, which would make a large-scale
donors' effort unnecessary. There is good
reason to believe the Iraqi people would
welcome the lifting of Saddam's oppressive
yoke if it also resulted in an improvement in
their material conditions and their personal
security.
An
American-led peacekeeping force will be an
essential element in providing that personal
security because without it there will be
considerable risk of ethnic, religious or
tribal strife in the wake of the collapse of a
totalitarian regime that has ruled the country
with an iron fist for so long.
Some neighboring governments will want
to participate in this endeavor the better to
influence the outcome of the internal struggle
for power.
Although Arab and Turkish peacekeepers
will help legitimize the operation, this
advantage must be weighed against the dangers
of creating opportunities for meddling. The Iraqi people are likely to want to jealously guard their
newfound independence and, like the Afghan
people, will probably prefer American
peacekeepers to those from neighboring
countries.
Why does such
a peacekeeping force have to be large, and why
must it be led by Americans?
After all, the International Security
Assistance Force in Afghanistan has neither of
these characteristics.
There are
several reasons.
First, ISAF is not going very well in
Afghanistan, so this is a poor model for
comparison. Indeed, the Bush administration admits as much at present,
but still imprudently hopes that other
countries will simply volunteer to beef up and
expand the mission.
Second, Iraq's Kurds in particular
might well be tempted to try to secede absent
a strong unifying national security force.
Third, Iraq is in a region where
cross-border aggression is more common than is
the case for Afghanistan.
Iraq's neighbors might well make
trouble in a destabilized Iraq.
Fourth, Iraq has a much larger army
than did the Taliban, and the United States
hopes to spare much of it in any future war,
partly to avoid creation of the very type of
security vacuum just noted.
But we do not know who within that army
is dependable and who may be bent on seeking
vengeance against U.S. forces or internal
foes. Weeding
out bad actors, while also improving training
and discipline, within the Iraqi military will
take time and effort.
Fifth, and relatedly, the overall
importance of the Persian Gulf region may
exceed that of Afghanistan (though that is
open to some debate, to the extent that
Afghanistan could again become a sanctuary for
Islamic extremists).
Helping create a stable, democratic
Iraq could have immense benefits for U.S.
interests in general, justifying a substantial
effort.
How many
forces would be needed to occupy Iraq?
Various studies have been done, based
on military history and the population,
military capabilities, territorial size, and
other characteristics of the country to be
occupied.
For example, work done by the Army's
Center of Military History suggests that
100,000 occupying forces could be needed.[ii]
Indeed, if anything that estimate seems
low: NATO's
stabilization mission in Bosnia, a country
less than one-fifth the size of Iraq by
population or territorial size (and also a
country with three main ethnic groups), began
with 50,000 forces and is still about
20,000-strong. Simply scaling those numbers for a bigger country, the
standard practice when estimating policing and
occupying needs, suggests that an initial
force might have to number more than 200,000
and that a residual force seven years later
might still total 100,000.
Assume for
the sake of planning a force that is composed
100,000 to 250,000 occupying forces in its
first year, and then 50,000 to 125,000 troops
by its fifth year.
Assume further that 15 percent to 25
percent of the total strength is American.
Those estimates translate into possible
U.S. requirements of roughly 15,000 to 60,000
troops the first year and anywhere from 7,500
to about 30,000 U.S. troops half a decade
later. The
gradual drawdown would presumably continue
thereafter, and the mission might last a
decade or so once all was said and done.
How could
such a large U.S. effort be sustained?
For a military of 1.4 million, that may
not appear difficult, but as the Armed
Services Committee knows well, today's
military is already working very hard to
maintain more than 250,000 personnel abroad,
including more than 100,000 at a time deployed
away from permanent bases and families.
Given rotation base issues, moreover,
sustaining a deployment of say 20,000 troops
tends to require about 100,000 in the force
structure.
To be sure,
some rather drastic measures could be adopted
to ease the problem.
For example, U.S. troops might leave
Bosnia, and reduce their presence on
Okinawa-two other places where forces deploy
away from families-in order to facilitate a
deployment in postwar Iraq.
But it would be hard to free up more
than 10,000 personnel in that way.
This added demand would be onerous.
It could require a combination of
sustained reserve activation and even more
difficult work for active-duty U.S. personnel,
leading to poor quality of life and renewed
problems with recruiting and retention (just
after those problems have been largely solved
by the work of the Congress and the last two
administrations over the past half decade).
It would not require a draft.
But it could require other creative
approaches, such as an alternative approach to
joining the military involving shorter
enlistments for those willing to put in 18 to
24 months of service (as suggested by Charles
Moskos and others). In short, this mission could require some unusual and
potentially rather expensive policy options.
Annual costs could plausibly range from
$5 billion to $20 billion.
I should not
dwell only on the negatives.
Occupying Iraq would be hard, but could
have real benefits.
Even the possibility of a U.S.-Iraq
alliance, or a collective security structure
involving the region's democratically
inclined countries, could be given serious
attention.
This is not the place for an elaborate
discussion, but suffice it to say that the
process could remake the region's basic
security dynamics as much as the aftermath of
World War II and the Korean War reshaped
Europe and East Asia.
Such a possibility is a definite and
major plus in favor of the argument for
overthrowing Saddam-provided, of course,
that the long-term work to stabilize and
rebuild the country follows the military
victory. Nation building would be needed, plain and simple.
II.
ESTIMATING CASUALTIES IN A WAR TO OVERTHROW
SADDAM
How
many casualties might result if the United
States and any coalition partners invade Iraq
to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime?
How important is this issue for
policymaking purposes over the coming weeks
and months?
Prior to Operation Desert Storm,
several military experts estimaed that U.S.
losses might wind up in the range of 5,000 to
10,000, and the Pentagon expected even higher
numbers of killed.
In contrast, actual American losses
were just under 400 (of whom about 150 were
killed by direct enemy action, the others
being lost in accidents or friendly-fire
episodes).
Is it possible to make more accurate
predictions this time around?
The
following develops two central themes.
First, the likely numbers of U.S.
military personnel killed in a future war to
overthrow Saddam could plausibly range from
roughly 100 to 5,000, with total numbers of
wounded about three to four times as great.
This range is wide.
But it is important to recognize that,
based on available methodologies for
predicting combat outcomes, anything in this
range is plausible.
Those in the public policy debate who
insist that any war would be a walkover have
the onus on them to explain why.
At the same time, there would appear to
be little chance of any war against Iraq
bogging down into the type of quagmire in
which combat could last years and entail many
many thousands of American deaths.
Invading Iraq would not be another
Korea or Vietnam.
The
second main theme is that Iraqi civilian
casualties could be substantial in such a war,
given the assumption that it would unfold
largely in Iraq's cities.
In approximate terms, casualties might
be ten times as great as those of the U.S.
military, if not more.
This fact could pose pressures and
problems for any Arab governments supporting
the United States in such a war.
Among its other implications, this is a
strong argument for trying to defeat Iraq
rapidly and with overwhelming force, so that
the pressure of the "Arab street" can be
contained.
Civilian casualties due to clandestine
or terrorist attacks are also possible in
places such as Kuwait, Israel, and the United
States, with plausible mortality ranges in the
high hundreds of individuals.
The
War Scenario
Consistent
with military and strategic logic, and with
leaked Pentagon war plans from the summer of
2002, I assume that a war to overthrow Saddam
would involve about 250,000 American forces.
The Afghanistan model of warfare, in
which small numbers of U.S. special forces and
American airpower work with indigenous
opposition groups to fight government forces,
would almost surely not work in Iraq, as
discussed further below.
That is due to relative weakness of the
Iraqi opposition as well as the Iraqi
military's ability to hole up in cities,
where American airpower is far less effective
than in open terrain.
Modest-sized operations, involving
perhaps 50,000 to 75,000 U.S. troops, are
somewhat more promising.
But they would run the risk of
encountering serious difficulties in the urban
centers of Iraq.
Relatedly, Iraqi forces would be less
likely to capitulate quickly if they sensed
they had a chance to prevail, increasing the
chances of a prolonged urban battle under such
circumstances.
This
is not to say that a larger operation would
have to mirror Desert Storm in its basic
concept.
The invasion might involve rapid
airborne or commando strikes against Iraqi
command and control assets as well as weapons
of mass destruction sites in the earliest
hours of combat, even as main invasion forces
march more slowly through Iraq towards Baghdad
and other cities.
It might also use relatively small
teams of American ground forces-perhaps
brigade-sized units of several thousand troops
each-to try to lure Iraqi forces out of the
cities into regions where they would be more
vulnerable to American airpower (and to lure
out defectors to join U.S. forces).
These sorts of "inside-out" tactics
would try to avoid the delays inherent in a
mechanized march from Kuwait and other
neighboring countries to Baghdad.
But they would be gambles, and the
United States would need backup forces in
place in case the gambles did not pay off.
Forecasting
Casualties in Infantry and Urban Combat
Operation
Desert Storm and, more recently, Operation
Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan probably do
not provide much insight into the likely
nature of a future war in Iraq.
Saddam seems unlikely to place many of
its forces in the open in a future war.
Because Iraq knows its weaknesses against the
U.S. military in open settings, and because it
is Saddam Hussein's regime and weapons of
mass destruction capabilities that would be at
issue in a future war, one has to assume that
the combat would be primarily urban.
This
fact immediately changes the calculus of a
future war by comparison with Desert Storm.
To begin, airpower would be much more
difficult to employ against Iraqi forces that
could intersperse themselves with civilian
vehicles and populations.
This type of tactic was employed near
Basra during Desert Storm, and has been
employed in the subsequent eleven years as
Iraqis have sought to place valued military
assets near civilian populations to make it
harder for the United States to bomb them.
Iraqi forces have much better cover within
cities, or even forested regions, than in open
desert. As
one further demonstration of this rather
obvious fact, recall that even after eight
years of further modernization after Desert
Storm, NATO airpower was of quite limited
effectiveness against small groups of Serb
forces operating within forests, towns, and
civilian populations in the Kosovo war.
If U.S.-led forces tried to fly low to
find enemy forces against this complex
backdrop, they would have to contend with an
Iraqi air defense network consisting, among
other things, of some 6,000 air defense guns
and 1,500 surface-to-air missile launchers
(including man-portable SAMs).[iii]
Nothing
about new technology and new warfighting
concepts associated with the so-called
revolution in military affairs seems likely to
radically change the challenge of urban
warfare anytime soon.
For example, recent Marine Corps
experiments incorporating such new concepts
suggested that U.S. troops could still suffer
quite high casualties in urban combat.
Historical
Parallels
Two
recent conflicts may provide better indicators
of the likely nature of a future U.S.-Iraq
war: the
1989 invasion of Panama and the 1993 U.S.
experience in Mogadishu, Somalia.
In December, 1989, U.S. forces
overthrew Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega
and defeated his armed forces.
About 22,500 American personnel
participated.
The operation involved simultaneous
nighttime airborne operations against 27
objectives throughout the country.
Special forces infiltrated key sites
shortly before the airborne assaults to take
down Panamanian communications and oppose any
attempts by Panama to reinforce its forces
under attack.
The massive, simultaneous assault
against Panama 's 4,400-strong defense
forces and its paramilitary forces of several
thousand more personnel overwhelmed the
latter, surprising them with its ferocity and
coordination in the opening hours of battle.
Twenty-three Americans died, as did
about 125 Panamanian military personnel.
Perhaps 200 to 600 Panamanian civilians
died as well.
In
the Somalia experience, U.S. forces faced
ragtag militia opposition.
Somali fighters had access to plentiful
automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades,
and mines, but not much more than that, and
they were not trained in combined-arms or
coordinated military operations.
As is well known, the United States had
18 soldiers killed in action on the night of
October 3-4, 1993 in the course of a raid on a
building where leaders of the Aideed faction
were meeting.
The tragedy occurred when two
helicopters were shot down by rocket-propelled
grenades; additional American casualties were
suffered in the effort to rescue any of the
crew members that might have survived those
crashes.
Only about 2,000 U.S. forces were
deployed for conducting and supporting such
raids at the time they occurred; only 160
participated in the October raid.
Estimates of Somali militia strength
were in the many thousands, with losses on
October 3-4 alone estimated at 300 or more
combatants.
Often forgotten is that a number of
other American troops died in Somalia.
In fact, total losses reached 29 from
hostile action and 14 from "nonhostile"
action such as accidents.
What
do past cases tell us about how a future war
conducted largely in the streets of Baghdad
might play out?
As discussed in the link, two useful
parallels are the U.S. experience in Mogadishu
in 1993 and the U.S. invasion of Panama in
1989. Iraqi
forces are almost surely better armed and
better trained than the military or
paramilitary organizations we fought in those
cases. Thankfully,
they are probably also far less motivated.
That
said, it is important to remember that the
Iraqi Republican Guard forces fought
reasonably hard in Desert Storm.
They also enjoy a number of benefits
from Saddam's regime-and they are rather
heavily implicated in his rule.
They would probably fear retribution
from an alternative regime or from western
occupying forces much more than they would
fear Iraqi opposition forces and American
airpower on the battlefield.
How much they would fear American
invasion forces, and thus when they would
choose to surrender, is difficult to
determine.
Whether they could be convinced to
desert Saddam by an amnesty offer or a promise
of protection and inclusion in a post-Saddam
regime is an open question. Whether Saddam's
commanders could be deterred from using
weapons of mass destruction by threatening to
hold them personally responsible should they
do so is also unclear.
Simply
scaling the results of Panama for the size of
the Iraqi military leads to an estimate of
about 2,000 killed Americans, more than 10,000
dead Iraqi military personnel, and tens of
thousands of dead Iraqi citizens.
If however it is only the elite Iraqi
forces that fight hard, numbering somewhat
more than 100,000 Republican Guard, Special
Republican Guard, and palace guard forces,
extrapolation from the Panama case suggests
that losses on all sides might be only
one-fourth as great.
The
Somalia analogy is also worth invoking.
The firefight on the night of October
3-4 can be used as a way to generate
pessimistic estimates of how war in Baghdad
might go.
As noted, that operation involved about
160 Americans against a single objective,
together with roughly a dozen ground vehicles,
and more than a dozen helicopters.
Overall operations in Baghdad might be
50 to 100 times as large, in any initial
assault wave to secure key facilities (recall
that 27 objectives were attacked in
much-smaller Panama).
With comparable casualty rates on a per
person basis, U.S. losses could number 1,000
or more just in this phase of the fighting.
The
Likely Implications of Weapons of Mass
Destruction
One
major wild card remains:
the likely consequences of any Iraqi
use of weapons of mass destruction.
Consider first SCUD attacks against
Iraq's neighbors.
Even if using chemical or biological
agent, they seem a relatively minor threat,
given the general difficulty of delivering
such agents via missile and the specific
limitations of the SCUD.
Iraq may still have up to two dozen
such missiles.
But it often broke up in flight during
Desert Storm and has clearly not benefited
from extensive flight testing to improve its
performance since then.
Delivering chemical or biological agent
is best done at a steady altitude by an
aircraft that spreads the agent over a large
area, not by a rapidly descending ballistic
missile that may disperse the agent too soon
or too late-and in any case, probably in far
too concentrated a dose in one place.
Should that one place be a sports
stadium or other congregating place, results
could be disastrous.
But given the SCUD's inaccuracy, that
would require extreme luck on the part of
Iraq.
Second,
Iraqi attacks against civilian populations in
places such as the United States could be
serious, especially if they involved
biological agents, in which case plausible
casualties could reach into the hundreds or
even the thousands.
Iraqi special forces have not focused
on preparing for such attacks in the past;
they have reportedly been devoted to efforts
to acquire technologies for producing weapons
of mass destruction.
It is also unlikely that Iraq has
access to the most dangerous pathogens such as
smallpox.
On the other hand, Saddam may be
willing to provide such agents to Hezbollah or
al Qaeda operatives under certain
circumstances.
On balance, the threat from such
weapons is rather finite-but also quite
real.
Third,
Iraq could increase casualty levels of
coalition forces by using WMD against them,
particularly its thousands of chemical-filled
artillery shells and rockets.
But it would probably increase
casualties by no more than 10 to 20 percent,
given historical precedent in conflicts such
as the Iran-Iraq war; indeed, U.S. forces are
much better equipped to protect themselves
from such attacks than most militaries have
been in the past.
However, Iraq might gain some
advantages nonetheless, if at a huge cost to
its own civilian populations (and perhaps to
its own troops, should winds shift).
It could oblige coalition forces to
fight in protective gear, slowing operations
and generally complicating the mission.
If the effects of fighting in such gear
were comparable to those of fighting in bad
weather or difficult terrain, for example, the
pace of coalition fighting and the
effectiveness of coalition forces might
decline 25 to 50 percent, and casualties might
mount by a comparable percentage.
Summary
The
United States and coalition partners would win
any future war to overthrow Saddam Hussein in
a rapid and decisive fashion.
This would not be another Vietnam or
another Korea.
But casualties could be significantly
greater to all concerned parties than in the
1991 Persian Gulf War.
The best analogy for what such combat
could involve would not be Desert Storm, but
instead the 1989 U.S. invasion of
Panama-and on a much larger scale.
In
rough terms, U.S.-led forces might suffer 100
to 5,000 forces killed in action in such a
future war.
The lower half of that range is perhaps
the most plausible.
But there is a very real possibility
that American deaths could exceed 1,000 in
number, and several thousand deaths cannot be
ruled out.
By
the methodologies employed here, Iraqi troop
losses might be expected to roughly 2,000 to
50,000. And
civilian deaths could number in the tens of
thousands as well.
Casualties in countries such as Israel
and the United States, not so much from SCUD
missiles or other military delivery vehicles
as from action by Iraqi-supported terrorists
or special forces, could number in the
thousands if Saddam provided them with weapons
of mass destruction.
But such losses might also be trivial
in size.
As
such, those who feel strongly that a future
war against Iraq would be either a cakewalk or
a debacle should be challenged to explain why.
Historical data and combat models put
the onus squarely on those who would make such
confident predictions. A
quagmire in Iraq seems extremely unlikely.
But on the other hand, to count on easy
victory, as many American proponents of war
seem to do, is not only unsupportable by the
available evidence and by the methodologies of
combat prediction.
It is also irresponsible as a basis on
which to plan U.S. military strategy in any
future war against Saddam Hussein.
III.
WHAT TYPE OF WAR WOULD IT BE?
Iraq, unlike
Afghanistan, is located in the heartland of
Arabia, a region whose stability is a critical
U.S. interest.
A prolonged war there could undermine
regional stability, put enormous pressure on
friendly Arab regimes and Turkey, increase the
terrorist threat against the United States,
and wreak havoc on oil markets.
Accordingly, if Saddam's regime is to
be removed militarily, the action must be
quick and decisive, and order must be
subsequently maintained for as long as it
takes to generate a stable and unthreatening
replacement government. In addition, to minimize the chances of concerted Iraqi
resistance, the U.S. force should be as
intimidating and overwhelming as possible.
These requirements mean that the United
States must be prepared to deploy a large
invasion force-at least 200,000 troops,
backed by some 1,000 aircraft-and to keep
many of them in the region for some time.
Why the
Afghanistan Model Won't Work
Why not
overthrow Saddam on the cheap, Afghan-style,
as some of the most prominent proponents of
overthrow seem to call for?[iv]
First, relying on insurgency operations
based on Kurdish and Shia forces would have a
very high probability of failure because of
the disparity of power between Saddam's
forces and anything that can be deployed by
these surrogates.
In Afghanistan opposition forces were
half as large and at least as well armed as
were the Taliban, whereas in Iraq Saddam's
army is five times as big as the fractious
opposition groups all put together.
And air power alone would not be
sufficient to tip that balance, especially in
urban environments.
Significant
U.S. ground forces would also be needed
because war planners cannot assume that the
Iraqi army will adopt counterproductive
tactics.
Iraqi forces are unlikely to deploy
their armor in the open desert (like Iraq had
to do after attacking Kuwait) or to fire from
static positions and becoming sitting ducks
for airpower (like the Taliban did in
Afghanistan).
They are more likely to hunker down in
the major cities, especially Baghdad, where
Saddam is likely to hole up.
Many of their weapons will be placed
near apartment buildings, hospitals, schools,
and mosques-as Iraq has already learned to
do during a decade of constant bombardment by
the United States and United Kingdom in the
southern and northern no-fly zones.
Knowing that his only hope once an
invasion began might be to ensure that enough
civilians were killed to provoke unrest or
revolution in other Arab capitals or major
protest movements in the West, Saddam would
probably seek to create an "al Jazeera"
effect by forcing the United States to hit
large numbers of civilians if it chose to
attack certain military targets.
Trends
in military technology development and recent
American battlefield victories suggest to some
that the United States' high-technology edge
will make the deployment of a large invasion
force unnecessary.
Indeed, laser- and satellite-guided
bombs, as well as new reconnaissance and
communications systems like JSTARS aircraft
and Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial
vehicles demonstrated enormous potential in
the Gulf War, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
But two other conflicts from recent
history also need to be kept in mind:
the U.S. military campaign in Somalia
in 1992-1993 and the war against Serbia over
Kosovo in 1999.
In both cases, difficult battlefield
terrain and conditions-the urban setting of
Mogadishu, the forested settings of Kosovo-limited
enormously what high technology could do.
The
Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) weapon
that was so effective against the entrenched
Taliban forces would be difficult to use
against Iraqi armor deployed in urban
settings, since it could cause so much
collateral damage to civilians that its use
might be severely limited. Laser-guided
bombs could be more effective, at least in
good weather, but they require forward target
designators and even they could not be used
against individual soldiers carrying small
arms. If
U.S. aircraft tried to spot targets on their
own, they would have to fly low over Iraqi
cities, risking losses from Iraq's
anti-aircraft artillery and shoulder-launched
surface-to-air missiles. When coalition
aircraft flew low in the first three days of Desert
Storm, the result was 27 aircraft damaged or
destroyed-one-third of their losses for the
entire war.
The
Need for "Desert Storm II"
U.S. ground
forces, on the other hand, would make a
decisive difference in a war to unseat the
butcher of Baghdad.
Indeed, many Iraqi units might well
change sides and move against Saddam if they
saw a massive army coming to get them.
At the moment many of the commanders of
these units are loyal to Saddam only out of
fear for their lives.
But if they come to understand that
their survival depends on distancing
themselves from Saddam, their brittle loyalty
to him could well crack.
It is unlikely to crack in the face of
opposition forces alone, led by rival ethnic
groups who would likely exact retribution on
Saddam's commanders if they were somehow
able to prevail on the battlefield.
Under these
circumstances, the United States and any
willing military partners would need a force
large enough to defeat Iraq's military unit
by unit if necessary, while eventually also
establishing order throughout Baghdad and
perhaps other cities as well.
Military targets would include command
and control infrastructure needed to maintain
control of the country, other major military
assets such as bases, marshaling yards, and
equipment depots, major public buildings,
utilities, and of course Saddam himself as
well as his palace guard.
They would also have to include the
main military forces of the Iraqi state, which
could otherwise mount counterattacks against
U.S.-led troops even after the invading armies
had wrested control of the country from the
ruling regime.
In the
initial phase, American forces would target
Saddam's Republican Guard and Special
Republican Guard, together about 100,000
strong, while trying to convince Saddam's
other 300,000 forces and 650,000 military
reservists not to resist.
If such a strategy were successful,
only a few tens of thousands of American
forces might ultimately see combat; in the
best case scenario, Iraqi resistance might
quickly crumble even in the ranks of the
Republican and Special Republican guards.
But the United States could not size
its forces or develop its war plans based on
that assumption, since Iraqi forces will only
collapse if they are convinced of the
inevitability of their defeat.[v]
What Bases
Would Be Needed?
This type of
operation could not be done without
substantial access to foreign military bases. Some have suggested otherwise, claiming for example that the
United States could mount an operation by
flying forces directly into western Iraq.
However, this idea makes little military
sense. U.S. airlift could deploy and sustain at most two divisions
and their direct support, or perhaps 50,000 to
75,000 troops in all-and neither of these
divisions could be particularly heavy with
armor (U.S. airlift would only be adequate to
deploy and sustain about one heavy division in
this way).
The fact remains that the only way to
confidently defeat Saddam is by deploying a
large armored force to the region by sealift
and then mounting an operation that would in
many ways resemble Desert Storm.
The United
States would require significant base access
to carry out this type of operation. Indispensable would be facilities in Kuwait and Turkey-the
former to provide air bases and permit
deployment of the main armored forces for
their northward march on Baghdad, the latter
for enough airfields to help protect Kurdish
populations and forces during the war.
Ideally, Bahrain would also allow the
United States to continue to use its 5th
fleet headquarters based there. But the requirements would also include air bases in at least
one or two other Gulf sheikdoms.
More air
bases would be needed due to the need to field
up to 1,000 combat jets in the region (the
Kosovo war, by way of comparison, required
nearly that many against a much smaller
country and enemy military).
In rough terms, fielding 1,000 combat
jets, plus associated support aircraft such as
refueling and electronic warfare planes, as
well as airlifters, would require at least 15
airfields and quite possibly 20 or more.[vi]
Were Saudi Arabia to provide its
facilities, the problem would be essentially
solved. Absent
Saudi access, however, the United States would
have to find that number of airfields in
Turkey, Kuwait, other small Gulf countries,
and its own aircraft carriers.
Even if the United States used 4 to 6
carriers, and even factoring in two to three
bases in both Kuwait and Turkey, the United
States would still need at least half a dozen
other facilities and perhaps a dozen.
Most of the smaller Gulf states have
two to four long, paved runways, though the
United Arab Emirates possesses eight (for
comparison's sake, Saudi Arabia owns 31).[vii]
So if Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the
United Arab Emirates each provided two
airfields, or if a subset of those countries
each provided three to four, the problem
should be solvable-especially if Saudi
Arabia would permit overflights of its
territory, since otherwise bottlenecks in air
traffic could occur at the northern end of the
Persian Gulf.
But the operation would still be
difficult, since most of these bases are not
nearly as well developed or stocked with fuel,
munitions, and spare parts as are Saudi
facilities.
Clearly,
Riyadh's active support for an invasion of
Iraq, while not absolutely indispensable,
would be enormously desirable on both
political and military grounds.
This is one more reason why the
president's 9/12 strategy of working through
the United Nations if possible is so sound,
since it vastly improves the odds of Saudi
assistance should we have to go to war.
IV.
CAN WE FIGHT IRAQ WHILE PURSUING AL
QAEDA?
An
important policy question in regard to a
possible war to overthrow Saddam Hussein
concerns the timing of any such effort.
Some suggest that, while they might be
willing to support an invasion of Iraq under
certain conditions, now is not the time given
the urgent priority of defeating the terrorist
organization that attacked the United States
on September 11.
There may be international political
reasons not to go to war against Iraq anytime
soon. For
example, countries unhappy about a war against
Iraq may reduce intelligence cooperation with
the United States for the war on terror.
However, in military terms at least, I
do not believe that the U.S. military would
have great difficulty in waging both wars at
once.
The
U.S. military, we have been told for a decade,
is sized and structured to fight two major
wars at once. Each conflict has been expected
to require up to 500,000 American troops. The
Bush administration has recently determined
such a goal may have been impractical, but
still claims the capability to wage one such
all-out war and a second major operation
perhaps half as big. In all, that could
involve about 750,000 U.S. troops in combat.
By
comparison, today's demands are modest, and
they would remain well within our capabilities
even if we went to war against Saddam.
Operations in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf
together now require about 60,000 American
personnel; the ongoing commitments in the
Balkans involve another 10,000; smaller
missions of various types in the Philippines,
Georgia, Yemen and the Sinai add fewer than
another 10,000. Post-9/11 security measures at
military bases around the world might involve
50,000 more troops. Adding in 250,000 GIs to
overthrow Saddam, all war-related deployments
combined would involve about 400,000
troops-a substantial number, to be sure, but
only about half the total we are supposed to
be able to deploy at once.
A more detailed military analysis leads
to the same conclusion. Consider:
Main
Combat Forces
We
have enough to deploy 250,000 troops,
including four to five ground combat divisions
and 12 to 15 air combat wings, to the Persian
Gulf. Today's U.S. military has 13 active-duty
divisions (10 in the Army, three in the Marine
Corps). Less than one full division is
presently involved in the Afghanistan
campaign; less than one is in the Balkans;
small pieces of other divisions are deployed
elsewhere. That leaves more than 10 divisions
available. Even after excluding the Army's
Second Infantry Division in South Korea, the
Korea-oriented 25th Infantry Division in
Hawaii, and the Pacific-oriented Third Marine
Force in Okinawa, we would have more than
ample ground troops to overthrow Saddam and
occupy Iraq.
A
similar conclusion holds for air power. There
are 20 tactical fighter wings in the Air
Force, 11 in the Navy, and three in the Marine
Corps. Of that grand total, only about 10
would be unavailable based on existing
commitments in the Western Pacific and
Afghanistan. And the dozen bombers that have
typically flown over Afghanistan constitute
just 10% of total U.S. capability.
Key
Support Forces
Certain
critical forces, ranging from aerial tankers
to transport aircraft to special operations
units to unmanned aerial vehicles, have been
heavily used in Afghanistan. But even at its
peak, Afghanistan did not place higher demands
on most of these support capabilities than
would a so-called major theater war. And today
the tempo of operations is less than half what
it once was, while allied combat forces are
providing considerable help in the ongoing
search for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
The
U.S. military today owns some 600 refueling
aircraft, of which more than 400 are airworthy
at present. They have been heavily used in
Afghanistan. But they are presently flying
fewer than 50 sorties a day in support of
Operation Enduring Freedom. Most would be
available should the bell toll for Saddam.
Ammunition
Much
has also been made of the depleted inventories
of precision munitions in the aftermath of
last fall's intensive aerial operations,
including satellite-guided joint direct attack
munitions, or JDAM. But this concern is easily
exaggerated when considering the feasibility
of a war against Saddam. Stocks of most other
ordnance, including Maverick and Hellfire
missiles, appear ample based on unclassified
estimates. Inventories of laser-guided bombs
may not be full, but are surely considerable
given how many were used in Afghanistan.
We
did not even have JDAM the last time we fought
Iraq. And we might not be able to make much
use of it in urban combat anyway since it
typically misses its targets by 10 yards or so
(meaning that a bomb aimed at Iraqi troops
might hit a hospital instead). But we are
producing more quickly, and inventories will
be substantially larger by the end of the
year-the soonest we would plausibly fight
Iraq, given that months of preparations needed
before any conflict.
Transportation
Finally,
what about getting to the fight? Most U.S.
sealift has hardly been used in Afghanistan
and would be quickly available for a war
against Iraq. That fleet is by far its
strongest ever; a largely unsung
accomplishment of the Clinton administration
and the Congress in the 1990s was the
construction of almost 20 large
roll-on/roll-off ships for rapid transport of
equipment. Airlift has been much more heavily
used in Afghanistan. But current operations
there involve a quarter of the total U.S.
capability, at most.
None
of this is to suggest that war against Saddam
is a good idea or a necessary option. Nor does
it solve the diplomatic problem of gaining
wartime access to bases in the Persian Gulf.
But American adversaries should have no doubt
about our ability to mount a large-scale
military operation, and to do it soon if
necessary.
V.
MAKING INSPECTIONS WORK
How
can inspections accomplish their purpose of
verifying the disarmament of Iraq from its
chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile
capabilities?
The track record on inspections in Iraq
is mixed.
Rather than argue over whether they
have been mostly good or mostly poor, we
should recognize what inspections do well, and
take advantage of those positives.
To its credit, despite taking a
dismissive attitude about inspections during
the summer (particularly in the cases of Vice
President Cheney and Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld), the Bush administration appears to
be pursuing improved inspections in its effort
to craft a new U.N. Security Council
resolution on Iraq.
The
following elements should be included in any
new inspections concept.
If properly applied, they should force
Saddam to make irreversible reductions in his
WMD capabilities in the next few months, while
the threat of U.S. military action should he
fail to comply is most credible.
They should also provide rather high
confidence that he will not make major
progress towards a nuclear weapons capability.
That is the one major WMD capability he
does not now possess, and it is the type that
could probably cause the most damage to
western interests if he did possess it.
Hence, an inspections regime that
reliably prevented Iraq from obtaining a
nuclear capability would in my judgment be
acceptable, even
if it could not absolutely guarantee
elimination of all of his chemical and
biological weapons.
n
Iraq must come into compliance with all
U.N. disarmament demands and other
requirements imposed on it after the Persian
Gulf War, including but hardly limited to the
immediate return of U.N. inspectors.
n
Those
inspectors must not be impeded from visiting
any potential weapons sites in Iraq, including
presidential palaces and compounds, at any
time and without notice.
Nor can they be impeded from access to
any Iraqis they choose to converse with, or
from determining the composition of their
inspection teams as they see fit.
n
The
United Nations must have the power to
immediately grant asylum to any Iraqi weapons
experts as well as their families, should such
experts provide information to the United
Nations that could put their lives at risk.
n
Iraq
must account for, display, and allow U.N.
destruction of stocks of chemical and
biological weapons and munitions that we know
it possesses, and do so within a short,
specific time period.
n
Iraq must agree to intrusive, long-term
monitoring of its weapons capabilities that
would include no-notice inspections.
n
And
even if Iraq were to comply fully with all
these requirements, its future oil revenues
would still have to be escrowed to control its
purchases of dual-use equipment.
One
additional but essential component of the
ultimatum concerns Iraq's neighbors.
Since they would all prefer to avoid a
U.S. invasion of Iraq, they need to agree to
stop their illicit trade with Iraq -- by which
oil comes out, and many goods including
weapons and dual-use technology go into that
country.
This would require detailed
negotiations with Jordan, Turkey, Syria, and
perhaps even Iran, including some combination
of economic incentives and strong pressure
that would depend in its details on the
country in question. Without tighter
sanctions, weapons disarmament and inspections
efforts will be far less effective.
There
is a chance Saddam will accept this ultimatum
and allow the return of the inspectors, if the
clear alternative is his demise, despite his
recent insistence that he will not comply with
any new U.N. resolution.
Some would prefer that he comply,
others that he refuse and, in doing so,
provide undeniable justification for war.
The key point, however, is that either
outcome would be better than the current
alternatives:
allowing Saddam to keep his weapons and
his power, or unilaterally waging war.
VI.
CAN DETERRENCE WORK AGAINST SADDAM?
Is
Saddam Hussein deterrable, and does
containment thus provide an alternative to
war, especially if rigorous weapons
inspections and disarmament can again be
conducted within Iraq? Some say no, noting his aggressiveness in attacking Iran and
Kuwait as well as his own civilian
populations. But even aggressive, evil rulers such as Joseph Stalin and
Kim Il-Sung, the former North Korean leader,
can often be deterred when faced with a
credible threat that any aggression they
attempt will meet a firm response.
Moreover, those who argue that Saddam
is not deterrable should remember Ambassador
April Glaspie's famous statement to him
before the invasion of Kuwait-that the
United States did not take a position on his
border disputes with neighboring countries.
The United States did not exactly give
him a green light to invade Kuwait, but it
gave him little more than a yellow light.
Its failure to oppose that aggression
before the fact ranks with Acheson's famous
1949 statement that Korea was outside the zone
of U.S. security interests as among the worst
examples of deterrence failure in American
history. And once Saddam had already taken Kuwait, it was no great
surprise that he refused to vacate it in the
face of American threats.
Political scientists have recognized
for decades that compellence, or getting a
country to undo an action already taken, is
much harder than deterrence, or persuading it
not to do something it may be contemplating.[viii]
Today,
there is no such ambiguity in American
willingness to respond to any aggression by
Saddam. The
only small uncertainty relates to what we
would do if he again attacked his own
populations, notably the Kurds in the north
and Shia in the south.
But even there, Saddam now knows he
would be taking huge risks.
As
threatening and dangerous as Saddam Hussein
may be, the recent track record suggests that
he can be dissuaded from undertaking actions
that he believes would likely lead to his
overthrow. During the Gulf War, he desisted from using the weapons of
mass destruction we now know he had, realizing
(following explicit threats from U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker and Secretary
of Defense Richard Cheney) that to do so would
almost surely lead to his downfall. He moved brigades southward towards Kuwait again in 1994,
only to pull back once the Clinton
administration mounted Operation "Vigilant
Warrior," a deployment of tens of
thousands of troops).
He interfered with the work of foreign
weapons inspectors frequently, and ultimately
expelled them, but never killed or harmed
them. He
brutally attacked Shia resistance forces in
southern Iraq in 1991, after it became clear
that the first Bush administration would not
interfere to stop such operations, but
generally avoided brutality against Kurds in
the north once the United States made clear
its commitment to their security.
In 1996, he did direct an incursion
into Kurdish parts of Iraq-but only after
internecine warfare among Kurds, and an
explicit invitation to him to intervene by one
of the Kurdish factions, made it unlikely that
the United States would be in a position to
oppose him.
There
is counterevidence.
Saddam tried to kill former President
George Bush in 1993, an action that, if
successful, might very well have led to a U.S.
operation to assassinate him.
Saddam might also think he could assist
al Qaeda or a similar organization, providing
it with biological agents or other material
support, and not be caught doing so.
But he also knows that we have a proven
ability to track meetings between his agents
and potential terrorists and that we can often
trace the origins of chemical or biological
agents based on their genetic content,
particle size, chemical coating, or other
attributes.
Thus while there is a chance his
cooperation with terrorists could succeed in
escaping detection, there is a better chance
that we would figure out what he was up to.
For a person like Saddam who cherishes
his hold on power, the odds would probably not
seem favorable.
And as for the attempted assassination,
now that Saddam recognizes our intelligence
capabilities, he appears to have thought
better of his vendetta against the former
American president, and has not again tried to
have him or any other American heroes from the
1991 Gulf War killed.
Deterrence
could fail in the future nonetheless, at least
in a limited way.
In particular, if Saddam had a nuclear
weapon, he would still almost surely be
deterred from directly attacking the United
States or its NATO allies. But he might take
greater risks in the Middle East and Persian
Gulf in the belief that his new weapon
effectively guaranteed his regime's survival,
making U.S.-led intervention to thwart his
regional ambitions less likely except in the
most extreme of circumstances.
What
might Saddam do under such circumstances?
Perhaps he would seize the oil field on his
border with Kuwait that was the purported
original cause of the 1990 Iraq-Kuwait crisis.
Or he might violate the safe haven in his
country's Kurd region and seek to reestablish
brutal Ba'ath party rule over that minority
population. He might escalate his support for
anti-Israeli terrorism, stoking radicals and
suicide bombers and trying to provoke Israel
into an overreaction. Given his propensity for
miscalculation, he might think he could get
away with actions that we would in fact find
unacceptable, causing a failure of deterrence
and a much greater risk of war.
In a worst case, on his deathbed he
might decide to attack Israel with nuclear
weapons for purposes of simple vengeance, and
to ensure his mark upon Arab history books.
This
situation would be at least somewhat risky,
even if not mortally perilous to the United
States, so the case for preventing Saddam from
getting nuclear weapons is strong.
But the argument that he can be
deterred, and has been deterred, from taking
most types of dangerous actions is also
strong. That
situation could clearly change in the event of
a war targeting his regime, however.
[i] As noted, this section as
well as several others draw in part on my
recent article with Philip H. Gordon and
Martin Indyk, "Getting Serious About
Iraq," Survival
(Autumn 2002), available at
www.brookings.edu.
[ii] See Vernon Loeb, "Study:
New Demands Could Tax Military," Washington
Post, September 23, 2002, p. 13.
[iii] See International
Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2001/2002 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 134-135.
[iv] See, for example, Patrick
Clawson, "Why Saddam is Ripe for a
Fall," Washington Post, January 1, 2002;
Ken Adelman, "Cakewalk In
Iraq," Washington
Post, February 13, 2002; Richard Perle,
"Should Iraq Be Next?," speech to the
Foreign Policy Research Institute,
distributed by Copley News Service,
December 17, 2001; Michael Dobbs, "Old
Strategy on Iraq Sparks New Debate:
Backers Say Plan Proven in
Afghanistan," Washington
Post, December 27, 2001; and James M.
Woolsey, "Should the United States Go to
War with Iraq?" CATO Institute Forum,
Washington, D.C., December 13, 2001.
[v] For methods of estimating
how large invading and occupying combat
forces must be, see Michael O'Hanlon, Saving
Lives with Force (Brookings, 1997).
[vi] See Christopher J. Bowie, The
Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases
(Washington, D.C.:
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, 2002), p. 17.
[vii] See Central Intelligence
Agency, CIA
World Fact Book 2001 [http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html].
[viii] This section draws on my
January 2002 Brookings policy brief with
Philip Gordon, "Should the War on
Terrorism Target Iraq?"
It is available at
www.brookings.edu.
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