Hussein Trying To Isolate U.S. In Current Showdown Iraqi Leader Taking Major Gamble After Seeing No End To Sanctions Imposed After Gulf War Defeat

Along the vaulted corridors of the Old Executive Office building and in State Department suites, U.S. officials pondering the escalating clash with Iraq contend that the turning point was a confrontational speech last spring by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

But behind the antebellum pillars of the National Defense University, Persian Gulf gurus argue that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein went on the offensive to protect his weapons of mass destruction, the tools of intimidation by which he can reassert his power at home, in the region and eventually the world.

And in the small, sterile offices of the CIA, analysts say the Iraqi leader is merely playing a variation of his long-standing “cheat and retreat” strategy, the cyclical provocations designed to probe his latitude with the United Nations, undermine the United States and rally support at home and in the Arab world.

Throughout Washington, views vary widely about why the United States, nearly seven years after a rousing military victory, is yet again challenged by aggressive behavior from Iraq. Each view is a piece contributing to the bigger puzzle of what motivates Hussein.

But on one thing pundits and policy-makers agree: The latest crisis is in many ways Hussein’s biggest gamble - most of all because so much is at stake on so many fronts.

“When faced with a difficult situation, Saddam is a proven risk-taker. And sometimes, when he’s in a particularly tight spot, he is most willing to take the biggest risks,” says Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“But this time, he’s trying to set a tremendously important precedent, which, if it succeeds, will undermine much of what has been achieved by the U.S. and U.N. so far.”

Five issues are at stake this time around, all of which the Iraqi leader is trying to mold or exploit to his advantage:

Hussein’s ability to rebuild his weapons arsenal and preserve the remainder of the huge stock of arms that allowed Baghdad to invade Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, to rain missiles on Saudi Arabia and Israel in 1991, and to quell internal Kurdish and Shiite rebellions.

The future of the toughest sanctions in modern history, which have prevented the regime from earning $100 billion in oil revenue but also have spawned tens of thousands of child malnutrition cases, vast shortages of medicine and widespread poverty among Iraq’s 20 million people.

Cohesion of the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War coalition, now facing internal battles over whether to tighten the squeeze on Baghdad or make business deals with Iraq in preparation for the end of U.N. sanctions.

Survival of Hussein’s rule, which U.S. intelligence originally estimated might not last 18 months after the Gulf War but which many of the dictator’s gulf rivals now fear could be indefinite - in part because of his masterful manipulation of the above issues.

The broader stakes of the post-Cold War world. The Gulf War’s Operation Desert Storm was intended to draw a line against aggression not only in the Arabian sands.

“If Saddam succeeds, it will also send a message to would-be aggressors everywhere that if you’re willing to stick it out, the international community will eventually lose interest or can be bought out,” Pollack adds.

A sequence of events since last spring made a showdown over these issues almost inevitable, analysts contend.

Albright’s switch from ambassador to the United Nations, where she helped orchestrate the U.S. campaign against Iraq, to secretary of State may have been the starting point.

Her tough speech in March made explicit what had been implicit since the Gulf War: Washington, she said, will not ease up on Iraq after its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and its long-range missiles are dismantled. Washington intends to hold out for a reversal in Iraq’s political “behavior,” meaning the Hussein regime.

The speech marked a new U.S. offensive, which eventually included a push for tighter sanctions, such as travel restrictions on important Iraqi military and intelligence officials.

“Hussein understood Albright’s speech better” than many others did, a senior Clinton administration official says. Rather than seeing a light at the end of the sanctions tunnel, Hussein felt increasingly boxed in.

So the Iraqi leader launched a counteroffensive. His two top goals: isolating the United States and setting limits on the United Nations.

In April, Hussein defied U.N.-imposed restrictions on flights over certain regions of Iraq by flying Muslim worshipers to and from Saudi Arabia for the annual “hajj” pilgrimage. The action elicited a U.N. admonition but nothing stronger.

For months now, he has courted European and Asian business, eliciting dozens of new contacts in the international community and important new oil and gas contracts poised to go into effect immediately after sanctions are lifted.

A pivotal U.N. personnel change this summer - when Australia’s Richard Butler replaced Sweden’s Rolf Ekeus as chief U.N. weapons inspector - provided a context for Hussein to probe further.

From June through August, Hussein sporadically blocked U.N. inspectors at suspected weapons sites and interfered with U.N. helicopter flights.

The actions drew limited responses. The U.N. Security Council agreed during the summer to impose new travel bans if his behavior did not improve, but that action, which the United States viewed as feeble, was deferred again last month - and even then, Russia, France, China, Egypt and Kenya abstained from a compromise resolution.

Hussein “saw a split on the Security Council and thought this was a moment to strike,” says an intelligence analyst. “He’s been trying to lower the price, and here it was lowered for him.”

So few in Washington were surprised when Hussein recently ordered American inspectors expelled and threatened to shoot down the American U-2 spy planes on loan to the U.N. inspectors.

As long as Hussein rules Iraq, U.S. analysts concede, the current showdown is not likely to be the last.