The Art of Politics

Saddam In A Box

Crank the handle, and ten years later, Saddam pops out - the folly of containment...

As charges and rhetoric fly between the Bush and Kerry campaigns regarding Iraq, and who did and did not support the Iraq War, and who did and did not support the troops, or the funding, the notion that Saddam posed no threat, and was contained, has floated forth.

The notion of containment as a solution ignores the fundamental fact that containment is never a solution, merely an improvisation until a real solution presents itself. An outbreak is contained, until those infected can be cured. A fire is contained, until it can burn itself out. Yet international relations do not readily lend themselves to self-curing episodes - a problem placed in a box, tends to stay a problem in a box.

Imagine discovering a snake in your home. Would most consider simply putting a box on top of the snake a solution?

A snake in a box is no less a problem than a snake on the loose - one merely presents a more immediate threat. You have merely exchanged one problem for another - you've exchanged the problem of a snake loose in your home with the problem of a snake in a box in your home. The snake is no less deadly - he simply has an immediate barrier between you. An improvement in immediate situation, but no solution. You can rely on the barrier, the box, that he will not escape it, that it will maintain integrity - and trust to that. Sleep tight.

Or you can kill the snake.

Only in the latter is the threat removed, the problem solved.

The same is certainly true of Saddam's now-deposed regime in Iraq. The Saddam problem that was placed into a box in 1991 is the Saddam problem the world found itself dealing with over a decade later. The Iraqi army, broken in 1991, was still largely broken. Saddam, a tyrant in 1991, was still ruling by fiat and threat. Nothing had changed in the interim, though we did discover his WMD programs were far more advanced than we'd first thought. It is argued that somehow Saddam's regime was something we could keep safely in a jar on the shelf, a box in the corner, indefinitely until the problem of the Iraqi dictator solved itself. Containment, it is argued, as a solution.

Yet containment does not hold. Examine for instance the situation on the Korean peninsula. North Korea was contained - at peace, if you consider socioeconomic stagnation and military brinksmanship across the 38th parallel peace. Except that over fifty years of containment, North Korea managed to nuclearize itself. Now, a starving, nuclear North Korea casts a shadow across Seoul. Containment doesn't solve problems, it simply removes their immediacy. It also allows those problems with a will to escape, to eventually do so.

Containment is one of those things that works, until it doesn't work. The fire was contained - until it spread. The infection was contained - until it spread. North Korea was contained - until it nuclearized. The Taleban were contained - until their harboring of terrorists bore fruit.

Saddam's containment was already cracking. Despite US pressure, Iraq was obtaining capital outside the grossly corrupt Oil-For-Food program. Pressure was mounting at the UN as well as regionally to reduce or even outright lift the sanctions - yes, the same sanctions now proclaimed to have been all that was needed to keep Saddam in his cage.

Containment isn't a plan - it's what is done when a plan fails. It is a mere stopgap measure that can allow one time to solve a problem, but it solves nothing in and of itself. In the age of terrorism, and nuclear and biochem proliferation, containment isn't a solution.

Posted by MEC2 at August 13, 2004 09:44 PM