Dec. 11, 2002

Dr. Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and director of its Sabin Center for Middle East Policy, says his research has led him to conclude, "very reluctantly," that the United States has little choice but to go to war with Iraq in the next few years "to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon and to threaten the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the entire world with the threat of nuclear devastation."

In a recent interview with the Washington File, Pollack said there is now a consensus among U.S., British, French, German and Israeli intelligence agencies that Iraq has everything it needs to build nuclear weapons, and while estimates vary as to when this will happen, "they all fall within the range of somewhere between four and six years."

War with Iraq may not be imminent, in his assessment, "but it can't be put off for very long, maybe two or three years at most."

Pollack said one of the principal reasons for concluding that war is inevitable is the failure of the 1990s multinational program designed to contain Iraq, a program that consisted of sanctions, no-fly zones and weapons inspections.

"It failed because the Iraqis got very good at defeating the system and because international support for containment, which was the sine qua non of its success, evaporated, and I don't think that there's any likelihood that containment can be rebuilt in the future," he said.

The main Iraqi threat to the United States, in Pollack's view, is its nuclear potential, not its purported ties to al Qaeda terrorists. He said he disagrees with the Bush administration on this point.

"While Iraq is unquestionably a state sponsor of terrorism, I do not believe that they are deeply tied to the al Qaeda network. In the past, Iraq's ties to al Qaeda were always very tenuous, and while the administration does say that they have new evidence, I have not seen it and I remain unconvinced that the Iraqis have made new overtures to al Qaeda," he said.

Asked why Iraq is being treated differently from countries with known nuclear capabilities, such as North Korea, Pollack replied that the response to Iraq is based on President Saddam Hussein's past behavior.

"While the North Koreans are unquestionably aggressive and expansionist," he said, "they have not attacked anyone in 52 years. By contrast, the Iraqis have attacked five of their neighbors in the last 22 years and threatened three others. ... In addition, Iraq has employed weapons of mass destruction against its own people and against its neighbors. It has violated virtually every international agreement it has ever signed and 16 U.N. resolutions against it."

Pollack noted that the international community has tried -- but failed -- to disarm Saddam Hussein by convincing him to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction voluntarily. Hussein's refusal, he said, has cost Iraq "somewhere between 150 to 180 billion [thousand million] dollars in lost oil revenues. It has destroyed Iraq's economy. It has destroyed Iraq's conventional armed forces, and it has impoverished the Iraqi people."

In the interview with the Washington File, the Brookings scholar also answered questions about the legal basis for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, Arab countries' views of possible military action, and what a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq might look like.