The formal deadline for dealmaking is now only a week away, and the prospects for a peaceful settlement of the Persian Gulf crisis are not good. Last week more than 1 million troops on both sides were squaring off for battle. As time ran out, there was a spate of freelance diplomacy, with interested parties in Europe and the Middle East groping frantically for a last-gasp solution. In Washington, a new Congress wrung its hands. “We have crossed the Rubicon,” Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont wrote in his journal after a briefing from President Bush. “The question is not whether we will have a war, but when.” The American public seemed increasingly fearful. In a new poll by NEWSWEEK, half of the people surveyed said war was “very likely” (chart).
War, if it comes to that, is not likely to break out promptly on Jan. 15, when military action is authorized by the United Nations if Iraq has not withdrawn from Kuwait. The Pentagon is still building up its forces and considering which superweapons it will put to use (box, page 16). And the military is still arguing with the press over ground rules for covering a conflict. Administration sources hint that if the crisis does lead to war, fighting would probably begin late this month or early in February. But if a conflict is to be averted, crucial steps must be taken this week, with Baker as point man on George Bush’s last peace patrol.
The original hope was that by making Saddam an offer he couldn’t refuse, Baker would complete a five-month campaign to bluff the Iraqi strongman out of Kuwait. Bush would avert a bloody conflict through savvy diplomacy and the threat of force, thereby saving his nascent New World Order, not to mention his presidency. Recently Iraq mixed fighting words with hints of compromise. But Washington feared that Baker’s meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Geneva this Wednesday would be more an exchange of rhetorical broadsides than a meeting of minds.
On the eve of Baker’s mission, there was tension within the administration. The White House and the State Department couldn’t agree on whether Baker should go on to Baghdad if Saddam invited him. A hot debate broke out over the contents of a personal letter from Bush to Saddam, as the White House pushed for a hard line and Baker urged a more temperate tone. White House officials no longer believe that Iraq is ready to make decisive concessions. Baker, always the realist, is said to be pessimistic too. Ever the politician, he is making his pessimism known - the better to lower expectations.
Strictly speaking, Baker will not negotiate with Saddam. “This will not be secret diplomacy at work,” Bush vowed on Saturday. “Secretary Baker will restate, in person, a message for Saddam Hussein: withdraw from Kuwait unconditionally and immediately, or face the terrible consequences.” While it is likely that Baker will do more than simply deliver an ultimatum, his well-honed bargaining tools will be blunted. Among the obstacles:
It has always been Rule One with Baker to allow his opponent to save face. Once the other side caves on the essential issue in a negotiation, Baker tries to make concessions on less important matters. He does have some sops to offer the Iraqis. If Saddam gets out of Kuwait, Baker will say, the Bush administration will not attack the Iraqi leader and his military machine. He can indicate that the United States will not stand in the way of Saddam’s “Arab brothers” if - after a decent interval - they want to give him an oilfield or an island or two in the Persian Gulf. He can say that Bush wants to see progress on the Palestinian issue, though he can make no promises regarding a Middle East peace conference. And he can indicate that the United Nations will lift most of the sanctions - except those aimed at Iraq’s war-fighting potential, particularly its chemical- and nuclear-weapons programs. All these assurances have been made publicly already by Bush and the United Nations Security Council. Still, Baker cannot be too obvious; he cannot seem to offer a deal.
White House aides are mildly concerned that in his zeal to emerge as the great peacemaker, Baker will give too much. They recall that as Bush’s campaign manager in 1980, Baker shut down Bush’s presidential campaign - over his candidate’s objections - in order to preserve Bush’s chances of getting the second spot on the GOP ticket. His aides insist that Baker will be circumspect this time - if only because he knows the Iraqis are likely to tape the whole meeting and make public any embarrassing giveaways.
In Geneva, Baker will hand Tariq Aziz Bush’s letter to Saddam. Baker wanted the letter to include the carrot as well as the stick: after the first paragraph containing Bush’s get-out-or-else threat, Baker wanted a second paragraph outlining the incentives for him to back down. White House staffers objected. National-security adviser Brent Scowcroft feared that Saddam would use the letter to suggest that Washington had groveled. At the weekend, the two sides were still wrangling.
Over the years, Baker has disarmed countless politicians and diplomats with Texas charm and plain talk. But Saddam Hussein would be exceedingly hard to bond with, even if Baker’s boss had not compared the Iraqi leader to Hitler. The cultural differences are too great. Baker regards himself as a straight shooter who never leaves the bargaining table without spelling out exactly what was agreed to. He wants to eliminate any possibility that the other side will later exploit a misunderstanding. Arab leaders, however, generally regard such attempts at candor as naive and unbelievable. “Trust,” a sine qua non for Baker, is not even in Saddam’s vocabulary. Baker prefers to get to the point. But in most Arab parleys, says William Quandt, a national-security staffer under Jimmy Carter, “there are a lot of hints about one’s position, without making things clear. Things usually don’t get done in one meeting, and everything is susceptible to bargaining.”
As secretary of State, Baker has been careful never to negotiate without first making sure that he is on firm ground at home. Before he began bargaining with the Soviets on arms control, he quietly canvassed Congress to see how far he could go. But Congress is in chaos over Iraq. Lawmakers returned to Washington from their Christmas break demanding a voice in gulf policy but hopelessly divided over what to say. Many congressmen seem to want to let the sanctions work for a few more months before going to war, but it is unlikely they would actually vote to stop Bush from commencing hostilities. The president continues to “consult” with congressional leaders - yet insists that the final decision is his alone. Saddam watches the unruly spectacle on CNN and sees a weakened opponent.
In Europe, public opinion is shifting against war, and America’s allies are growing restless. Last week the 12-member European Community decided to hold its own meeting with Aziz the day after the Iraqi Foreign minister confers with Baker. (Aziz declined, perhaps to keep open the option of inviting Baker to Baghdad that day.) Behind the facade of unity, some Europeans, notably the French, want to push harder for a compromise than Bush does. In September French President Francois Mitterrand said that if Saddam promised to get out of Kuwait, “everything would be possible.” Last week French politician Michel Vauzelle, who is close to Mitterrand, was in Baghdad, probing Saddam for a compromise.
The chances for miscalculation and missed opportunities on both sides are enormous. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have playing this hand than Baker, but it isn’t the world’s strongest hand,” says Washington lawyer Bob Strauss, a fellow Texan and another old hand at dealmaking. “He’s got a country that’s divided. He’s forced to operate with markers that were laid down early and in haste. And he’s got a coalition of countries with conflicting interests. Worst of all Saddam Hussein doesn’t know Jim Baker’s world, and Jim Baker doesn’t know Saddam Hussein’s.”
Among Bush’s senior advisers, Baker has always been the most cautious voice on the gulf. He and the president sometimes seem to have been stamped out by the same WASP cookie cutter, but there are important nuances that distinguish the two old friends. While subscribing to Bush’s vision of a New World Order - a system of collective security led by the United States - Baker lacks Bush’s visceral revulsion at Saddam’s aggression. And he privately winced at some of Bush’s macho threats to “kick ass.” Bush is a member of the old East Coast foreign-policy establishment that, in part for business reasons, has always seen a dominant role for the United States in preserving world order. Baker’s roots are in a wealthy old Texas family whose business and civic interests were far more parochial. In World War II, Bush enlisted in what he saw as a moral crusade. Baker’s war was Korea, a more ambiguous conflict, and he never saw combat as a Marine lieutenant.
Unlike most members of the Washington elite, Baker actually has a family member at risk - Will Winston, 24, son of his wife, Susan, by her first marriage, a reservist in an Army National Guard reconnaissance unit that could be called up if war breaks out. “When we look at those soldiers, we see the face of our son,” says Susan Baker. Above all, Baker is controlled and careful while Bush is far more spontaneous and incline I to take risks “Jim Baker is still a corporate lawyer at heart,” says a friend. “He hates unpredictability.”
Baker was slower than others in the administration to conclude that sanctions and a massive troop deployment would not drive Saddam out of Kuwait, and that force might be required to do the job instead. Within the inner councils of the administration, according to White House and Pentagon officials, he has been the most outspoken about the costs of war. Baker’s aides have never heard him criticize the president’s policy, but they have heard him say, “We have to make sure the president understands the consequences.” Most annoying to the secretive White House, Baker’s reservations became publicly known. A New York Times article in November suggesting that the cool Baker was a restraining force on the gung-ho Bush was resented by White House critics as a classic Baker ploy to cover his rear. “People around here feel that Baker or his aides are awfully quick to get out his version of events,” said a White House official. “It’s seen as a preoccupation with the boss’s reputation that borders on an obsession. It gets under people’s skin.”
Baker’s differences with Bush are tactical, not philosophical. He is no Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Foreign minister who resigned over a matter of principle. Baker has never questioned Bush’s goal of driving Saddam from Kuwait. Baker is Bush’s man, and has been for 35 years. “To put it bluntly, Baker recognized that if that’s where the president is, he ought to be there too,” says a State Department colleague.
Bush values Baker for his political advice, not for an overarching world view. High-concept strategizing comes more from national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft, although Bush is really his own architect when it comes to shaping foreign policy. Most of Baker’s suggestions have been pragmatic. They are aimed at maintaining the support at home and abroad that Bush will need to settle the crisis - whether by diplomacy or war. Baker supported the doubling of the U.S. deployment in the gulf from 200,000 troops to 400,000. But during a visit to Moscow, he fired off a cable to Scowcroft arguing in vain that the announcement should be put off until Congress and the allies could be massaged. Baker’s political fears were well founded: Sam Nunn, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, became a vocal critic of administration policy after he felt that he had not been properly consulted over the buildup.
Baker was first to recognize the value of working through the United Nations Security Council, despite reservations of the White House and the Pentagon. By using the Security Council, Baker was able to reassure both the Soviets and the American people that Bush wasn’t going it alone, like a Ronald Reagan cowboy. Baker choreographed a dozen U.N. resolutions aimed at Iraq, including the unprecedented Nov. 29 vote that in effect authorized military action against Saddam if he refused to withdraw from Kuwait. It was also Baker who pushed for the idea of asking America’s allies to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for the Pentagon’s additional costs.
Trying to manipulate public opinion, a disparate international coalition and Saddam Hussein all at once is a difficult juggling act, even for someone as politically agile as Baker. “For five months we’ve had to play both sides of the equation,” Baker told NEWSWEEK. “When something helps one side, it generally hurts the other.” For example, the Saudis were shocked by President Bush’s surprise offer on Nov. 30 to send Baker on a mission to Baghdad to talk to Saddam. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was anxiously wondering whether Washington had any other secret tricks up its sleeve when Baker tracked him down in London. “Hi, Bandar, this is your wake-up call,” Baker said affably. “Do you still trust me?” Bandar assured the secretary that he did. “Good,” said Baker. His voice dropped into a near whisper. “Did you see The Washington Post poll?” he asked. The poll showed that Bush’s announcement had stopped a sharp slide in popular support for his gulf policy. “I saw it,” said Bandar. “You see?” said Baker. “It worked.”
True enough, the ploy worked to allay public fears in the United States. But the offer may just lead the United States into an Iraqi trap. Aziz may declare that he and Baker made progress in their meeting and invite Baker to Baghdad to meet with Saddam. If Baker goes to the Iraqi capital, he risks getting caught in a protracted and fruitless negotiation. That could put the president under pressure to let the Jan. 15 deadline slip. It would not be long before the March heat and dust storms, and the Muslim holy season of Ramadan, which would make going to war much more difficult.
Late last week Bush insisted that Baker would not be lured to Baghdad. “We’ve exhausted that option,” the president said as he left for a weekend at Camp David. The Geneva meeting with Tariq Aziz, he declared, was the end of the diplomatic road. But sometimes negotiations develop a momentum of their own. State Department officials acknowledge that if Saddam does beckon Baker to meet with him, the invitation would be very difficult to turn down. Congress and the allies, they say, would insist that he go the extra mile.
By having decided to walk down this road with his old friend, Baker is exposed in ways that are exceedingly uncomfortable for a man who has perfected the art of risk avoidance. Baker sought the job as secretary of State in part because he wanted to shed the image of a political gun for hire. Prince Bandar, for one, thinks the gulf crisis has transformed Baker from “politician to statesman.” Says Bandar: “A politician will always zigzag and dodge the bullets and survive. A statesman will take a stand.” Of course, the stand in the gulf is really George Bush’s. But Jim Baker’s reputation is on the line too. If he fails, a lot more could go up in smoke than just his career.
Do you think U.S. forces should engage in combat with Iraq if Iraq refuses to leave Kuwait and restore its former government?
61% Yes; 29% No
Is it likely that the U.S. forces in and around Saudi Arabia will become engaged in combat?
50% Very likely 32% Somewhat likely 11% Not too likely 4% Not at all likely
For this NEWSWEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization interviewed a national sample of 759 adults by telephone Jan. 3-4. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Some “Don’t Know” and other responses not shown. The NEWSWEEK Poll copyright 1991 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.
