I don’t disagree with that. This is a complex issue, and there are a lot of things going on. France is attempting to build a coalition to check U.S. power. France is also jockeying for power within the EU. And France has 50 billion dollars worth of oil contracts with Iraq, negotiated at very favorable terms, and only due when the sanctions are dropped.
But even that is just symptomatic of the real issue: France sees Iraq has being in its own sphere of influence. France was one of Saddam’s biggest trading partners before the Gulf war. Cooperation between France and Iraq goes back decades.
So yes, there are a lot of factors in play. The bottom line is that France has a lot to lose from a successful U.S. invasion of Iraq, in financial losses, prestige, political capital, embarassment, weakening its position in the EU, etc.
As for Russia, I agree that simple corruption makes more sense than high collusion with the government to thwart the U.S. Russia is starved for hard currency, and Saddam is awash in it. That causes government officials to look the other way.
Nonetheless, Russia was warned by the U.S. at the highest levels long before the war started, and chose to do nothing. It was therefore embarassing to the Russian government when U.S. tanks started falling victim to the vrey missiles the Americans were concerned about. It remains to be seen what other Russian weapons are found in Iraq, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.
“And France has 50 billion dollars worth of oil contracts with Iraq, negotiated at very favorable terms, and only due when the sanctions are dropped”
Except that sanctions were unlikely to be dropped while Saddam was in power so these contracts are largely worthless.
Wouldn’t it make better economic sense to support an invasion and use the leverage thus gained to obtain real contracts after the war which actually result in production and profits?
Not to mention the fact that as a net importer of oil (2 million bpd IIRC) the French will benefit if the invasion is successful and succeeds in increasing the supply of Iraqi oil and reducing the world price.
In other words your claims make no sense whatsoever…
France’s position in the EU is far from weakened. If anyone’s position has been seriously damaged, it is Britain’s. Blair knows that fully well, which is why he has started to bridge the gap by insisting on UN oversight after the war. Spain is irrelevant anyway, given that they will have a number of elections in the months to come culminating in parliamentary elections next year, which will lead Aznar into political oblivion. In fact, the French, if anything, will profit, given that a joint EU decision making process on foreign issues is now seen as imperative by people on both sides of the Iraq question. Not the least, however, the attack has largely eliminated the chance for the US to be seen as a fair arbitrator in middle eastern affairs by the Arab world for the short term, which will only lend more power to the EU in such a role.
As for financial losses, it remains to be seen how high they will be in the end. Given that the Iraqis have already stated they will not feel bound by any contracts not enacted by a sovereign Iraqi government, there are far more unknowns than knowns in the reconstruction process. Not the least, a US administration there giving out contracts to US companies alone can easily be seen as a case of illegal subsidies, and is unlikely to rouse sympathies by the Iraqis, especially when they are asked to pay for it.
Regarding France, I think that power on an individual level is a much more direct influence on its policies. Chirac knows fully well he only had a very marginal support in the public, despite his record election. He also knows that there’s DAs sharpening their knives for the day he ceases to be president and enjoy the immunity coming with that office. Doing what he did was the PR coup of the century, providing him with immense public support. Conversely, supporting the US would have resulted in large parts of the public calling for his being ousted.
There is a blurb in the latest issue of US News and World Report (a fairly conservative publication, it’s true) that says the three main opponents to the invasion of Iraq were France, Germany, and Russia. Iraq owes people a lot of money, and see if you can guess which three countries hold most of the Iraqi foreign debt.
By the way, this drivel from the anti-war folks about the U.S. having armed Saddam is a gross exaggeration. Saddam has NEVER been a major recipient of U.S. weaponry. The ‘chemical weapons’ he received were things like anthrax samples delivered for agricultural purposes, and NOT for weaponry. The shipments did not come from the U.S. military, but from the Center for Disease Control.
Saddam’s primary arms suppliers have always been the Russians and France. Saddam’s fighter jets are Mirage F1’s (French) and MiG 29’s (Russian). Saddam’s missiles are Russian, French, and Chinese. Saddam’s artillery is mostly Russian. The light arms used in Iraq are mostly Russian.
The amount of military aid given to Saddam by the U.S., even when he was an ‘ally’, was a trivial amount. I believe the total amount of U.S. aid amounted to about 200 million dollars, compared to hundreds of billions from other countries.
I hope no other madmen were armed in this apparently innocuous manner.
It is not wrong to say “the US helped arm Iraq”. And “The US armed Iraq” is itself not an exclusive statement, in fact it could exist right alongside other statements such as “France armed Iraq”.
But it would be totally disingenuous, wouldn’t you agree? If the U.S. sold 200 million worth of goods to Iraq, most of which was intended for agricultural purposes, while France sold Iraq 200 billion dollars worth of fighter jets, nuclear power plants, missiles, etc., then it would be very, very misleading to say, “The U.S. helped arm Iraq just as France did.”
The fact is, Iraq was armed by Russia, China, and France. The U.S. was not a real factor - and whatever money flowed to Iraq from the U.S. was a piddling amount.
Sam, speaking of disingenuous, please refrain from implying that US provided no military aid to Iraq. I’m pretty sure the American arms found in the Iraqi weapons cache were not intended for “agricultural purposes.”
(Or maybe they were. Perhaps the rifles were intended for shooting crows…)
I can’t vouch for the Jordanian arms, but the coalition did find Russian gas masks and chemical suits, still in the plastic bags, with expiration dates of 2007, which means that they were pretty new.
Uh ok… sure.
Except in the decade before the first Gulf War the United states did help build Iraq’s military. Quite a bit of it was in the form of “aid” that could be weaponized. The helicopters they used on their own people before the No fly zones were imposed were American designed sold for “Agricultural scouting purposes” which became gun ships quite easily. The agricultural chemicals that were sold had the side benifit of being able to be combined to make chemical weapons.
I wasn’t aware that I had implied that. But here are the facts: Between 1980 and 1990, Iraq purchased about 60-70 billion dollars in weapons from other countries. The U.S. contribution was less than a billion dollars - and it came primarily in the form of about 100 helicopters. Another billion or so in ‘dual-use’ equipment (machine tools, computers, ambulances, large trucks) was sold to Iraq by the U.S. And unfortunately, far too many dangerous chemicals, although NONE were intended for weaponry. But Iraq bought a lot of pesticides, cultures of things like anthrax and botulinin toxin, etc. Bad policy by the U.S. for sure, but there were legitimate non-military uses for this stuff.
That’s about all I can find for U.S. weapons being sold to Iraq. Iraq was in possession of a very small amount of other U.S. weapons, but they were purchased from other countries like Jordan. Things like Howitzers, small arms, etc.
In comparison, France alone during this period sold Iraq: 400 Exocet missiles, 200 AS30 laser-guided missiles, 133 Mirage F1 fighters, Five Super Etendard advanced strike fighters, and 100 Gazelle, Super-Frelon, and Alouette helicopters. And that’s just aircraft and air-to-ground missiles.
Before the gulf war, Iraq had 5500 tanks. ALL of them came from the Soviet Union or China. Anti-tank weaponry came from China, France, and Russia.
In fact, if you go through the Iraqi inventory of arms, three countries leap out at you - China, Russia, and France. These three countries are responsible for about 95% of all of Iraq’s weapon purchases, and virtually 100% of the weapons extant around the first Gulf war.
Of the helicopters the U.S. sold Iraq in the early 1980’s, none survived in the inventory after the Iran/Iraq war, as far as I can tell. They were either destroyed or became unmaintainable because the U.S. soon stopped selling parts to Iraq.
So when people say, “The U.S. armed Iraq”, it is SERIOUSLY misleading. It implies that Iraq’s military strength was somewhat due to the United States, or even that soldiers in Iraq today are facing U.S. weapons. This is simply not true. If the U.S. hadn’t sold those 100-odd helicopters to Iraq, it would have just bought them from someone else. And in any event, 1 or 2 billion dollars is a TRIVIAL amount of hardware compared to the ‘big three’ suppliers, and most of it was dual-use anyway.
Sam, The Rumsfeld-led envoy gave Sadaam something even more important–legitimacy. That allowed the other countries to treat The Ba’ath party as the legitimate government of Iraq.
I don’t disagree with that. The U.S. did aid the Iraqi regime in lots of ways - it just didn’t ARM the regime. Not in any meaningful sense.
No one disputes that the U.S. supported the Hussein regime. There was a policy shift in the 80’s - at the start of the Iran/Iraq war, the U.S. had a policy of rough neutrality in the conflict. But the Reagan administration came to believe that Iran was a bigger threat, and therefore supported Saddam’s regime. Remember, this was just after the Iranian hostage crisis, and during the period of time when Iran was screaming about the “Great Satan”. Hussein, in comparison, looked like a moderate, secular leader - someone who could be reasoned with.
However, as the U.S. came to realize how barbarous Hussein’s regime was, and how reckless and dangerous he was, U.S. policy shifted away from the regime and became actively hostile. France, Russia, and China ignored all this and continued to befriend the regime and sell arms and give other support to it, up to and including their tireless efforts to keep Saddam in power this year.
Odd, then, that Oliver North and his seekret clique of operatives were selling arms to Iran at about the same time. I believe Ronnie even sent a cake to Iran as a token of gratitude.
The only reason Reagan backed Hussein at all was because Iran was being supported by the Russians at the time. Since, in the conservatives’ black-and-white worldview, Communists == evil, it was imperative to support Iraq as an anti-communism move. Any doubts about working with Saddam were irrelevant, since all Reagan cared about was countering the Soviets.
Well, I think you have 1/2 of a point Sam. You’re correct that the U.S. was not a primary arms supplier, even during the Iran-Iraq War ( and not at all before that, as Iraq was the primary regional foe of Iran, the dominant U.S. proxy/ally in the region ). However I wouldn’t take that too far. Above and beyond the direct arms sales, the U.S. carefully funneled equipment through other states ( for example those cluster bombs purchased from Chile were obtained with U.S. blessing ) and diplomatically it quietly helped prod the Gulf States into supplying the cash to buy those French, Russian, and Chinese arms. I don’t have the exact cite in front of me, but my source is Anthony Cordesman et al. in his volume on the Iran-Iraq War.
Abe has the correct answer - the U.S. helped arm Iraq, at least during the Iran-Iraq War.
I’ll agree with this, with the exception that I don’t think the U.S. administration, or at the very least the regional specialists in the State Department, ever had any serious illusions as to how “moderate” Saddam Hussein was. He was considered the lesser of two evils, period.
I think you are exaggerating U.S. benevolence. The correct modifiers are probably unreliable and uncooperative. The barbarity was quietly tolerated during the war and they knew he was reckless from the first minute he invaded Iran. France, Russia, and China continued to supply arms to him because they always had and it was good business. I’m quite certain ( yes, this is opinion ) the U.S. would have done the same if it had come to that. The reason they didn’t wasn’t so much political ( before 1991 ), but for the same practical reasons they hadn’t been a major equipment supplier before - the Iraqi military was already primarily equipped with a dual soviet/western equipment grouping ( like so many third-world nations ), in this case Russian and French-patterned, that would have only had more incompatability problems if they had added a third major supplier.
A misguided and poorly executed attempt to deal with the Lebanese hostage crisis. A realpolitik dealing that had nothing to do with nothing, really ( at least vis-a-vis the Iran-Iraq War ).
I substantively agree with Sam’s take on U.S. motives ( excluding benevolence, as I mentioned ).
While the cold-warrior mentality doubtless seeped into the equation ( it was indeed endemic in the Reagan administration, for good or ill ), I don’t think this was the major factor. The U.S.S.R. in fact armed both sides, but mostly Iraq before 1989 ( i.e. both before and during the Iran-Iraq War it was THE largest arms supplier to Iraq ). China and North Korea were the bigger suppliers of arms to Iran during the war, but neither was ever regarded as a Cold War threat on the level of the U.S.S.R. .
Tamerlane - Well, I pretty much agree with you. The U.S. had a policy of aiding Hussein’s regime, and that included things like looking the other way while American arms were funneled to Iraq through other states, as well as giving direct aid and support.
My point, however, is that the sum totality of U.S. military aid to Iraq is DWARFED by the amount of arms received from France, Russia, and China. If the U.S. had maintained an overtly hostile stance towards Iraq and not given them a nickel, Hussein’s regime at the start of the Gulf war would have had about the same amount of arms as it did with U.S. support. Because the sum total of all support from the U.S. and aid from allies amounts to a few billion dollars at a time when Iraq was the largest importer of arms in the world, buying tens of billions of dollars in weaponry each year.
So in that sense, saying “The U.S. armed Iraq” is disingenuous. Even, “The U.S. helped arm Iraq” overplays the effect U.S. aid had on the Iraq military. A more accurate statement would be something like, “The U.S. gave Iraq a small amount of aid in the 1980’s, almost all of which was used up in the Iran/Iraq war”.
After all, I can’t find a single U.S. weapon in any Iraq inventories such as the one at GlobalSecurity or FAS. Those 100 American helicopters are long gone, and the only other U.S. weapons Iraq ever got were a few howitzers and other small arms, and ammunition for those mostly dried up by the early 1990’s. So in no substantial way does Iraq’s military power have anything to do with the United States.
