The strengthening of Iraq

The threat from Baghdad to Middle East stability remains. Last week's deal by United Nations Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan just gave an unfocused U.S. reason not to unleash the military might it had amassed around Iraq. Newly negotiated access by U.N. weapons inspectors to formerly closed facilities doesn't matter. What matters is that Saddam Hussein remains in power, stronger in the region than before.

He's stronger for two main reasons. The deflating crisis liberated no one from his despotism. And his neighbors are weaker, thanks to U.N. deal-making and U.S. confusion.

Saddam's oppressed and terrorized subjects had little say over the outcome, of course. But his neighbors should have acted more forcefully on behalf of their economic and strategic interests.

Worst fear

Events culminating in the U.N. deal ratified the worst fear of Persian Gulf oil producers: that American commitment to their protection has unpredictable limits. They'll now feel obliged to further distance themselves from the U.S. and to accommodate Saddam's regime in other, measured ways.

They also must brace themselves against damage from expansion of the U.N.'s perversely designed oil-for-food program. While Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan was in Baghdad waiting for an audience with Saddam, the U.N. Security Council approved his proposal to raise allowable Iraqi revenues from oil exports to $5.26 billion every 180 days from $2 billion. If Iraq can produce it, more than 2 million b/d of oil will pour into a replete market, heedless of price.

Not that Saddam cares about the food and medicine that U.N.-sanctioned oil money is supposed to buy. What he cares about is his relative strength in the Middle East, which naturally grows as the oil-based economies around him suffer from falling crude prices. So a market-wrecking expansion of the oil-for-food program serves Saddam's strategic purposes very well.

Gulf producers must be wondering where to look for friends. Last December, their economic foundations came under assault in an international protocol on global warming, which received outspoken support from governments already making more money by taxing oil than they do by producing it. More recently, the U.S. government embraced one of the protocol's core concepts with a draft energy policy seeking volumetric reductions in oil use. Then, on Iraq, the U.S. deferred to an international body oblivious to the strategic dimension of oil prices.

Yet non-Iraqi governments around the gulf share blame for their setbacks. Most of them are known to want to be rid of Saddam but do not, given his ruthlessness and their doubts about American commitment and motives, dare say so. Some of them also have political reasons not to want to appear subject to western influence.

At some point, however, the gulf governments need to decide whether they want American protection or not and, if they do, to act like it. They had good reason to be frightened when officials of the Clinton administration began declaring Saddam not to be the target of whatever military action might occur. To head for nearest cover and deny U.S. forces access to bases, as some did, however, was unconscionable.

Why resolve wavers

Gulf governments need to understand that such behavior is part of the reason that U.S. resolve wavers at times. Americans do not go to war without good reasons, clearly expressed and popularly supported. This time they heard insufficient reason from their own government to endanger lives. And from governments dependent on them for defense they saw only thinly veiled hostility.

So Saddam emerges from the latest crisis stronger than he was before as the countries around him, due to falling oil prices, and the U.S., due to damaged credibility, end up weaker. Before the next crisis, the U.S., the gulf producers, and the U.N. need to get specific about their interests in relation to one another and decide what they're willing to do to pursue them. The next crisis could happen at any time.