Air Power Wins Wars, Fails to Purge ‘Rogue’ Leaders

WASHINGTON —  After 78 days of airstrikes and 34,300 sorties, the United States and its allies appear to have curbed the flagrant aggression of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But they have not managed to evict him from power.

The situation bears an uncomfortable resemblance to their experience in Iraq. The U.S. and its allies were able in 1991 to reverse Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. But eight years and 250,000 sorties later, Hussein’s stubborn standoff with the West shows no sign of ending soon.

The bitter aftertaste of the Persian Gulf War appears to be one reason why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s victory in Yugoslavia does not seem quite as sweet as it might otherwise.

In both theaters, a fundamental lesson is clear: Allied air power can deter or defeat military aggression, making a ground offensive comparatively easy or even unnecessary. But the thunderous might of aerial bombardments is not effective in removing an authoritarian leader from power--at least not with any speed.

In other words, airstrikes have not proved to be a useful political tool in Iraq, and there is no assurance that the outcome will be any different in Yugoslavia.

The current situation in Iraq illustrates the problem.

“A change in Iraq’s leadership is not going to happen from air power alone,” a senior U.S. official acknowledged. “Bombing can only put on additional pressure. It will take fortuitous events on the ground by internal forces to get rid of Saddam.”

The frequent airstrikes against Iraq in the aftermath of a December air campaign labeled Operation Desert Fox have destroyed more than a quarter of Iraq’s air-defense systems, U.S. officials say. Yet the increased pressure on Hussein’s regime has so far yielded little.

“What we’re doing is aimed at a constant attrition of Iraq’s air defenses to demoralize the military and reduce its capability. That contributes to containing Iraq,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the U.S. capital.

“But in terms of producing a situation that pressures the military into launching a coup, which is the U.S. goal, it doesn’t do much. In balancing the incentives to act, Saddam Hussein still offers the [Iraqi] military more.”

In Iraq, the ongoing airstrikes by the U.S. and Britain have come in response to the targeting of allied aircraft, which patrol the northern and southern “no-fly” zones created after the Gulf War to prevent Hussein from harassing his neighbors and Iraq’s Kurdish minority and Shiite Muslims. On Friday, for example, U.S. warplanes bombed an Iraqi communication site after being fired upon by antiaircraft artillery, Associated Press reported. It was the 57th attack in six months on Iraqi facilities in the northern zone.

But those skirmishes are peripheral to Iraq’s center of power in Baghdad, as well as to the Republican Guard forces that are the regime’s main military prop.

“The right people aren’t being hit, so this is not going to result in a decisive strategic outcome,” Eisenstadt said.

Still, the U.S. has no intention of abandoning the fight. In fact, Clinton administration officials say last month’s victory over Milosevic has serious implications for Hussein and his military commanders at a critical juncture in the prolonged crisis.

“It showed that the United States can sustain a controversial air campaign for a long time without the American people going haywire,” a senior administration official said. “It showed that the Russians and Chinese can’t save an ally. It showed that we can lose airplanes and have soldiers taken prisoner and still persevere. U.S. resolve is not so easily broken.”

Now that a sitting head of state--Milosevic--has been indicted on war crimes charges, he said, Hussein “has to be worried about the danger of being indicted himself if he should step out of line again.”

Despite his remarkable staying power, Hussein is showing signs of vulnerability, according to U.S. officials and regional experts. His problems are largely internal, including social unrest and a deteriorating economy. But Washington hopes that the ongoing allied bombardments will tighten the squeeze and eventually prod the military to act against Hussein.

The greatest challenge to Hussein’s regime has been the internal reaction to the February slaying of a prominent Shiite ayatollah. Mohammed Sadeq Sadr’s death triggered three days of demonstrations in Baghdad and the Shiite-dominated south.

“This is the most significant unrest since the uprisings following the 1991 war,” said Judith Yaphe, an Iraq specialist at National Defense University in Washington. “The problems that started this spring in the south have continued to elude Saddam’s ability to resolve them. He’s been very distracted by the security threat at home, which has limited his ability to mess around on other fronts.”

To divert attention from his political problems and to beef up his domestic security, Hussein this week sent about 60,000 Iraqi boys ages 12 to 17 to summer military camps, where they will receive light-weapons training with AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and pistols. The boys are called “Saddam’s Youth.”

Iraq’s currency has plummeted to a new low in the past two months. Before the war, the Iraqi dinar was worth about $3. Today, it takes 1,200 dinars to equal $1. Last week, the Hussein government complained that U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 have cost the country more than $120 billion in income.

“Saddam is increasingly isolated and on the defensive,” the senior U.S. official said. “It’ll take time and perseverance, but there are no ways out for him.”