Summary

This proposal identifies a middle ground between the two existing approaches to Iraq: continue to do nothing, or pursue an overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In the lead chapter of the report, Carnegie president Jessica T. Mathews proposes "coercive inspections" in which a multinational military force created by the UN Security Council would enable international inspections teams to operate effectively in Iraq. The U.S. would forswear unilateral military action against Iraq as long as inspections worked unhindered. This "comply or else" tactic would place the burden of choosing war squarely on Saddam Hussein.

The report stems from a series of bipartisan meetings held at the Carnegie Endowment beginning in April. The discussions included international experts on the Middle East and former military officers and inspectors intimately familiar with Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs, including: Charles G. Boyd, General, U.S. Air Force (Retired); Rolf Ekeus, former Swedish Ambassador and former UNSCOM Executive Chairman; Robert L. Gallucci, former U.S. Ambassador and former Deputy Executive Chairman of UNSCOM; Terence Taylor, former UNSCOM Commissioner, former Chief Inspector in Iraq, and former career officer in the British Army; and Patrick Clawson, Deputy Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The report includes a detailed analysis of UNSCOM and IAEA inspections, the new political situation that makes UN support for a new inspections regime possible, the likely responses from Russia and Middle East states, and relevant UN resolutions and international laws.

This paper identifies an alternative policy that, as Mathews writes, "blends the imperative for military threat against a regime that has learned how to divide and conquer the major powers with the legitimacy of UN sanction and multilateral action.