IRAQ Eastern Flank of the Arab World by Christine Moss Helms Published by: The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 208 pp; $28.95 cloth; $9.95 paper; 1985

Abstract

At the end of 1979 when the fall of the Shah of Iran was imminent, all eyes
were set on Iraq. Iraq was then seen as the new giant of the Gulf. It had remained
completely aloof from all the major inter-Arab disputes and contnwersies
for almost a decade and had exclusively focused its attention on its own
socio-economic development. Its development performance during the 1970s
had been phenomenal. Iraqi economic planning was rated by international
development experts as the most prudent, rational and well-implemented in
the entire Middle East. Notwithstanding-or perhaps because of- its oppressive
political apparatus, the Ba'thist state had imposed a code of strict, puritanical
financial ethics on its international economic transactions. Iraqi development
experience was thus regarded as unique in the Third World in that it was the
least hog-tied by malpractices, pay-offs and personal empire-building by the
leadership.
Iraq in 1979 was thus a nation with great promise. The size of its oil reserves
and potential oil revenues, its capacity for sustained economic development
based on a non-oil economy, and its vast water resources that offered the
possibility of an expanded economic base in both agriculture and industry,
were some of the major advantages Iraq enjoyed over other Arab oil-producing
states. Its geographical position bordering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan,
Turkey, and Iran placed it in an area of great geostrategic concern for
both regional and global ewers. Its pivotal position between Israel to the
west and the Gulf to the east, where it forms what Christine Moss Helms
has called "the eastern flank of the Arab World" was regarded as unique in
the Middle East.
But then, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein took the greatest gamble of his
life-and lost. He misjudged the vulnerability of the newly installed Islamic
Republic of Iran under the leadership of Ayatullah Khomeini and, believing
in his own rhetoric about the invincibility of the Iraqi armed forces, decided
to invade Iran on some filmsy pretexts. Five and a half years after the war ...