Analysis | Putin and Saddam Hussein Have a Lot in Common

Each historic comparability is a stretch — historical past doesn’t fairly repeat itself. And but, to a reader of the chapters of Saddam Hussein biographies that cope with the Iraq-Iran struggle, the parallels are unavoidable.

Ostensibly making an attempt to stop Iran’s Islamic Revolution from spreading to his nation’s giant Shiite group, Saddam Hussein first launched bombing raids on Iran’s navy airfields after which despatched tanks rolling into the neighboring nation in late September 1980. Putin, too, has sought to painting his invasion as preemptive — to him, Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi regime” was creating an “anti-Russia,” a beachhead of the hostile West, subsequent to Russia’s borders.“We want neither to destroy Iran nor to occupy it,” Iraqi Overseas Minister Tariq Aziz declared 11 days earlier than the invasion started. Russian official statements matched this one nearly verbatim — and as late as October 2022, Putin himself claimed: “We now have by no means set the purpose of destroying Ukraine.”Saddam’s navy targets in 1980 had been as vaguely outlined as Putin’s in 2022: specifics drowned in nationalist rhetoric. Whereas Putin has in contrast himself to Czar Peter the Nice, who, in response to him, gained again a lot traditionally Russian land, Saddam styled himself one other Sa’d Ibn Abi Waqqas, the Arab basic who defeated a numerically superior Persian military within the yr 636, and even one other Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem in 587 B.C.

Like Putin in February 2022, Saddam in 1980 noticed his nation profitable a blitzkrieg (his imaginative and prescient stemmed, considerably counterintuitively, from the Israeli victory within the Six-Day Conflict of 1967).

“By all accounts he anticipated the struggle to final only some days — to finish by way of mediation to the collapse of Iranian resistance,” Mentioned Aburish wrote in Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, printed in 2000.

The Iraqi forces superior alongside a broad entrance, taking some villages and cities and initially trying a lot stronger than their poorly armed Iranian adversaries. But, like Putin’s Russia, Iraq did not destroy the Iranian air pressure on the bottom and set up full air superiority, and it quickly turned clear that the frontline was too lengthy for Iraqi troops to keep up the preliminary strain. Like Putin 42 years later, Saddam had underestimated his enemy’s preventing spirit; younger, typically poorly educated Iranian volunteers proved a match for his skilled navy.

Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi wrote of their 1991 political biography, Saddam Hussein:

Discovering themselves entrenched for months in rapidly ready defensive positions and subjected to the hardships of the local weather and the suicidal assaults of the Iranian militias, the Iraqi troops started to lose all sense of function. This lack of will, which was mirrored in studies of self-discipline issues and a rising variety of defections, in addition to within the giant numbers of Iraqi prisoners or struggle taken and weapons deserted, was exploited to the fullest by the revolutionary regime in Tehran.

If this sounds acquainted, that’s since you’ve been studying studies of poor morale, obligation avoidance and even rioting among the many invading Russian troops.

The blitzkrieg failed largely as a result of Saddam tried to command his invasion himself — “right down to platoon degree motion and the bombing of minor tactical targets,” in response to Aburish. Putin’s apparently heavy involvement in tactical choices by way of the spring of 2022 is paying homage to Saddam’s heavy-handedness — and neither Putin nor Saddam ever served within the navy at any degree.By the spring of 1981, Saddam’s forces had been not advancing; furthermore, in Might of that yr the Iranians gained again the symbolically vital metropolis of Khorramshahr, which the Iraqi propaganda referred to as Al-Muhammara (the apply of utilizing completely different names for cities is widespread at this time, too — many pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, for instance, use the Soviet title, Artyomovsk, for the city of Bakhmut, the place the struggle’s heaviest preventing at the moment rages). The setback prompted Saddam to fortify the border with Iran, fearing a counterattack, one thing Russia is doing at this time within the Belgorod and Kursk areas following the Ukrainian navy successes of final fall.

On the similar time, like Moscow twenty years later, Baghdad, with its bustling commerce and no seen shortages or defensive measures, didn’t look or really feel just like the capital of a rustic at struggle.

“As a substitute of concentrating most of Iraq’s sources on the navy effort and, like Iran, stressing the advantage of sacrifice, the Iraqi president sought to show to his people who he might wage struggle and keep a business-as-usual ambiance on the similar time,” Karsh and Rautsi wrote.

Like Russians at this time, Iraqis acquiesced to the battlefield losses, not least as a result of Saddam’s authorities offered the bereaved households with free vehicles, land plots and interest-free development loans. Putin’s authorities, too, pays sufficient compensation to purchase a brand new Russian-made automotive.

Each nations, it turned out, had been in a position to maintain one other seven years of off-again, on-again preventing that noticed comparatively small bits of territory misplaced and regained, the usage of chemical weapons and Iranian cities bombed and attacked with missiles as Saddam — like Putin within the final two years — launched retaliation strikes towards civilian infrastructure to make up for his lack of ability to win decisively on the battlefield.This resilience on either side was, partially, defined by the US angle: The superpower didn’t thoughts an extended struggle between sworn enemy Ayatollah Khomeini and pan-Arabist dictator Saddam. The US principally leaned in favor of Iraq, viewing Saddam, a secular ruler, because the lesser evil — however it did secretly promote weapons to Iran underneath the Iran-Contra deal. Within the present battle, after all, the US and its allies are firmly on the Ukrainian aspect — however they won’t intervene straight, and Russia, with its huge reserves of each manpower and armaments, will not be Iran within the Eighties, so the belligerents are kind of evenly balanced, similar to Iran and Iraq again within the day.

Conflict, nonetheless, is exhausting. By 1987, the Iran-Iraq battle was one of many longest common conflicts of the twentieth century, and Saddam was prepared to tug again his troops in step with a United Nations decision, however it wasn’t sufficient for Iran, which, like Ukraine at this time, demanded in depth reparations. Solely a yr later, after a string of battlefield setbacks, did Iran settle for the decision — with Iraq nonetheless occupying a few of its territory. This allowed Saddam to assert victory. Aburish wrote:

He gained weight, smiled quite a bit, walked with a swagger, gave speeches in reward of his preventing males, introduced plans to construct monuments, obtained Arab visitors providing their congratulations and on one or two events spontaneously joined crowds in performing the chobbi native dance. That over 360,000 Iranians and Iraqis had died and over 700,000 had been injured, and that the struggle had value an estimated $600 billion, had been quickly forgotten.

Putin could properly rejoice in comparable fashion (maybe minus the dancing) if an eventual peace deal permits him to carry on to any conquered territory. When struggle targets are basically undeclared, and particularly years later, after preliminary targets have pale away, dictators have lots of flexibility to play the victor. For the likes of Saddam and Putin, any consequence that ensures their continued ascendancy is a win.

Putin, nonetheless, is unlikely to return any territory voluntarily, as Saddam did in 1990, when he was already targeted on his invasion of Kuwait. That different journey was the one which sealed his destiny — however solely after the US put boots on the bottom, and even then, not instantly.

Together with his invasion of Ukraine, Putin eliminated himself from the ranks of European leaders and turned Russia towards Asia. But his habits at Russia’s helm has typically resembled that of a Center Jap oil dictator; Saddam, whose admitted position mannequin was Joseph Stalin, is particularly comparable. Each got here from humble origins and poverty, each have craved a historic position, each have embraced violence and suppression, and each constructed corrupt, nepotistic methods propped up by lavishly funded safety companies.

The uncomfortable reality constructed into this admittedly imperfect historic parallel is that even Saddam, whose regime by no means acquired nuclear weapons, would have survived as Iraq’s authoritarian ruler and initiator of aggressive wars and not using a direct US navy intervention. With a robust suppressive equipment conserving a fragmented, weakened opposition in verify, Iraqis had been prepared to tolerate his lower than sensible navy adventures even when they resulted in some lack of life and a lower than catastrophic decline in dwelling requirements. What Saddam might obtain will not be not possible for Putin, both — the US navy marching into Moscow because it did into Baghdad is a picture as unlikely as it could be fascinating for a lot of Ukrainians. And sadly, if the Iraq-Iran precedent is any indication, there isn’t a crucial for a fast peace, both.

Extra From Bloomberg Opinion:

• It’s Not Ukraine’s Peace-for-Our-Time Second: Leonid Bershidsky

• After Ukraine, What Nation May Putin Goal?: Andreas Kluth

• Don’t Abandon Democracy to Save It in Ukraine: Pankaj Mishra

This column doesn’t essentially replicate the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its house owners.

Leonid Bershidsky, previously Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg Information Automation Staff. He just lately printed Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

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