All Policy Analysis by Patrick Clawson

The U.S. and its coalition partners have insisted on the acceptance in principle of Iraq's responsibility to pay compensation for the loss, damage and injury its aggression has caused. While all agree on the importance of the principle, strong differences exist on how hard to push Iraq for actual cash

The arrival of large numbers of Iraqi planes in Iran is almost certainly another effort by Saddam Hussein to reduce Iraq's isolation and widen the war. As he explained to CNN on January 28, he views Iran as a "fellow Muslim nation" which shares his view of the confrontation as

Economic sanctions are making Iraq poorer day by day. The Iraqi economy is being hollowed out. The diet of the Iraqi people has already suffered markedly, with a drop of at least 25 percent in calories consumed. Yet despite all this, it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion

A sanction-induced economic crisis cannot be counted on to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, much less out of office. Iraq has good prospects of surviving sanctions through the end of 1991 by a combination of tightening consumer's belts and loosening the socialist tourniquet now tied around the Iraqi private

"Will sanctions against Iraq work?" is a question too ambiguous to be useful. It leaves unspecified such key issues as what we want sanctions to accomplish and how Iraq would react if sanctions started to pinch. And, then, how much does Saddam Hussein care about what happens to Iraq's economy

In the last decade, Syria has forcefully opposed U.S.-supported peace initiatives for Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Syria’s inflexibility has persuaded many observers that little can be done to influence its president, Hafez al-Assad. In fact, much can be done once his vulnerabilities are understood. In this Policy Paper, Patrick