Last Chance To Talk

If quantity were any substitute for quality, the gulf crisis might have already been resolved by diplomatic means. Last week brought a flurry of summits, tete-a-tetes, initiatives and trial balloons, all aimed at averting a war over Kuwait that otherwise looked imminent. The European Community met in Luxembourg. Jordan's King Hussein shuttled around Europe. A former aide to French President Francois Mitterrand tried his luck in Baghdad, and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi convened his own Arab confab. Most significant, after weeks of ; petty dickering over when to get together, the U.S. and Iraq finally agreed to a high-level meeting in Geneva this week, their first since the confrontation erupted on Aug. 2.

For all that diplomatic movement, however, there was little forward progress. The bottom-line positions of the antagonists remained fixed at cross-purposes. Washington and its allies say flatly that Iraq must leave Kuwait without conditions. The Iraqis say Kuwait is theirs forever -- except, perhaps, if Israel gives up the occupied territories and Syria quits Lebanon. "I really hope we can find a peaceful and political solution," U.S. Secretary of State James Baker said in a TV interview last week. But, he added, "I'm frankly not as optimistic about that possibility now as I was before Christmas."

The military planners were hardly counting on the politicians for an eleventh-hour reprieve. Having already conscripted much of Iraq's able-bodied adult population into the armed forces, Baghdad last week began drafting all 17-year-old males. According to the Pentagon, Saddam Hussein poured an additional 20,000 troops into the Kuwaiti theater. That brought the total Iraqi force there to 530,000; the U.S. and its allies will have 630,000 troops in place by mid-February. Bracing for a battle that might reach all the way to Baghdad, the Iraqi government advised foreign diplomats to leave the capital and to set up temporary missions in the city of Ramadi, 60 miles to the west.

Meanwhile the anti-Saddam coalition continued to cover the Saudi sands with soldiers and bristling weaponry. The Saudi government belatedly distributed gas masks and evacuation maps to the country's citizens. NATO dispatched 42 jet fighters from Italy, Germany and Belgium to Turkey, which shares a 200- mile border with Iraq. Officially, the contingent's purpose is to help defend Turkey in the event of an Iraqi assault. But the airplanes could also reinforce the threat of a second front opening up in Iraq's north.

The booster for Turkey and other allied preparations were meant not only to ensure a successful war effort but also to try to avert the battle by frightening Saddam into retreat. Bush's brinkmanship strategy assumes three things: 1) Saddam wants to survive, 2) he can change his mind if he thinks his survival depends on it, and 3) he will not act until the gun is at his head, with the hammer cocked and the trigger finger already squeezing.