espite his present military weakness, Saddam Hussein is still potentially "one of the most dangerous leaders in the world," because he is amoral, hugely ambitious, and believes he can achieve his goals only through military means, including the manufacture, threat--and perhaps actual use--of weapons of mass destruction, says Amatzia Baram, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and head of the department of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa in Israel. Saddam's ambition is to lead the Arab and Islamic worlds--and place himself among the great military leaders of history.

Saddam is dangerous, too, because he has not learned from his past defeats that in today's world the economy, not the sword, makes a nation great, says Baram, an expert on the Iraqi dictator and his socio-political system. Baram discussed Saddam's background, motivations, power base, and recent expulsion of UN weapons inspectors at an Institute briefing November 20. C-SPAN broadcast the event, which was moderated by Max M. Kampelman, vice president of the Institute of Peace's board of directors. Saddam poses "a greater threat today to our country and the civilized world than he did six years ago [at the time of the Gulf War]," Kampelman said in his introductory remarks.

Baram said that although Saddam seems to be a resolute player at the games of "chicken" he initiates, he has one major fear: that a revolt within his armed forces might topple him. For example, if he provoked an air attack by the United States/United Nations, that could create the kind of chaos in Iraq that would give ambitious soldiers a chance to grab power, Baram said. As a result, Saddam is likely now to stop short of provoking such an attack, but at some point he may miscalculate and drive matters to a head.

To achieve and retain power, Saddam has ordered the deaths of political allies and close relatives, as well as the massacre of hundreds of thousands of unarmed Kurdish and Iraqi villagers, Baram said. Despite his military defeat in 1991, Saddam continues to resist weapons transparency, while at the same time using the Iraqi people's suffering to manipulate western moral outrage in hopes of gaining an end to the UN-mandated sanctions.

Saddam expelled the UN inspectors primarily because they were getting too close to massive caches of biological weapons--"They were prying into his holy of holies," Baram said--and thus Saddam had to demonstrate his willingness to protect his military strength, to show his power base that he could limit the supervision teams. "In Iraq, security and state secrecy are a new secular state religion," Baram said.

Saddam is claiming victory not only in this latest confrontation, but also in the Gulf War. Baram noted that Saddam boasts to his people, "Where are George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, or Mikhail Gorbachev?" While Saddam, as everyone knows, is still in charge in Baghdad. Iraq, he claims to his captive audience, won a moral, as opposed to a clear-cut military, victory in the Gulf War, because its leadership is still intact and defiant. Demonstrating defiance is, thus, of great importance to him, especially when it comes to preserving important components of his non-conventional weapons, Baram said. As Saddam sees it, these weapons are critical not only to his own strength, but also to his credibility with his domestic power base: his tribe, his palace guard, and the Republican Guard Corps. By keeping biological and chemical weapons, he proves to them that he remains a formidable figure. Thus, Baram concluded, these weapons to him are both a means of survival and a means to achieve his grandiose dream of Arab and Islamic leadership.

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