NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Outlines Containment Strategy for Mideast Peace

WASHINGTON —  In suggesting the creation of a new multinational organization to guarantee security and stability in the Middle East, the Bush Administration for the first time has sketched its vision of a solution for the turbulent region that would outlive the current crisis.

As outlined by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the proposal essentially would seek to transplant to the Middle East the strategy of containment that the United States successfully pursued for more than 40 years in its Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Operating like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the new entity would seek to assemble an overwhelming coalition to repel military aggression by Iraq--or any other nation that might rise up to pose a threat to the region and its vast energy supplies.

The principle is sound, as the success of NATO has shown. But attempts to create similar structures elsewhere have been less successful, leaving it far from clear whether the approach could succeed in such a different political landscape.

Some experts warn that the approach could even be disastrous. They say that it could inflame Arab resentment at Western intervention, ultimately undercutting the support of even the most friendly nations in the region for the concept.

“I think that this would not be well received among the Arab populations,” said Shireen T. Hunter, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But other analysts--expressing what U.S. officials said is the growing consensus within the Bush Administration--argue that there is no other conceivable model for a truly lasting solution in the Middle East.

“It’s the only hope,” said Judith Kipper, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “You have to build in deterrents and red lines and green lines before you can have peace.”

Baker provided only spare details of Administration thinking in his testimony before Congress on Tuesday, insisting that planning for the long term remains in an embryonic stage.

He made clear, however, that the United States now expects to maintain “some continuing (military) presence” in the region as part of a new Middle East security organization to be composed primarily of Arab nations.

And in drawing the explicit parallel to NATO, Baker suggested that the new security arrangement could serve as such a powerful deterrent “that there would be very little risk” that a Middle Eastern leader might be tempted to resort to armed conflict to further his goals.

A senior State Department official said that the remarks reflect a Bush Administration conclusion that the United States must take steps to “contain” Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein even if he ultimately agrees to withdraw his forces from Kuwait.

“It doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of him, but you do have to contain him,” the senior official said. He added: “We need a broader security structure, one that ensures access to the energy of the region.”

With the United States likely to provide the decisive military power, the security arrangement that the Administration appears to have in mind might most closely resemble not NATO but the regional treaty organizations established in the 1950s in efforts to block Soviet expansion.

But as critics note, those experiments were far from outright successes. The Baghdad Pact--a 1954 anti-Soviet alliance made up of Middle Eastern powers and backed by Britain--collapsed of its own weight four years later when Iraqi opposition to the close links to the West contributed to a revolution that ousted the monarchy and put Iraq squarely in the Soviet camp.

And the separate Southeast Asian Treaty, signed by the United States and other world and regional powers in 1954, established a U.S. obligation to the region that historians regard as a principal factor motivating the American entry into the Vietnam War.

In citing these lessons, analysts said Thursday that any American decision to create a new security organization carries with it the danger of a backlash in the Arab world and could heighten the prospect of U.S. involvement in conflict in the area.

In particular, many experts warned that simmering Arab hostility toward U.S. involvement in the region could turn dangerous if it became clear that the American presence would be long-term.

“People are going to say--pact or no pact--this is just a justification to get the United States involved,” said Hunter, the CSIS analyst. As a result, she and others suggested, regimes friendly to the United States might be overthrown, undermining the Arab base for the security treaty.

Other analysts, however, contend that the prospect of domestic turmoil in the Middle East is a risk far more acceptable than the bloodshed that they said inevitably would continue without some multilateral effort to keep the peace.

“We can’t live with this the way it is,” said Kipper of Brookings. But she cautioned that it probably is no longer within the power of the United States alone to persuade Arab nations to accept a permanent security organization.

“It would have to be a joint U.S.-Soviet initiative,” she said, “because that means it’s serious.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann contributed to this story.