“China and the Soviets also sold chem/bio weapons to others who may have been hostile to the U.S. so again why didn’t we attack them? Of course most of the world new Iraq posessed these types of weapons - we sold it to them!”
I thought I covered it when I explained that they were/are tough potential adversaries. A fight with either would result in many more dead people per day than died in the whole Iraq war for one thing. The other is that we seem to have a touch more faith that the Russians and Chinese would stand by their word, which Saddam clearly did not.
When the Soviets agreed to disarmament the job of the inspectors was to stand by while the Soviets themselves destroyed the weapons. This was done. They honored their word. The US did likewise and destroyed weapons under supervision of their inspectors.
There is also the economic factor. We can and do use economic forces to bring about change with both China and Russia. We can do that because they need to trade with us more than we really need to deal with them. With Iraq we couldn’t do that. Their only major money source is oil and if we didn’t buy it anyone else would. As it was they were violating sanctions and selling it to Syria and others. That tends to undermine the effectiveness of economic means.
From a piece by Daniel Pipes (June 8, 2003)
"Iraqi and coalition military leaders met in Safwan, in southern Iraq, on March 3, 1991, to sign a cease-fire agreement. This was right after the U.S.-led coalition forces ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
The agreement they drew up had many provisions ? specifying the cease-fire line, prohibiting certain activities by Iraqi troops, ending support for terrorism. Foremost among them was the demand that Baghdad dismantle all its WMD. To give this teeth, Baghdad had to accept outside inspectors who would locate and destroy the offending weapons."
"Exactly a month later, on April 3, the United Nations Security Council endorsed these terms in Resolution 687. The resolution required that Iraq "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of:
"(a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities;
“(b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers and related major parts, and repair and production facilities.”
The U.N. resolution also included provisions for a “Special Commission, which shall carry out immediate on-site inspection of Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities.” This work of locating and destroying was supposed to be completed in 120 days.
No way. Instead, for 7? years Saddam Hussein and his minions played a cat-and-mouse game. They hid weapons and documents, threatened the Special Commission personnel - and on the sly developed new WMD. "
So when you sign an armistice agreement to cease hostilities and then violate the terms of the agreement you can pretty well expect the resumption of hostilites. Otherwise what good would any cease fire or surrender treaty mean in the future? The loser in the conflict wouldn’t have a lot of bargaining power to save the lives of it’s remaining troops if the winner couldn’t or wouldn’t trust that the terms of surrender would be honored.
So, Russia is not China is not Iraq. Each situation is very different. There is no one size fits all solution to every problem…even if the problem is similar on it’s face to another one.