Reports have been circulating that this week is the deadline for Saddam Hussein to surrender or face a U.S. onslaught that could dwarf that of the Gulf War. Iraq is now in the tragic position of having been selected as the place where the U.S. will once again make its power credible. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, professor emeritus of U.C. Berkeley, has authored numerous books on international affairs and reads widely in the Arab-language press.

Two thousand years ago the Roman statesman Cato the Elder kept crying out, "Delenda est Carthago" -- Carthage must be destroyed! To Cato it was clear either Rome or Carthage but not both could dominate the western Mediterranean. Rome won and Carthage was leveled to the ground.

Iraq is now Washington's Carthage.

The official Washington position is that everything must be done to destroy the lethal weapons Saddam will not let the UN inspect. However, in the Arab world another view prevails: Washington simply wants Saddam to surrender unconditionally or else Iraq will be ravaged.

In the short term Washington's tactics can guarantee victory. If Saddam does surrender unconditionally, the Clinton administration will have won the march on Baghdad which Bush called off seven years ago. If Saddam doesn't, Iraq can be bombed and burnt back into the Stone Age. Either way, Iraq is knocked out of the Middle Eastern power game.

For decades U.S. strategist have made it clear the U.S. must control world oil in order for the American economy to function with security. That meant primarily the Middle East whose oil cannot be allowed to fall out of American control.

Most of the region's oil wells are concentrated along the northern semi-ellipse of the Gulf, mainly in the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Until 1967 all were securely linked to the U.S. After the big Arab defeat by Israel in the Six Days War several major Arab countries including Iraq drifted into the Soviet camp. In 1979 after the triumph of its Islamic Revolution Iran turned fiercely anti-American.

Worry levels shot up among U.S. strategists when on August 1, 1980, war between Iraq and Iran broke out -- a war that would last eight years. That war was about which of the two would dominate the Middle East. In the U.S. the Iran-Contra controversy of the mid-eighties revealed deep factional in-fighting between those who wanted to back Iran and those who favored Iraq.

The latter won out but ten years later Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The U.S. won the Gulf War supported by a broad Arab coalition. Both Iraq and Iran remained enemies but Secretary of State Baker's diplomacy started bringing peace not just to the Holy Land but the entire region west of Iraq and Iran. And during the rest of the Bush administration both seemed to be softening their position towards the U.S.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rubin during the Clinton administration marked another key turning point. The Baker strategy began to come apart; the Israeli-Palestinian peace process crumbled; the Saudi monarchy grew shakier; the Kurdish problem in northern Iraq became a nightmare; Saddam's grip on power tightened; Iran emerged as a great power. And while recently under its new president Khatemi Iran began to smile at the U.S., it also started to project its own power onto the region. One of its greatest victories was a dramatic reconciliation with Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. was fast losing control despite its immense military power. The crowning blow was Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's good-humored brush-off of one U.S. warning after another that he was going too far in building an unofficial Greater Israel in the Occupied Territories.

For the strategists the key question became: is or is not the U.S. the world's solo superpower? If so, then its power has to be credible and not just assumed because of huge accumulations of firepower. Iraq is now in the tragic position of having been chosen as the place where the solo superpower wants once again to make its power credible.

What led to Iraq becoming the sacrificial victim in good part has been Saddam's own cunning. Right to the end he has been playing his Russia, France and Arab "cards" in the vain hope that could sway Washington, as several times in the past, to delay or call off the onslaught. But Saudi Arabia's strongman Prince Abdullah, in what sounded like a pre-execution statement, pleaded with him to surrender "to avoid grave consequences which only God knows."

Russia and France are America's main rivals in the "great game" for control of oil and natural gas resources in the Middle East and Central Asia. Iraq and Iran have a rapprochement under way. And the deflation of oil prices indicates to the U.S. that Saudi Arabia, its closest ally in the Middle East, by default or design, maybe losing its clout in the region.

Once Rome annihilated Carthage it was only a matter of time before it controlled the entire Mediterranean. Many strategists may now be hoping that the destruction of Iraq can restore American control of the Middle East, give it new power in Central Asia and greater influence in East Asia. Over the dead bodies of Saddam and many, many Iraqis, America can assert its invincibility as the world's solo superpower.