Week 9 Lecture -The Invasion of Iraq 2003: US and the Use of Force

Flashcards of key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes.

The Clinton Legacy

US as unipolar moment and was leading world-stage it hadn’t before and Clinton administration was encapsulation force of that

• Clinton administration used force in a limited, constabulary role 

• 1994 bombed Iraq in retaliation to the attempted assassination George H W Bush 

• Bombed Iraq more or less continuously throughout the 1990s in the enforcement of the UN authorized no fly zone 

• 1998 Bombed Iraq again in “Operation Desert Fox” over noncompliance of disarmament resolutions 

• 1998 Bombed Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for al Qaeda attacking US embassies in Africa, killing 200+.

  • Together these actions represented the greatest number of military actions in any period in US history. 

• At least part of the motivation here was demonstrative – to show resolve after the setback suffered in Somalia and Clinton’s failure to act in response to the Rwanda genocide.

  • Need for Robust military response(?)- greatest motivation was to show resolve and use of force after past failures

• Limited use of force, constrained by strategic, domestic and legal considerations. 

  • Use of force in hit and split style

  • Legal considerations whereby Clinton wanted to do something but if it's not a warzone the US don;t have the legal ability to do so

• 1998, Clinton.  “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.”

  • This absoluteness in the idea of not killing civilians in his calculations

Kosovo’s Mixed Legacy (1)

• “[t]he hazard posed by an ethnically cleansed Kosovo on Balkan stability is a good example of not a secondary but a tertiary interest.  The United States went to war over Kosovo – a place of almost no intrinsic value – less to correct Serb misbehavior there, than to preclude adverse consequences elsewhere, for example, a general deterioration in the relations of the Balkan states that could ultimately pit Greece against Turkey and, hence, undermine NATO.” Elliot Cohen

• The strategic context of unipolarity created a permissive environment for the US. It perceived that it had a free hand to act beyond its core interests.

  • Idea of minor irritants and the US got in place- much more peaceful time and less complicated so US felt it had the legitimacy to use force even for minor tertiary disputes

• 2 elements contributed to this – 1) Precision bombing and 2) zero casualties

  • Could use/perception you could use for in a surgical way and could do this knowing where you could lose none of your forces

    • Use of force were casualty free as far as US was concerned which bread a confidence in the use of force during this period

• “I’m sure you have talked to your Iraqi counterparts about what to expect. Well, you can forget what the Iraqis told you. Our aim is far greater and far more lethal and accurate today. Iraq was just the beginning…Why don’t you go out now and drive around your city and take one last look at it as it is today, because it will never look that way again.” 

Gen Mike Short, Allied Air Com in OAF, to Serbian counterpart in 1999

Kosovo’s Mixed Legacy (2)- Daalder and O’Hanlon + Bacevich on Kosovo

• Public opinion research in 1998 and 1999 found much greater support among elite and popular opinion for the use of force in support of a broad range of missions and threats. 

•  But Kosovo war did not go quite as planned by allies, military etc.  

• Daalder and O’Hanlon argued that without the KLA on the ground or the growing momentum towards the deployment by NATO of ground forces the war would not have been won.

  • Different view of public against academics and military

•  In air war NATO was challenged initially to identify appropriate targets to attack. 

• For Andrew Bacevich, the Kosovo campaign became “the defining moment in the post-Vietnam effort of the US military profession to rehabilitate itself” because “it signal led an end of the military’s united front on questions of war and peace. Operation Allies Force had violated the Powell Doctrine to the last jot and tittle…because the General in command [Clark] had chosen to fight it that way.”

  • Up until this point after Vietnam the US has said the President can only commit use of force if there are public support, congressional support and mobalise reserved arms and have the support of the people to do that and go in with force and win quickly

  • Did it differently as it wasn’t overwhelming force, no boots on the ground, increasingly incremental and used air power

    • Led to military to break all its own rules to not let it be controlled and allowed Bush administration to assert to civilian control

• Military divided on Kosovo strategy, did not produce the quick victory promised, and that allowed incoming Bush administration to reassert civilian control of military.

Kosovo’s Mixed Legacy (3)- War by Committee

• Seen as war by committee. 

  • Wesley Clark recalls a meeting with a senior Bush administration official at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 attacks which graphically illustrates both America’s mood at the time, and the lessons that had been learned at the Pentagon from the Kosovo crisis, "We read your book. And no one is going to tell us where we can or can't bomb." 

    • Mood was yes we won in Kosovo but Kosovo was an allied operation and was a lot of bickering we won’t do that and mattered little us and was for Europe but after 9/11 when we have been attacked and when our security is at stake we will put those things aside and do it differently

      • Lessons learnt from Kosovo in both US and Europe did not go away thinking that Kosovo gave a template for the future 

• While ultimately successful neither the Americans nor their European allies came away from the experience with the feeling that OAF provided a template for future allied operations. At a meeting of NATO Defence Ministers after the war to discuss its implication one defence minister prefaced his remarks with the observation that the most fundamental lesson of the operation was that “we never want to do this again.” 

  • Commenting of this statement General Wesley Clark notes “if the remark was meant to be humorous, no one laughed.”  

    • Americans saying that we don’t want you involved and wild o thing anyways and will look after your interests in defence, pushing Europeans aside for all campaigns aside from Afghanistan

    • European sentiment and need to have defence capabilities came from this period

• Condoleezza Rice, emphasised Bush admin’s opposition to foreign adventures in contrast to Clinton administration:  “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne  escorting kids to kindergarten”

9/11

• Things all dramatically changed with 9/11

• September 11, 2001 was a huge psychological shock, and created a widespread sense of vulnerability.

• Led to radical shift in US National Security Strategy 

  • Anthrax attacks shortly after led to fear of vulnerability and not knowing what will come next

  • Sense of parallel enormous

• Invasion of Afghanistan was first manifestation of that reaction but wasn’t really seen as enough

Was Kosovo A Model/Precedent For Afghanistan?: At one level it can be argued

• At one level airpower and support from local forces on the ground which had been used to great effect in Kosovo with the KLA, was applied to Afghanistan in 2001. 

• In Afghanistan the US relied on the devastating use of air power coupled with an offensive by the Northern Alliance, on the ground and US Special Forces to direct air strikes. 

  • Became with CIA operation due to no one else having operation bring cold coins oto bribe them and computers to communicate and then flattening anything that moved with the North Alliance

Was Kosovo A Model/Precedent For Afghanistan?: Was Not

• But in other respects OAF acted as an anti-role model.  For Bush and Rumsfeld, Kosovo showed Clinton’s risk adverse approach to conflict. 

  • By contrast in their view, Afghanistan needed more than cruise missiles and stand-off bombing, and according to Bush, Rumsfeld “was insistent upon boots on the ground to change the psychology of how Americans viewed war.”  

    • 9/11 was too much of an opportunity to miss and too much of a tragedy to not exploit 

• Bush also made the contrast with the Clinton approach, stating “I don’t want a photo-op war…The American people want a big bang.”  Blu 82 – Daisy Cutter or MOAB Massive Ordnance Air Blast (was designed to clear whole forest areas in Vietnam but was used to attack cave complexes in Afghanistan here Al Qaeda was expected to be hiding in the mountains)

  • Massive use of force

Afghanistan

• Lots of bombs dropped but light footprint

  • Partly due to the terrain of the country but also the Army had no war plans for Afghanistan. 

• The initial operation thus simply followed a CIA blueprint for regime change. 

• The “light footprint” of ground forces was successful in decapitating the Taliban government in Kabul but dispersed as much as it destroyed the terrorist networks in the country. 

  • Like when US was doing with War Lords in Somalia, with just burying war lords and hide, it was a similar case here where they groups skipped over the border of Pakistan

• The fact that Osama bin laden escaped from Afghanistan during the battle of Tora Bora in December 2002 was seized upon by critics as a US military failure brought about by an over reliance on local forces – Northern Alliance-  and a reluctance to commit American soldiers to the fight. Casualty aversion?

  • Possible casualty aversion as Americans were ensure of the territory and what they were dealing with (booby trapped caves) 

• The fact that Bin Laden escape left a sense of incomplete victory and frustration

• But Afghanistan fell quickly and victory was declared in December 2021.

Coalitions of the Willing/Obedient

• NATO Declared 9/11 an Article 5 Attack.

• Wolfowitz told NATO in 2002 the Atlantic Alliance would be afforded no special role, military response “would be made up of many different coalitions in different parts of the world”.  

  • US said thank you symbolically for that but we’re not that interested in your help

  • Idea that US was dealing with a global war on terrorism

• The application of this thinking meant that British and Australian Special Forces were called into action in Afghanistan but Germany’s offer of troops, despite the fact that Chancellor Schroder had staked the future of his government in order to make the offer, was refused. 

• The criteria adopted was usefulness and willingness to participate without any corresponding role in the decision-making process

  • “[w]ars can benefit from coalitions of the willing, to be sure, but they should not be fought by committee.  The mission must determine the coalition.  The coalition must not determine the mission.  If it does, the mission will be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and we can’t afford that.”   Donald Rumsfeld (Sec Def)

    • NAto being told your useless and we don’t want you involved as we don’t want you to veto any missions and we want the command and control doing it ourselves gives us

• The decline of European military capabilities through the 1990s paralleled by the revolution in military affairs in the US armed forces created real operational difficulties due to lack of interoperability within NATO. 

  • European forces seen as less capable that US’s

Why did America Decide to Invade Iraq: Pretext

• Argues material explanations are not as important as the ideational explanations

• It was far from obvious, 15 of the 19 9/11 attackers were Saudi, their leader was Egyptian. But 9/11 changed the context in the way in which this was viewed. 

  • Interesting in how that was framed to focus on Iraq as it was not obvious

• Our view is also coloured by hindsight; Iraq is largely regarded as a strategic failure on a monumental scale. Was it a failure of execution or design?

  • Some still argue it was just badly done and if it had been done differently it may have had success whilst others say from the outside it was fundamentally flawed

Did America Decide to Invade Iraq?: 5 Broad Interlocking themes noted in debates and drivers

1. Realist Anti-Appeasement

2. US Providence/American Exceptionalism

3. Assertive Unilateralism

4. Willing to fight and fighting to win

5. Threat Inflation and Conflation

1) Realist Anti-Appeasement (1)

• 9/11 not seen as isolated incident, anthrax attacks, general feeling of vulnerability and powerlessness.

• Crucially, 9/11 Report concluded not a failure of intelligence but a failure of imagination

  • No one imagined that someone would be so creative to hire airliners early in the morning when they were still light but still full of jet fuel and the idea of hijackers was using the jet fuel to use as an explosive 

  • Was called the shuttle with hardly ever security, caught a flight easily, no pre-book needed

  • No sense of vulnerability at home until that vulnerability was exploited

• Set Dick Cheney etc to start asking “What if?” questions. (see Woodward + Films “W” & “Vice”)

  • No using that imagination that hadn’t been used before

  • What do we know a country that is trying to build a weapon of mass of destruction and gassed their own people with chemical weapons and knows he supports terrorism what if he then uses that capacity and weapons against America

    • Can imagine Iraq attacking us and therefore we should not take the risk

  • Idea of why take the risk e..g poison lettuce in a burger with Iraq and weapons of mass destruction- why should US take that chance

• Outrage, desire for revenge “how dare they do that to us?”   

  • Inflamed the desire for retribution

• US has the power to remove all threats – a search for perfect security in an anarchic world.

• Afghanistan was both too easy - feeding confidence….and not enough to satisfy the thirst for revenge and the desire for greater security (and Bin Laden escaped). 

• No link between Baghdad and Al Qaeda  - but Iraq did sponsor terrorism. “War on Terrorrism”

  • Bush concluded that during a war with a hostile terrorist network that is seeking WMD it can no longer tolerate this rogue regime and its failure to disarm, and its failure to submit.

• "While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place," Bush said.

• "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousand of people.“    (Halabja chemical attack,1988, 5k dead)

1) Realist Anti-Appeasement (2- Fear of ‘Superterrorism’)

• "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,“ Bush 

  • "The time for denying, deceiving and delaying has come to an end. Saddam must disarm himself or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.“ Bush

• Realism focuses on states as the main actors in international relations, & thus as the primary source of threats. US military equipped for states.

• The Bush Admin also concluded that the type of terrorism it feared most “Superterrorism” - using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, could probably only be brought about using the capacity of a state. 

• As Condoleezza Rice explains “the threat of rogue regimes and hostile powers… [are] increasingly taking the forms of the potential for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”   In the realist view then, terrorists need states to operate from hence the focus on “rogue regimes”.

1) Realist Anti-Appeasement (3- Response to 9/11 not 9/11 itself)

• As a result it lowered its threat assessment threshold for Iraq concluding that it is necessary and prudent to confront Baghdad now before it reaches that stage.  

  • The fact that this was an American initiated change of policy rather than a response to any new Iraqi misdemeanours is partly responsible for the controversy that surrounds the Bush administration’s approach.  

    • It was not Iraq looked more threatening but rather US looking around at the anarchical system that it had tolerated and wondered why should we, in a unipolar world

    • Anti-appeasement of having tolerated Iraqi idea for too long 

• It was the response to 9/11, not 9/11 itself.

• Justified because the terrorist attacks altered fundamentally the context in which the Iraqi threat must be judged.  

• What was previously viewed as a regional threat, in the aftermath of September 11th has taken on global implications.  A threat to the US.

1) Realist Anti-Appeasement (4- Goldilocks target)

• Dealing with Iraq before it got WMD was the preferred option to dealing with a state like North Korea which could not be coerced because of its nuclear capabilities.  

• It was the goldilocks target – not as dangerous as North Korea, but not as easy as Afghanistan appeared to be i.e. bad enough to take down as a means to restoring the credibility of US deterrence in the face of other security threats.   

  • Not as complex as North Korea but not as easy as Afghanistan

  • Was focused on as it was seen as doable

• For Richard Perle (senior advisor in Bush administration) “the Continental powers waited until Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and America waited until after September 11 to go after Osama bin Laden…what risks do we run if Saddam is left in power and continues to build his [WMD] arsenal.” 

• The credibility of the UN was drawn into the issue on this subject.  World order issue, are we on the edge of anarchy?  

  • Also used argument that US was acting in world order and argued that UN credibility was at threat 

  • Asked will UN fail like the League of Nations failed in the 1930s or will it rise to the challenge and re-establish itself as the mechanism through which the great powers preserve international order?   

    • Sadam Hussein ignoring Mass UN orders to give up weapons of mass destructions and show he head

    • So US argued that it was arguing to uphold UN orders for world order

•  Bush “If the Security Council were to allow a dictator to lie and deceive, the Security Council will be weak.”

2) US Providence/American Exceptionalism- (1)

Idea that US is divinely inspired to be saviour of the world and be the model for the rest of the world to follow and idea that US would remake the world in its image to make it safe

• For Bush out of 9/11 came the opportunity for the reform of the Arab/Muslim world on a liberal basis.  

• Having held back in advancing its values in the past in the Gulf (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia), Bush believed it necessary to reverse this

• The “liberation” of Baghdad and the establishment of a “democratising” Iraq seen as means to do this.  

  • Woodrow Wilson entered WWI “to make the world safe for democracy” 

  • For Bush plan was to “make the world democratic in order to be safe”. 

• It was a way to link US interest and values – to bring democracy and modernity to the Middle East not just bringing down the bad guys

  • In this idea Iraq is “the cork in the bottle” to Middle East reform. 

  • Once you pull the cork out the whole Middle east will follow

• Removing Iraq’s support for Palestinian suicide bombers seen as way to unlock the conflict between Israel and Arabs.

• Henry Kissinger had long argued that “the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad.”  

2) US Providence/American Exceptionalism- (2)

• The comparison drawn was the reform brought to the communist regimes of Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War.  Enfranchised politically and economically, modernity and prosperity would follow.

• A clear assumption of this policy is that the status quo in the Middle East is unsustainable and that regime change in Iraq will be a positive catalyst for change.

  • This analysis also misses the sectarian state for Sunni and Shai muslims, was a deeply corrupt regime and a petri dish for muslim extremism and one of the reasons why Hussain was a leader was to keep a lid on some of the tensions and yet there was an assumption 

    • Recommendations by local analysts was ignored by Neoconservative analysis  

• For Wolfowitz- “It is hard to believe that the liberation of the talented people of one of the most important Arab countries in the world from the grip of one of the world’s worst tyrants will not be an opportunity for Americans and Arabs and other people of goodwill to begin to move forward on the task that the President has described as ‘building a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.’” (Ignores sectarianism, Islamic Radicalism, corruption.)

• Ignored the advice of regional experts in favour of neo conservative ideology.

•  “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity”. 

• Bush believed he was doing God’s work, “we have found our moment and we have found our missions” 

3) Assertive Unilateralism- (1)

One of the most controversial justifications was this need to act unilaterally and buck against the rules of international system that US had a major role in forming- Bush administration pressure to now and go against the system to advance its interests

• Post 9/11 Bush was willing to put US national interests ahead of international norms & institutions.

• US had lost of faith in traditional instruments of diplomacy such as deterrence, sanctions, containment and engagement.

• Saddam Hussein was in breach of seventeen resolutions passed by the UN since the Gulf War (1991) and UN had failed to contain him.

  • UNSCOM inspection failed to find substantial parts of Iraq’s WMD  programmes in their original phase of inspections. 

• About to conclude its work in 1995 UNSCOM was reportedly shocked at the scale of the biological and nuclear weapons programmes disclosed by the defector Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son in law.

  • Kamel had a major role in the weapons and had fallen out with Hussien and gave a lot of documents and coordinates to find huge amounts of documents and materials 

•  Millions of pages of documents were revealed about the multiple routes the regime had pursued to enrich Uranium, about Iraq’s extensive and previously undiscovered biological weapons programme, and crucially, significant gaps were identified about aspects of the programmes that had not been revealed

  • Pieces fo the jigsaw which showed other pieces of that jigsaw was elsewhere

  • Huge lack of confidence they had got everything

    • Showed they thought they had everything but hadn’t and now there may other pieces/paths being pursued then he thought

    • Led to US having no confidence in any guarantee of Iraqian regime having been disarmed

3) Assertive Unilateralism- (2)

• As a result of this episode resolution 1441 put the onus on Iraq to provide evidence of what it had done with its WMD stocks.  

  • Iraq’s failure to provide evidence or explanation of what had become of these stocks was, for Washington, indicative of deception.  

• Powell explained to the UN, “We haven’t accounted for  the anthrax, we haven’t accounted for the botulinum, VX, both biological agents, growth media,  30,000 chemical and biological munitions… We have not had a complete, accurate declaration.”   

  • Lack of trust with Iraq having been a liar 

• Even with many more inspectors and unlimited time the Bush administration believed that Iraq could still deceive the UN much as UNSCOM was “duped” between 1991 and 1995.  For Bush a new “hide and seek game” would be a “re-run of a bad movie” which he had no interest in seeing.

• The Bush Administration had also lost faith with the sanctions regime as a means of containing Iraq.  

  • This policy instrument began to unravel after the UNSCOM inspectors left in 1998. By 2000 oil exports from Iraq had regained their pre-Gulf war levels and the goods and services flowing into the country went way beyond those allowed by the UN for humanitarian purposes. 

3) Assertive Unilateralism- (3)

• More than a dozen countries had restarted scheduled airline flights into the country in defiance of a UN ban and the regime was importing many items to restore its military infrastructure, including a fibre-optic communications network for the regime supplied by the Chinese.  

• US wanted new “smart sanctions” regime on Iraq, an effort which failed due to opposition from France, Russia and China who were eager to exploit the commercial benefits that would follow from the removal of sanctions altogether. 

  • Negotiating who is going to do what when when sanctions were lifted and companies were lobbying- led to US attempts in Iraq was being undermined by other actors in the system and so need to take down the regime 

• Saddam Hussein was now viewed as too dangerous to be left to deterrence alone.  

• His decision to invade Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990, to fight in 1991, and to threaten Kuwait again in 1994 were seen by  Ken Pollack as evidence that he was “an inveterate gambler and risk-taker who regularly twists his calculation of the odds to suit his preferred course of action.”

Bush observed, “After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water, as far as I am concerned”.

4) Willing to fight and Fighting to Win (1)

• Post cold war the utility of force had increased in America’s estimation.  Following US success in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan (in 2001-3) 

• Philip Gordon, described “a profound optimism that we can do it –we can invade a country halfway round the world and bring about a reasonable settlement.” 

  • Confidence of military force high at this time

• Implicitly, however, the administration also realised the limitations to the threat or use of force.  Hence Iraq not N Korea or Iran, and convincing itself it would be over quickly.

• What separated America’s approach to Iraq from that to North Korea is the calculation that Pyongyang had the military capability to deter the US.  

• America wanted to disarm Iraq before it reached that state like N. Korea were it could challenge US

• There was a tendency to conceptualise political problems in military terms to suit the available means – the most powerful military in history can remove bad actors from the stage was what Americans told themselves

  • Often expressed as “when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail”.  (most convenient nail was Iraq)

4) Willing to fight and Fighting to Win (2)

• Administration assumed that it could win, win quickly and decisively and at little risk to the US from Iraq.  

• As Rumsfeld said the war “could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months”.

• Interesting conception of what “the war” meant – i.e. the kinetic period, which the US is good at.

  • US didn’t not think about the long process of rebuilding the country but rather the short smashing of it

4) Willing to fight and Fighting to Win (3)

• The fact that Iraq’s armed forces were a third of what they were in 1991 and had not been updated in the period, while improvements in America’s military have been considerable over that time, was a factor in the overconfidence  

  • The military option looked easy, tempting, risk free, seductive. 

• Bush etcl viewed force against Saddam Hussein’s regime rather like the lancing of a boil on the Persian Gulf, bloody, painful but necessary and therapeutic and quick  

  • They convinced themselves that the risks of not acting against a broad range of “terrorist threats” such as Iraq, were worse than those of taking action.  

•  “Liberating” Iraq and thus setting in train the reform of the whole Middle East is for the US a kind of military problem solving, of tackling the terrorist threat at its roots. Better to drain the swamp than swat mosquitoes (like Al Quidea)

• Wanted no half measures, nothing left unfinished, unlike Korea, Vietnam, or  GW1 the US would fight to win.  

  • Views half measures like N. Korea were from past half measures- idea fo taking down the regime and doing a good job of it

• US was going for the fait accompli, as one senior White House advisor commented, “The way to win international acceptance is to win.  That’s diplomacy: winning.”

5) Threat Inflation and Conflation- (1)

• The application of worst case thinking to the war on terrorism lowered Washington’s tolerance of Iraq. The potential production and distribution of WMD by Iraq to terrorists was now considered grounds for pre- emptive attack. 

• Iraq’s failure to obey UN instructions to disarm provides the trigger mechanism for this action to take place, and the legal cover.

• The mere existence of a hostile rogue state actively seeking WMD elevated Iraq on America’s target list. 

• It differed from North Korea since it had not yet reached the point where it could deter the US from acting.  

• It was seen as a threat that was both credible and manageable. 

While such action would be damaging to America’s desire to win hearts and minds – not to do so in the administration’s view was potentially catastrophic and therefore becomes the priority.

5) Threat Inflation and Conflation- (2)

The conflation of the disparate threat was to become central to the whole concept of the “War on Terrorism”. What started off in a limited way, grew enormously. It was conceptually vague and in practice almost limitless.

• Who are you fighting= ‘terrorism’ (terrorism is an abstract verb) adn dight ti anywhere

  • Their strategic objective as they were sen as responding to their attacks and creating perfect security and justify what they wanted to wherever they wanted to and roll any bad guys into one category and hence of conflations into many desperate threats into one threat

• Eliminating threats to American security was the prime focus of worst-case thinking. 

  • Thus will sue American power and money to go after them as we can;t take those risks

  • Insistence on a ridiculous level of response in response to this sense of security and responsibility 

• For Bush “We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain the weapons of destruction. We act now because we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come.”

  • This quite shows this desire for perfect security 

•  It is for this reason that Iraq’s potential capability to build WMD and its potential to supply them to terrorists is seen as justification for its high threat status in Washington.  

• How “cogently probable the threat from Iraq” was, was seen less of an issue than the need to reduce that threat to Americans.  

• Richard Perle is candid in his answer to this question. “We cannot know for sure. But on which side would it be better to err? How would a decision to do nothing now and hope for the best look when Saddam has nuclear weapons, and he makes another run at Kuwait or succeeds Afghanistan as terrorist headquarters of the world?”

  • Tolerating no sort of threat that could metastasize and attack us

5) Threat Inflation and Conflation- (3)

• The standards of “non-threat” that Iraq was demanded to demonstrate was set impossibly high by Washington.  Thus, in his 2003 State of the Union Address President Bush asserted that: 

  • “Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction.  But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to intimidate, or attack.” 

• Different assumptions to mirror image of US justifications – deterrence, stability, peace, prestige?

  • What about US’s own mass weapons

  • Extraordinary level of threat assessment for another soverign state in the international system that you can't tolerate another state having these things despite US having such things

• That the US saw no contradiction in applying these stringent criteria to others and yet saw no grounds for others to view its own defence policy in this way illustrates the limitations of this approach to national security policy.

• Iraq was invaded, destroyed, and remains broken, to satisfy extreme calculations of threat assessment.

5) Threat Inflation and Conflation- (4)

• It was chosen also because it was seen as politically and militarily easy to bring about regime change.

• The negative assessment of Iraq threat, was combined with an entirely positive assessment of how the invasion would play out, and the untold good it would bring.  Both were dramatically proved wrong

  • Maximum threat from Iraq you have exaggerated and exaggerated likely outcome so if you don’t do anything its worse of possible world and if you do something its the best possible worlds with two weird justification and when they collided:

    • US failed to find weapons of mass of destruction

      • Fundamentally undermined one of the US rationales

      • In UK led to vilification of Blair as that was largely the sole justification UK gave

      • Whereas this doesn’t undermine US faith as much but the next 20 years did with the trip trip number of casualties as US tried to fix that they wanted to prove 

    • Difficulty in bringing peace and democracy 

Post-invasion- (1)

• US presence was initially welcomed positively as bringers of order and justice. Changed quickly when they failed on both counts.

• Invasion March 2003 -Saddam Hussain eventually captured and executed by new Iraqi government

• More Hubris  “Everybody wants to go  to Iraq, real men want to Iran!”. 

  • Period of 5 months of US being viewed as right 

  • Mood that US can use force and what we did in Iraq we can do to other states and idea of sending message to Iran where comply or your next 

• Gen Jay Garner. Who is next?

  • He was pulled back to the White House to be given a medal 

• Bush “Mission Accomplished”?

  • Judging the operation by decoupling the regime and take down of the forces

Post-invasion- (2)

• But - Force not big enough to impose order

  • Big enough to break down the military force but not the military occupation

• No WMD found, undermined legitimacy.

• Disastrous decisions to: 

  • Disband Iraqi Army - Paul Brenner

    • One of the ky instruments of the state, taking away their pay and keeping guns so they get involved in crime, radicalized and terrorism leading to where IS (Islamic States) come from

  • “De-bathification” removes all Sunny Muslims from power

    • Husseim ran his regime by loyalty and so if you are sacking anyone in the bath body you are sacking the whole management strata who knows how things work and exacerbated differences between SUnni and Shia and so when you have elections when majority Shai with no constitution that ensure minority people that had been in power before you have a basis for secretarial conflict

• Created alienated, disaffected, unemployed, well-armed section of the population

• US torture, and sexual abuse Abu Ghraih Prison.

  • Idea of outrage of US messing up and abusing their power and seen as a occupying force

• Sectarian divisions:- Elections return a Shia government,

  • Allows them to behave badly 

• Insurgency follows, paid for by oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting

Post-invasion- (3)

• Having taken troops from Afghanistan, that conflict flares up and isn’t sorted.

  • Forces in’t big enough and don’t speak the language leading to general lawlessness

• Running sore, casualties, IEDs, Iranian influence thinking its next sends loads of Improvised explosive devices.

  •  US formally leaves Dec 2011.

• US comes back in 2014 to counter ISIS who had taken over huge sways of Iraq and Syria.   

  • As of July, 2021, 4,431 total US deaths (higher now)

• US Public Opinion sours. 

  • Talk of “Rumsfeld Syndrome” or “Iraq Syndrome” with a sense that US has come full circle with Vietnam Syndrome where the US military instrument has seen to fail spectacularly 

Concluding Questions- (1)

Coming from success of 1990s with the 5 factors, it turns out to be a complete cluster

• What does the Invasion of Iraq tell us about how to use force Strategically?

• And what does it tell us about how US confidence in its ability to use military force developed in the Post war period?

• How did fear of escalation influence the US response to 9/11?

  • Fear escalation was not a big part of calculator as it chose a target that it thought was quick and a contained conflict and as a discreet operation and doable

• How did the “Vietnam syndrome” influence the Iraq invasion?

  • Probably didn’t influence it an enormous amount as they felt by this point they were over it and were acting in a different way as they had been attacked in a different way and so rules didn’t apply

• What happened to casualty aversion and why?

  • Concern of rule wasn't really a factor due to being attacked aside from Goldliocks factor where you can defeat easily

Concluding Questions- (2)

• How did 9/11 affect threat assessment, and was this justified?

  • 9/11 absolutely changed the whole discourse of threat assessment

  • Sense of vulnerability and opportunity and rewriting the rule of threat assessment and how we can use power were all part of that mindset of strategizing in a new world

  • Was nto justified as it was based on faulty outcomes, focusing on the best outcomes whilst not focusing on the negative

    • Look at their action in best possible light whilst looking at the others actions in worst possible light

• Was it a good use of 3.2 trillion dollars?

  • Mass amount of money to try and build up that regime

• What do you think the legacy of the invasion of Iraq will be?

  • In many ways we are living with it and the legacy we are faced with is Trump

  • What happened is that US power was seen to be at an apex and american dominance was tested to destruction in Iraq and the US public lost faith in the military instrument and what the governments told them about foreign entanglements and why they should involved abroad

  • Made Americans lose faith no only in military force, but also foreign policy entanglements and trust in politicians and what they say

    • A large part of what Trump says comes from US failure to make it work in Iraq in the past 20 years to lead US to turn inwards and reject trust in government an in any notion fo foreign policy consensus and reject the established political order and go fro something completely different

• What precedents are set about the use of force, pre-emption and intervention.

  • Led to others saying we can use force when we want to and not care if UN doesn’t support it

  • Seen with Russia and Putin

• What impact on US reputation, world order, policy towards Ukraine and China?

  • All bets are off

Clinton Administration

Used force in a limited, constabulary role.

Clinton Administration

Bombed Iraq in retaliation to the attempted assassination of George H.W. Bush in 1994.

Clinton Administration military actions

Actions represented the greatest number of military actions in any period in US history.

Clinton's Legacy Summary (use of force)

Limited use of force, constrained by strategic, domestic and legal considerations, often using a 'hit and split' style.

Unipolarity's Impact on US Military Action

Precision bombing and the perception of zero casualties contributed to this environment, fostering confidence in the use of force.

Daalder and O’Hanlon on Kosovo War

Argued that without the KLA or the growing momentum towards NATO deployment of ground forces, the war would not have been won.

Kosovo campaign according to Andrew Bacevich

Signaled an end to the military’s united front on questions of war and peace, violating the Powell Doctrine.

Senior Bush administration official at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 attacks

We read your book. And no one is going to tell us where we can or can't bomb.

Condoleezza Rice

Emphasized Bush admin’s opposition to foreign adventures in contrast to Clinton administration: “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.”

US Strategy in Afghanistan

Relied on the devastating use of air power coupled with an offensive by the Northern Alliance and US Special Forces.

Bush and Rumsfeld on Kosovo vs. Afghanistan

Kosovo showed Clinton’s risk-adverse approach to conflict and Afghanistan needed more than “cruise missiles and stand-off bombing”.

Blu 82 – Daisy Cutter or MOAB Massive Ordnance Air Blasts

Was designed to clear whole forest areas in Vietnam but was used to attack cave complexes in Afghanistan.

NATO and 9/11

NATO Declared 9/11 an Article 5 Attack.

Donald Rumsfeld

Wars can benefit from coalitions of the willing, to be sure, but they should not be fought by committee.

Why Did America Decide to Invade Iraq?

Argues material explanations are not as important as the ideational explanations

5 broad themes that are interlocking debates and the drivers of Iraq invasion

Realist Anti-Appeasement, US Providence/American Exceptionalism, Assertive Unilateralism, Willing to fight and fighting to win, and Threat Inflation and Conflation.

9/11 Report

Concluded not a failure of intelligence but a failure of imagination

Bush on Iraq's weapons

I was was about mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousand of people. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud

Realist view

Terrorists need states to operate from hence the focus on “rogue regimes”.

Goldilocks target

Dealing with Iraq before it got WMD was the preferred option to dealing with a state like North Korea which could not be coerced because of its nuclear capabilities.

Richard Perle

The Continental powers waited until Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and America waited until after September 11 to go after Osama bin Laden…what risks do we run if Saddam is left in power and continues to build his [WMD] arsenal

American Exceptionalism

Idea that US is divinely inspired to be saviour of the world and be the model for the rest of the world to follow and idea that US would remake the world in its image to make it safe

Condoleezza Rice Quote

We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten

Quote from Bush

The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity

Assertive Unilateralism

Post 9/11 Bush was willing to put US national interests ahead of international norms & institutions.

UN Resolutions

Saddam Hussein was in breach of seventeen resolutions passed by the UN since the Gulf War (1991) and UN had failed to contain him.

Resolution 1441

Resolution 1441 put the onus on Iraq to provide evidence of what it had done with its WMD stocks.

Powell explained to the UN

“We haven’t accounted for the anthrax, we haven’t accounted for the botulinum, VX, both biological agents, growth media, 30,000 chemical and biological munitions… We have not had a complete, accurate declaration.”

Sanctions regime

By 2000 oil exports from Iraq had regained their pre-Gulf war levels and the goods and services flowing into the country went way beyond those allowed by the UN for humanitarian purposes.

Bush

After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water, as far as I am concerned

US and state power

America wanted to disarm Iraq before it reached that state like N. Korea were it could challenge US

Conceptualising political problems

Describe a tendency to conceptualise political problems in military terms to suit the available means such as when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Rumsfeld quote

The war “could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months”.

Threats

Eliminating threats to American security was the prime focus of worst-case thinking

Bush threat assessment

We act now because we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come.

Richard Perle

Tolerating no sort of threat that could metastasize and attack us

Assesment on Threat

Maximum threat from Iraq you have exaggerated and exaggerated likely outcome so if you don’t do anything its worse of possible world and if you do something its the best possible worlds with two werid jusficatiosn adn when they collided

More Hubris

“Everybody wants to go to Iraq, real men want to Iran!”.

Invasion Iraq

It was chosen also because it was seen as politically and militarily easy to bring about regime change.