From Beirut's English-language _Daily Star_:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=9101
'By God, we've just created the Iraq syndrome!'
By Gary Sick
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Former President George H.W. Bush famously declared, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!" In one of the many ironies of our times, the current president, George W. Bush, may have inadvertently created a new syndrome - the Iraq syndrome - to take its place.
The former President Bush can be forgiven his triumphal pronouncement in 1991. He had just assembled and successfully led a mighty international coalition that flushed Saddam Hussein's forces out of Iraq. The war was short and provoked few casualties on the allied side; it was largely financed by others; and it captured the popular imagination. The old notion from the 1970's that the U.S. public would not support military intervention abroad indeed appeared to be waning, though it probably did not dissipate entirely until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, whatever the elder Bush may have believed.
Since the trauma of Sept. 11, America's national security strategy has been reinvented from the ground up. The new Bush Doctrine, which has been unveiled in formal documents and presidential speeches during the past two years, is based on three cardinal principles: First, the concept of pre-emption, which was always part of U.S. policy, has been elevated to a central role, on the grounds that the nation cannot wait for terrorists to strike, but must hit them first, wherever they are and with whatever it takes.
Second, the new doctrine proclaims that the U.S. will take whatever measures are necessary to insure its supremacy over any other country or combination of countries, especially in military terms. Overwhelming power and a demonstrated willingness to use it, the policy implies, will intimidate American friends and enemies alike into cooperation and compliance on key international objectives.
Third, the strategy is specifically aimed at spreading democracy throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, as an antidote for the kind of lawless tyrannical regimes that are likely sources of aggression and terrorism.
The invasion of Iraq was the first major test of the Bush Doctrine. By pre-empting against a sordid regime with unbridled hegemonic ambitions that had launched two aggressive wars against its neighbors, the invasion was intended to end the costly duel with Saddam Hussein that had run for over a decade. The "shock and awe" of the campaign was designed to send a message to Iraq's neighbors that it was futile to oppose American power; and the anticipated reaction of the regional states, in turn, was to provide the U.S. with immense leverage to deal with such questions as regional nuclear proliferation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In addition, the replacement of a brutal dictator with a more democratic government would serve as a model for reform in the Middle East and an alternative to Islamic radicalism.
This was a bold, even radical vision, made possible only by the angry reactions of Americans to Sept. 11. It was a huge gamble, an innovative and breathtaking departure from traditional U.S. foreign policy, with the verdict riding largely on the success of the Iraq experiment. And it didn't work.
The discovery that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the principal rationale for the war, cast very serious doubt not only on the quality of U.S. and Western intelligence but also on the very concept of pre-emption. If you are planning to go to war to protect yourself against a dangerous future threat, you need to have, and to generate, great confidence in your threat assessment. Will Americans be willing to take their government's word the next time?
The invasion did unequivocally demonstrate the reality of U.S. military pre-eminence, thanks to the defeat of the Iraqi Army in only six weeks. But American forces proved to be utterly inadequate in dealing with the security situation on the ground once formal military combat was over. The strain of keeping 140,000 troops in place in a vicious guerrilla war has strained American forces and placed immense burdens on the U.S. treasury.
The spiraling insurgency has vastly complicated the effort to reconstitute Iraq's infrastructure and its political system, which was to serve as a model for the repressive governments of the region. Instead, the U.S. has steadily whittled down both its objectives and its expectations in favor of a makeshift political arrangement that will meet the minimum requirements to permit America to disengage without excessive embarrassment.
The bottom line is the emergence of an Iraq syndrome that seems likely to bedevil U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East at least for the near future. After the fall of Baghdad, Washington neoconservatives were speculating openly about what the next U.S. target should be ("Should we turn left toward Syria, or right toward Iran?" they asked), and the leaders of both those nations were paying close attention. Today, the Iranians and Syrians are aware that America is bogged down in Iraq and, despite the persistent rhetoric of a few hard-liners, the U.S. is unlikely to soon launch another costly military venture in the region.
Iran, in particular, is more comfortable with its security situation today than at any point in its 25 years of clerical rule. The U.S. has eliminated its two major enemies - the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Baath regime - and now needs at least tacit assistance from Iran to navigate the treacherous Shiite politics of Iraq. The Iranian conservatives have used U.S. threats to successfully discredit their reformist opponents as soft on security, and their plans to complete a full nuclear fuel cycle (though not, they say, a bomb) has widespread national support.
At the same time, U.S. popularity and credibility - in the region and in the world - have hit an all-time low. International security is not a popularity contest, but an ability to leverage support from others does rely on a measure of respect the latter feel and their willingness to give you the benefit of the doubt. The countries most willing to do that today with the U.S., such as Pakistan, are authoritarian and are least likely to be the leaders of any reform movement.
Reform, which was stirring in the region even before Sept. 11, is now progressing at a snail's pace; the collapse of Iraq has, if anything, inspired repressive Middle Eastern governments to crack down even harder, not to liberalize.
The Bush Doctrine was intended to be America's definitive strategy for dealing with a world of terrorism. By choosing to apply it first in Iraq, and then badly bungling its implementation, the Bush administration has cast doubt on the doctrine's validity and has reduced any chance that such policy remedies will be available in the future, when they may well be needed.
Gary Sick served in the National Security Council under presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. He is also the executive director of Gulf 2000, an international research project on political, economic and security developments in the Gulf. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
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