The answer used to be effective disarmament of Iraq. Now it is the “necessity” to unite to enforce UN Security Council resolutions concerning Iraq, to be “relevant” in the 21st century by adhering to Washington’s demands.
Much of the current debate on the crisis in Iraq focuses on the “day after” the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. What will Iraq look like and how will the United States and the international community rebuild the country and fulfill its promise of “reshaping” it into a bastion of democracy for the entire region?
As U.S. officials look for political cover after losing the drive for a second UN Security Council resolution, the recently renamed “Coalition to Disarm Iraq” is the Bush administration’s only opportunity to salvage a semblance of international legitimacy for war. A closer look at the countries involved reveals that claims to multilateral action in the name of democracy are grossly exaggerated. In reality, the U.S. is isolated internationally, and a few of the countries signing on to “liberate” Iraq have human rights records that rival Saddam Hussein’s.
The internationally supported reconstruction and nation-building effort in Afghanistan can boast many successes in the period since the Taliban’s collapse in November 2001. Two million Afghan refugees have returned to the country; three million Afghan children, particularly girls, have resumed school; a new currency, the Afghani, has been established; and a central government, chosen on a democratic basis, has grown more assertive and effective with each passing day.
Transatlantic ties have frayed as pundits and politicians have hurled invectives and insults across the ocean over France and Germany’s opposition in both NATO and the UN Security Council to the Bush administration’s war plans in Iraq. What makes this high-stakes drama so confusing to the public is the Bush administration’s red herring–Iraq. This row is not about Iraq, it’s about the new world order.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hit a nerve last month when he dismissed French and German opposition to the U.S. rushing to war in Iraq, saying bluntly to reporters, “You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t.” He added: “I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east.”
The Institute for Policy Studies has analyzed the relationship between the United States and the
nations in the Security Council and those in Bush’s non-UN coalition. Are these allies supporting
the United States on the merits of the case, or is their support of the U.S. war effort more a result
of coercion, bribes, and bullying?
Soon after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the Bush administration launched the “second front” of its war on terrorism, deploying troops in the Philippines for training and joint military exercises in late 2001 and early 2002. In the next few weeks, even as war in Iraq looms on the horizon, U.S. troops will begin a major new counter-terror operation that, in the words of one official, will “disrupt and destroy” Muslim rebels there. U.S. Special Forces are expected to play a combat, not just advisory, role.
Historical analogies often serve as tools to explain the world we confront today or expect for tomorrow. Harvard professors Richard Neustadt and Ernest May insightfully examined the use (and misuse) of such historical analogies for policymaking in their seminal work Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. It seems that at least some in the Defense Department might want to review his work.
In the aftermath of millions on the streets worldwide opposing a rush to war by the Bush administration, U.S. officials remain at war among themselves over the shape of a post-war Iraq. While finishing touches are being put on war plans that could involve as many as 250,000 U.S. troops, neoconservatives and realists within the administration are battling over the future of a post-invasion Iraq.