OIF Strategic Decisionmaking
My monograph on the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was just released. This is the first of a series on OIF strategic decisionmaking that the Strategic Studies Institute will publish. The next one--on the strategic shift of 2007--will be published in about a month.
I have one quibble. On page 47 of the main body (68 of 89 overall)....
Those two alternatives seem to be the opposite fringes of a very wide range of possibilities. While I am certain some people held one or both of those assumptions, I suspect those individuals were far from mainstream thinkers and far from the White House. How do you discern between the rhetoric and what the actual decision making was? As you noted on page 16...The primary criterion for the decision was an adverse projection of the future. If Hussein was not removed from power, the Bush administration expected the sanctions to crumble and Hussein to rebuild his military and his WMD and ballistic missile programs and eventually obtain a nuclear, biological, or chemical deterrent capability; he would then renew aggression against his neighbors, and actively support transnational terrorist movements. If Hussein was removed, administration officials expected Iraq to use its oil wealth and human resources to develop into a democracy, thus serving as a model and a catalyst for wider change in the Islamic world and lowering the chances of armed conflict in Southwest Asia. Hence the risks of inaction were greater than the risks of action.
While you point out that he likely did not draw ideas from the rhetoric in the media, the first quoted paragraph seems to suggests that such rhetoric did, coincidentally, reflect his actual thought process behind the decision. This is either amazing happenstance or, I fear, the result of attributing too much weight to public statements that were intended to sell an idea.There is little indication that he drew ideas from National Review or Weekly Standard. But the pundits and writers did assist the hard liners inside the administration by preparing the public and hence Congress for military action, making the decision to invade seem feasible and necessary.
WMD, sponsoring terrorism, and related justifications seem now (and at the time, for some of us) to clearly have been just excuses to appeal to an American public swept up in post-9/11 hysteria and a perception of a quick and easy "victory" in Afghanistan. Those reasons were certainly the public rationale and I think you did a great job of documenting and presenting them. But was it the private rationale, too? I think it's a stretch to conclude that. But, perhaps there is no way to investigate that without doing a Vulcan mind-meld with Bush.
One alternative: It seemed unlikely in 2002 that most of the Middle East was ever going to significantly progress beyond being a collection of authoritarian, theocratic, or hopelessly corrupt and stagnant regimes that existed to keep their rulers entrenched in power, paid for with petrodollars and foreign aid, and sustained politically by demonizing Israel and the US. That is, unless the US could intervene in a more significant way than doling out foreign aid or selling weapons. Saddam proved a convenient and timely excuse to get both feet in the door. That is not to say that we were expecting to embark on something resembling the second "if" in the first quoted paragraph above, but rather than we were embarking on a long-term endeavor to reshape the Middle East, not by creating some Iraqi change agent, but by deepening our involvement. A friendly regime gives us physical access with which to flex our muscle.
Administration officials, particularly Cheney, were very clear in the argument that the only options were Hussein's removal or the emergence of a much strengthened and aggressive Iraq. That was how they shaped discussion to reach the point they wanted--by portraying those as the only two options. If, in fact, those are the only two options, any reasonable person would support intervention. People who tried to paint other options like the continuation of containment were not taken seriously.
With hindsight it seems strange that the administration was able to shape the debate this way--into only two diametric options. I argue this was possible because of the lingering national psychological effects of September 11. An attempt to replicate it today by, say, contending that the only option toward Iran is intervention or a nuclear-armed Iran invading neighboring states, would not be taken seriously.
The realists in the administration---Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld--were never as enthusiastic about the idea that Iraq could be a catalyst for region-wide democratic change as Bush was. But once Bush started talking about that, the others had to follow along. For the realists, though, it was always about addressing what they saw as a threat rather than starting a revolution. As conservative realists, they were wary of revolution and aware that revolutions often careen out of control. Bush, though, was transfixed by the end of communism in Europe and very badly wanted to replicate Reagan. I believe he saw the flowering of democracy in the former Soviet bloc as the normal process when authoritarian or totalitarian regimes were removed.
Last edited by SteveMetz; 03-24-2010 at 11:10 AM.
It seems to me that's pretty common, at least in the US. We're seeing a similar dynamic regarding Iran - either we attack them or we live in a world with Iranian nukes. After Iraq, though, there is certainly more skepticism on that sort of either-or thinking or at least a greater appreciation of the costs of military action. And rhetorically, the either-or argument is used quite often in politics.With hindsight it seems strange that the administration was able to shape the debate this way--into only two diametric options.
I'm not seeing that so much in the current debate on Iran. Certainly there is still some effort devoted to using carrots and sticks to cause Iran to abandon its nuclear program (however unrealistic that might be). And I don't think the notion that a nuclear armed Iran invariably would undertake regional aggression is nearly as stark (or articulated by senior policymakers) as it was during the Iraq debate. I don't have the Bush administration statements right at my fingertips, but the rhetoric was not if Hussein would renew his regional aggression, but when.
Right. That's how they "shaped the discussion." Those were "portrayed" as the only two options. But is there any evidence that Cheney or Bush actually believed any of that? There is often a world of difference between what a politician argues and what his actual rationale is.Originally Posted by SteveMetz
Well, we don't know what they really thought but I've never seen any evidence that they didn't believe what they were saying publicly.
True there's no way to know what they really thought.
However, I think that if one considers what was said publicly was in in a sense difficult to refute, that it wasenough to garner some support other than the Neocon approach (which I thin bush just used without necessarily signing on) that became the rationale along with the WMD bit which Wolfotwits later aknowledged had been a mistake and was overhyped.
I suspect that like any MBA, Bush looked for synergies in his strategery. Thus things like not committing heavily to Afghanistan but instead going elsewhere to disrupt AQ et.al. with an unexpected stroke (which became expected due to political problems, to wit, supporting Blair to keep him on side); attacking the Region the so-called terrorists came from (Saudia Arbia was out of the question, too much disruption of the world oil supply and we want China to have all the oil they need. Afghnanistan is not part of the ME so did not count); selecting a pariah state and removing an unpopular autocrat which would elicit less objection than most others; forestalling the move by Iraq to convert their oil sales to the Euro; the disruption of the French, German and Russian near monopolies in ME commerce (while mildly upsetting EU consolidation efforts at the time ongoing...); attacking a point in the ME which would offer geographic leverage over the rest of the area (and thus hopefully getting large bases in the MEfrom which to annoy the neighbors); the quixotic idea of planting 'democracy' in the ME and a host of other little things. Not least the message the US is nuts...
Also a lot of people wanted to get out of Northern and Southern Watch efforts, the Saudis wanted us out of their country so they could crack down on local dissidents and Kuwait and Doha etc. don't really offer enough basing area. A plus was getting in the knickers of France, Germany and Russia to the extent that when Baker visited them postwar with I'm sure interesting things in his attache case, he was able to 'persuade' them to forgive much Iraqi debt -- while letting them know we had other even more incriminating items.
Little of all that would sell well publicly, what did sell well enough was the allegation of a threat -- made little sense but the media isn't bright and it was good enough to get things started.
I've always believed Bush rushed the effort and did it the way he did because he believed had he not gotten a second term, his replacement would do nothing about AQ et.al. but make ineffectual slaps they way his four predecessors did and would do nothing about Saddam. Don't know but I suspect they truly believed the WMD bit to at least a driving extent.
It is interesting to ponder what might have occurred had we gone when first planned instead of delaying about six months to support Blair. That would have been before Saddam gave his two Russian Gen-gen 'advisers' gold medals and he had released all prisoners from jails, passed out weapons and set up his post invasion 'insurgency'...
On the other hand, it seems a bold assumption to think that they did believe what they were saying publicly. The purpose of public statements is not to defend the beliefs that motivate an undertaking. The purpose is to win support for the undertaking. Those are two entirely different things.
This is not a critique of your monograph or your rationale - just an observation from a cynic has found that politics is easier to predict when one coldly analyzes how incentives are aligned, ponders their likely second-order effects in light of recent trends, and ignores the rhetoric that is drafted for the largest target audiences.
The casus belli for the Iraq War drove another nail into the coffin of the "Lessons of Munich," the idea that it is better to fight a small war now rather than a larger one later. Similarly, public confidence in intelligence gathering and analysis is considerably reduced; the aerial photography that showed Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 would probably not arouse the same response today that it did nearly 50 years ago.
Last edited by Pete; 03-25-2010 at 09:16 PM.
While I don't get into it in this monograh, in my book on Iraq I noted that the Bush administration elected to use the "Hitler" analogy--a dictator unchecked simply becomes worse--rather than the "Cold War" analogy--a totalitarian system contained eventually collapses on its own. But the administration never explained exactly why Hussein was more like Hitler's Germany than the Soviet Union.
One of the dominant characteristics, perhaps even pathologies, of this decision was that September 11 created a political climate where major assumptions went unchallenged. The notion that if Hussein had WMD he would give them to terrorists or would renew armed aggression against neighboring states was one example. That democracy would flower if the Iraqi political system was decapitated was another, as was the notion that democratic states will control extremism.
The "Axis of Evil" did have a certain connotation about it.
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