My post on Cyprus raised some eyebrows with its reference to the relative insignificance, in geopolitical terms, of the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Looking back, I’m not surprised that this was controversial. After all, the idea that the war in Iraq is crucially important is a common background assumption in most of the debate, shared by both supporters and critics. Of course, geopolitics isn’t the only criterion of importance – the costs and benefits in terms of lives lost and saved, human rights and so on need to be discussed, not to mention economic impacts. But still, I think it’s fair to say that most people assumed that the presence in Iraq of more than 100 000 US troops, with a demonstrated capacity and willingness to overthrow governments, would make for big changes one way or another.
The most obvious candidate for such effects is Iran1. It is number 2 country in the Axis of Evil (and everyone knows North Korea was only thrown in at the last moment for rhetorical balance). It has advanced weapons-of-mass-destruction-related-program activities. And its current rulers are the same ones who humiliated the US in 1979 and who were, until Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US Public Enemy Number 1 in the region.
On the positive side, we might have expected the invasion of Iraq to cow the Iranian mullahs and embolden their opponents. In particular, we might have expected to see a rapid move to scrap the nuclear program.
On the negative side, we might have expected the theocracy to play on nationalist and anti-American sentiment, wrapping themselves in the flag against a foreign invader. This would seem to be particularly appealing given the American backing for Iraq in the 1980s war. And this could have led to a speedup of attempts to build an atomic bomb.
In fact, as far as I can see, nothing at all has happened. With careful tweaking of the counterfactuals, it might be concluded that the Iraq war has made the Iranian government slightly more, or slightly less, co-operative in relation to its nuclear program. Domestically, Iranian politics seems to be stuck in the same quagmire it’s been in ever since the election of Khatami, going backwards with the rigged elections now under way. On the optimistic side, it’s clearer than ever that the mullahs have lost popular support, and it’s arguable that Khatami’s temporising has created space for the emergence of a civil society in which Khomeinism plays no role. But either way, the dynamics of this seem to be entirely Iranian.
One reason for the limited geopolitical impact of the Iraq war is that it’s increasingly being recognised, not as the first stage in a new American empire, but as a one-off exercise. As Tim Noah points out, the military, financial and credibility costs of the Iraq war make another such exercise not more, but less likely in the foreseeable future.
1 Although, I don’t have time to spell it out, I think very similar points apply to the Israel-Palestine conflict – if the Iraq war has had an impact, it’s not easily perceptible.
{ 26 comments }
Dan Simon 02.20.04 at 10:33 pm
Uh, John, it’s been less than a year. Are you the same guy who heralded the reunification referendum in Cyprus as “the biggest geopolitical event of the year”, based primarily on its increasing the likelihood of Turkey’s entry into the EU in a decade’s time or so, with some vaguely specified regional consequences some time thereafter?
Patience, my good man. Patience.
lancer 02.20.04 at 10:35 pm
Sign ‘o the times when people complain that instant gratification is a bit too slow!
I echo what Mr. Simon said: time, time. (Like, decades even. After all its history!)
John Quiggin 02.20.04 at 10:41 pm
Fair points. But the effects I referred to were anticipated to arise in the short run, and rely on factors that will tend to fade over time. Most obviously, unless things go badly wrong, the US military presence will be reduced significantly over the next year or two.
Dan Simon 02.20.04 at 11:00 pm
I’m obviously not responsible for those who imagined that the Middle East would be re-engineered overnight as a result of the Iraq campaign. In fact, I’m not even particularly sanguine about the near-term prospects for Iraqi democracy. However, I believe that the (likely continued) presence of a less repressive, less neighbor-threatening, and less anti-Western government in Iraq than either the previous regime or several of the nearby ones, will be of significant long-term benefit to the health and progress of the region–even if we don’t see “Switzerland-on-the-Tigris” anytime soon.
Michael H. 02.20.04 at 11:17 pm
“On the positive side, we might have expected the invasion of Iraq to cow the Iranian mullahs and embolden their opponents. […] In fact, as far as I can see, nothing at all has happened.”
It just blows my mind that you can say this with a straight face on the same day there are massive demonstrations and nationwide boycotts in Iran…
Doctor Slack 02.20.04 at 11:23 pm
I don’t see how it’s clear that a continued US presence in Iraq will necessarily be less neighbour-threatening. Less anti-Western? Well, Saddam was a substantially pro-Western dictator for much of his tenure up to ’91, but it didn’t seem to do the region much good; I don’t see how one could spin another strong man on that model as being a “benefit to the health and progress of the region.” (If by “less anti-Western” you mean “friendlier to Israel,” then you probably need to make peace with the fact that your chances of installing sympathy for Israel in Iraq are substantially worse than your chances of turning it into Switzerland-on-the-Tigris.)
The real question isn’t whether we’ll be seeing a “democratized” Iraq anytime soon — the rhetoric about “democratization” was laughable from the get-go — but whether we’ll be seeing a civil war in Iraq. That’s when we’ll know what the geopolitical impact of the invasion was.
Doctor Slack 02.20.04 at 11:25 pm
It just blows my mind that you can say this with a straight face on the same day there are massive demonstrations and nationwide boycotts in Iran…
Seems to me he’s saying that this confrontation was clearly going to happen in Iran anyway. Which is clear to those who’ve been observing Iranian politics before their acquisition of coveted “Axis of Evil” status.
TM Lutas 02.21.04 at 12:16 am
5 years ago, where was the closest pro-freedom Iranian patriots could base out of to plat the taking of Iran, Austria? Today, the closest they could be is in Iraq, right next door. This is a tremendous change.
Clearly, Iraq is still in flux. The situation has not settled. It is a bit early to say that nothing of import has happened when the event itself hasn’t even stopped.
TM Lutas 02.21.04 at 12:22 am
Oh, almost forgot, Libya caved as a consequence of Iraq and that led us to rolling up the biggest nuclear proliferation network on the planet.
Doctor Slack 02.21.04 at 12:54 am
5 years ago, where was the closest pro-freedom Iranian patriots could base out of to plat the taking of Iran, Austria?
If you’re talking about armed dissident groups, the Iranian group the People’s Mujahedeen were operating out of Iraq, among other places, since the early 1980s. Why wouldn’t they? Hussein’s Iraq was a mortal enemy of the Iranian revolutionary leadership, remember?
Of course, the People’s Mujahedeen aren’t “pro-freedom patriots” by any stretch of the imagination. The arguably “pro-freedom” elements of Iranian society have accomplished what we’re seeing today with political pressure, not weapons. An alien concept to the kind of militaristic mindset that either conceived or cheerleaded Bush’s Iraq venture, obviously, but there it is.
Libya caved as a consequence of Iraq
Matthew Yglesias, in linking to this post, noted rightly that either side of the debate will be citing virtually every occurrence in the region, good or bad, as a point in their favour for some time to come. Commentary on the Libya deal — which was in the works for years and stemmed in part from a constructive engagement approach — seems thus far to bear that prediction out.
marky 02.21.04 at 12:59 am
Lutas, the meaning of your post is unclear. You refer both to Libya ( a small player in the nuclear and wmd trades) and
“the biggest nuclear proliferation network on the planet” which must refer to Pakistan. I don’t see a direct relation here. Morever, with regard to Libya, sanctions had a lot to do with Qadafi’s actions. With regard to Pakistan,
I’m not aware that the U.S. has done anything except turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear marketing until very recently—even now there’s no evidence that
Pakistan has stopped being a nuclear Wal_mart
Doctor Slack 02.21.04 at 1:24 am
Morever, with regard to Libya, sanctions had a lot to do with Qadafi’s actions.
I agree with your points except this one. IIRC sanctions on Libya were lifted in 1999 as part of the constructive engagement approach I was referring to.
Dan Simon 02.21.04 at 6:46 am
“I don’t see how it’s clear that a continued US presence in Iraq will necessarily be less neighbour-threatening.”
Perhaps when the US has occupied Iraq as long and as ruthlessly as Syria has occupied Lebanon, or Iraq would have occupied Kuwait absent American intervention, you can say that. Till then, the comparison, frankly, is just silly.
“I don’t see how one could spin another strong man on that model as being a ‘benefit to the health and progress of the region.'”
I agree that another Saddam would not be a sign of progress. But Saddam would be awfully hard for the next leader to match for brutal despotism, and awfully easy to improve upon.
“(If by ‘less anti-Western’ you mean ‘friendlier to Israel,’ then you probably need to make peace with the fact that your chances of installing sympathy for Israel in Iraq are substantially worse than your chances of turning it into Switzerland-on-the-Tigris.)”
What on earth does Israel have to do with this discussion, and why on earth would you suspect me of conflating “less anti-Western” and “friendlier to Israel”? Wait–perhaps you suspect me of being one of those dreadful little people with their pushy ways, stubborn beliefs and inordinate affection for Israel? What do they call them these days….oh, yes–“neoconservatives”. Don’t worry–I’m certainly not one of those….
“The real question isn’t whether we’ll be seeing a “democratized†Iraq anytime soon — the rhetoric about ‘democratization’ was laughable from the get-go — but whether we’ll be seeing a civil war in Iraq. That’s when we’ll know what the geopolitical impact of the invasion was.”
A civil war wouldn’t be optimal, but there are worse outcomes–one of which might well have been the continuation of Saddam in power. If there’s somebody worth supporting in the fight, then it might actually prove useful. (Think of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, for instance.)
BP 02.21.04 at 7:35 am
“Perhaps when the US has occupied Iraq as long and as ruthlessly as Syria has occupied Lebanon, or Iraq would have occupied Kuwait absent American intervention, you can say that. Till then, the comparison, frankly, is just silly.”
Heh. Heh heh.
I would think that when a hostile, monied superpower attacks and occupies a country, and announces its intentions to ‘transform’ the entire Middle Eastern region through military action, sponsoring of subversives etc., that neighboring countries might well regard it as an ‘imminent threat’.
“A civil war wouldn’t be optimal, but there are worse outcomes – one of which might have been the continuation of Saddam in power”
There are worse outcomes than a civil war? Like what, pray tell? Saddam is no superman; you are thinking as simplistically as GWB’s speechwriters. He is not capable of single-handedly killing thousands of people. For Saddam to match the bodycount of a civil war he would have to be involved in another Iran-Iraq magnitude war, with substantial portions being waged in Iraqi urban areas to simulate the damage civil wars cause.
In fact such a war would probably be preferable to civil war, since civil wars have the tendency to fester,spread to neighbors, and wind up in balkanization and ethnic cleansing.
Doctor Slack 02.21.04 at 5:24 pm
But Saddam would be awfully hard for the next leader to match for brutal despotism, and awfully easy to improve upon.
Hopefully you’re right, but though Saddam was one of the worst, I tend to think his degree of abstract evil gets exaggerated. His cruelty did not spring from nowhere, and even with his torturers, his pogroms, his mass graves, his corruption and his wars, he was simply no Pol Pot and no Hitler. It may not be as hard to get as bad, or worse, as you might think.
Other scenarios can be just as bad as totalitarian dictatorship, albeit in different ways. I find your blitheness about the possibility of civil war astonishing. If there’s any scenario that could generate more death and suffering than Saddam could have, that’s the one.
What on earth does Israel have to do with this discussion
You mean apart from being widely regarded as the West’s key ally in the region? Not a thing. So if that’s not part of your argument, fair enough.
I’ll clarify the point on regional stability later, if I have time.
ginger 02.21.04 at 7:25 pm
I tend to agree with John on this. And also, when I’m in a particularly skeptical mood, with something like this:
Doctor Slack 02.21.04 at 10:22 pm
Well, John’s point was about Iraq’s geopolitical impact. That’s fair, if debatable. O’Neill’s point seems to be that Iraq itself is unimportant, which strikes me as more than a bit dense. The invasion was the centrepiece of an ambitious military doctrine being pushed by a powerful faction in the halls of power in America. Anyone trying to pretend that’s unimportant is kidding themselves.
And you know, to rant about the O’Neill piece a bit — this is a guy who not too long ago was denying the existence of any effective anti-Coalition forces in Iraq, and he evidently isn’t too pleased about having to notice the violence:
“What kind of national liberation movement does not declare its aims? Or take responsibility for its actions? Or posit an alternative to the powers-that-be?”
I just can’t buy his pose of exasperation-with-all-and-sundry when he’s so obviously taking up one of the opportunistic positions he’s pretending to deride: namely, that there is no real “resistance” and that the violence in Iraq is pointless, motiveless Evil terrorism for its own sake.
(Oh, and it’d be nice if he’d read something about guerilla warfare, too. Since when do guerillas issue manifestoes or claim “responsibiliy” after every operation? Oh, but this can’t be guerilla warfare, because it must be Nihilist Terrorism. And gosh darn, guerillas attack and then run away again? Shocking! Stand and fight, you dastardly villains!)
I’ve got to say that people like this baffle me. I understand his contempt for those trying to romanticize and adopt the Iraqi resistance, but he’s committing an equally egregious error. How do you propose to fight guerillas if you refuse to acknowledge to yourself what their motives are, or even that they could have motives that it’s possible for you to learn about? Faceless enemy hordes driven by abstract Evil are heady fun in LOTR movies, but it’s dangerous and stupid to approach real life this way.
Dan Simon 02.21.04 at 10:59 pm
“I would think that when a hostile, monied superpower attacks and occupies a country, and announces its intentions to ‘transform’ the entire Middle Eastern region through military action, sponsoring of subversives etc., that neighboring countries might well regard it as an ‘imminent threat’.”
Well, I’m not terribly concerned about what the local despots think. With the possible exception of Jordan, whose pro-American monarch pretty much immunizes his country against American attack in any event, I doubt that Iraq’s neighboring peoples are particularly disturbed by the prospect of American military action.
“I find your blitheness about the possibility of civil war astonishing. If there’s any scenario that could generate more death and suffering than Saddam could have, that’s the one.”
I agree that civil wars, in general, can have truly horrific consequences. But a civil war in which American troops are on hand to intervene on one side is likely to be much shorter and less brutal, and to have more heartening results, than the average internecine conflict ignored by the world.
Doctor Slack 02.22.04 at 12:05 am
I doubt that Iraq’s neighboring peoples are particularly disturbed by the prospect of American military action.
Kinda depends on how the Iraq thing turns out, wouldn’t you say?
But a civil war in which American troops are on hand to intervene on one side is likely to be much shorter and less brutal, and to have more heartening results, than the average internecine conflict ignored by the world.
Well, maybe it’s time to have a think about historical examples. How have American attempts to take sides in civil wars worked out in the past? Did the American intervention conclude or exacerbate the conflict? Does the US appear to have the necessary intelligence to make this outing work better, if it comes to that? Of electoral significance: can the Bush team be trusted to handle that kind of eventuality competently?
linden 02.22.04 at 4:27 am
“It is number 2 country in the Axis of Evil (and everyone knows North Korea was only thrown in at the last moment for rhetorical balance).”
Oh, please. This is such crap. To believe this you’d have to completely ignore all the information that has come out about North Korea’s concentration camps and experimentation with chemical and biological weapons on humans, as well as the huge amount of information about its role in the proliferation of wmd.
John Quiggin 02.22.04 at 5:20 am
It was widely and credibly reported that the first draft had Syria in place of NK, or, more generally that NK was added so that not all the members would be non-Muslim. See here,here, and here.
The point is not that NK isn’t evil or that (like Saddam) it doesn’t have nuclear weapons but that there’s no plausible sense in which it could be said to form part of an “axis”.
obliw 02.22.04 at 6:54 am
“I agree with your points except this one. IIRC sanctions on Libya were lifted in 1999 as part of the constructive engagement approach I was referring to.”
U.N. sanctions were lifted; U.S. bilateral sanctions remained. Since Libya’s oil infrastructure was mostly contructed during the brief and hopeful reign of Idris I, Libya’s first and last official monarch, by American oil companies, Qaddaffi needs U.S. spare parts to make the pumps go, a rare case where bilateral sactions were very effective.
As for this,
“I agree that civil wars, in general, can have truly horrific consequences. But a civil war in which American troops are on hand to intervene on one side is likely to be much shorter and less brutal, and to have more heartening results, than the average internecine conflict ignored by the world.”
Which side? One of the most likely scenarios in which a civil war could happen is one in which Sistani, the Shiite Object of Emulation, declares that expanded governing council is taking too long to hold elections and orders massive civil protests on the part of the Shiites. They take to the streets and violence erupts, very probably involving the three alread organized and armed Shiite militas — the Dawa boys, Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the SCIRI’s Badr brigade. Would the U.S. army then leap in on the side of a governing council widely viewed as illigitimate — i.e., as our puppets — and against a uprising representing the majority of the population?
Sebastian Holsclaw 02.22.04 at 11:17 pm
Hmm, for someone who is willing to praise the UN for perhaps helping to solve the Cyprus problem after decades, John, you sure are in a hurry to judge the results of the Iraq invasion.
I say perhaps only because we still don’t know if the problem as come to a resolution. It just looks more hopeful than it has in many years.
John Quiggin 02.22.04 at 11:37 pm
Sebastian, if you read the post again, you’ll see that it’s not about how things are developing within Iraq, but rather about whether this has had any significant impact (positive or negative) in the region as a whole. My answer, illustrated by the case of Iran, is that it hasn’t. That may change over time, if Iraq turns out much better or much worse than I expect (a government broadly similar to what Khatami advocates for Iran, dealing with continuing guerilla attacks but no outright war), but I don’t see it at present.
Similarly, wrt Cyprus, the issue isn’t the shift within Cyprus itself, but the geopolitical implications, which are profound.
Sean 02.24.04 at 1:15 am
Both the Iranians and North Koreans deserve their place on the ‘axis of evil’ list and the sooner GWB is re-elected and topples their regimes the better it will be for all – their citizens, their neighbors, and the rest of the world. Those who dismiss Bush as stupid probably thought the same of Reagan and his crusade against the ‘evil empire’. They were wrong then – and remain so today.
Rajeev Advani 02.27.04 at 3:56 am
The point is not that NK isn’t evil or that (like Saddam) it doesn’t have nuclear weapons but that there’s no plausible sense in which it could be said to form part of an “axisâ€.
It’s been proven from repeatedly by David Kay and others, through interviews with scientists and computer hard drive evidence, that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy Rodong missiles from NK. Syria, your other candidate for “Axis” status, happened to be the site of the negotiations. These transactions are believed by many to have failed precisely because the US invasion gave Pyongyang a bit of a scare. There’s your “axis” between Iraq and NK. As for Iran and NK… well, I’m tired, but it’s all over the web. Sure these aren’t iron alliances, but collaboration existed nonetheless.
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