Us Foreign Policy and the Gulf Wars: Decision-making and International Relations 9780755608652, 9781780768359

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For Professor Gilbert Achcar

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INTRODUCTION

In this book I develop an analysis of the post-Cold War academic, quasiacademic and official discourses on the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, and the policies displayed by the respective administrations of US presidents G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush prior to these wars. These discourses are compared with the actual conduct of the Wars and post-war strategies. Considering the academic discourses and intellectual contributions, I analyze liberal cosmopolitan, mainstream realist and neoconservative discourses on the Gulf Wars. I develop an analytical perspective that I call ‘critical realism’ and which encompasses the Machiavellian and Marxist traditions in examining and dismantling discourses as ideological covers for power and material interests.1 This perspective is employed for the purpose of analyzing the academic discourses surrounding the decisions to wage these wars, and for the purpose of critically analyzing the official discourses, documents, statements and actual policies and practices of the two Bush administrations. The commonalities in these case studies are the two Republican administrations headed by presidents with similar political backgrounds, confronting the same regime headed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A significant difference is the types of discourse developed by the two Bush administrations. Discourse analysis is an extensive domain; however, in the discipline of international relations, it has developed significantly through the interpretation and critique of academic arguments, official proclamations, policy documents and media exchanges between statespersons. It puts emphasis on the existence of a causal link between the evolution and development of discourses and the formulation and conduct of state policies. While engaging in discourse analysis in order to explain the decision-making process at state level, I observe that there is a link between the development and evolution of academic discourse to the resonance of similar ideas in the official discourses promulgated by statespersons. Regarding the focus of this book, while official discourses

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have been employed by the Bush administrations for the justification of their grand strategies and in concealing their real motives and interests, they nevertheless played a significant role in shaping their policies for the promotion of US global strategies. The academic debates and discourses from the end of the Cold War, between the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the 1991 Gulf War, broadly included arguments regarding the relevance and validity of international law and the nature of the emerging international order. After 11 September 2001 (9/11), there were further developments in the previous discourses with the inclusion of ideas and themes comprising the moral justification for war, humanitarianism, international strategic evaluations and US global politico-economic objectives associated with its decision to wage the 2003 Gulf War. During both these periods – i.e. from the end of the Cold War to the 1991 Gulf War (1989–91) and from 9/11 to the 2003 Gulf War – the academic debates have been complemented by quasi-academic and official discourses on US grand strategy, emerging from neoconservative think-tanks and the US administrations, respectively. Viewing matters from a broader perspective, the two Bush administrations professed their objectives of transforming the international order, fostering wider military alliances across Europe and the rest of the world, and addressing the radical forms of violence that had emerged due to the rise of non-state actors. Although US interests and grand strategic objectives remain significant, ‘ideas’, including humanitarianism, democracy, economic neoliberalism and advanced global capitalism, maintain a significant place in the development of discourses. While the main emphasis in the legitimizing discourse of the 1991 Gulf War was on the international rule of law and the New World Order, it shifted in the case of the 2003 Gulf War to ‘democracy promotion’.2 Analysts engaged in discourse analysis observe an interconnection of ideas, language, perceptions, knowledge, interests and power – in the process of evolution, production and reproduction of discourses – and hence their contribution to the shaping of policies and decisions. Considering the role of ideas and ideologies in the evolution and development of discourses and their effects on perceptions, policies and decisions, constructivism is an approach which emphasizes the role of shared ideas, through which structures of human association are determined. Constructivists view the evolution of discourse as a two-way process. They assume that while ideas debated in the academic domain resonate in the official discourses, the overall process of the evolution of

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discourse – at academic, quasi-academic and official levels – is mutually constitutive. It can be gathered from their arguments that the evolution and development of discourses are complemented by changes and transformations in the perception and understanding of the objects of discourse among the people engaged. This process contributes to the social construction of knowledge and reality. Based on the primary understanding that there is a continuous process of social construction of knowledge and construction of social reality, constructivists argue that the interests and identities of purposive actors are contested by these shared ideas rather than material forces given by nature. Therefore, intersubjective knowledge and ideas have constitutive effects on social reality and its evolution. Constructivists claim that when shared ideas, rules, norms and cause-effect understandings are drawn upon individuals, they have the potential to make material objects meaningful. These rules, norms and cause-effect understandings in turn become the source of people’s reasons, interests and intentional acts. Similarly, when the same norms, rules and cause-effect understandings are internationalized, they become the source of international practices. Therefore, constructivism strives to explain why people converge around specific norms, identities and causeeffect understandings and how interests are defined. Social actors do not bargain to achieve the utility they expect – as rational choice theory maintains, they prefer to engage in a discourse that helps to demonstrate the validity of their arguments. Discourse promotes collective understanding; therefore, language remains the vehicle for the diffusion and institutionalization of ideas, a necessary condition for the persistence over time of institutionalized practices, and a mechanism for the construction of social reality. Constructivists associate with an epistemology that makes interpretation an intrinsic part of social science. Therefore, they move forward from explaining how things are, to try to fathom how things become what they are.3 Keeping in view the constructivist arguments, it may be further inferred that the objects of attention and debate are transformed and continually evolving during the process of engagement in discourses and decision-making and, therefore, that the actual motives and interests behind the decisions of actors may adequately be explained by fathoming and deciphering the transformed and evolved nature of the objects of their attention and debate. Regarding the question of whether ‘material objects’ or ‘ideas’ constitute interests, constructivism advances the notion that interests are ideas, which are ontologically intersubjective but epistemologically objective

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interpretations about, and for, the material world. Interests cannot be mechanically deduced from international anarchy and the distribution of material resources. Ideas and ideologies are real and causally relevant because they have real consequences. As they change, attention to problems, sectors and allocations to resources also change, in turn changing policies and, in the longer-term, contributing to international developments. Therefore, the basic epistemological premise is that human beings in general and political decision-makers in particular are problem solvers. They attempt to close the gap between what they perceive as reality and what they want to achieve.4 Therefore, by employing specific case studies, an effort can be made to explain the origination, evolution and penetration of ideas into the political realm and the causes and reasons behind this phenomenon. Refining the constructive argument, Martha Finnemore claims that strategic social construction may be regarded as a process whereby actors consciously set out to change the perceptions and values of others.5 Explaining the translation of norms and rules from individual to the international level, constructivists observe that the process of application of norms to classify the world is relevant to the manner in which world politics unfolds. States face security choices and act upon them not only in the context of their physical capabilities, but also on the basis of their normative understanding. Therefore, the evolution and development of a state system and international organizations are taken as a testimony that certain norms and rules have gradually attained wider acceptance. Therefore, constructivists further assume that institutions are a reified set of intersubjective constitutive and regulative rules that, in addition to helping coordinate and pattern behaviour and channelling it to one direction rather than another, also help in establishing new collective identities, shared interests and practices. They view rational actors as living in a socially constructed world where instrumental action takes place as a backdrop not only to the knowledge that individuals share qua individuals, but also to all institutionalized knowledge, such as norms.6 From this perspective, international organizations may also play a significant role in ‘teaching’ norms and constituting the national interests of the states that adopt them.7 Therefore, constructivists trace a link between the evolution of wider discourses and the policies and agendas of international organizations and agencies.

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Some scholars have attempted to show that discourses play a significant role in the formation of images and identities and, hence, the formulation and conduct of policies of a group or alliance of states. From this perspective, Helle Malmvig has tested the claim that knowledge and the object of investigation and debate are mutually constitutive. While comparing the cases of Kosovo and Algeria during the course of 1990s, she has analyzed sovereignty as a discursive construction, in an attempt to show that sovereignty and intervention are mutually constitutive concepts and the changes in the types of discourses on sovereignty may lead to different international responses regarding intervention. The discourse on Kosovo gradually developed by identifying Kosovo as an object of observation to an object of intervention; while the discourse on Algeria projected it as an object of concern to an object of non-intervention, despite the deaths of more than 100,000 people in Algeria.8 Similarly, Lene Hansen has employed the case study of the Bosnian War in an attempt to show that the construction of a different ‘identity’ may have led to a different policy of intervention by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In order to understand foreign policy as a discursive practice, Hansen argues that foreign policy relies upon representation of identity, but it is also through the formulation of foreign policy that identities are produced and reproduced. Foreign policy discourses articulate and intertwine material factors and ideas to such an extent that the two cannot be separated. Foreign policies need to ascribe meaning to the situation and to constructs within it and, in so doing, they articulate and draw upon specific identities of the other state, regions, peoples and institutions as well as on the identity of a national, regional, or institutional Self. This process of reification institutes and creates a specific identification and classification, which may also serve as an input for a general or specific audience. The Bosnian War was represented by President Clinton’s administration as the Balkan War – from this representation the war was seen as an armed conflict fought by barbaric, violent people with a ‘Balkan identity’, who had hated each other for at least 500 years. Therefore, to claim that foreign policy is discursive and political is to argue that representations of identity place foreign policy issues with a particular interpretative optic, one with consequences for which foreign policy can be formulated as an adequate response. The conception of identity as being discursive, political, relational and social also implies that foreign policy discourse articulates a

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Self and a series of Others.9 It can be gathered from the constructivists’ claims that the analysis of process from the primary question of ‘being’ to the constructivist question of ‘becoming’ may help to explain how ideas are reified and hence lead to new perceptions and the formulation and conduct of different policies. From the constructivists’ claims, it can be gathered that discourses develop independently of ulterior motives and interests. They refer to the complex manner in which discourses gradually evolve over the time and reflect, delineate and sketch the developments on the ground. On the other hand, the motives of decision-makers can be plausibly explained by critically analyzing the discourses and the policies pursued. Despite engaging in discourses, the decision-makers are more likely to select the option that they perceive will ensure the attainment of their interests. At this stage, discourses do play a role because the decision-makers have a perception of their interests and have engaged in discourses that legitimize their pursuit of these interests. However, choosing one option or strategy instead of another can be attributed to the perception of interests and the related discourses that are harmonizing and complementary in making the decision-makers believe that a particular discourse may serve their interest. Similarly, Richard Little, writing in the preface of Malmvig’s book State Sovereignty and Intervention, has claimed that case studies can indeed be used to support the realist notion of ‘organised hypocrisy’, where states are driven by self-interest and will violate international norms whenever doing so improves their position. The hypocrisy emerges because states will also draw on a discourse that legitimizes their activities.10 However, the validity of the aforementioned constructive claims can be established by analyzing Malmvig’s and Hansen’s arguments and comparing them to the actual conduct of war on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the after-effects of NATO’s intervention. Peter Gowan, while also engaging with the classical realist arguments and revealing the contradictions in the discourses and actual practices, has persuasively argued from a critical Marxist perspective and explained the existence of regional objectives behind the expansion of NATO after the Balkan War and the US’s geostrategic interests in the eastern European region.11 According to this interpretation, humanitarian discourses essentially served to provide an ideological cover for vital geostrategic and economic interests. From this perspective, the position and role of the decision-makers are significant factors that may be successful in creating a specific image or promoting

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a specific bias and hence leading to preference of a specific policy over another. Contributing to the debate on the role of ideas and decision-making, Steven Lukes has analyzed the conception of power in decision-making and explained the three-dimensional view of power. This view is a development from the one-dimensional view of power, which involves a focus on first-hand study of the behaviour of actors and the process of decisionmaking, and the two-dimensional view, which involves the analysis of the behaviour of actors in view of ‘concrete decisions’ as well as ‘non-decisionmaking’ through coercion or the conscious or unconscious creation of barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts. Lukes argues that while decisions are choices consciously and intentionally made by individuals between alternatives, the bias of the system can be mobilized, recreated and reinforced in ways that are neither consciously chosen nor the intended result of particular individuals’ choices. Therefore, the three-dimensional view allows for consideration of the many ways in which potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through the operation of social forces and institutional practices or through individuals’ decisions.12 From a realist and Marxist perspective, Goran Therborn has developed concepts and explanatory propositions about the operation of ideas, ideologies and subjectivities in power relationships, social change and decision-making. To conceive of a text or utterance as ideology is to focus on the way it operates in the formation and transformation of human subjectivity through interpellation. Considering the process of discourse formation and their impacts on decision-making, it is vital to analyze how the concept of ideology – as it has interpellated individuals as subjects – relates to another concept of ‘role’. Generally, it refers to the behaviour normatively expected of persons occupying a particular position. The social-psychological focus on personal behaviour and interpersonal relations in terms of role-definition and role enactment goes under the name of ‘role theory’. However, ideological mobilization may involve setting a common agenda for a mass of people, summing up the dominant aspect or aspects of the crisis, identifying the crucial target, the essence of ‘evil’, and defining what is possible and how it should be achieved. Such mobilization develops through a breach in the regime’s matrix of affirmation and sanction, which in normal times ensures compromise or acquiescence and the successful sanctioning of the oppositional forces.13 The philosophical question that also arises as a result of the inquest into the role of ideas and ideologies in production and reproduction of discourses

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concerns ‘images of reality’ that conditions the thoughts and perceptions of the decision-makers. This phenomenon has been theorized as the generation of ‘a knowledge that does not know itself’.14 Charles Wright Mills explained the behaviour of decision-makers who pursue their interests by mingling moralist aspirations with opportunism. To such decision-makers, this qualifies as a rational and realistic approach. Mills classified this as ‘crackpot realism’15 and highlighted the negative impacts of employing moral arguments for the attainment of interests. However, in addition to presenting a critical Marxist perspective, Gilbert Achcar explains the role of discourse in leading to deluded idealist behaviour comprising a ‘high flying moral rhetoric at its core’, and classifies it as ‘crackpot idealism’.16 Specifically in the case of the 2003 Gulf War, Achcar argues that the G.W. Bush administration opted for the policy of invasion and occupation, while overruling the option of the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime through a coup. This policy can be explained through the analyses of the discourse built on the options of invasion and occupation and the perception of the Bush administration that their core interests could be attained through this specific discourse and policy.17 While it can be observed that constructivists study the role of discourses in the formulation of policies, the point of difference between constructivism and the approach followed in my analysis is that interests remain the primary considerations despite engagement in discourses. The decision-makers perceive and gradually believe that their interests can best be attained through engagement in a specific discourse, and the discourse in turn strengthens their convictions. However, discourses do have an impact on the execution of policies, since they have the capability of laying certain constraints on actions. Critical realism comprising critical Marxism is therefore an approach which analyzes, deconstructs and dismantles discourses through a critical optic by identifying discourse, essentially, as the ideological cover for material and class interests. Realism as a theoretical tradition in international relations explains the behaviour of hegemonic states in light of their wider geostrategic interests – not on the basis of the ideology propagated by them. Marxism explains the same behaviour of hegemonic powers through a primary focus on the economic interests, the existence of a class system and the role of state in representing and serving the ruling class or classes. Therefore, collectively, realism and Marxism share this critical approach based on the identification of vital interests and objectives as the guiding factors of policy. Through critical realism and

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Marxism, the globally emerging role of the US will also be analyzed in view of the discourses as well as the geostrategic, economic and financial factors and systems built to support the US’s hegemony. In addition, the critical realist approach developed here acknowledges that, once discourses, evolve they have the capability of shaping and restricting the decisions and policies, primarily in societies which are politically cultivated and where decision-makers are accountable to the electorate. Considering US foreign policy, a combination of factors has affected the policy and decision-making of the US administrations. Due to the conducting of regular elections, there exists a system of checks and balances and accountability in US domestic politics. While statespersons can propagate certain causes at the domestic level, in order to extend and promote the national interests of the state at the international level, they also have to campaign for political office from the platform of their political parties, and justify not only the claims made during their election campaigns, but also their policies during their terms. Especially, regarding the decisions to wage wars, it is difficult for leaders to justify illegal and unsuccessful wars.18 In the case of the two Gulf Wars, there were limitations on their ability to implement their policies by virtue of their engagement in the discourses. I begin my analysis by tracing the evolution of discourses on international law with a focus on the relevance of the UN Charter and the inclusion of the ‘just war’ tradition, and critically analyze the post-Cold War debates on the two Gulf Wars as they emerged within the liberal, liberal-left, cosmopolitan and realist schools of thought. I focus on the arguments surrounding the two Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, and critically analyze liberal cosmopolitan arguments juxtaposed with the arguments of the mainstream realists. I also elaborate the vision of postwar international order as developed by the thinkers from both ends of the continuum. Considering the role of a hegemonic power and the nature of a globally emerging order, the notion of empire has traditionally been defined as any single polity that successfully expands from a metropolitan centre across various territories in order to dominate diverse populations.19 The theoretical construct of empire may be further developed by engaging with critical realist and Marxist theories in order to explain the employment of war by a hegemonic power for its geo-strategic dominance and attainment of its economic interests. On the other hand, liberal cosmopolitans engage with the philosophical construct of cosmopolis (implying

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a global civil society by relating it to the Kantian image of Perpetual Peace) to visualize the post-war international order. Therefore, ‘war’ and ‘international order’ have also been the prominent themes in the postCold War discourses on US foreign policy. The liberal thinkers argue for war as a form of retributive justice, and debate its moral justification. In addition, they develop a case for humanitarian intervention. The liberal-leftists contribute to the liberal arguments for humanitarian intervention and, in so doing, also challenge the leftist and Marxist critiques of ‘empire’, ‘hegemony’ and ‘dominance’. The cosmopolitans further debate the justification and purpose of war from the perspective of human security and human rights in the sense of distributive and restorative justice. They argue that all human beings claim common cosmopolitan rights, a common global communicative space and a cosmopolitan identity;20 therefore, ‘individuals’ or human beings may serve as the basic units of analysis in international relations. Drawing upon these primary presumptions and focusing them on the question of war, the cosmopolitans argue that human nature may be perfected; therefore, war is neither innate to human beings nor a natural state of affairs in international relations. Therefore, peace, not war, is regarded as the norm in international relations. However, they consider war to be a social phenomenon and a factor capable of effecting structural changes in the international order. Alluding to transcendental idealism and Kantianism, cosmopolitans philosophically argue that war may be controlled and employed for the benefit of world society. They go further in arguing that wars may be waged for some higher goals, such as delivering retributive justice or for a humanitarian cause. They expect that punitive and preventive wars may lead to the necessary changes in the existing, moribund and degenerating international order, and contribute towards promoting post-war economically robust policies to achieve wider justice in the distributive and restorative sense, in the form of global economic welfare and global peace. In this context, liberals and cosmopolitans argue in favour of a war waged to deliver a morally acceptable punishment for a crime and to eliminate a grievous future threat to peace – provided the outcomes of such wars are also socially and economically productive.21 Therefore, it may be inferred from their arguments that the initiator of such wars may be exempted from any moral blame for waging a ‘necessary war’. Moreover, the cosmopolitans call for the rethinking and transformation of international law into international cosmopolitan law in view of the Kantian notion of cosmopolis.22

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On the other hand, the traditional classical realists visualize and explain the role of war in the development of international order through the Hobbesian philosophical construct, and do not engage in questions regarding justifications for war. Beginning from the level of individuals, they claim that the innate nature of humanity is survival and power oriented, and that this nature is furthermore evident at a higher level, in the conduct of the affairs of states by leaders. Realists claim that the ‘state’ may therefore be considered the basic unit of analysis in international relations. The state remains the highest and sole creator of legitimacy, and self-preservation is its first duty. Based on these primary presumptions, they visualize interstate relations as a condition of perpetual war of all against all, where states pursue and safeguard their own interests and maximize their power and influence through all kinds of means available. Therefore, statespersons may employ war as one of the means of attaining the ends of the state. Realists further argue that powerful states often morally justify their expansionist ambitions as obligatory and necessary, or paint their decisions to wage wars in idealist hues in order to mask their ulterior motives: gaining more power and extending their hegemony. Therefore, according to the realist philosophy, statespersons may define rational objectives and pursue calculated international strategies that also appear moral and legal; however, in actuality these policies ultimately ensure the hegemony and increase state power. A policy may not be Machiavellian if it openly appears as such. Therefore, for an analyst studying a social phenomenon or a case of war by employing a realist theoretical lens, the intentions of actors may be fathomed through the critical analyses of their declarations and strategies under specific circumstances, as well as the outcomes of their strategies. From the perspective of international order, these arguments from different ends of the continuum overlap at the point where some cosmopolitan scholars visualize the emerging order in the light of hegemony, interstate cooperation and globalization. These scholars argue that the complex and gradually unfolding changes and developments in the international order cannot be adequately explained merely through the constructs of either unilateralism or multilateralism, or, from the perspective of US foreign policy, as pro- or anti-Americanism.23 This argument raises a theoretical question regarding the nature of the emerging global order, which displays a global interconnection and influence of various non-state actors and entities, despite a hegemonic state’s employment of war for primacy and dominance.

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Regarding the parameters of my theoretical analysis, I present the cosmopolitan case for war in view of cosmopolitan identity and humanitarian intervention, and their reference to Immanuel Kant’s arguments in his essay Perpetual Peace, but referring to the arguments on war, I exclusively deliberate upon the relevant tenet of the ‘just war’ tradition – jus ad bellum – justifications for war and, similarly, I shall not delve into the philosophies behind the concept of cosmopolis. I shall not elaborate the philosophic-theoretical basis of realism as a tradition in international relations, but present the basic assumption of the realist scholars and employ them as a perceptual lens with the objective of focusing them upon the two US administrations, in order to study their intentions, approaches and policies. I shall not examine the philosophies behind neoliberalism as an economic policy, but explain the concept of economic welfare from the perspective of the debates surrounding neoliberalism.24 I employ the Marxist critiques to analyze the liberal-left and the cosmopolitan arguments in favour of neoliberalism and capitalism. In addition, I shall not explore the conservative ideology as it developed in western political thought but will exclusively critically examine the ideological bases of the neoconservative movement in the US and their discourses on the 2003 war, which were built on the premise that Iraqi society would welcome the US invasion and takeover, and the proposed infrastructural changes in the political and economic order of Iraq. In order to focus these debates on US foreign policy, and trace the history of realist and liberal cosmopolitan rhetoric in the evolving US foreign policy, I analyze the strategic doctrine National Security Council 68 (NSC 68), formulated during the Cold War years. The purpose is to identify the continuation of Cold War strategic objectives in postCold War strategic doctrines, including National Security Strategy 1990 (NSS 1990) and National Security Strategy 2002 (NSS 2002), formulated during the administrations of G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush, respectively. In addition, I explain the emergence of the neoconservative policy-makers in the US government and analyze their discourses on US foreign policy, which sounded of realist as well as neoliberal and cosmopolitan arguments. I explain the evolution of post-Cold War US grand strategy, which benefited from the mingling of realist and neoliberal ideas, materializing in military globalism and the extension of advanced capitalism in the form of the Wall Street system, which I explain in Chapter 2 on realist discourses.

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The post-9/11 academic discourses emerging within the US included the notions of engaging in the War on Terror (WoT) and reforming Middle Eastern societies by introducing democracy.25 These arguments were originally based on the presumption that democratic and liberal states do not indulge in wars for the sake of their own economic interests. Therefore, in order to create a world that is more democratic and peaceful, and while simultaneously eliminating the threats to democracy and liberalism, war had been argued as unavoidable and an acceptable policy. Keeping in view my approach of critical realism, in Part 1 of the book I critically analyze the basic assumptions of the liberal cosmopolitans, realist and other intellectual contributors and identify how the ideas lead to the development of concepts and images that affect the perceptions, and hence the decisions, of policy-makers. This approach will also encompass critical Marxism to dissect the liberal cosmopolitan discourses for the promotion of neoliberalism and capitalism. Continuing this approach in Part 2, I analyze the use of terms and language in the official statements and strategic policy documents, and trace their connection with the ideas and images identified in Part 1. The analysis will also include realist and Marxist critiques of US policies in the past, especially with respect to Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Therefore, this approach of discourse analysis comprises the employment of a theoretical perspective, realist and Marxist critiques, references to historical events and the analyses of rhetoric, speeches and statements. Chapter 1 develops the post-Cold War discourses and focuses on the gradual inclusion of liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan arguments that comprise the moral justification for war, the notion of justice in both a restorative and distributive sense and the role of war in building a liberal politico-economic world order. Chapter 2 includes the arguments from Chapter 1 and also simultaneously highlights realist assumptions, arguments and interpretation of wars waged for the attainment of the national interests. I lay out the parameters for the theoretical employment of liberal cosmopolitanism and realism from the perspective of US policy towards Iraq, in order to apply the theoretical construct to the case studies in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 comprises an analysis of the 1991 Gulf War and a critical evaluation of the decision-making process. I analyze the official discourses as they developed, including analyses of

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National Security Strategy 1990 leading up to the 1991 Gulf War and the post-war policy of President G.H.W. Bush’s administration towards Iraq. Chapter 4 includes the analysis of official discourses on the 2003 Gulf War, including the critical analysis of National Security Strategy 2002, and focusing on the justifications for the 2003 war along with a brief evaluation of the reality of the strategic threat from Iraq. It presents a critical evaluation of the US decision to wage war and the conduct of policy after the occupation of Iraq up to the elections of January 2005. The analysis of the 2003 war will highlight the differences in the discourses and strategies as compared with the 1991 war. Finally, I present the theoretical and empirical findings of my analyses.

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1 THE POST-COLD WAR ACADEMIC AND INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENTS ON THE USE OF FORCE BY THE US: DEVELOPMENT OF LIBER AL COSMOPOLITAN DISCOUR SES

The philosophical ideas and moral arguments that contributed to the development of the debates on ‘just cause’ for waging wars also developed the concept of justice in a retributive sense – i.e. as a morally acceptable punishment for a crime. It can be observed that in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 discourses on war and strategy, justice was also broadly defined as distributive (social justice and the allocation of economic goods in a society) and restorative (reconciliation among the victims and broader fulfilment of their needs). Therefore, the ideas of humanitarian war, promotion of democracy and the earlier debated themes of civilizing1 some identified societies and states also re-emerged, urging the developed, resourceful and free states to address the socio-political and economic problems of failing2 and collapsing3 states. The emergence of these philosophies and arguments led to an expansion of the theoretical bases of these debates and was a move forward from the theorizations during the Cold War years, where international law, the statutes of the UN Charter and precedents from interstate relations had been employed to draw the parameters of the discourses on war. The previous Cold War

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theorizations had also served to validate the primary rationale behind the idea of ‘state’ and the fundamental principles supporting it, for instance, the state’s sovereignty, which had contributed to the development of a society of states, international law and international organizations. The state-centric theorization during the Cold War years had also contributed towards the enrichment of the realist philosophy of international relations. Similarly, the UN had maintained a significant status as an international mediatory institution. During the Cold War years, the US approach to the UN underwent a drastic change. This trend was a consequence of UN Resolutions, which had been perceived by the US leaders as favouring the USSR. US–UN relations had been further undermined by UN Resolution 3379, which had condemned the Zionist agenda of Israel. This resolution, passed in 1975, defined Zionism as a form of racism because it was based on racial discrimination and so signified a threat to world peace. The resolution called upon all countries to oppose this racist ideology.4 On the other hand, a vast majority of UN member states felt deep-rooted suspicion towards the US’s promotion of global capitalism. Some scholars argue that this suspicion can be attributed to the colonial exploitation experienced by many newly independent states. In addition, during the Cold War years the Soviet model had appealed to some of the member states as a viable alternative to capitalism. Therefore, in theory there were fears among the pro-Soviet Third World states that a worldwide capitalist market economy would mean rival centres of power and influence, which might threaten the regimes during the difficult period of post-independence nation building.5 Collectively, these factors added an economic and financial side to US discontent towards the UN. The US ambassador to the UN at that time (1965–68), Arthur J. Goldberg, gave his opinion about the UN’s inability to apply Article 19 and penalize defaulters, thereby serving a subtle warning to the UN and hinting at the possibility of withdrawal of US financial support if the UN did not impose the principle of collective financial responsibility. In 1972, the US budget for the UN had been reduced from 31.52 per cent to 25 per cent. In 1974, ten years before pulling out of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the US Congress stipulated that no funds were to be specifically reserved or spent to support the UN until the US president certified that it had ceased anti-Israeli actions. This hostility towards the UN reached its height during Reagan’s presidency. US Senators Jesse Helms and, later, Nancy Kassebaum made amendments

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to the reduction of the US budget for the UN, which played a significant role in the suspension of financial support for the UN. During the 1980s, an ideologically conservative institute, the Heritage Foundation, which had once been regarded as an organization ‘on the outer fringes of respectability’,6 gained credibility and influence as a think-tank. The Heritage Foundation’s United Nations Study Project sent out a barrage of anti-UN monographs, capturing the growing resentment towards the global organization and channelled it towards policy recommendation.7 These developments were an addition to the already existing discourses questioning the writ, validity and necessity of the UN. In contrast, at the time of the decision to launch the first Gulf War in 1991, President G.H.W. Bush’s approach to the UN had displayed a complete turnaround. Although he had served as the Vice President under Reagan, during Bush’s time UN-bashing had ended, the Heritage Foundation’s influence had gradually minimized, budgetary reforms had been initiated at the UN and Bush had started efforts to engage collectively with the USSR and the UN.8 Therefore, marking a drastic shift from Cold War policy, G.H.W. Bush attempted to gain US Congress approval for the war by turning to the UN for its sanction, and praised the UN for its international role in promoting international justice. This shift in policy and the related financial and strategic aspects of these changes will be explained in the concluding section of Chapter 3. In focusing on the discourses surrounding the two Gulf Wars, it can be observed that there was a significant difference between the post-Cold War and post-9/11 discourses on these wars. From the perspective of the 1991 Gulf War, international law and the UN Charter remained the fundamental sources for determining legitimacy on the questions of self-defence and preventive war; in contrast, in the post-9/11 discourses leading up to the 2003 Gulf War the validity of international law and the UN Charter was questioned. The roots of this trend can be traced to the approach of US presidents towards the UN during the Cold War. This difference will be examined in the analysis of these case studies. While tracing the emergence of the post-Cold War debates that focused on the role of non-state actors, I shall analyze the arguments that went beyond the notion of state sovereignty and the concepts of self-defence and justice. These debates initiated the arguments calling for the reinterpretation of legal obligations related to the principles of self-defence and ‘justifications for war’, as manifested in Articles 2(4)

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and 51 of the UN Charter. Furthermore, the ‘just war’ theorists identify themselves as liberals, and debate the need for identifying a common ground between the realist and idealist arguments on war. They argue for retributive justice through the employment of war and further argue for distributive and restorative justice while appealing to the idealist and cosmopolitan principles of peace and socio-economic welfare. As liberals, the ‘just war’ theorists also criticize the left for being complacent towards the terrorists who had given an anti-imperialist hue to their destructive agendas. Therefore, these theorists also contribute towards the promotion of a new liberal-left ideology, presenting their own justifications for war. Similarly, the cosmopolitan debates about a ‘just war’ and the preventive use of force are based on the principles of human rights and human security, extending these themes to the need for socio-economic reforms for achieving wider global peace. Overall, the liberal ‘just war’ theorists, the liberal-left and the cosmopolitans share an approach towards international relations that is opposed to realism and can also be classified as liberal internationalism.9 The initial arguments focus on the shift in paradigm from ‘post-charter self-help’ to ‘pro-democracy’ strategies. In the post-Cold War era, ‘post-charter self-help’ emerged as a framework for understanding contemporary international law, relating to the recourse to force. This framework will be explained in the relevant section; however, it was based on claims that: (i) the rise of a new valuehierarchy (of justice surpassing peace); (ii) the failure of the UN Charter to establish consensus on peace building; (iii) the need for launching just reprisals to correct past injustices; (iv) the increasingly transforming nature of conflict in post-Cold War world politics; (v) persistent problems of interpretations of the statutes on self-defence in the UN Charter; and (vi) the difficulties in the enforcement of UN’s rulings, meant that states might explore strategies other than those prescribed by the UN Charter.10 ‘Pro-democracy’ strategies implied the pursuance of policies for the promotion and sustenance of democratic regimes, this being the right of the democratic members of the international community to aid, directly or indirectly, those fighting for their democratic entitlement.11 This was one of the theoretical developments that went further beyond humanitarian intervention. The purpose of analyzing these themes is to lay the groundwork for the extension of the debates in the next section, following the liberal advocacy of a proactive war for the deliverance of justice, humanitarianism and promotion of democracy.

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Elaborating the themes from the previous section, I critically analyze the ‘justness of cause’ from the perspective of jus ad bellum, according to the ‘just war’ tradition12 and the liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan arguments on the ideas of justice, the right of self-defence and the promotion of humanitarianism and democracy. The philosophical question addressed by the liberal ‘just war’ theorists was the moral justification for war. While arguing that moral principles can be applied in this way, the theorists opposed the realist claims that international relations is a perpetual state of war, that states rationally pursue their interests through the employment of war and that the success of such wars serves as a source of their legitimacy. Similarly, arguing for a preventive war to ensure the security of the threatened and innocent non-combatants in the US, while calling for humanitarian intervention in other failing and collapsing states, the liberal ‘just war’ theorists took a bellicist stance, as opposed to idealists, who had been sceptical towards the justification and employment of war as the ‘means’ to ‘ends’. Similarly, the theorists oppose the pacifists who argue that war should be outlawed. While sharing a global vision, liberal ‘just war’ theorists are sceptical about the Kantian transcendental idealist notion of Perpetual Peace, as well as the cosmopolitan case for use of force,13 authorized by international agencies such as the UN. From the perspective of the US’s hegemony and the emerging international order, the liberal ‘just war’ theorists, the liberal-left commentators and cosmopolitans also argue for the promotion of neoliberal and capitalist economic policies along with democracy. Therefore, their arguments can be critically analyzed from the Marxist point of view. In the theoretical domain, these debates overlap the issue of US’s policy of war against Iraq. In order to relate the debates to post-Cold War US foreign policy, the liberal case for ‘just war’, the ‘WoT’ and humanitarian intervention is explained, along with the liberal-left’s arguments, the cosmopolitan case for the use of force for humanitarianism and democracy and the significance of liberal economic policies. This leads to the identification of interplay and points of convergence in the arguments from liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan sides. These arguments are compared with those of the realists in Chapter 2, in order to explain the developments in the discourses from the post-Cold War and post-9/11 periods, and examine the collective effects of these developing discourses on the policies of the US decision-makers at the time of both Gulf Wars. The liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan arguments are related to the question of the evolution of US hegemony in post-Cold War and

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post-9/11 international relations. The purpose is to place the arguments from the post-Cold War and post-9/11 discourses in the perspective of US foreign policy towards Iraq, and the conduct of the wars of 1991 and 2003 and their aftermath. This approach serves to identify and demarcate the grounds for the theoretical analyses, comprising the liberal cosmopolitan arguments in light of the realists’ arguments, which are set out in Chapter 2, and provides analyses of the two Bush administrations in the case studies.

Discourses on war and US foreign policy in post-Cold War international relations, leading to post-9/11 discourses on ‘just war’ Addressing the moral, legal and politico-strategic issues related to justifications for and motivations behind going to war, both the academics analyzing and explaining US foreign policy and the planners who formulated US strategy faced fundamental questions about the international role of the US and the employment of war in the post-Cold War era. The end of the Cold War promised an opportunity for the US to seek its professed objective of redefining its international role and recreating the international order, which already resonated with the notions of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and American exceptionalism. At the same time, the lingering inter- and intra-state contentions and low-intensity conflicts which had been the consequences of proxy wars – the remnants of the Cold War era – were gradually bringing the message home to the US that it would have actively to engage militarily in future conflicts. Moreover, with the relative decline of its post-World War II strategic adversary, the USSR, along with its ideological and economic communist agenda, the strategic thinking that had gradually developed during the Cold War required theoretical reinterpretation and reasoning, while the US grand strategy required new legal and moral justification. During the late 1980s, the USSR’s blocking ability against US endorsements in the UN had gradually been diminished; however, there also existed a perception in the Reagan administration that the majority of the Third World states in the UN General Assembly negated the endorsement of US goals in these bodies. The US maintained a low-profile policy of quasi-withdrawal from the UN during the 1970s and 1980s whilst simultaneously extending its control over the international economic institutions in which its interests remained predominant. Through these institutions it managed

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to penetrate many Third World states, offering open economic policies and structural adjustment programmes to settle their growing external debts.14 In addition, US military policy from the twilight of the Cold War was supported with the moral rhetoric of delivering justice. The notion of justice in these cases had been distributive and restorative. President Reagan promoted notions such as correcting ‘unjust’ conditions in Nicaragua, and G.H.W. Bush’s administration launched the military operations named ‘Operation Just Cause’ in the case of Panama in December 1989.15 While the US could virtually ignore the UN and allow the economic forces and institutions to continue shifting power relations in its own favour, any state that sought to control its own economic resources in its own interests, in contradiction to the external market forces, posed a challenge to the global economic system. Chile and Nicaragua suffered the consequences; however, the Gulf Crisis that led to the war of 1991 became a critical juncture for the US to engage with the UN in redefining its global role and the standing of its allies, including the United Kingdom (UK) and France. A Security Council under US governance could authorize military action that could serve a warning to any Third World country planning to build a military challenge to the system. The reason for the US initiative against Iraq (1991) remained obscured by the public ritual at the Security Council.16 However, at the time of the 1991 Gulf War some of the post-Cold War debaters on war and the international order had philosophically and theoretically employed the theme of the ‘just war’ to explain the US role role as a hegemonic power and address the questions regarding its conduct of war in a plausible theoretical construct. Moving further in terms of threat perception, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 raised these questions to a higher level by including the threats from unidentifiable adversaries with non-conventional strategies, and also exposed the strategic vulnerability of the US. Therefore, the arguments, debates and discourses that developed in post-Cold War and post-9/11 international relations contributed towards the extension of the theoretical horizons as well as the strategic policy objectives of the US grand strategy. The legal, ethical and politico-economic issues debated by academics could also be traced, respectively, in the policy statements and official discourses of the US administrations of G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush in their justification for these two wars. Scholars theorizing about and explaining the post-Cold War debates have referred to a shift in the paradigm,17 in their discussions of the

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rights of self-defence and the need for adequate and justified responses against the non-state belligerent entities. This conceptual shift emerged primarily as a consequence of the transformed nature of international politics with the emergence of one greater hegemonic power, especially owing to the concerns about its potential hegemonic expansionism. Similarly, with the rise of non-state actors with unconventional tactics of belligerency, there had been the concern that Article 2(4) of the UN Charter18 had become ineffective and moribund – on the one hand, in the face of terrorism and, on the other hand, in the face of unilateral actions of states against other states and non-state entities. Similarly, there had been debates regarding the permissibility of preventive war according to Article 51 of the Charter, which permitted the use of force only in self-defence ‘if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations’.19 On the other hand, since the debates included non-state belligerent entities that in some cases transcended the boundaries of states, the legitimacy and sovereignty of these states were called to question. In addition, the 1990s witnessed the rise of debates not only regarding the problems of newly emerging threats, but also regarding the responsibilities of international organizations and hegemonic powers in maintaining and promoting peaceful and economically viable international order. These trends called for the definitions of the legal obligations and responsibilities of states and international institutions, limits on the use of force for collective security and the need for justifications for the pursuance of the grand strategies. In a broader perspective, the post-Cold War era up to 9/11 therefore signified a relative continuation of post-World War II thinking, in which justice was to be sought, but not at the expense of peace, owing to the lessons learnt from the massive devastations during the World Wars. However, in the debates gradually emerging in the post-1991 Gulf War and post-9/11 eras, the ‘just war’ tradition had been employed in the reasoning for war, and it had been argued that the tenets of just cause as explained in the jus as bellum of the ‘just war’ tradition had to be rethought in view of new international developments. With the emerging international strategic environment becoming increasingly complex, some scholars argued that the nature and extent of the threat from the unconventional and non-state adversaries neither permitted any state planning to defend itself as to the effective exhaustion of all the options of preventive and pre-emptive defence, nor be able to establish that all of the requirements of jus ad bellum had been explored, if not

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satisfied.20 Therefore, in the post-9/11 debates there was a gradual move towards delivering justice in a wider sense of the responsibilities of states beyond their borders, even if it was at the expense of peace. In retrospect, tracing the history of these developments in the postCold War but pre-9/11 era, Arend and Beck, while debating the lawful use of force and the future relevance of jus ad bellum, refer to the postCharter self-help paradigm, and argue that the Charter Institutions had failed to form a consensus on collective security and peace keeping, and so a new value hierarchy had emerged in favour of the right to use force for self-determination, to apply ‘just’ reprisals and correct some past ‘injustice’. In view of the challenges to Article 2 (4) they conceptualized three approaches to explain the legal obligations: the Legalist, advocating the right to self-defence according to Article 2 (4); the Core Interpretist, arguing that a narrow legalist interpretation of the same Article no longer represented existing law, but the core meaning of the article (which was still authoritative) could still be identified; and the Rejectionist, arguing that this Article did not in any meaningful way constitute existing law. Arend and Beck conclude that the Rejectionist approach seems to offer the most adequate description of the contemporary jus ad bellum.21 The post-9/11 discourse on war and self-defence extended these debates, along with the call for the reinterpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter,22 further calling for a significant shift in the value hierarchy of ‘justice’ to surpass ‘peace’ from the perspective of the domestic as well as international responsibilities of the dominant state(s). The inclusion of a philosophical construct of ‘just war’ to the discourses can be observed as a sequence of these debates and trends. The case for humanitarian intervention in these series of arguments, especially post-9/11, has also been theoretically motivated by the debates based upon these approaches. The complex and diverse discourses on war and self-defence – by virtue of the employment of philosophies of justice, peace, democracy and humanitarianism – laid an expectation of international responsibility as well as accountability for action on responsible states. Moreover, as noted earlier, with the decline in competing ideologies, primarily communism and socialism, there had been a developing consensus in western liberal thought23 about what constituted an illegitimate regime; therefore, the debates on a shift in paradigm included the proposition of removing such proclaimed illegitimate regimes to be replaced with liberal, democratic and humane governments – in the spirit of a shift from post-Charter self-help to pro-democracy paradigm.24

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The significant issue that emerged in the post-Cold War discourse on war regarded the permissibility of breaking the peace in the name of justice, rather than continuing with amicable but relatively ineffective institutions, laws and strategies for achieving peace. The terrorist incidents of 9/11 rendered some strength to such claims. However, the evaluation and establishment of ‘just cause’ and the legality of armed action remained an undisputed principle in academic discourses, as well as an obligation in the policy declarations and military strategies of states. The post-9/11 discourses comprised the interplay of the fundamental criteria of strategic nature: the concepts of the ‘anticipation’ of threat and the idealist and cosmopolitan advocacy for the cause of ‘humanitarianism’,25 along with the themes including promotion of democracy and liberal economic reforms. In the theoretical domain, however, where emerging strategic threats had been contemplated, the academic debates had been inclusive of the themes related to the strategic concept of ‘anticipation’, the moral arguments for humanitarianism and sociological concepts of politicoeconomic welfare. The discourses collectively also presented an explanation for the emerging international order and the role of the US as a hegemonic power. Therefore, my objective is also to analyze the role of the discourses and to fathom whether US policy is contributing towards a cosmopolitan and global order despite a unilateral approach – as has been philosophized by some scholars26 – or, on the contrary, whether it displays evidence of Machiavellianism despite the moral justifications and supporting discourse based on liberal and cosmopolitan principles.

Arguments relating to ‘just cause’, humanitarianism, democracy and neoliberalism in post-Cold War and post-9/11 international relations Considering the arguments on the ‘just war’ tradition, laws of war, natural law, humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, democracy, capitalism and diverse discourses on the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, I have included the relevant arguments on the issues specific to these Gulf Wars. The first tenet of the ‘just war’ tradition, jus ad bellum or the right to wage war, debates the conditions supporting the launch of a ‘just war’. This principle has been interpreted by both academic thinkers and other intellectual contributors. Among the liberal thinkers, Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social

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Science and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School and editor of The New Republic. Among the liberal-left, Michael Walzer is an American philosopher, public intellectual and Professor Emeritus at the School of Social Sciences at the Institute of Advanced Study in New Jersey. He is the co-editor of the magazine Dissent. The liberal-left commentators include Paul Berman and Thomas Cushman. Among the cosmopolitan scholars, Mary Kaldor is a Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics (LSE). Ulrich Beck is a German sociologist and currently a Professor at the University of Munich. Daniele Archibugi is an Italian economist and political theorist. And at the time of writing, David Held is a political theorist and a Professor of Political Science at the LSE, and Anthony McGrew is a Professor of International Relations at Southampton University. Held and McGrew had already contributed to the cosmopolitan discourses by theorizing the nature of the emerging international order from a politico-economic perspective. These thinkers have been placed in this order with the objective of analyzing the developments in the discourse: from arguments over justification and the right to use force to the inclusion of already prevalent arguments calling for humanitarian intervention, the promotion of democracy and neoliberalism and a proactive role of the US in the emerging international order. The traditional philosophers of the ‘just war’ tradition, while building a moral case for war, have drawn up parameters where the use of force might be considered legitimate, primarily in the case of an imminent threat to a state and its population, or in an effort to rescue a group of people facing a grave threat. In so doing, the philosophers established certain limitations on the conduct and means of war; therefore, in the post-Cold War and especially in the post-9/11 discourses, the principles of ‘just cause’ and ‘proportionality’ – the appropriate amount of force in the face of a perceived threat – have been extensively debated.

The liberal discourses on ‘just cause’ Elshtain built a moral and theological case for a ‘just war’ based on the Christian tradition by referring to St Augustine27 in arguing that a political ethic is an ethic of responsibility, and that the ‘just war’ tradition offers a way to exercise that responsibility. Elshtain further argues – in the context of ‘just cause’, proportionality and retributive justice – that, since non-combatants were targeted in the 9/11 attacks, the cause to

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respond was just, provided the US ensured that non-combatants would not be targeted when it retaliated against the perpetrators of 9/11. In Elshtain’s view, the avoidance of civilian casualties is possible and likely, given the nature of the modern weaponry and the US army’s targeting strategy, which was aimed at avoiding civilians as well as important cultural centres and houses of worship. For Elshtain, visualizing such a strategy is possible due to the fact that, in the post-Cold War era, US freedom of strategic manoeuvrability had increased significantly, with no strategic limitation such as the ‘balance of terror’ that had pertained during the Cold War years. She argues that the terrorists, whom she identifies as Osama bin Laden and his group Al Qaeda, had neither negotiated in the past nor did they want to negotiate in future; instead, they were inclined towards murderous destruction, specifically targeting non-combatants. Therefore, in her view there was a legitimate casus belli for war, and she further argues that there was no purpose in pursuing negotiations.28 Elshtain’s argument is that violence does not always beget violence.29 She emphasized that the US would retaliate for 9/11 and would target only combatants. On the other hand, she argued that Al Qaeda must be taken at their word: that they have called for the targeting of both military personnel and civilians. While on the one hand Elshtain claims to be a liberal and argues for the wider promotion of freedom and democracy, but also argues from a realist perspective where states and the US empire are central elements, at the same time, she appeals to the humanist principles of the idealists. In her view this is logical because ‘politics’ has to be recreated considering the circumstances the political leaders face. In Elshtain’s view, politics cannot be reduced to a choice between war or pacifism; she insists on a break from the benign acceptance of the Clausewitzian notion that war is politics by other means, as well as making a Kantian reference to the abolition of standing armies and outlawing of war for a perpetual peace. She considers that Kantian discourse eliminates politics – which evolved as a way devised by human beings to deal with their differences.30 Post-9/11, Elshtain’s arguments have been built on to relate the terrorists with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime and to justify the US war on Iraq in 2003. Mingling realism with liberalism and debating along the borderlines of the idealistic and humanist notions of humanitarian intervention enables Elshtain to interpret certain arguments selectively. Elshtain first challenges and denies the fact that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi infants

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died as a result of US-supported sanctions and embargoes, and Saddam Hussein’s manipulation of resources.31 Similarly, she claims that there was no quantifiable evidence of the numbers of deaths of Palestinians killed by Israeli armed forces and intelligence agencies with the benign support of the US.32 On the other hand, she admits that Saddam Hussein should not have gone unpunished because he was a mass murderer of Shiites and Kurds.33 These inconsistencies point to a fundamentally obvious question regarding her standard of justice: the status of innocent civilians and non-combatants. Elshtain does not clarify whether she agrees that Iraqi children had died as a consequence of allied sanctions and financial manipulations by the Ba’ath regime, but she acknowledges that the sectarian and ethnic groups, including Shiites and Kurds respectively, had been victimized by the Ba’ath regime in Iraq. Elshtain does not address the question of why the US did not undertake significant measures to prevent such atrocities on humanitarian grounds. Elshtain seems to be projecting Saddam Hussein as a tyrant and his regime as illegitimate, worthy of being overthrown by force, but she also tries to omit and disregard evidence that may point towards the interventionist and manipulative role of the US, in the Middle East in general and in Iraq in particular. US policies had contributed to prolonging Saddam Hussein’s rule, especially after the 1991 Gulf War. Counterproductively, US policies had, in turn, strengthened Saddam Hussein’s position and enabled his brutal suppression of the Shiites and Kurds, who could have posed challenges to the Ba’ath regime and who, in the long term, could have formed political alliances based on ethnic irredentist affiliations and cause political problems for the US and its allies in the region. Saddam Hussein’s suppression of these groups qualified as a crime against humanity; however, from the perspective of humanitarianism based on retributive, distributive and restorative justice, the issue of victimized Iraqis needs to be studied not only at Iraq’s domestic level, but also in view of the role of the US, which had a long history of relations with Saddam Hussein and had continued a policy of dictatorial interference in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Elshtain’s arguments display a selective identification of factors and interpretation of history, combined with her logic of recreation and adaptation in politics, which also enables her to profess that the removal of Saddam Hussein through the use of force was just. Elshtain has gone further to argue that unjust means may be employed in such a ‘just war’.34 These arguments, on the one hand, ignore the test of avoidable harm35 and, on the other hand, are

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utilized to develop her claim that the US military will not target noncombatants in pursuing a ‘just war’. However, the central basis of Elshtain’s arguments is her categorization of the adversaries as irrational, apocalyptic36 and evil. The other arguments follow from this basic presumption; therefore, Elshtain’s argument begins with the depiction of US citizens as the aggrieved parties, victims of an apocalyptic organization’s evil agenda. Elshtain refers to Albert Camus, criticizing the humanists who have banished the word ‘evil’ from their vocabularies.37 On the other hand, another point of view is advanced by Joseba Zulaika, who calls for a wider view of the threat and the notion of ‘evil’ from a philosophical perspective. On the question of evil and the WoT, Zulaika quotes Hegel: ‘evil resides also in the innocent gaze itself, perceiving as it does evil all around itself’.38 Zulaika further argues that the danger with morality plays is that: by constantly repeating them, one ends up believing them and a categorically ill-defined, perpetually deferred, simple-minded Good-versus-Evil war echoes and re-creates the very absolutist mentality and exceptionalist tactics of the insurgent terrorists. Therefore, we must question our own involvement with the phantasmatic reality of the terrorism discourse for now even the US and its citizens can be regulated with the terrorism discourse.39 In Elshtain’s view, however, the focus of the debate has been on the vulnerabilities of the citizens, while excluding the international role of the US and its global status as a dominant state, as Zulaika points out. Elshtain conveniently engages with Augustine’s ideas to project the Augustinian notion of ‘response to injustice’ committed by a ruthless adversary against defenceless non-combatants. In the context of the ‘just war’ tradition and Augustinian philosophy, the moral responsibility for delivering justice and punishing the transgressor requires the identification of the guilty, so that that they are subjected to adequate punishment and the innocent and defenceless may not be unjustly victimized.40 This does not imply that Augustine gave tacit or explicit approval for a war where innocent non-combatants are likely to be killed, or that the warring parties may be exempted from any responsibility, as in the case of strategic strikes using ‘smart bombs’. Without the adversary being identified, Elshtain argues that sending trained military officers to fight the terrorists (in Afghanistan and Iraq),

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is acting responsibly. The implication is that any ‘collateral damage’ (a term that emerged after Vietnam and Korean Wars but gained prominence after the 1991 Gulf War and NATO’s bombing of Kosovo) cannot be seen as premeditated killing. Quoting Michael Walzer, Elshtain suggests that drawing any comparisons between 9/11 and the killings of non-combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq would amount to undermining the justice of war.41 However, this argument excludes the fact that innocent non-combatants were always likely to be victims in this war (Iraq 2003), which had been launched against an unidentified enemy. This was against the basic principle of the ‘just war’ tradition, which calls for the identification of an enemy who has displayed clear intentions to attack.42 Thomas Aquinas clarifies the basic criterion of ‘right intentions’, which is associated with legality and legitimacy, thus introducing a distinction between the stated aims and goals of a war and intentions that can be regarded as real and ulterior. This criterion translates into the adequacy of the means to stated ends, therefore prescribing the need for ‘just means’, which contradicts the view that the ends justify the means. Any kind of means cannot be employed in the pursuance of a cause that is indisputably just.43 Elshtain’s argument for the security of innocent non-combatants is selective for US citizens, while on the contrary, Iraqi non-combatant innocent civilians are excluded from the same category, when she insists that ‘in any conflict non-combatants will fall in harm’s way. But it is forbidden to knowingly and maliciously target them’.44 This argument furthermore excluded the other two criteria of the ‘just war’: ‘just war’ – jus in bello (justice in war) and jus post bellum (justice after war)45 – and presented a myopic approach in employing jus ad bellum for the justification of war because, in ignoring the tenets of legitimacy, just means and responsibility, it excluded the possibilities of abuse of power and authority by soldiers, war crimes committed during the conflict and the maltreatment of prisoners in the aftermath of war.46 The basic assumption that the adversary is ‘irrational’ and the US military is ‘rational’ was employed to build a case for a necessary war. Elshtain claimed that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were adversaries who had targeted the US without any justification or warning, but she does not mention the history of attacks launched by Al Qaeda on US interests since 1990, which would have given clear indication that the 9/11 attack had not been completely unexpected. Similarly, while initially building the case for war, Elshtain does not refer to the series of

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statements given periodically by Bin Laden after each attack on US’s interests during the 1990s, when he blamed the US for instability and conflict in the Middle East and warned the US of retaliatory terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda. These statements were available in the media archives and were later compiled by Bruce Lawrence.47 Elshtain selectively employed the claims made by Al Qaeda and, claiming to be a liberal, suggested that the US policy of international involvement is likely to produce results that Americans did not like but could not have foreseen. She insisted that the alternatives are either of isolation or conquest, neither of which are viable policies for the US, therefore withdrawing from the Muslim lands, as Al Qaeda had demanded, was not an option,48 as it would amount to succumbing to their blackmail or going against the wider interests of the US A comprehensive debate on the notion of ‘just war’ requires the inclusion of the role and status of the US as a growing dominant state and its global policies, especially while building a case for the security of its citizens. Elshtain’s arguments exonerate the US of any responsibility for contributing to the low intensity conflicts that were the remnants of the Cold War and the rise in incidents of international terrorism that could be attributed to these conflicts and US militarism.49 The language of morality invoked by engagement in ‘just war’ as a philosophical tradition served the purpose of placing the US on the moral side of the debate and the terrorists as iniquitous. These arguments display a shift from Elshtain’s earlier advocacy of ‘just war’ from a humanistic and feminist perspective.50 Similarly, the discourses of liberating Iraqi women and women’s empowerment were not ways of duping well-intentioned people into supporting military intervention; they were regarded as integral to empire building and ‘imperial feminism’.51 From both a humanistic and liberal perspective, Elshtain argues that force can be an instrument of justice; therefore, she argues in favour of the policy of war by a state, which appears to be a realist approach to international relations theory.52 This amounts to a limited and contradictory approach for analyzing conflict and radical violence that transcends state boundaries. These arguments are structured to overshadow the fact that causes of terrorism also needed to be addressed, keeping in view the literature that shows terrorism as a reaction53 to strategic violence by powerful states. Similarly, Elshtain’s arguments ignore the literature that reveals that the use of force by a hegemonic power had proved to be counterproductive.54

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Regarding the hegemonic role of the US, Elshtain’s arguments are directed to counter the criticisms from the left. Although Elshtain initially relied on the enforcement of UN Resolutions, by May 2003 she had shifted her arguments to ‘double effect’, calling for humanitarian interventions and the liberation of Iraqis from Saddam Hussein.55 She also criticized the left for once again denying what she argued to be the ‘truth’ of the cruelty of terrorists; arguing further that the left had earlier denied the mass slaughter and gulags of the USSR during the Stalinist era.56 These arguments were constructed to urge the left to emancipate itself from what Elshtain categorized as a fixation that had led to the denial of the cruelty of the movements that claimed to be anti-Imperialist57 and the left’s antiwar psychological indoctrination, which was a consequence of the Vietnam debacle. While criticizing the left, Elshtain developed a pro-war rhetoric which enabled her to view the fall of the Taliban as a great victory celebrated by the Afghans,58 and the deaths of innocent victims of war as a necessary price. While rejecting the fact that a large number of non-combatants had been killed in Afghanistan, Elshtain criticized the signatories of ‘The Letter from the United State’s Citizens to Friends in Europe’59 for ignoring and distorting the facts, attacking the left for lacking thorough investigation and being prone to exaggeration. She cites Richard Rorty’s phrase that ‘we’ have a tendency to ‘whip up a story to make ourselves look good’.60 Elshtain is no stranger to self-contradiction, supporting as she has the dignity of the people through a ‘just war’ while not addressing the indignity and humiliation of people subjected to war, especially Afghans killed in the continuous cluster bombings by the US military using ‘daisy cutters’, similar to the large-scale bombings during World War II. These ideas enabled her to argue that a similar war in Iraq would not only be just, but also welcomed by the Iraqis. Elshtain neither explains how the rejoicing at the fall of the extremist regime of the Taliban in Kabul could be viewed as a popular approval by Afghans for the presence of US troops in Afghanistan and continuous devastation by war, nor how her observation of rejoicing Afghans might be the basis for building a similar argument for Iraqis in post-war and post-Ba’ath Iraq. It is also evident from an examination of Elshtain’s arguments that 9/11 marks the beginning of her interpretation of justice in war; therefore, these incidents are projected as the greatest acts of injustice. She cites Hannah Arendt quoting the French Prime Minister Clemenceau

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regarding the origins of the World War I: ‘the disputes of who, or what led to the calamity will long be debated. But I know one thing for certain that they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany’.61 By placing 9/11 as the starting point of argumentation about a just war, Elshtain rejects other academic critiques, especially from the left and Marxists, which posit that US hegemonic and totalitarian policies are responsible for the creation of actors similar to Bin Laden and entities including Al Qaeda. Elshtain’s premises, based on the selective identification of historical events and actors, enable her to reverse the image of the Melians and the Athenians. Contrary to the narrative in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War – the subtext of the Melian dialogue being that the powerful have the will to do what they intend and the weak should submit to the will of the strong – Elshtain likens US citizens to the Melians,62 who had no choice but to fight for the preservation of their civic liberty, after having suffered an unjust and expansionist war by absolutist Athenians (whom she identified with the terrorists), who attacked and killed men, women, children and the elderly. The contradiction of analogizing the status of the US with the relatively isolated and peace-loving state of Melos – a victim of an expansionist power’s agenda – is evident in another of her claims: the US is not obliged to defend everything it has done or is doing internationally, but only to defend the ideals of free citizens, civic freedom and freedom of religion.63 Therefore, Elshtain’s arguments for a necessary armed intervention to uphold equal moral regard64 are constructed to counter the criticism of an existential conception of the state that, when married to political and strategic action, threaten to perpetuate violence and war rather than ameliorate them.65 While the selective interpretation of history deprived the liberal discourse of necessary historical depth, it played a significant role in strengthening Elshtain’s convictions for waging a war to deliver justice. Elstain’s contribution to the discourse can also be categorized as constructivist in nature, where the principle of justice merges with elements of urgency and security. The realist rationale of the security of the state is supported by the humanist arguments of the security of individuals. This interconnected argument contributed to the dominance of moral rhetoric over strategic considerations in the discourse on war, in turn sanctioning what had been prohibited according to the ‘just war’ tradition. This discourse contributed to the depiction of a controversial war as a logical choice for the decision-makers. The basic contradiction in Elshtain’s analysis, within the domain of the ‘just war’ tradition, is that although the

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choice for war is promoted as logical and rational, the lethality of the strategic threat cannot be verified by any observable evidence. However, the image of the enemy and the probability of the threat – constructed due to the engagement with the ‘just war’ tradition – found its place in the ongoing debates about the re-interpretation of international law, and promoting a case for humanitarian intervention and democracy in failing and collapsing states. Along with the liberal discourses on a ‘just war’, the liberal-left argued for a war for humanitarian intervention and promotion of democracy in Iraq.

The liberal-left discourses on ‘just war’, humanitarianism and democracy Ideologically, Walzer can be regarded as an erstwhile left, turned nearleft66 to becoming a liberal-left intellectual. He suggests that in the face of certain exceptional strategic threats and extraordinary circumstances, a war may become unavoidable. Therefore, strategic threat must be taken as the yardstick for deciding a case for just war. Walzer analyzes the question of moral arguments in a politico-strategic perspective with the hope that such argumentation would lay out some limitations on the conduct of war. He is sceptical of war being justified as a religious duty, or of the ‘just war’ theory being misused to write an opportunist history.67 In his earlier works, during the Cold War years, Walzer suggested two alternatives: the ‘sliding scale’ and the ‘supreme emergency’. He defines supreme emergency as the moment when our deepest values and collective survival are in immediate danger. The guiding principle for sliding scales and supreme emergency is ‘the greater the justice of my cause, the more rules I can violate for the sake of the cause’.68 At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Walzer criticized those who claimed that the US war in the Gulf was motivated by the quest to control an oil-rich region, arguing that the US’s decision to wage the war to liberate Kuwait and punish Saddam Hussein was based on principles of justice. He claimed that the nations most in need of oil from the Gulf would rather deal than fight, confident that the market would prevail over Iraq’s ambitions and Iraqi ideology – if there was such a thing.69 He argues that Saddam Hussein had displayed his dictatorial and violent intentions by victimizing a weaker neighbour, and that he must not be allowed to threaten the peace of the region further. Developing post-9/11 discourses, Walzer ascribed the same tendency to the terrorists

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and argued that they had slid the scales to compel the US to retaliate; therefore, a preventive war to avoid any future attacks was just. Walzer traces these arguments to John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, arguing further that aggression may be justified in a war for legitimate self-defence and under certain doubtful situations where further attacks may be anticipated. Walzer insists that ‘just war’ had turned into a doctrine of radical responsibility.70 In an effort to explain the value of justice, in the overall debate over morality in war, he compares the two theoretical positions of absolutism of theory of right, which calls for considering the innocence of victims as a defining factor in arguing for justice, and radical flexibility of utilitarianism, where innocence is only one value which must be weighed against other values in pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Building on these theoretical positions, Walzer argues in the perspective of the theory of representation71 that people can morally and psychologically accept risks for themselves, but as political leaders they cannot do the same for the people they represent; therefore, considering the wider nature of the threat after 9/11, the perceived vulnerability had increased many times and the leaders had to decide on the wider interests of their own people.72 However, it can be argued within the ‘just war’ theory that while planning to retaliate after being attacked, the leaders must identify an enemy and employ all the amicable means available before resorting to war. Walzer outlaws the notion of last resort, both for terrorists as well as for a retaliating state. He rejects any act of terrorism committed under the pretext of ‘last resort’ of the oppressed. Similarly, he displays scepticism of the argument that a ‘just war’ should be waged as last resort. He argues that the principle of last resort could be misused, since there is a risk of subjective interpretation. However, his post-9/11 argument for a just cause based upon imminent threat overshadowed his earlier claims in Just and Unjust Wars, where he had argued that before retaliating, a state should identify an adversary. Regarding responses to terrorism by a state, he defines his position that any kind of violence other than legitimate war cannot be justified. These arguments are developed by critically analyzing the justifications or ‘excuses’ associated with terrorism. He argues that the violence perpetrated by terrorists or national liberation movements cannot be justified as a last resort, as it is illogical to argue that they have exhausted all other peaceful options. Similarly, he argues that terrorism is not a successful policy, and no terrorist movement has achieved national liberation. Moreover, this policy is tyrannical

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because it repeats the same evil of violence, displaying a lack of commitment to non-oppressive politics.73 He classifies terrorism as a political strategy and opposes the notion that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. However, unlike Elshtain, Walzer does not exonerate the US74 in the debate on terrorism, classifying Hiroshima as a classic case of war terrorism. Through the classification of acts of terrorism and the political objectives of terrorists, Walzer formulates a calculating approach towards terrorism in evaluating the nature of threat. He claims that in the post9/11 era, the success of an anti-terrorist strategy will be measured by a reduction in the number of attacks on the US. He argues that the US did not suffer any further terrorist attacks on its soil after it launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The case for a ‘just war’ therefore seems credible to the liberal and liberal-left ‘just war’ theorists, and they employed this reasoning to further strengthen their conviction that the US WoT had been necessary to display its military superiority and communicate a symbolic message to the terrorists in particular and the world in general. It can be inferred from Walzer’s argument that a proactive war would demoralize the terrorists and potential adversaries and reduce the chance of further attacks on the US.75 These arguments seem weak in the face of the fact that terrorist attacks on the US mainland actually increased after the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and, more recently, after the drone attacks on the tribal areas of Pakistan. These terrorist attacks were averted by homeland security and other agencies, due to the raised level of surveillance and not as a result of the psychological impact of the US wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, which had not helped in minimizing the attacks on the US; in fact, they had contributed to further violence. Walzer does not take into account that the Afghan Taliban had no direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks, while the US war in Afghanistan had killed thousands of innocent Afghans. However, as a reaction to the US WoT, its interests were targeted in places other than the US mainland. Therefore, the question of war leading to reactionary violence remained unaddressed in the liberal and liberal-left’s argumentation on ‘just war’. Walzer agrees with Elshtain that violence in the form of a ‘just war’ will not beget more reactionary violence by terrorists, but he does not explain how the US, by resorting to unlimited WoT, will not be repeating the evil of violence in a similar way to the terrorists, as he had argued earlier. From this perspective, Walzer’s arguments contribute to the development of the notion of supreme emergency in the sense of retributive

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justice, more than to the wider concept of justice in distributive and restorative sense. Relating to the issue of post-9/11 supreme emergency, Walzer argues that in such rare moments, the negative value we assign to a disaster that looms before us devalues morality itself and compels us to take necessary action to avoid any future disaster. However, he is cautious that in avoiding a disaster such as 9/11 a state should not produce an even worse disaster.76 In addition, Walzer argues that a ‘just war’ should only be waged for a just cause, and should also be conducted with limited means and for certain defined objectives. On the contrary, he also claims that justice in a political sense had been related to the success of military policies.77 Judith Lichtenberg claims that Walzer should also have added a necessary clause: ‘the greater the justice of my cause and the more violating a rule is necessary for my cause to prevail, the greater my justification in violating the rules’.78 Therefore, in a negative sense, there is a risk that utilizing all possible military means to win a war and politically justify the initial decision may become the goal of the political as well as military leaders, even if it means violating the laws of war and using all possible means available – even more than necessary military means. This is the primary dilemma that Walzer confronts, by virtue of arguing from a strategic perspective and referring to the ‘just war’ tradition. This dilemma leads to a conflict in his moral stance of applying the issue of the innocence of noncombatants selectively for US citizens but not for Afghans and Iraqis. In his case for WoT going beyond countering an imminent threat, he argues for humanitarian intervention and initially makes a case for jus ad bellum but, unlike Elshtain, Walzer is not passive towards the killings of non-combatants as being ‘collateral damage’. However, his later theories on the ‘perceived’ nature of threat and justice through war lead him to exclude the killings of non-combatants in Afghanistan as factors in undermining justice, when compared with the innocent non-combatants killed in 9/11. To Walzer, the non-combatants in Afghanistan were not killed intentionally; therefore, it appears a necessary price to be paid by the people of Afghanistan for their freedom.79 In constructing this argument, he seems oblivious to the fact that non-combatants were likely to be killed and that war in fact led to greater disaster. The time period of his analysis is limited, starting from the defeat of the Taliban to a few months after; therefore, his argument, based on selective facts and interpretations, is deficient in addressing the chain of violence that the war in Afghanistan initiated.

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While arguing on the basis of innocence and justice and claiming that it is difficult objectively to calculate the moral cost of murder,80 Walzer agrees that the denial of the killings of non-combatants in Afghanistan is wilful, not accidental, and thus constitutes murder.81 However, he does not deliberate upon the question of the blame on the US forces during the wars and the abuse of the prisoners in the post-war detention camp of Abu Ghraib. These events projected a conflict in his own case for humanitarian intervention based on the minimalist standards of human rights, life and liberty, arguing as he has that the basic value and standard is ‘decency’, which should be, and is being, enforced by the US.82 These contradictions reflect the conflict in arguing for war by mingling moral principles with strategic compulsions. According to Walzer’s logic, US soldiers had the right intentions, but at this point his arguments based on decency could not provide a comprehensive explanation, and he seems to comply with Elshtain’s explanation that in an armed conflict innocent lives are likely to be lost. His arguments are dominated by his notion of supreme emergency based on logical and strategic calculations, preventing him from foreseeing that appropriate strategic calculations might not prevail when a war is waged. The effects of this contradiction can be observed in the materialization of Walzer’s own concerns when the US army resorted to unlimited military means for achieving victory. Walzer refers to the theory of radical utilitarianism, arguing that in politics and war, cost/benefit has always been highly particularistic and endlessly permissive of each particular. He claims that, commonly, ‘what we are calculating is our benefit (which we exaggerate) and their costs (which we minimize or disregard entirely)’.83 While Elshtain’s references to the Christian tradition and the portrayal of an adversary as ‘evil’ had contributed to the discourses of the US leaders – which included arguments of moral sanction for a dutiful war84 – in a negative way, leading further to the degradation of the defeated army85 and the killing of innocent civilians,86 Walzer’s strategic calculations based on sliding scales and supreme emergency had the potential to turn the preventive ‘just war’ into a contest requiring the use of unlimited means to ensure victory and strategic superiority at the expense of innocent lives. Therefore, a selective emphasis on jus ad bellum undermined jus in bello and jus post bellum in the overall debate on ‘just war’. From the perspective of intervention in Iraq and post-war distributive and restorative justice, Walzer does not initially argue for the intervention and occupation under the pretext of granting political

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rights to the Kurds, because they had been living in a protected enclave in northern zone of Iraq;87 however, he argues for the de-Ba’athification88 of post-war Iraqi society and for holding elections, leading to a transfer of power and the institution of a representative government after the Ba’ath regime was toppled. Furthering Elshtain’s and Walzer’s criticism of the left and their advocacy of preventive war by the US and its allies, Paul Berman bases his arguments for war on the assumption that the downtrodden Iraqi people were incapable of bringing a revolutionary change from within the state. He argues that Saddam Hussein had an expansionist agenda and would have been successful in strategically influencing and controlling Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. Arguing that Saddam Hussein’s policies were Fascist and fervently anti-Zionist, with his aspirations to destroy Israel, Berman concludes that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to global peace. From the perspective of distributive justice, he argues that the western ideals of freedom should not only be specifically for westerners, and must be introduced to non-western societies. He further claims that US presidents, especially Bill Clinton, had accomplished more than any other world leaders in trying to resolve the Palestine issue, so the US intentions of promoting peace in the Middle East could not be doubted. Furthermore, by employing Tariq Ramadan’s analyses, Berman argues from the opposite perspective, claiming that Islamic scholars had a rigid interpretation of religious injunctions, and Islam was devoid of the liberal spirit or the ‘idea to rebel’, as conceptualized by western thinkers such as Albert Camus. Berman, using the term ‘nihilist’, insists that once faced with suicide bombers, there is no other choice but to launch a war against them. He assumes that the Al Qaeda bombers were inspired by the Fascists and Nazis and thus equated them with Fascists under Benito Mussolini. These arguments led to the use of the term Islamofascism89 for this new form of extremist terrorism. Berman claims that the central problem of this kind of extremism is that it is totalitarianism in a new form and therefore it must be resisted, especially by the left. Therefore, Berman’s arguments were constructed to project Saddam Hussein as a terrorist who must be eliminated through force. Berman complies with Walzer’s criticism of the left, where he argues that religion is a significant motivational factor for violence and claims that leftist thinkers ignore this factor and are fixated with poverty as the ‘root cause’ of violence.90 Berman also criticizes the philosophers of the left and their opposition to

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the 2003 Gulf War, considering them to be favouring Saddam Hussein91 – hence totalitarianism. The liberal-left’s case for a ‘just war’ displays a similar selective approach as that of the liberals. While arguing in favour of humanitarian intervention by the US, in promoting wider change against totalitarianism, Berman does not address the reason why the US did not support the Kurdish and Shiite rebellion against Saddam Hussein in 1991, ultimately enabling the Ba’ath regime to crush the Kurds and Shiites. Considering his second assumption, it is debatable whether, during the years between the two Gulf Wars, Iraq had the military capability to take over the whole Middle East and Persian Gulf, since there were strong rivals in the region, including Syria and Iran. There had been no disagreement among the scholars and commentators that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and that all tyrants display the same kind of attributes: accumulation of power; the masquerade of irrationality; and the use of rhetoric with its basis in religion, culture, ethnicity and nationalism. However, drawing on relations between Fascism and Islam (or ‘Islamofascism’) can be observed as an effort to give an extremist, totalitarian and apocalyptic character to terrorists and equate them with the Ba’ath regime, because the terrorists associated themselves with Muslims and claimed to represent the Muslim world. Berman quotes the work of Sayyed Qutb, In the Shade of the Quran, in order to trace some evidence of totalitarianism in Islam and to find some evidence of sanction for the ‘sacrifice of life’ (similar to suicide) by any religious authority. He argues that Islam had limits in accommodating secularism. This assumption does not include the review of the vast body of literature, some of which had explored the progressive elements in the Islamic societies.92 He further argues that the western concept of individual freedom – where every sphere of human activity operates independently of each other, without yoking everything under a single guiding hand – faces opposition in Muslim societies. In his view, the problem of rigidness and bigotry in Muslim societies can be resolved by promoting freedom of thought and freedom of association. He assumes that Qutb’s writings contributed towards anti-Americanism and suicide terrorism. Quoting Qutb – ‘The ultimate price of working to please God Almighty and to propagate His way is often one’s own life’ – Berman argues that this text may be misinterpreted by radicals as sanctioning suicide bombing.93 In his effort to interpret the original

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writings of Qutb, he quotes from three volumes, 1, 4, and 40, and does not support his own arguments with religious literature or empirical data on the same issues. On the question of suicide bombers, Berman ignores the fact that in modern times, especially post-World War II, this culture had also been associated with the Tamil suicide bombers, only later being adopted by national liberation movements including the Palestinians and, later, Al Qaeda. Relating such tendencies particularly with Fascism and Nazism, Berman ignores suicide as a strategy of the Tamil resistance and, furthermore, ignores the influences of writers including Frantz Fanon and his work The Wretched of the Earth, where violence is seen as a legitimate response to imperialism.94 Luca Ricolfi, in a study of Palestine suicide attacks, concluded that religion may act as an enabling factor, but does not ‘mould individuals, forcing them to become martyrs’; it is the constant humiliation, severe material deprivation and miserable conditions in which reality has ‘shrunk to a minimum’ that leads to suicide terrorism.95 Similarly, in his efforts to explain suicide, Berman ignores the renowned works of Emile Durkheim. Similarly to Elshtain and Walzer, Berman’s claims have been constructed to exclude the coercive role of the imperialist powers and imperialist political injustice as contributing to depression and helplessness, which can be traced as potential causes of societal degeneration, dependency, violent resistance and suicide terrorism. He claims that suicide terrorism is perpetrated by dejected but educated Muslims, some of whom were second- and third-generation immigrants to Europe, who suffer from a split identity due to the fact that these European societies had failed to assimilate them. The divergence between the values of western societies and the Islamic tradition highlighted a conflict in an earlier assumption made by Berman. While arguing in favour of the introduction of the values and norms of western civilization throughout the Muslim states, he also questions whether western ideals of freedom should specifically be restricted to westerners.96 He contradicts himself when, on the one hand, he concludes that western culture and society had not assimilated but, instead, had alienated the Muslim immigrants in Europe, while on the other hand, he argues in favour of introducing western values across the globe. He does not identify the reasons and factors behind western societies’ inability to assimilate migrants, leading to the alienation of the second and third generations of Muslim immigrants in Europe and the US. The only explanation that Berman presents is that religion is

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the root cause. He seems to argue simplistically that religion is the cause of the alienation of immigrants in Europe and the US, and it is this same factor which has given rise to extremism in the Muslim states; at the same time, he conveniently rejects criticisms from the left and from Marxists, which were focused on the socio-economic impacts of the class structure existing in European societies and the imperialist policies of the US all over the world. The philosophical and theoretical constructs emerging from the left and Marxist arguments regarding class structure and imperialism present a plausible explanation for alienation and extremism, as compared with Berman’s arguments from the perspective of religion as a primary source of negative stereotyping. It has been observed that movements of resistance against class structure and imperialism seek to muster popular support by promoting or exploiting some kind of a cause, whether ethnic, religious or political. Berman, in identifying religion as the root cause, ignores some of the fundamental causes of suicidal violence and terrorism. Thomas Cushman and Mehdi Mozaffari further develop Berman’s ideas and argue that Rawls, in The Law of Peoples, professes that a tyrant who victimizes his own people, invades states in his region97 and terrorizes humanity across the civilized world needs to be eliminated by the rest of the free liberal world. Under certain conditions, civilized states that comply with the reasonable laws of peoples may decide to engage in a war that advances their rational interests; he also defines outlaw states on the one hand, and the standards of reasonableness of well-ordered people on the other.98 According to his classification of Outlaw States, Iraq under the Ba’ath party fitted the description. Therefore, referring to Rawls’s theory, the point of beginning of the post-9/11 liberal and liberal-left discourse on ‘just war’ had been that civilized states faced a threat to their existence. In view of the assumptions made by Rawls and their interpretation by Mozaffari, the Middle East was viewed as an outlaw region, and the coalition of the willing as liberal, humanitarian and reasonable force. Mozaffari does not address the question of intervention by other major players, including Russia, China, Germany and France, or the support of the US for undemocratic Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He disregards the fact that, at the time of the 2003 Gulf War, there were significant disagreements between European states and the US. The members of the European Union, while sharing the liberal principles of western civilized societies and qualifying as reasonable, well-ordered people, according to

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the Rawlsian theory of The Law of Peoples, had not supported the forceful application of their liberal principles through war. While trying to define ‘reasonable’ and ‘well-ordered’ people, Rawls sets them up against intolerant and bigoted societies. He argues that the bigoted societies display an inability to change, and are overbearingly self-righteous. Dwelling on Rawls’s theory, Mozaffari and other liberal-left commentators, similarly to Elshtain and Walzer, relate these tendencies to the extremists and trace the evidences of these in the declaration of terrorists, where they profess their moral values to be superior to those of the west and declare an ambition and even moral duty to spread their own values and systems all over the world. Rawls argues that those on other side of the continuum – liberal and reasonable people who live in reasonable and civilized societies – have it embedded in their nature to see law as it should and ought to be, affirming these laws and the institutions that are built upon them, to further ‘ensure that their social world endures and thus their long-term aim is to bring all societies eventually to honour the law of peoples to become full member in good standing of the society of well-ordered people’.99 On the other side of the continuum, it can be observed that a similarity exists in the views of the extremists, who consider their moral values superior, while at the same time acknowledging, albeit reluctantly, that western societies comprise economically evolved and politically developed nation states. The liberal and liberal-left thinkers, in arguing for the promotion of their values in other societies, made no effort to differentiate between ‘well-ordered’ and ‘overbearingly self-righteous’, similar to the bigoted and intolerant entities and societies. The primary logic presented by Rawls and the liberal-left is based on the existence of developed and advanced social, political and economic infrastructure in western societies as the standard of reasonability in the present times, while conveniently ignoring the historical depth, literary and scientific contributions of nonwestern civilizations to the present western civilization. While referring to societal factors to address the issues of conflicts faced by all nations, these arguments are not constructed to engage in a dialogue between directly concerned antagonists or a wider range of societies. In addition, Mozaffari does not clarify whether Rawls’s ‘reasonable law of the people’ meant international law. If that had been the standard, then humanitarian intervention in the violation of international law could theoretically not be argued. Moreover, if international law and the United Nations were to be considered as the reasonable law of the people and the

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reasonable institutions, respectively, then it was debatable whether the US had cooperated with the UN in delivering justice to the developing states in the past, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. The objective of employing the theory of the law of peoples in the liberal-left’s arguments on war was to build a case for intervention and the promotion of democracy based on the idea of the existence of superior values of reasonable people living under reasonable law, i.e. international law. On the contrary, the liberal-left were supporting the violation of the UN Charter by the US in the conduct of the WoT. The issue of Saddam Hussein being a threat to Israel was more relevant at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq launched rockets at Israel. It can be argued that the limited rocket attacks also served a political purpose in gaining the support of the Palestinians, and this Iraqi strategy also led to political pressure on Jordan to give tacit support to Iraq during the 1991 Gulf Crisis.100 Saddam Hussein’s limited strategic attack on Israel was not primarily intended to cause devastation but to send a strategic message and to muster political support; so it can be observed that Saddam Hussein did not have serious intentions to harm Israel in 1990–91, neither did he pose a serious threat to regional and international peace post-9/11. However, at the time of the 2003 Gulf War – because of his previous misadventure – he did not show belligerence towards Israel. In addition, since 1991, Iraq’s missile capability had been eliminated – a fact established by Hans Blix and other reports by UN monitors.101 To identify Saddam Hussein as a threat to the world’s peace from a Rawlsian perspective, as was argued by Berman and Mozaffari, required proof of the existence of missile and other military capabilities. The purpose of the liberal-left’s arguments was not to evaluate rationally the nature of the strategic threat; rather, similarly to Elshtain’s and Walzer’s approaches to terrorists, the liberal-left’s discourse was constructed to capitalize on Saddam Hussein’s rhetorical statements and incongruous threats to annihilate Israel. Considering any one state as a threat to peace in the Middle Eastern region, Israel’s track record was decidedly ignored. Israel had pre-emptively attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research facilities on 7 June 1981, in an operation code-named ‘Operation Opera’, which had been condemned by the UNGA Resolution 36/27, passed on 13 November 1981, calling it a premeditated and unprecedented act of aggression, and also calling for Israel to pay damages to Iraq.102 After the 1981 bombing, the Osirak site was inspected by physicist Richard Wilson, the chair of

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Harvard University’s Physics Department, who concluded that, as Israel had insisted, the installations bombed were not suited for plutonium production, while Israel’s own Dimona reactor had reportedly produced several hundred nuclear weapons.103 Similarly, Israel had waged wars on its neighbouring countries since 1947, adding to the suggestion that Israel was a greater threat to the region’s peace than Iraq. Cushman, Daniel Kofman and Jeffry Herf identified Saddam Hussein as a threat to the civilized and liberal world, and argued that a war against such a tyrant was morally justified according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.104 While criticizing the dubious conviviality that the international system (i.e. powerful states and international institutions) had developed with tyrants, Kofman built his argument on the basis of sovereignty. Kofman criticized Noam Chomsky, Tony Benn and Edward Said for their traditional approach towards sovereignty, but did not explain how the attack on the sovereignty of a state, through war, in existing circumstances could be justified. Similarly, Cushman assumed that the US managed to forge consensus through the ‘Letter of the Eight’,105 signed on 30 January 2003 by the prime ministers of five of the 15 members of the European Union, expressing its indirect support for regime change in Iraq. Later, on 6 February 2003, the Vilnius group of states promulgated the ‘Vilnius Letter’106 against Saddam Hussein, in favour of preventive war, preservation of human rights and promotion of democracy. Both these letters were subjects of controversy and received wide criticism; therefore, the signatories of these letters could not be regarded as representatives of Europe. Moreover, a theoretical conceptualization explaining political divisions in Europe was ignored, and letters of the ‘Eight’ and ‘Vilnius’ were simplistically employed to conceptualize political sentiments in Europe. Liberal-left writers have ignored the various political opinions among the European leaders, which were analyzed theoretically by Thomas Risse. Risse establishes several groups of states in the European Union. First, the European Kantians, who were not pacifists – Gerhard Schroder had not been against the war against Afghanistan; second, the European Gaullists, who were in favour of multilateralism and the balance of power but who believed that the hegemonic policy of the US would ultimately fail and lead to a multilateral world. The third category was that of the European Transatlantics, which comprised the European ‘coalition of the willing’, who held moderate views but did not raise questions regarding US unilateralism and economic liberalism in Europe because

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these questions were more likely to expose the contradictions among the European states, undermining European foreign policy consensus.107 The liberal-left arguments were not constructed to keep in mind these European regional political dynamics, especially the opposition by French leadership towards G.W. Bush’s unilateralist approach. The liberal-left criticized the radical and reformist left, arguing that they refused to see reason because G.W. Bush was broadly perceived as an unusually repulsive politician and people were blinded by their revulsion. In their blindness they refused to identify the main contours of reality, because many otherwise intelligent people had decided a priori that all significant problems around the world stemmed from the US. A significant number of people supposed that any anti-colonial movement must be admirable or, at least acceptable. Many people in their good-hearted efforts to respect cultural differences have concluded that Arabs, for inscrutable reasons of their own, like to live under grotesque dictatorships. Many believe that Israel’s problems represent something bigger – a uniquely diabolic aspect of Zionism, which explains the rage and humiliation felt by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. Similarly, the liberal-left accused the left of being wilfully blind to anti-Semitism in other cultures.108 These arguments do not consider the ideological stance and convictions of the left. They ignore the resonance of absolutism, imperialism and monetary-driven capitalism in the policy declarations of US leadership, which had been the focus of the left. Berman and other liberal-left writers had not taken into account that modern-day imperialists were not similar to the colonialists of the past, who occupied and controlled larger territories and waged wars to capture more. The imperialist and neo-colonialists displayed the same attitude and aspirations of global dominance in newer manifestations: regulating and influencing interstate conflict, extending cultural imperialism in a globally conceived civil society, controlling means of war and natural resources and promoting the rise of small-arms lobbies and corporate warriors.109 This vicious cycle had led to the extension of low-intensity conflicts through proxy wars and, in turn, these imperialist powers had gained economically and financially,110 by selling small arms to conflict-ridden countries and subsequently maintaining a profit by recycling their currency,111 by making the buyers of arms pay in dollars. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had led to armed insurgencies, where the small arms ‘entrepreneurs’ made financial profits. These patterns of the manipulation of war by

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hegemonic powers and the profiteering from conflicts by foot soldiers have been discussed in detail by Simon Sheppard.112 The liberal-left’s arguments seemed to be constructed specifically to criticize the ideological stance of the left while ignoring some significant realities in the Middle East that were the focus of leftist critiques and which presented a more comprehensible explanation of the discontent in Arab societies. The liberal-left’s argument, based on the claim that Arab societies have a tendency to display a relative submission to dictators, would have benefitted from including another perspective on one undemocratic and absolutist regime: Saudi Arabia, which had been a close US ally. Saudi Arabia’s ruling regime had flourished as a result of US strategic and diplomatic support and managed politically to coerce its populace. The liberal-left disregarded the growing disapproval in Middle Eastern societies towards the US. This disapproval was implosive in character and had increased over the years due to the noticeably overbearing military presence of US forces. Moreover, there is a dearth of evidence to support the claim that US policies in the Middle East and its strategic alliances were structured to promote liberal values, including democracy and a free and open economy, in the Middle Eastern societies. Theoretically, in Cushman’s view, the liberal-left’s approach represented a new way of looking at conflict, in the ‘spirit of liberal hope’ and welcoming the emergence of a ‘third force of liberal interventionism’, where the realist, conservative, pacifist, leftist, radical, exclusionist and Marxist theories had failed to provide an explanation or a solution. The proponents of the liberal-left defended the decision to launch this war on traditional principles of liberal internationalism and the struggle against Fascism and totalitarianism, on the fundamental grounds of human rights, which in times to come would be expected to become the greatest priority of the UN. However, Cushman does not explain his stance regarding the reform of the UN. His argument seems to extend the same logic of war to promote humanitarianism and democracy. While this war and the associated violation of international law had been expected to serve as a means for reforming the UN, Cushman – assuming that the UN is autonomous and impartial – argues, ironically, that a critique of the Bush administration must be accompanied by a critique of the UN, because the European Union (EU) with France, Germany and Russia were against the war for their own reasons of realpolitik, and thus affected the UN Resolutions. While debating the issue of ‘just cause’, humanitarianism and democracy, the liberal-left’s arguments had been

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developed to question the validity of international law and build a case for US hegemony.

The cosmopolitan discourses on ‘just war’, relevance of international law, human security, humanitarianism, democracy and neoliberalism During the post-Cold War and post-9/11 eras, the cosmopolitan thinkers debating on the issues of war and justice had focused their arguments on the issues of human security, natural law and the relevance, applicability and credibility of international law. In the perspective of retributive justice and debates on a morally acceptable just cause for a punitive action, they argued that the security of individuals should be prioritized higher than security of the state. This implied that the cosmopolitan arguments for a just cause had been structured to rethink the ‘just war’ tradition along the principles of human rights and human security. From another perspective, where natural law may serve as a source for the development of ‘just war’ tradition and international law, this also implied that any breach in natural law called for a response to deliver justice. Based on these primary presumptions, they built their arguments from the perspective of distributive and restorative justice, and envisioned the development of an international humanitarian law, which might surpass international law and the laws of war, contributing towards the creation of a global civil society – similar to the Kantian vision of Perpetual Peace in a global cosmopolis.113 In so arguing, they professed that the ‘just war’ tradition, as well as international law,114 had remained insufficient to address the issues of just cause in view of the nature of radicalized violence in a globalized world. Therefore, the cosmopolitan discourse had developed further the arguments of just cause from a humanistic perspective. Furthermore, Held and McGrew, while arguing from the perspective of distributive and restorative justice, had called for the promotion of worldwide democracy, neoliberalism and capitalism. They presented an international economic strategy, a liberal economic plan for reform, complementarily to the theoretical criticism of the left by the liberals and the liberal-left. In her Cold War discourses on war, Kaldor argues that military technological developments and revolution in military affairs (RMA) had the potential of making wars less devastating. However, on the other hand, the development in the discourses during the Cold War had worked as a

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‘disciplinary technology’, which expressed and legitimized power relationship in modern society. Developing this point and elaborating the theoretical nature of post-Cold War discourses on wars, she employs the philosophical reasoning, ‘we are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth’.115 The cosmopolitan thinkers argue for an ideological shift in the production of truth and the exercise of the power, through the promotion of human rights as the fundamental principle in the discourses on ‘just war’. Kaldor argues that in the post-911 era, in the face of terrorism, instead of making human rights fit the framework of ‘just war’, which they do rather uneasily, still allowing loopholes for ‘double effect’ and ‘collateral damage’, aggression can be fitted into the ‘responsibility to protect’, since aggression is not just against a state, but also against the individual citizens who compose the state. In other words, states can use military force under the auspices of the UN, within a multilateral framework and according to the criteria that have been agreed. They are to be used for the protection of civilians in conjunction with the international police force and civilian experts.116 Similarly, Ulrich Beck, supporting the wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), argues that these wars were unprecedented because they were the first wars in human history against a culturally-generated risk. While moving Kaldor’s argument forward, Beck’s arguments combined the moral rhetoric of Elshtain and the strategic calculation of Walzer to the humanitarian arguments of cosmopolitans, by claiming that the global society of people was threatened by newer versions of violence. He further claimed that the globalized terrorist threats could not be explained through the existing strategic thought and that these new forms of violence clashed with the defining characteristics of war, immediacy and presence. Beck claimed that the possibility of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) reflects the reality of the interstate wars of the first modernity. He further argued that the US, as a dominant state, could not risk even a 1 per cent possibility of the transfer of a nuclear arsenal to terrorists by ‘evil’ dictator, Saddam Hussein or failed and collapsing regimes.117 While Kaldor argues for the use of force118 under the sanction of the UN, Beck’s arguments combine the rhetoric of ‘evil’ adversaries, the threat of nuclear annihilation and notion of failed and collapsing states to build a case for humanitarian war. From the perspective of international law and the UN Charter, while Article 51 of the Charter had sanctioned the retaliatory use of force

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by member states in the event of an armed attack, Michael Glennon explains that the US administration of G.W. Bush had built a case for war because there was no clause in the UN Charter to forbid an anticipatory preventive war.119 This argument ignores the fact that the UN Charter explains the conditions for the right of self-defence only in the event of an armed attack. Similar to liberal-left commentators, Beck’s criticism of international law was directed towards building an argument that, since international law had been ineffective in offering options for defence and retaliation against the terrorist threats, it was likely that international law would be left in abeyance, as a result of the necessary action taken by the US and its allies against terrorists. Therefore, the cosmopolitan argumentations from the perspective of retributive justice were focused on the question of the validity and utility of international law. Since the development of international law had been complemented by developments in natural law and the arguments on morality and justice as professed by Thomas Aquinas120 and Hugo Grotius,121 the cosmopolitans appeal to the same principles and argue that a new ethical approach and a proactive strategy for the attainment of justice is needed.122 The long-term objective of this approach appears to be the creation of a moral international community.123 The stages of the process have been visualized as the deliverance of retributive justice leading to distributive and restorative justice, and this process being simultaneously supported by the generation of an international humanitarian or cosmopolitan law, replacing the existing international law. However, the cosmopolitan writers do not theoretically explain how such a cosmopolitan law would be formulated and how its sources would be classified, categorized and delineated, and how, according to their argument, the concept of human rights might serve as the source for the development of such a law. From the perspective of distributive and restorative justice in a globalizing world, Beck claimed that the society of states was going through a process that could be categorized as ‘cosmopolitization’ and the US, by pursuing its foreign policy objectives, was playing a contributing role towards this process. He claimed that after the collapse of the bipolar world order that rested upon the opposition between communism and capitalism, the US model had been asserted as the model of ‘western modernization’ with worldwide reach – indeed, dominance. For many European countries, companies and business representatives it had also

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been a model of a flexible labour market, against which a European model could differentiate itself. In developing this point of European models, Beck argued for a global cosmopolitan movement, if not a revolution.124 While envisioning such a global politico-economic transformation, Beck did not argue for cosmopolitization complemented by US hegemony.125 However, Daniele Archibugi, while sharing a similar perspective, further argues that the US is an unsurpassed hegemon capable of promoting international policies for the creation of a new international order. He claims that US hegemony is more consolidated than ever before and that the US faces no opposition from another, greater power. Therefore, the US and other developed states have an obligation to introduce and promote democracy and the political culture, including elected government, periodic elections, independent judiciary and parliamentary institutions, to failed and collapsed states. Archibugi’s arguments are based on the assumptions that the citizens of today’s hegemonic bloc are, and are reasonably happy to be, governed democratically. While arguing in favour of democracy, however, the cosmopolitans are divided over the question of whether all erstwhile non-democratic states would accept the democratic system introduced by the US, once they have been emancipated from their non-democratic regimes and offered a chance to democratize and liberalize economically.126 While they argue that, since democracies do not fight each other, a cosmopolis of democratic states would eliminate war, at the same time they disagree about whether there could be some kind of agreement on universally accepted standards of democracy. Archibugi’s arguments were based on the hope that US policy-makers, while formulating the post-9/11, grand strategy, would prioritize the principles of humanism, idealism and liberalism both for creating globally conceived civil society and to minimize the incidents of war from international relations, by engaging in wider debates on war. Considered broadly, the cosmopolitans argue that the zeitgeist of cosmopolitanism was stalled by the 9/11 attacks. On the contrary, some have suggested that G.W. Bush, in launching a retaliatory WoT, had proved to be antiglobalist,127 because the war might not further the process of globalization and cosmopolitization. However, there was agreement among the cosmopolitan thinkers that if the war served to minimize the negative effects of anti-cosmopolitan forces, then the process might lead to a consensus on the creation of a global civil society and ultimately a global assembly. Similarly, cosmopolitan thinkers Held and McGrew, while arguing from the perspective of distributive and restorative justice, build a case

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for free trade between developed and developing states. They argue that the monetary dividends accumulated as a result of the transactions in the international financial markets can be utilized and invested for the promotion and sustenance of mutual trade between the developed and developing countries. These monetary dividends had been leading to a gradual and sustained rise in the gross domestic products (GDP) and gross national products (GNP) of developed states over the past years. Therefore, the financial and monetary models based on free trade, and supported by international monetary turnover, might serve as the mechanisms for emancipating the developing countries from their economic problems. The US and developed states of Europe have invested their monetary resources in international enterprises, multinational banks and entrepreneurs; therefore, the balancing power of the international currencies, the dollar and the euro could provide sustained support to the emerging new cosmopolitan, democratic and financially sustainable order. Held argues that through free trade between the developed and developing countries, the problems of poverty and financial imbalances could be addressed.128 While Held builds a positive image of the power of monetary turn-over, his assumptions are based on a system of advanced capitalism similar to ‘Casino Capitalism’, which has been critically analyzed by Susan Strange, who explains the negative impacts of immense global financial turn-over.129 Held’s assumptions do not take into account the fact that the rest of the world population, other than the developed west, could not relate to these financial and monetary figures and, instead, a significant part of the population, including 650 million children, lives on less than one dollar a day.130 Similarly, credible evidence led to the theory that financial mechanisms based on international currencies and regimes such as the Dollar Wall Street Regime (DWSR) had worked to achieve the dominance of the dollar over all other currencies.131 Moreover, the structural problems in the developing countries did not directly affect the developed countries of the west, which had growing neoliberal and capitalist economies, because the western political and socio-economic infrastructure had been designed and had evolved to support such economic growth. The rising dividends in the GDP and GNP and the purchasing power in the west did not trickle down to the less-developed, turbulent states comprising the Third World. The balancing power of the international currencies cannot be taken as a dependable and sustainable mechanism to be utilized as the engine for free trade between the developed and the developing countries. In

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addition, the developing countries lack the necessary developmental infrastructure for production or manufacture of tradable goods, so the flow of capital and financial investments from the developed countries should be preceded with infrastructural development. Timothy Brennan, while criticizing these claims by Held and McGrew, argues that the long-term objective of the cosmopolitans is to build an economic society where conflict will be viewed negatively; therefore, cosmopolitanism constructs political utopias in aesthetic or ethical guise, so that it may more effectively play what often proves on inspection to be an ultimately economic role.132 The cosmopolitan reference to the Kantian image of Perpetual Peace has been criticized by Nadia Urbinati, who argues that the theorists of cosmopolitan democracy violate the Kantian model when they question the idea that the democratic transformation of states should come first. Starting from cosmopolitical institutions seems to them less ‘paternalistic’ than expanding democracy, which is a contradiction, since they deny the principle of sovereign autonomy. Similarly, they doubt that democracy within states will bring democracy between states and bring about a world order more respectful of human rights.133 Urbinati argues that it is counterintuitive to think that global citizenship and cosmopolitical institutions would produce these outcomes even if a portion of world citizens live under non-democratic regimes. Cosmopolitans defy Kant’s egalitarian proviso and underestimate the fact that, within an international scenario dominated by one nation state that holds a quasi-imperial power, cosmopolis would not be possible but dangerous.134 The assumptions of cosmopolitan thinkers in favour of war seem weak in face of Urbinati’s arguments, which question the promotion of democracy in other states for the objective of creating a cosmopolis. The concept of a cosmopolis supported by economic liberalism, free trade and global economic incentives envisions the creation of an economically equitable international ‘order’ similar to the Pacific Union. Gowan argues against Held’s idea, and professes that this strand of cosmopolitanism is a radicalization of the Anglo-American tradition, which in practice proposes a set of disciplinary regimes, dubbed in oleaginous jargon ‘global governance’, reaching deep into the economic, social and political lives of the states subject to it, while safeguarding international flows of finance and trade.135 Held has argued that the ‘economic miracle’ of capitalism and neoliberalism is based on the principle of worth

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and dignity, active agency, personal responsibility, consent, collective decisions about public matters through voting procedures, inclusiveness and subsidiarity, avoidance of serious harm and sustainability.136 However, the European Union and European Court of Justice have not formulated just and practicable principles to regulate mutual trade. A majority of developing countries is neither equipped with the necessary industry, nor has the infrastructure for producing tradable goods to match international standards. Moreover, the debt-ridden developing (Third World) as well as developed countries (within the European Union, Greece being the prime example at the time of writing) have been subjected to stringent structural adjustments by the international monetary agencies. Similarly, the multi-national corporations (MNCs) that Held expects to play the role of the engines of this economic miracle have not been equipped to rescue economically degenerating states from economic-financial crises. The prospects of free trade between developed and developing states has been stalled by disagreement on the quality standards for manufactured goods. When product norms are applied, the distinction between ‘country-of-origin’ and ‘country-ofdestination’ rules is established. While the country-of-origin principle accepts the domestic quality standards of the country-of-origin as the standards for the tradable products, the country-of-destination leaves it to the importing country to set its domestic standards as the yardstick for the imports, resulting in a potpourri of diverging standards representing barriers to trade. Moreover, such regulations can easily be captured by interest groups. The aim of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) should be to push back the role of the country-of-destination rules, as a weakening of the country-of-origin rules harms the multilateral order.137 GATT were not able to resolve this problem until 2009.138 As a reaction to such unbalanced economic policies and structural adjustment, regional economic integration organizations are likely to emerge. Such organizations, starting from a regional level, may have the potential to unite regional spheres of economic cooperation that could lead to the development of a wider global civil society, but this could pose a challenge to US hegemony; therefore, the policies of international monetary regimes are preferred. Similarly, Gowan explains another negative effect of the same economic strategy. He argues that neoliberal cosmopolitan doctrine tends

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to assume that the regulatory and market-shaping impulses of the states have been geared towards liberal free-trade regimes. However, contemporary evidence suggests that the drift of international economic policy of the core countries in the 1990s has been marked by a resistance to free-trade principles to those sectors of critical importance to economies outside the core-agricultural products – steel, textiles and apparel – and resistance to managed trade and ‘reciprocity’ in others. The ‘rules of origin’139 are designed to exclude goods with varying amounts of inputs from Third World countries. These protectionist and mercantilist methods generate chronic trade and current-account deficits on the part of the developing countries, increasing trade debts and making peripheral governments desperate to seek supposedly compensating inflows of capital from core countries.140 This is the continuation of ‘dependency’ in newer manifestations. Moreover, the growth of a global economy with reliance on the markets and the massive inflow of a frequently dominant yet variable factor such as currency (the dollar) have been criticized as an unbalanced, structurally flawed and unsustainable economic approach.141 The arguments for distributive and restorative justice through wider economic prosperity and the balancing power of the dollar did not address the dichotomy between the founding principle of international financial regimes (i.e. equitable trade opportunity) and their practical economic policies, which seem to be directed towards maintaining the dominance of the US dollar over all other currencies, as empirical evidence behind the aforementioned theoretical critiques displays. The cosmopolitan thinkers observed evidences of globalism and anti-nationalism in the international policies of the administration of G.W. Bush, but some of them also questioned how the multicultural recognition in constitutional-democratic states in the developed countries could be reconciled with the post-colonial activism in the erstwhile colonies, especially on the basis of capitalism.142 To its critics, cosmopolitanism seemed a privilege of those who can take a secure nation state for granted.143 However, in their global vision, cosmopolitans expected that the US realist hegemonic objectives would be surpassed by the politico-economic benefit that the US would be able to reap, by offering its developed industry, monetary support and scientific knowledge. They had argued that if violent threats arose in such a cosmopolitan world, they would be addressed by collective security measures, instead of an empire’s unilateralism.

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The relevance of the liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan discourses to US hegemony and international order The post-Cold War discourses up to 9/11 that constituted the debates on the transforming nature of international order from the perspective of international law have been analyzed. The debates on pro-democracy policies also include the notions of transforming undemocratic, failing and collapsing states or illegitimate regimes and the question of active military interventions under the rhetoric of humanitarianism. In continuation, the post-9/11 discourses from liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan thinkers were collectively focused on the justification for war by the US, along with the professed raison d’être of humanitarian intervention, and the promotion of democracy, neoliberalism and capitalism. These thinkers also conceptualized the emerging nature and dynamics of US predominance and presented alternative explanations to the realist and Marxist theorizations of hegemony and dominance. The liberal arguments on just cause also contributed to the moral justifications for the US grand strategy and a case for preventive war. The debates surrounding the liberal-left’s notion of humanitarian intervention were focused on the exceptional situations under which the US could disregard the legal constraints imposed by international law and international organizations. The liberal-left, while criticizing the radical left, also presented a case for the promotion of liberal economic policies to build free and liberal societies all over the world. The cosmopolitan arguments on war were also extended to present an alternative scenario of post-war international order, where Held and McGrew visualized an economic strategy that could serve as an alternative to the DWSR and minimize the antagonism between the US and the European Union, which had been building-up as a consequence of US efforts to maintain the dominance of the dollar over all other international currencies. These discourses, collectively, while conceptualizing the post-Cold War and post-9/11 role of the US in the emerging international order, played a significant role in the development of official discourses and US postCold War grand strategies. Tracing the models of the emerging order and the future role of the US, Walzer conceptualizes seven scenarios portraying possible political arrangements of international society. The basic legitimizing criteria for the hegemon or the governing alignment of powers is categorized as the capacity to promote peace or deliver distributive justice, cultural

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pluralism and individual freedom. On the ideological plane, the other basic divisions are from the traditional left or ‘radical centralization’, and from the right, ‘anarchy’ and ‘realism’. Walzer argues that the best regime may lie in the centre but is not likely to be found in the two extremes. He classifies three regimes from the right – anarchy, plurality of international politics and plurality of international associations, and two regimes from the left – global state and global empire. After critical assessment of these arrangements, Walzer gradually builds a case for an international regime, an International Federation of Nation States, which in a simpler sense implies a version of the American political system, projected internationally. In addition, Walzer conceptualizes another arrangement which comprises an Association of International Civil Society working with agencies such as the UN and regional unions, similar to the European Commission. However, he is cautious of the limitations of such arrangements, due to the failure to protect ethnic and religious minorities, the inability to promote equality and the inability to defend individual liberty.144 It is evident that Walzer argues for an international order where the principles of liberalism would form the basis for peace, justice, pluralism and freedom. This argumentation also became the source of motivation for the liberal-left and cosmopolitans.145 Considering the cosmopolitan arguments of Kaldor and Beck, the proactive US strategy may be seen as a benign move from a Hobbesian to a Kantian international order. Such a change in international politics may be fathomed not merely through the perceptual lens of balance of power, diplomacy, war and international law, but also through the transnational social bond that links the individual human beings who are the subjects or the citizens of the state.146 The idea of justice in such an imagined civita maxima or cosmopolitan world society was expected to be cosmopolitan justice.147 With human rights as the highest priority, from the current international strategic perspective, Corneliu Bjola argues that the NATO countries, with the exception of Turkey, are the most democratic states and have a proven track record of observing, defending and advocating human rights.148 Therefore, it has been inferred that under the leadership of the US there could also be a possibility of capitalizing on the ‘Anglosphere’149 or the union of English-speaking states – the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – forming the foundations of a new international order. From a comparative realist and cosmopolitan perspective, Barry Buzan and Held engage in a discussion over the emerging international

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order. While claiming that cosmopolitanism is the position of advocacy for democracy, Held argues that democracy is the only principle of legitimacy in current times. Democracy adapts itself to diverse conditions and interconnectedness. The idea of state in a transnational world can be nurtured and rearticulated through the cosmopolitan account of democracy, which seeks to develop the idea of the modern state into the conception of governance, shaped and circumscribed by ‘democratic law’, and adapted to the diverse conditions and interconnections of different peoples and nations.150 Held presents a global, liberal and transformative picture of international order and international law, where principles of democracy – being practised at the level of the states – could lead to an agreement on a supranational law agreeable to the society of states. He visualizes the US and Europe playing a leading role in materializing the cosmopolitan society of states. While evaluating the possibility of a cosmopolitan order under the leadership of North America and western Europe, Buzan argues from a realist perspective, claiming that there is likely to be a highly organized and developed western world, portraying what Hedley Bull refers to as ‘neo-medievalism’, where political authority moves upwards and downwards, existing simultaneously on different levels and where, on the other hand, there will be unstable zones.151 Buzan does not criticize democracy as a system of governance, neither does Held’s argument that the transitional nature of the globalized world call for the reinterpretation of the role of state; however, he questions how the change from the practice of democracy at the societal level would translate to the international level while overriding the state and its infrastructure. Furthermore, he questions the type of global order that the cosmopolitans visualize would emerge internationally after this transition, and also questions the stability of this order in the case of conflict and war. The US post-Cold War and post-9/11 grand strategies have displayed the relatively realist objective of extending US hegemony, complemented with the rhetoric of a quest for survival and building a New World Order.152 Robert Cox employs the Gramscian theoretical construct and argues that hegemony is pursued through a combination of moral rhetoric for consent with the policies of coercion. The hegemon seeks to construct not only an order compatible to its interests, through the regulation of inter-state conflict, but also seeks to promote a globally conceived civil society supported with the modes of production of global enterprise.153 The post-Cold War policy of the US of consolidating its hegemony could

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benefit from the rhetoric of promoting a globally conceived cosmopolitan society supported by democratic, neoliberal and capitalist economic policies. On the contrary, Chomsky refers to the US track record of de-railing democracy and controlling the military, politics and free press in other countries, including Nicaragua.154 From the perspective of maintaining order by unilateral action, international law and UN Resolutions have been argued as being obsolete; therefore, the cosmopolitan arguments calling for the necessity of rethinking international law have been criticized on the grounds that they seem similar to the legal bases provided by Hugo Grotius to justify the Dutch imperial expansion and piracy, and John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, justifying the expansion of the British empire and categorization of colonial subjects.155 Considering the international legal aspect in the case of armed intervention in Panama, Article 51 of the UN Charter, which restricts the use of force for selfdefence until the Security Council acts, was interpreted as sanctioning the use of force, when the US Ambassador to the UN informed the General Assembly that the same Article provides for the use of armed force to defend ‘our country, our interests and people’.156 While the significant cases of post-Cold War use of force by the US until the Gulf War 1991 included Nicaragua and Panama, US military policy at the time of the 1991 Gulf War displayed a consistency of a pattern that was continued in Kosovo and subsequently in the 2003 Gulf War. Chomsky categorizes Nicaragua and Panama as incidents displaying G.H.W. Bush’s ‘new thinking’. In addition, Gowan, while analyzing the expansion of NATO and the Kosovo campaign, has argued that, theoretically, both realism and liberalism in their Cold War forms would have predicted the collapse of the western alliance after 1991; realism, because the collapse of the Soviet superpower would lead to a rebalancing against the US; liberalism, because without the threat from a totalitarian-dictatorial enemy there would be no need for a military political alliance. Thus NATO, peace, liberal democracy and harmony would reign supreme. So, at the very least, no one would have thought that there would be a puzzle for those working on these frameworks to explain the existence157 and expansion of NATO. In all of the cases of post-Cold War use of force by the US – interventions in Nicaragua and Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, the bombing campaign in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the 2003 Gulf War – there had been a gradually growing pattern of employment of political and moral justification as well as the extension of the military influence and imperial hegemony of the US.

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From the perspective of theory, Martin Wight categorizes the realistHobbesian and revolutionist-Kantian approaches, and argues that the mediatory path for the hegemon could be rationalist-Grotian, which is a move forward from the strict categorization in the power-oriented or broad humanist sense. From this perspective, the overall liberal internationalist and cosmopolitan approach cannot be viewed either as progress from the rationalist tradition, which presented ‘just war’ as a compromise between the Kantian ideas of Holy War or crusade, and the Machiavellian notion of ultima ratio regum.158 Continuing with the theoretical analysis, in Chapter 2, I shall discuss the realist arguments that seek to explain post-Cold War and post-9/11 US policies and the propositions for the emerging international order.

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2 POST-COLD WAR R EALIST AND NEOCONSERVATIVE DISCOUR SES ON US FOR EIGN POLICY

Continuing with the arguments elaborated upon in Chapter 1, I analyze realist arguments on war, justice, democracy, promotion of liberal economic policies and the role of a hegemon in building security coalitions and international order. Since the focus is on US foreign policy under the two Republican administrations of Presidents G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush at the time of the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, respectively, it can be observed that their policy statements also include their arguments on the above-mentioned themes. The neoconservative discourses on US foreign policy, from the time of the Cold War to the post-Cold War and post-9/11 eras, have also been included because neoconservative ideology had gradually gained prominence during the Cold War years, especially under the Republican president, Ronald Reagan. However, after remaining in political isolation for several years, the neoconservatives re-emerged post9/11 during the term of Republican president G.W. Bush. Therefore, I focus on the arguments of neoconservative commentators and practitioners who have been politically associated with the Republican Party. They argued for competitive strategic and economic policies towards the USSR, when Reagan was president and G.H.W. Bush was the vice president of the US. In the following sections, I explain the arguments concerning US responsibility for fighting the ‘Evil Empire’ and reforming the world through the promotion of democracy and liberal economic

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reforms which were propagated during the Cold War discourses. After the decline of the USSR, the neoconservatives moved to the opposition in domestic US politics, because they did not support the realist and pragmatic trends in Republican president G.H.W. Bush’s foreign policy. Neoconservatives remained in opposition during the two terms of the Democrat president, Clinton. However, there was a relative shift in this trend after 9/11. While the post-9/11 foreign policy objectives of the G.W. Bush administration included the call for retributive justice as a response to the terrorist acts, neoconservative ideology – supported by a messianic rhetoric of transforming the world in a distributive and restorative sense – had also re-emerged. The neoconservative policy-makers gradually joined the decision-making structure in the US. Furthermore, within the neoconservatives there had also been an ideological bifurcation between those who propagated liberal cosmopolitan ideals and others who took a realist approach. The academic discourses comprising the liberal cosmopolitan and realist arguments can be employed to understand and explain the objectives behind the official discourses constructed by the two Bush administrations. The realist theory serves as a perceptual lens through which to understand, analyze and explain the nature of the official discourses developed during G.H.W. Bush’s presidency and, thus, the foreign policy objectives behind the decision to wage the 1991 Gulf War. Similarly, G.H.W. Bush’s rhetoric of a New World Order can also be analyzed from a realist as well as a liberal cosmopolitan perspective. On the other hand, the post-9/11 discourses developed during the G.W. Bush presidency and the decision to wage the 2003 Gulf War, leading to invasion, occupation and elections in Iraq, can be studied by tracing the echo of the liberal, cosmopolitan and neoconservative arguments in the official discourses. I continue the liberal and cosmopolitan debates from Chapter 1 and juxtapose them with the realist arguments, tracing their resonance in the arguments presented by the two Bush administrations. I analyze the arguments of the realist intellectuals as well as the neoconservative thinkers and commentators on post-Cold War US foreign policy, and also explore the interplay of realist and liberal cosmopolitan arguments in the overall neoconservative discourses. In domestic US politics, traditional conservatism had been developed further into paleoconservativism by thinkers including Leo Strauss. Straussian thought had roots in European radical conservatism and an affinity with key new-right tendencies, and it helped to inspire the

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neoconservative movement. However, the paleoconservatives criticized neoconservatives for surrendering US sovereignty to a new world order (the UN, IMF, NAFTA, and so on) and capitulating to neoliberalism, consumer culture, liberal individualism and multiculturalism.1 In the overall debates on traditional conservatism, paleoconservatism and neoconservatism, the differences between these strands are not explored, but the focus on the neoconservative arguments in favour of a global hegemonic role for the US is explained. Moreover, the ideological bases of neoconservatism are explored, along with their arguments for promotion of ideals and objectives including a global hegemonic and messianic role for the US, calling for humanitarian intervention, promotion of democracy and liberal economic policies. Furthermore, in order to formulate a realist theoretical approach to study the global role of the US, I employ the theoretical construct of hegemony and explain the hegemon’s objectives of building strategic and economic coalitions and conducting wars to change the international order. The purpose is to explain the realist arguments on unilateralism and multilateralism, because the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars were waged by the US in collaboration with its allies. Considering the relevance of emerging US foreign policy and the international order in a theoretical framework, two broad perspectives can be identified that developed as a result of the juxtaposition of liberal and cosmopolitan with realist arguments on the post-Cold War US policy. The ‘international approaches’ and ‘international order’ can be usefully employed to analyze post-Cold War US foreign policy. From the perspective of such approaches, the themes of ‘unilateralism’ and ‘multilateralism’ are relevant; and, from the perspective of international order, the liberal and cosmopolitan theoretical construct of ‘cosmopolis’ can be positioned side-by-side with the theoretical construct of ‘empire’. I analyze the realist arguments on US foreign policy and international order in the context of the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, while engaging with these approaches and theoretical constructs, with the objective of maintaining my argument in the theoretical realm. However, in order to keep my analyses focused on post-Cold War US foreign policy and the two Gulf Wars, I do not delve into the philosophies that form the bases of unilateralism and multilateralism or cosmopolis and empire. I critically evaluate realist discourses on the two Gulf Wars and also explain the research strategy of supporting my theoretical analyses with empirical factual data analyses in the chapters that follow.

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Realist thinkers have developed a political theory based on the concept of power (or realpolitik), and have categorized the innate nature of man as interest-driven and survival-oriented. With similar logic, they have argued that individuals pursue their interests by uniting themselves into some form of social group.2 With the materialization of a modern state system, nation-states personify such social groups. Therefore, with the same realist logic, the leaders of these states formulate policies and strategies for the attainment of the national interests (of their citizens) and to ensure the survival of their states. Furthermore, it may be inferred from realist arguments that a structure of society and a legitimate form of government that governs the group of people – the Leviathan – may be possible at the domestic state level; however, they observe that a similar global or international leviathan does not exist to govern the community of states and maintain international order. In the absence of a global or supranational authority, they have conceptualized the international system as anarchic – similar to the Hobbesian state of war of all against all.3 In the absence of a global leviathan, the realists hypothesize that anarchy is the norm in international relations, while justice, order and peace are exceptions. Therefore, international agencies and treaties between states may not guarantee international peace and order or the national interests of states. The realist theory of international relations is built on the concepts of power, states representing group interests and the quest for survival and dominance in an anarchical world. In interstate relations, power is regarded as the final arbiter on political issues. The realists employ states as ‘models’ to test their assumptions about the survival-oriented and power-driven nature of man and his natural pursuit of interests. According to the realist interpretation, ‘interest’, defined in terms of power, is the factor that compels states to cooperate. Power at the ‘individual’ level is regarded as the ability to influence the minds and actions of other people, and at the international level it can be observed to operate in international relations, when one state – through the utilization of its resources – is able to influence and compel another state to pursue a specific line of action.4 Thus, realist thinkers explain international relations through the perceptual lens of rational pursuance of national interests by states through the utilization of their national power. Moreover, power is regarded as a means for the attainment of national interests as well as an end in international relations. The observation of the pursuit of interests and power by states and their quest for survival and sustainability in an

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anarchical world leads to further developments in realist assumptions, which are employed to explain the patterns of cooperation, competition, conflicts and wars between states, and the rise of hegemonic powers. Competition and uneven growth of power are regarded as the major causes of wars between states. Wars lead to international changes,5 and may be waged by prudent and powerful statespeople in order to attain their national goals. Moreover, wars may also be employed to effect changes in the international order. Therefore, realists do not refer to the ‘just war’ tradition, while arguing that war remains a fundamental determinant in emerging international order. Instead, the realist theorization of war develops by observing the behaviour of international statespeople and their prudent association of moral justifications with the rational calculations that comprise the ‘interest’ of their states. In order to attain their objectives through war effectively, rational leaders engage in multilateral approaches. As a result, it can be gathered from realist arguments that rational and pragmatic leaders of a hegemonic state propagate the moral justifications for wars as congruent with their national interests and the interests of their allies and, therefore, the wider interests of the international community of states. Some realist thinkers and practitioners further argue that the wider interest of the international community may be achieved through the creation of a sustainable international order guided by a single and powerful hegemon.6 Furthermore, building an international order that ensures the survival and hegemony of the superpower logically falls within the realist theoretical construct of a powerful state’s quest for hegemony, dominance and primacy in an anarchical world.7 Through developing this practical reasoning based on congruence between moral rhetoric and the interest of the powerful state, and extending it to the wider interests of international community, the hegemonic state may also be expected to assume a moral and rational international responsibility of fighting injustice, preventing the rise of any threats to peace and promoting socio-economic policies. Considering the US as one such emerging hegemon in post-Cold War international relations, the notions of ‘international responsibilities’, its duty to promote an ‘international civil society’ and build a ‘just international order’ have also resonated in realist discourses on the emerging international role of the US.8 The realist thinkers, through their observations, argue that the hegemon is likely to remain at the helm as long as it can achieve its own national interests, formulate and maintain strategic multilateral alliances, promote its own values internationally,

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and monopolize the means of war and prevent the rise of a challenger – whether it is another superpower or a group of states with shared politico-economic and strategic power. It is evident that war remains a central factor in realist arguments on all of these issues. While it can be gathered from realist arguments that foreign and strategic policies should be directed towards the attainment of national interests, on the other hand, it can be deduced from the arguments of idealists that national and foreign policies should be based on ideals. However, realist thinkers observe that pragmatic leaders may engage in idealist debates to validate their arguments for the attainment of their interests and to build multilateral support for their policies. The rational leaders of hegemonic states are cautious not to employ their power unilaterally for the pursuance of their national interests because they are aware that unilateralism is more likely to alienate their allies and lead to strategic counter-alliances against the hegemon. Similarly, in the case of decisions to wage wars, rational and pragmatic leaders are likely to make rational calculations regarding the costs and gains of wars from the perspective of their national interests, and justify and wage these wars with the support of the allies so that the wars may not be perceived as unjust or unilateral. Moreover, this may ensure that the financial and logistic burdens are not borne solely by the hegemon. These wars may serve the objectives of increasing the elements of national power, extension of geostrategic hegemony, primacy and military dominance. Through the analyses of the justifications, decisions and conducts of such wars and a hegemonic state’s multilateral policies for the attainment of its own national objectives, realist thinkers build theoretical assumptions for explaining the role of war in international relations. Post-Cold War international relations witnessed the emergence of the US as the sole superpower, and it pursued its foreign policy objectives through multilateral collaboration with other powers, including the UK and France. The other powers also aspired to regain a privileged position in the centre of world power. The US, as a growing hegemon, and the other powers had been strategically dependent upon each other.9 To the globalists, liberal internationalists and some cosmopolitans – as explained in Chapter 1 – this trend had been posited as a shift from the international system of bipolar alliances and spheres of influence during the Cold War years. It can be gathered from realist theorization that both the US and the other powerful states have attained their own interests through multilateralism. However, considering the overall cost

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and gains, the US – through its prudent and rational strategies – has benefitted more than the other powers, and this has enabled it to consolidate its hegemony, build its primacy and move towards global military dominance. The superpower’s increased politico-economic and strategic capabilities have further enabled it to consolidate its hegemony through the effective utilization of its military technological capabilities and by exercising its strategic military power, in which it surpasses the other powers. These functions of an advanced military arsenal can be strategic as well as symbolic and psychological. Hegemonic powers may sustain their primacy and dominance not only by building a multilateral network of alliances through the continuous projection of a common interest, but also through a ‘common threat’ to the alliance and its interests. Wars play a significant role in projecting this concern. Conducting war on different fronts serves the purpose of supporting the notion that the hegemon is considered necessary for maintaining a just and stable world order; these wars also act as reminders of the concern that the common politicoeconomic interests and values are under continuous threat. Therefore, the leaders of hegemonic states may not only influence their allied coalition through projecting the need for waging a ‘perceived’ necessary war, but wars may also serve as fundamental stimuli towards building an international geostrategic and economic order that may serve the wider interests of the allied partners. Conducting war on various fronts, therefore, serves the objectives of building strategic alliances that are regarded as necessary for the new order, as well as building and strengthening a global economic system which requires multilateral cooperation. In turn, the combination of war and economic financial order justifies military spending, building military bases and, through this, the extension of the global strategic reach of the hegemon. Observed in a relatively sceptical sense, this policy is a combination of distraction and incentive, where the threat and employment of war may serve the purpose of the attainment of politico-economic and geostrategic objectives. In addition to these arguments, two additional interpretations can be included, which enrich the comparison of realists to liberal cosmopolitan arguments on the role of the hegemon, employment of war and building coalitions for effecting changes in the post-war international order. Considering the US’s emerging international influence and post-Cold War employment of wars, John Lewis Gaddis examines the post-Cold War and post-9/11 trends in US foreign policy and the pursuit of US strategic objectives through multilateral coalitions. He

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analyzes the responses of US allies and the world towards increasing US hegemony. In his West Point speech in June 2002, G.W. Bush claimed that the military preponderance of the US and the benign nature of the US hegemony, combined with commonly shared values, have led the European allies to willingly accept a subservient role vis-à-vis the US. Gaddis claims that most, though not all, political scientists would also find these explanations plausible.10 However, from a different perspective, considering the nature of the multilateral alliances between the hegemon and other powers, the other significant powers may, in the long run, expect to gain politico-economic strength and strategic influence as a result of cooperating in a coalition. This is because this system of multilateral alliances is not similar to the tight bipolar alliances during the Cold War era, where peripheries of different poles or centres could not politically and economically interact with each other. Under present circumstances, the powerful allies may continue to render their support to the hegemon in its engagement in wars. Observing the decline of USSR, the allied powerful states may expect that these wars are likely to lead to the gradual weakening and downfall of the hegemon as a result of the imbalances in various domestic politico-economic factors, but primarily due to the increasing imbalance between its excessive military expenditure and its domestic economic growth. However, realist thinkers observe that the pragmatic leaders of hegemonic states may not be deluded into waging unilateral expansionist wars to extend their hegemony and building global empires at the expense of their strategic alliances or to invade and occupy other states with the intention of politically and economically reforming them. Pragmatic leaders are able to make rational calculations regarding the limits of their power and the need for setting attainable strategic objectives. They are more likely to engage in multilateral approaches to achieve their objectives through influencing their allies and even utilizing their resources. Therefore, they are not likely to indulge in unilateral or expansionist imperial wars of conquest because these cannot be politically or morally justified and are likely to lead to wider military resistance, alienation of their allies, tremendous financial costs and, ultimately, the decline of the hegemon. On the other hand, with a relatively different argument, liberals and cosmopolitans expect that the process of engagements between the powerful coalition partners, on the one hand, and the hegemon, on the other can, be seen as a transformative phase because, in addition to ‘nation states’, other non-state actors also play respective roles in these

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politico-strategic interactions and gradually gain international political influence. This theme has been debated by scholars who have analyzed the complex interdependence between global actors from the perspective of realism, considering realism and liberalism as two incommensurable paradigms with different concepts of the nature of political action. They have analyzed the nature of the influence of non-state actors, but they have not argued that that interdependence would make power obsolete; instead, they posit that patterns of interdependence and patterns of potential power resources in a given issue-area are closely related. These scholars link realism and liberalism in an integrated analysis.11 As explained in Chapter 1, liberals and cosmopolitans lay greater emphasis on the global tendencies and expect that an international order based on the system of states is going through a process of transformation as a result of the engagements between states, international organizations and non-state actors. On the other hand, realists do not necessarily argue that states are permanent features of international relations. They argue that the nation-state system is a product of socio-economic historical forces. Similarly, any fundamental changes in these forces could even transform the existing nation-state system. At present, individuals acknowledge that the ‘state’ represents their interests but, in the case of a drastic change, those individuals may cease to believe that the state continues to serve their security and interests.12 Therefore, it may be gathered from realist explanations that the fundamental point still remains the pursuance of interests by actors and, at the present time, the state system offers a comprehensible model and they regard the ‘evidence’ of complex interdependence between states and non-state actors as insufficient to build a model that may represent the interests of individuals and social groups, and may serve to explain the nature of cooperation and conflict in international relations. Moving further from the aforementioned ‘evidence’ and from postCold War multilateralism and interdependence, liberal cosmopolitans have referred to the processes that have contributed to globalization, including societal changes and ongoing scientific advancements. As explained in Chapter 1, they argue that these global trends have the capacity to transform the manner in which power is exercised at the global level and how decisions on waging wars are reached. In the future, they expect and envision a significantly enhanced role for an empowered global civil society in the decisions of war. Similarly, they expect that, due to the global transformations and the transcending nature of

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interstate conflicts, wars may accelerate the transformation of the globe into a mutually shared space, or a ‘cosmopolis’, where global actors living side-by-side will learn to value peace and future incidents of war may be minimized.13 On the contrary, it can be gathered from the realists’ assumptions and their interpretation of historical events from the times of Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes to Carr and Morgenthau, that wars lead to changes in the international order, but that the stability of the post-war order rests on the ability of the emergent hegemon to create or forge consent among other powerful actors and promote a kind of order that ensures its own hegemony. Realist theorization on war is built on the observations drawn from historical events that the post-war power vacuum is not serendipitously filled by a group of states or a global community comprising of various actors. Realists acknowledge the role of these global tendencies and actors, but they observe that rational leaders of a hegemonic state may be successful in forging a consensus and building an international order through the inculcation of the themes of human security and globalization in their own agenda. It may be inferred from realist theory that consent may be achieved through the multilateral approaches, but the actual nature of the international order may be more similar to an ‘empire’ rather than a ‘cosmopolis’. Therefore, in order to analyze these two perspectives in post-Cold War international relations theoretically, with the focus on the two Gulf Wars waged by the US and its allies and the effects of war on international order, the two theoretical constructs of ‘empire’14 and ‘cosmopolis’ can be employed. The question of whether the global influence of the US can be studied in the context of an empire has been debated extensively, as I explain in the sections that follow; similarly, some writers have critically analyzed the arguments that envision the gradual emergence of a cosmopolis.15 However, with the focus on the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, these constructs may serve two different purposes. The concept of empire may serve the purpose of addressing the question of whether the planning and conduct of the 1991 Gulf War contributed in strengthening the global US empire. In addition, keeping the liberal cosmopolitan theoretical construct of cosmopolis and the related arguments of humanitarian intervention, global civil society and democratic liberalism in perspective, an effort is made to analyze how the official and neoconservative discourses on the 2003 Gulf War – through the exploitation of the liberal and cosmopolitan arguments on humanitarian intervention and democratic liberalism – contributed to the decision to wage war against Iraq,

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leading to invasion, occupation and elections, which were detrimental to US interests and its global influence. Moreover, it is observed that the strategy of the G.W. Bush administration towards Iraq was opposed to the pragmatic strategy of the previous Republican administration of G.H.W. Bush. The 1991 Gulf War can be considered as a significant juncture in post-Cold War era; with no significant global competitor like the USSR, this war enabled the US to extend its global empire. In the theoretical domain, however, some scholars have viewed the modern empire as a network of powers, cutting diagonally across debates that pose unilateralism and multilateralism or pro-Americanism and anti-Americanism as the only global political alternatives. They argue that debates cannot be reduced to the division between the political alternatives of unilateral and multilateral strategies of exercising influence.16 This argument will be critically analyzed in the relevant section. However, the central questions that pertain to the policy of reaching consensus through multilateralism or the exercise of unilateral influence are of significant importance in the study of a hegemon and its decision-making at international level. The idea of empire has its uses in theoretical analyses, although in the past it has not been exploited because of methodological reasons, partly because it goes against the American grain and partly because it has been associated with the radical critique of the US foreign policy.17 However, theoretical analysis from the perspective of empire and cosmopolis may also serve as a perceptual lens through which to understand the relation between the employment of war and the nature of post-war international order. The purpose of including these two constructs is also to analyze and explain whether the post-Cold War rhetoric of the ‘unipolar moment’18 signified a shift from the imperial tradition of the US empire with the proclamation of creating a liberal and just international order or, to the contrary, it had been a sequel to the long-standing American imperial episode.19 It can be gathered from the assumption of realist theorists that rational actors may utilize the discourses on cosmopolis for the materialization and consolidation of an empire. However, realist thinkers also observe that the rational decision-maker’s vision of a realist and anarchical world may not be distorted by engaging in discourses that comprise cosmopolis. As explained in Chapter 1, liberal-left thinkers and commentators have also contributed to liberal discourses surrounding the 2003 Gulf War. They advocate military intervention for regime change, promotion of democracy, neoliberal economic policies and capitalism. While

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building a case for global democratic capitalism, they criticize the left and the Marxist theory of imperialism. Similarly, they display scepticism towards the realist theory of international politics and advocate a global humanist approach towards international politics. However, Alex Callinicos argues from a different perspective. In order to understand the modern versions of imperialism and neo-colonialism, he proposes that the Marxist theory of imperialism can be employed with respect to two other perspectives in international politics. One can be realism, while the other may take various forms; all these forms, however, have one idea in common: that contemporary international politics has been transformed by globalization and, as a result, contributed to economic interdependence, the emergence of ‘global governance’. Moreover, the communications revolution and information technology are progressively displacing the old system of interstate rivalries.20 In view of Callinicos’s theoretical proposition, the global cosmopolitan perspective can be studied by positioning it along with the Marxist theory of imperialism and realist theorizations on empire. This theoretical construct may also serve to analyze the cosmopolitan and global alternatives to international politics. Similarly, some thinkers visualize worldwide structural changes where Third World countries may unite politically and economically and transform the global hegemonic structural imperialism.21 These theorists also envision a global transformation, however, within the perspective of the nation-state system. On the other hand, the globalization theorists offer the explanation of hegemony by envisioning the nature of an international system through the constructs of cosmopolis and multitude.22 Keeping Callinicos’s theoretical proposition in perspective, the liberal cosmopolitan and realist arguments can be dissected while focusing this theoretical construct on the relevant aspect of the two Bush administrations and the Gulf Wars. Marxist criticisms of US policies in the post-Cold War era can be employed to trace a close connection between the policies of promoting global capitalism, building global financial regimes and waging wars.23 The realist theorization of international relations and the post-Cold War realist discourses on the international role of the US help in tracing the gradual introduction of market-oriented capitalism, the Wall Street System and also the rise of neoconservative ideology. Therefore, the analyses of post-Cold War US foreign policy from the academic realist perspective will also include the critical evaluation of the arguments of the neoconservative commentators and policy-makers. Drawing

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upon these factors, I analyze the gradual developments in the discourses comprising the ‘unipolar moment’ from the end of the Cold War to the first Gulf War. I trace the resurgence of neoconservative discourses in the post-9/11 era and, subsequently, the rise of debates comprising the WoT leading up to the second Gulf War.

The realist discourses on power, interests, war and hegemony The theory of realism may be categorized further into ‘classical’, ‘structural’, ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’. The classical realists – from Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes to the present thinkers – have based their analyses on their perceptions of the nature of humanity and have developed the realist theory on the concepts of power, interests, anarchy and survival. Their assumptions have served as the basis for further developments in other realist political thought and, subsequently, the behaviour of international leaders has been conceptualized in the same manner – as being directed towards the pursuance of their own state’s interests. Describing the international system as anarchic, the realists argue that anarchy induces a sense of insecurity and mistrust among states towards the other states. The post-Cold War realist thinkers explain US foreign policy from the perspective of anarchy, self-help and balance of power and, hence, a rational pursuance of power and national interest. From the perspective of war, the classical realists argue that statesmen acting on behalf of their state may not engage in dialogues on moral justifications; instead, they may wage a pre-emptive or preventive war against an imminent or ‘perceived’ threat. Classical realism refuses to identify the moral aspiration of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe; however, realists claim that all nations are tempted to disguise their own particular actions and aspirations with moral rhetoric.24 The structural realists have developed these arguments by moving further from a classical realist approach, focusing on the study of the ‘individual’ in society to the study of the ‘states’ in the structure of an international system. They claim that relations between states are measured by the differences in their relative power instead of factors such as values or types of government. Although they argue that the principle objective in both cases of individuals and states remains the same – interests in terms of power – the nature of man is, however, complex and variable and therefore may not serve as a ‘constant’ or perceptual

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lens through which to explain the diverse range of issues comprising international relations. Kenneth Waltz contributes to this theory in the perspective of international relations by proposing that, in addition to the international system being anarchical and decentralized rather than hierarchical, the states remain, nonetheless, formally equal units, performing similar functions for their security, and there is a system of distribution of capabilities at the international level. The conceptualization of this system of distribution of power implies that states have specific interests but, for the attainment of these interests, they have to operate as part of a system.25 Therefore, the behaviour of the state and its aspirations are linked to competitiveness and a quest for survival. Similarly, there may be certain limitations on their actions; however, states may overcome these limitations by increasing the elements of their national power. The arguments of the structural realists lead further to the developments of an international perspective by the neorealists,26 who lay greater emphasis on the potential and strategic influence of the super powers on the behaviour of other states within the global hierarchy. The idea of states as the units of analysis and the idea of their pursuit of survival and national interests are further developed by Randell L. Schweller. After the critical analysis of Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, he argues that the quest for survival is further linked to the relative positions and ranking of other actors – a quest for prestige – after survival has been secured.27 This implies that states are engaged in balancing and over-balancing other states by exploiting their own resources and gaining more power; therefore, they are in a continuous struggle to increase their elements of national power and hence gain dominance over other states. These assumptions also imply that powerful states extend their hegemony and prevent the rise of any future competitors. Similarly to the structural realists, the defensive realists argue that although the powerful states are continuously striving to increase the elements of national power and international influence, they are inclined to follow a defensive approach for the maintenance of the balance of power, in the event of confrontations and conflict with other powers. The offensive realists argue that superpowers resort to war and conquest of other territories as short-term strategies for increasing their national power and international preponderance. The fundamental point that unites the structural and defensive realists and differentiates them from offensive realists is their argument about the changes in the international balance of power. The structural and defensive realists argue

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that the competitions between powerful states and their allies lead to a strategic equilibrium, which can be observed as an offence-defence balance;28 this balance is, in turn, sustained by the hegemonic power or the ‘balancer’. They argue that the hegemon is usually heavily inclined towards pursuing a policy of defence to maintain this balance and the status quo. To the contrary, the offensive realists argue that the balancer or hegemon will try to maintain the balance or status quo as long as it is able to extend its hegemony without initiating wars; and it will strive to change the balance when the direction of change is likely to favour its hegemony, or when the hegemon perceives that the gains from aggression may be greater than the defence or maintenance of the status quo.29 This relates to the Hobbesian notion of gaining all helps and advantages of Warre – in which the hegemon surpasses all the other actors.

Realist arguments on the perspectives of war, the US national interest and growing post-Cold War hegemony Post-Cold War US hegemony can be understood by observing the developments during the Cold War, when the pursuance of national interests through the extension of military influence and capitalist-market economy became significant factors in US foreign policy.30 The aforementioned arguments explain the post-Cold War pursuance of global hegemony and dominance by the US; however, the categorization of states as similar international units also implies that, despite being similar political units the states are not equal; therefore, there is a continuous struggle to gain power, in order to survive in a conflict-prone world. The concepts of ‘hegemony’, ‘primacy’ and ‘dominance’ had received criticism, and some scholars had questioned the basis of the theoretical assumption that hegemony and primacy among the community of states can be sustained through control of resources and exercise of military power. Paul Kennedy argues the hegemon’s pursuance of a policy of extending its influence through excessive military build-up and military spending leads to its decline by ‘imperial overstretch’. In the case of the US, he implies that the sum total of US global interests and obligations may grow far greater than the country’s ability to defend them simultaneously.31 From the same perspective, Callinicos traces the pattern of military intervention and occupation to global dominance and the promotion of the liberal capitalist order from the perspective of the US invasion of Iraq.32 However, during the post-Cold War years, the US policy-makers attributed the

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rise of the US as the sole hegemon or the hyperpower33 to the Cold War foreign policy of Reagan, which comprised excessive military spending, through the combination of debatable and incoherent formulas of ‘military Keynesianism’, neoliberalism and domestic tax cuts. These policies contributed to the decline of the USSR; therefore, they were perceived as the requisites of a successful foreign policy34 and military strategy. The growing post-Cold War US hegemony was complemented by economic expansion during the Reagan and, later, the Clinton eras. These trends and subsequently developing discourses further strengthened the convictions of realist policy-makers that the US national interests could be achieved and guaranteed through excessive military spending, employment of military force along with the promotion of a liberal market agenda as long as the US had the capability to assume a global role and creating a consensus to lead the other significant powers. The structural realists argue that, in the quest to build consensus for the attainment of ‘perceived’ collective interests, the globally dominant actor, which may be categorized as a ‘hyperpower’, strives to achieve its strategic objectives through a combination of coercion and consentbuilding.35 This policy of consent-building might be interpreted by the liberals and cosmopolitans as a multilateral approach because of the involvement of various allies and politico-economic arrangements. The offensive realist Mearsheimer argues that liberals – similarly to the realists – also consider states as the basic units of analysis; but they argue that characteristics and domestic dynamics of states vary and these profoundly affect the state’s behaviour.36 Therefore, the liberals question the realist assumption that all states are survival-oriented and are engaged in a struggle for power. They expect that due to multilateral approaches, engagement with international organizations, economic interdependence, globalization and the emergence of international civil society, a multipolar order may emerge and transform the hegemonic world order from one where unilateralism may remain an option, if not the custom. From a realist perspective, G. John Ikenberry suggests that there is no inconsistency between unilateralism and multipolar, rule-based order; instead, these two complement each other because even the most powerful states have a deep, enduring incentive to operate in a world of rules and institutions and construct their preferred international order.37 Therefore, it is also in the hegemonic power’s interests to build an international civil society; however, through this engagement with multiple actors the hegemon may be able to validate some of its promulgated ‘necessary’

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unilateral policies. The structural realists Morgenthau and Carr refute the liberal internationalist view, claiming that it had been overpowered by visionary zeal, causing a deficiency in understanding the nature of international relations, thus barring dispassionate analysis and, therefore, making it responsible for the crisis of the interwar years.38 In the context of globalization, Mearsheimer argues that the proponents of the globalization thesis, economic interdependence and multilateralism had constructed a flawed reasoning based on ‘selection biases’. Nationalism still remains a strong factor despite regional integration in Europe, and the reason that European states cooperated economically during the Cold War was the strategic and military threat from the USSR. The states are not driven by a desire for mutual economic prosperity because, paradoxically, economic interdependence fosters competition between states, which becomes the cause for war.39 Therefore, according to the realist interpretation, the stable international order requires the consolidation and maximization of a single hegemon’s power and influence. Similarly, Mearsheimer regards aggressive wars and the expression of power and influence as short-term strategies employed by the great powers, in a perceived anarchical world, where anarchy and the distribution of power, in turn, play a major role in shaping the behaviour of states.40 He further argues that the actors at lower echelons in terms of power and influence in the overall hierarchy of states also make similar rational calculations, and thus their intentions can be understood in the same context of realpolitik, power and influence. John Herz further argues that sustaining anarchy assures the centrality of the struggle for power.41 Regarding the nature of the international system, the offensive realists profess that a bipolar system is more stable than a multipolar system; therefore, when confronted with challenges from various powers – growing and great – the hegemon may be inclined to prevent the rise of another power that has the potential of leading the world towards multipolarity.42 From the same perspective, the defensive realist Waltz, conceptualizing the behaviour of the great powers and the patterns of bi- or multipolarity, contends that under the conditions of international anarchy, threatened states balance against the preponderant power, while in the hierarchical structure of the international order, they resort to bandwagoning.43 Therefore, the hegemon prefers creating a uni- or bipolar order and preventing multiple poles of power. However, it has been problematic to maintain a strategic balance between hegemon and other growing powerful states in the post-Cold

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War era because of the proliferation of offensive strategic and tactical weapons within the erstwhile ‘peripheries’ that had been subservient to their ‘centre’ states during the Cold War. This development has made it compelling for the greater powers to employ offensive military means in certain situations.44 Therefore, in the face of an imminent strategic nuclear threat from another growing regional power, the hegemon is likely to pre-empt and, in the case of a threat likely to emerge in the near future, prevent the use of offensive military strategies. It is evident that the realist discourses visualize an international order where stability can be maintained through the promotion of a coalition of states with similar interests, led by a militarily powerful hegemon. Therefore, the hegemon’s international strategic policy is directed towards preventing the creation of a multipolar order through the aggressive employment of tactical and strategic weapons. Mearsheimer further argues that the hegemon’s exploitation of its military superiority for conquest of another state’s territory is a primary operational objective. Considering overall costs and benefits, aggressive wars of conquest may be preferable to short-term strategic options. However, considering the long-term sustainability of this strategy, he claims that, in the long run, the conqueror may not exploit modern industry especially related to information technology and as a reaction to conquest, reactionary nationalist movements may arise.45 Therefore, in order to increase its national power with a short-term policy similar to imperialism and preventing the international order from turning multipolar and hence building a new geostrategic order, the hegemon may wage an aggressive war and justify it in the wider interest of a progressive community of states. It can be observed that such a policy of hegemonic territorial expansion is complemented by a simultaneous denial of geostrategic access to other powers. Considering US history, the evidence of these trends can be traced from the territorial expansion seen as ‘Manifest Destiny’. The Monroe Doctrine 1823 called for disengagement from European affairs, barring European states from acquiring land in American territory or forming alliances with Latin American states. These measures contributed to the period of expansion from 1800–1900, the purchases of Louisiana (1803), the annexation of Texas (1845), the secession of Oregon (1846) and California (1848), and the purchases of Gadsden (1853) and Alaska (1867). However, the US did not annex Canada or Mexico.46 Evaluating these trends, Mearsheimer claims that conquest contributes to strategic and economic power which,

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in turn, can be employed to extend the hegemon’s influence in regions that do not require physical presence. From the same perspective, Chomsky argues that with Canada and US-controlled Alaska at its north and half of Mexico being conquered after the elimination of the native population of North and South America, the phrase ‘United States’ transformed from plural to singular 150 years ago.47 In this manner, post-Cold War US global hegemony can be understood as an extension of the previous successful US experiment on the American continent. However, in the post-Cold War era the term ‘New World Order’, which had a cosmopolitan connotation, was employed for the promotion of a hegemonic order led by the US in collaboration with its allies. Robert Cooper claims that the challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to double standards: ‘Among ourselves we keep the law but when we are operating in a jungle we keep the law of the jungle.’ Callinicos critically analyzes Cooper’s argument and his advocacy of imperialism which sought acceptability from the world of human rights and cosmopolitan values, but which was actually redolent of Victorian imperialism.48 Continuing the arguments for extending US territorial influence, the realist oriented US policy-maker Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that, in the post-Cold War era, the US needed to extend its hegemony by controlling the Eurasian land mass. This strategy would set a premium on political manoeuvring and diplomatic manipulation, and prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that might have the capability to challenge US primacy. The promotion of a stable, transcontinental balance should not be viewed as an end in itself, only as a means towards strengthening strategic partnerships. A benign US hegemony must discourage others from posing challenges by making the costs of confrontation too high. At the same time, the US must also respect the legitimate interests of Eurasia’s regional aspirants. Brzezinski argues for the exercise of hard and soft power in a global perspective, implying that US unilateralism should have an outer multilateral edifice. In an operational sense, these policies include the enlargement of military and strategic alliances – for example, NATO – along with the widening of US financial and monetary influence in Europe.49 He later posits that the three grand imperatives of US foreign policy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected and to keep the barbarians from coming together.50 The power of the US, in asserting the nation’s sovereignty in a dominant fashion, is the ultimate guarantor of

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global stability; therefore, the US could maintain its hegemony and preeminence in collaboration with its European allies.51 Further developing the US post-Cold War global ‘missions’, Brzezinski claims that the US would need the capability to manage, steer and shape the central power relationships in a world of shifting geopolitical balances and intensifying natural aspirations. It would have to contain and prevent terrorism and the proliferation of WMD, promote collective peacekeeping in regimes torn by political strife and address global inequalities, keeping in view the emerging ‘global consciousness’.52 These objectives were also a continuation of National Security Council Report 68, formulated in 1950, which had already emphasized the need for controlling the European land mass because the USSR aspired to extend its influence in this region.53 Considering Brzezinski’s arguments in a broader perspective, the future global role of the US demanded that it take the lead among the powerful states to prevent global strategic threats from emerging. However, the emerging idea of collective peacekeeping in strife-torn regimes can be related back to the post-Cold War discourses on failed and collapsing states which required US intervention. Therefore, in a realist sense these ‘missions’ can be seen as the global duties of a benevolent hegemon exploiting its hard and soft power in the pursuit of building a benign empire. Contributing to the post-Cold War academic debates on empire, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argue that the modern empire signified a decentred and deterritorialized apparatus of rule that progressively incorporated the entire global realm within its open expanding powers. The contest for power is therefore eliminated in this system because conflict itself is transcended: national governments are drawn into a multilateral process of global governance and a new global sovereignty, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms, which had led to the rise of a new empire that was not imperialist in nature.54 Hardt later argues that imperialism is therefore not the favoured policy for political and economic elites around the world.55 In their more recent works, Negri and Hardt interpret the novel tendencies in the global political order by replacing the traditional perceptual lens of an imperial empire with the concept of a ‘network of power’, which comprises dominant nation states, supranational institutions, capitalist corporations and various other similar entities. Developing their explanations from the perspective of globalization, they hypothesize that alongside empire

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there is an emerging ‘multitude’ or simultaneously developing global movement. The notion of empire therefore cuts diagonally across the debates that pose unilateralism and multilateralism or pro-Americanism and anti-Americanism as the only global political alternatives.56 In his later works, Negri proposes that wider socio-economic benefits can be achieved through structural change and widespread struggle to change the capitalist international order, and the multitude – non-state actors – may provide the platform for this change. He also contends that alongside the emergence of the multitude, the US is pursuing an imperial geostrategic and monetary agenda by building a strategic coalition of allies: After September 11, 2001, the campaign in Afghanistan, which initiated on a global level the first phase of the war on terrorism, put together conventional and unconventional means of warfare, as well as high and low intensity police actions. Today the new military doctrine couches in terms of common sense and elementary self-defense Empire’s right to intervene against potential enemies before such threats materialize. This is the theory of preventative war. Preventative war is not only a military doctrine; it is a constituent strategy of Empire. The American administration’s September 20th document explicitly states so: preventative war is a just and necessary means to defend liberty, justice, democracy and economic growth against terrorists and tyrants. Major decisions are not being made on the war on terrorism or on the conventional war against tyrants, but rather on the forms of hegemony and the relative degrees of power that American and/or European capitalist elites will have in the organization of the new world order. Preventative decisions are not simply to do with war but more with market predominance in the sub regions of the imperial organisation, therefore the only adequate field of struggle and organisation for the Multitude is the global terrain, where the line of action can be anti-capitalism.57 Negri terms the US policy of war as ‘preventative’. It can be deduced from Negri’s explanation that he regards the policy of war of the G.W. Bush administration as a combination of preventive military doctrine and a constituent strategy of promoting liberty, justice and economic growth. Negri and Hardt visualize a global transformation through engagement

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with the multitude, and expect that competition between rival economic powers would be minimized. Critically analyzing Negri and Hardt’s ideas, Callinicos suggests that 9/11 changed these conceptualizations and that empire does involve competition between rival capitalistic groups.58 It can be observed that Negri and Hardt acknowledge US pursuit of a realist approach to building an empire, but insist that they expect the global forces of multitude would affect changes in the dynamics of international relations in a way that power would not be used for coercion, but for peaceful resolution of conflicts through mutual consent. Similarly, democracy, on a global scale, may emerge to oppose the militarism of the US empire.59 Alejandro Colas argues that such eclectic uses of empire envision the present international conjuncture in terms of the neoliberal utopia of unrestrained space of market exchange rather than the world of class, racial and gender hierarchies underpinning the reproduction of global capitalism. Hardt and Negri’s view of empire overstates the demise or transformation of territorial forms of politics in the contemporary world, thereby ignoring one of the defining features of contemporary empire: the use of extraterritorial force to reconstitute state sovereignty.60 Callinicos critically analyzes their claims and asserts that, relative to the theoretical muddle that Negri and Hardt negotiate, realism seems more realistic. However, he also argues that realism does not explain the role that ideological representations play in motivating political actions. Therefore, the actor’s interests (in this case, the global interests of a hegemon), are not necessarily the same as their perceptions of those interests. One reason for this potential gap is that these perceptions are themselves ideologically constituted.61 Similarly, realism, by treating states as unitary actors, does not integrate the analysis of the capitalist economic context on which both Marxist and liberal enthusiasts of globalization lay emphasis.62 Considering the post-Cold War strategic alliances, the extension of US hegemony and the employment of war, Samir Amin explains the promotion of capitalism and attainment of national interests by envisioning a strategic triad. In this triad, the US remains at the top echelon, and its advanced information-technology industry, RMA and global network of entrepreneurial enterprises enable it to collaborate economically and financially with the European Union, China and Japan, which lie at the second echelon. Similarly, the US is increasing its strategic and economic liaisons with Russia and India, with the objective of placing them at the third echelon and gradually including them in the global advanced

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capitalist order. Amin contends that such an arrangement of empire with several regional powers is vulnerable to the risks of conflict between the component states; however, it can be observed that the US seeks to unite this triad by waging a global WoT and expounding the rhetoric of democracy. Amin argues that the other fundamental point of contention is the nature of capitalism, which ideally could be reformed along the lines of socialism.63 However, realistically, while the US has managed to unite the coalition on the strategic issue of war and hence the perceived threats to collective interests, it is not in the national interest of the US to mitigate the negative effects of the advanced capitalist system that it is promoting internationally. Although this advanced capitalist system may, in the long run, lead to conflicts and disintegration of the strategic triad, from an offensive realist perspective the US military preponderance and monopoly over war may revive the cycle of hegemony through aggressive wars and acquisition of territory and resources. In this light, Michael Mann critically analyzes the US empire, which in his perception signifies a military giant, economic back-seat driver, political schizophrenic and ideological phantom. Mann argues that the US empire faces neither a challenge from another superpower nor the risks of imperial overstretch; on the contrary, its demise might result from an extremely uneven and conflicting utilization of its military, political, economic and ideological power.64 US hegemony displays a combination of complex and diverse, often antagonistic and conflicting mechanisms; however, it is based on ideological foundations and practical reasoning. There is the rhetoric of the WoT, which was combined with the notion of humanitarian intervention, pursuit of democracy and the building of an economically and financially robust economic order, while contrarily, non-compliance with the UN Resolutions and unilaterally waging aggressive wars collectively display a contradictory and incoherent approach. However, these policies also signify the combination of liberal themes with realist strategies. Considering Gowan’s arguments, it can be observed that the US post-Cold War policy of complementing its military preponderance with the promotion of neoliberal economic policies and advanced capitalism through the creation of a ‘Wall Street System’ can be considered a continuation of the prudently calculated policy of promoting its national interests abroad as the collective interests of its allies, and exporting American values as common to civilized, free and democratic nations. To develop this point further, the policies of the architects of these international strategies can

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be traced; they held pivotal positions in the foreign and strategic policy infrastructure. Therefore, in the following sections, I trace the rise of the Wall Street system and its connection to the global strategic objectives that continued from National Security Council Report (NSC 68) to the National Security Strategy 1990 (NSS 1990) and National Security Strategy 2002 (NSS 2002). I explain the interplay of these factors and their role in the formulation of US foreign policies in order to support my argument that the promotion of capitalism and the Wall Street System internationally can be explained in terms of hegemony and the exercise of influence and coercion, as conceptualized by the realist theorists.

The ‘national interest’, transforming nature of ‘state’ and the emergence of the Wall Street System as a mechanism for building an ‘empire’ A significant development in US foreign policy during the Cold War years was the complementation of military superiority and the ability to coerce through military means, along with the proactive promotion of the international, market-based monetary order, and subsequently the exercise of monetary influence and coercion in the economic and financial domains. The mechanisms of this system are elaborated next. This international system is based on a monetary speculative mechanism, which is powered by exponential fiscal turnover as a result of trading between states and transnational entrepreneurs. In simpler terms, it is the global extension of the monetary force that powers the US’s domestic Wall Street. Gowan defines this development as the emergence of a global Wall Street System. Under ideal circumstances, for this system to grow internationally it was imperative that the participating states were industrialized, relatively liberal democratic in nature and willing to hold regular elections. Dictatorial or theocratic regimes may be ill-suited to this system. Therefore, the post-Cold War arguments of promoting worldwide democracy were welcomed by realist commentators on US foreign policy, because the euphoria in the west after the decline of communism compelled the realists to develop their arguments in view of the emerging liberal debates and transformations in the international environment. Although US policy-makers had earlier managed to contrive workable relations with dictators and leaders of theocratic regimes, this new system had the potential of promoting the worldwide monetary system that US policy-makers had planned for the attainment

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of US national interests. It can be argued that, in theory, this international system had been expected to promote international economic competition, with the objective of increasing the levels of production and trade at international level through engagement with international firms. Therefore, this system counted on the latent dynamics of the financially growing ‘market’; however, in its practical operation, this system signified the Hobbesian state of war of ‘all against all’ and the survival of the prudent, influential and monetarily astute. The Wall Street System developed as an international trading and monetary mechanism where oligopolistic enterprises speculated and competed in buying and selling shares in the domestic stock markets of member states. Alongside buying and selling, the growing entrepreneurs took over the smaller or relatively weaker ones, either by surpassing them in monetary turnover and buying their shares and assets because the smaller firms were unable to generate the necessary profits to excel in the market, or, in certain cases, because they had been financially declining towards bankruptcy. The uncontrolled and unmonitored monetary transactions often led to a financial bubble, which in some cases could turn out to be artificial or contrived because of excessive monetary speculation, but the likely consequence of this financial turnover would be that the smaller entrepreneurs would perceive, from the market trends, that their survival was at stake. In such circumstances, the option for the smaller enterprises would be either to adapt to the rules of the Wall Street System – borrow heavily, trade and reinvest and buy even smaller entrepreneurs – or, if incapable of so doing, they would be eliminated from Wall Street by a greater entrepreneurial takeover. As a consequence of the rise of Wall Street in the US, the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Wall Street entrepreneurs and multinational banks had also gradually gained positions in the US government. Similarly, there was also the gradual inculcation of the rules that assimilated Wall Street into US foreign policy. This system had allied the US market and Wall Street with developing economies and capitalisms in Europe and other parts of the world. Observing the US hegemony and promotion of this system globally, it offered strategic protection and financial incentives to the allies, albeit on terms favourable to the US. From the international strategic perspective, by engaging with multinational entrepreneurs, the promotion of the Wall Street System is closely linked to the attainment of national interests and the use of military coercion and war by the hegemon. From a realist perspective, this strategy cannot be confused with the liberal/neoliberal or idealist/

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cosmopolitan aspirations – in the ideal sense – of building a community of democratic states that seek economic cooperation and are striving to build a global civil society. Gowan explains the developments of the Wall Street System internationally as a result of a series of events which also led to the influence of Wall Street rules on the process of US foreign policy formulation. There are various interconnected trends and factors which can be traced to the policies introduced by Paul H. Nitze. I shall go on to explain the emergence of these trends and the role of certain factors that led to US international financial monopoly. During the Cold War confrontation, Nitze and Albert Wohlstetter argued for maintaining an arms rivalry with the USSR65 along with building financial regimes to counter the Soviet economic influence. Wohlstetter critically evaluated the perceptions prevailing on both sides of the US and USSR during the Cold War, and argued that the nuclear arms race had the potential of deluding the leaders on both sides and leading to economic decline; nonetheless, he supported US military expenditure to match the USSR’s tactical and strategic arsenal.66 Nitze envisioned a global role for the US president in building a ‘coalition of the free’, an economically liberal group of states and a ‘concert of allied powers’ to counter the Soviet politico-economic agenda.67 Nitze’s approach was more market-oriented, and he started his political career as a Democrat, but, because of ideological differences, in 1937 he shifted to the Republican Party. He played a central role in the formulation of the NSC 68, and the inclusion of James V. Forrestal in the policy and decision-making structure. Forrestal had been closely associated with the US growing of domestic entrepreneurs and argued for decision-makers to develop a CEO approach towards foreign policy. Nitze and Forrestal together raised the Office of the Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs, with the ultimate purpose of formulating a long-term strategic policy,68 and Nitze served as its Financial Director from 1942– 43. He argued that the world could be transformed into a better place by those individuals who had luck on their side and were not supinely willing to accept ‘what in absence of will and action might be world’s fate’.69 His experience as an immigrant to the US and his early life traumas played a significant role in the formation of his ideas about domestic and international politics.70 He had been greatly inspired by economics as a discipline and considered that principles of economics can form the bases for national policies and help in finding the path to understanding and influencing the real world.

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The worldwide financial depression of the early twentieth century had significantly affected the way Nitze visualized future US politico-economic strategy. Considering the market as a robustly growing enterprise, emerging in the form of Wall Street, he argued that it could serve as the model that should provide not only the power, but also principles and the insights into the process of state governance. Nitze worked for a profitable investment bank on Wall Street – Dillon, Read & Co. – from 1929 until he founded his own company, P.H. Nitze & Co., in 1938. On politico-economic issues, he argued for massive deficit spending as the solution to financial depression. He did not consider over-production as a problem and argued that financial depression was a result of worldwide competitive search for economic security through excessive banking liquidity. He believed this problem might be tackled through effective trading. He argued that ‘J.M. Keynes’s theory of employment was a confirmation of what “we” had learned through daily practical experience’,71 and was convinced that the principles governing Wall Street could guarantee national power through monetary growth. At the time of Roosevelt’s presidency, and his efforts to mend ties with the business community, Nitze and Paul Shields were instrumental in the induction of a group of individuals representing business entrepreneurs, called the ‘Silent Six’.72 Of these, James Forrestal had been an assistant from Wall Street, instrumental in the decision-making structure of the state. Forrestal was later appointed as the undersecretary of the Navy and Nitze served as a system analyst. Callinicos and Jane D’Arista have analyzed these trends, and their arguments have contributed to Gowan’s analyses. The new political culture of the induction of individuals representing entrepreneurs into the decision-making strata has remained deeply embedded in US policy formulation up to the present times. This system grew globally and contributed towards the increasing influence of US-based enterprises. From Republicans governing US politics between 1922–33 and, later, Roosevelt and his ‘inner circle’s’ formulation of the ‘New Deal’, which implied spend and spend, elect and elect, tax and tax,73 subsequent US administrations have consistently pursued a strategy based on collaboration with a network of central and investment bankers, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of New York, J.P. Morgan and, additionally, the Bank of England, on the other side of the Atlantic.74 The formation of the Federal Reserve and Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), the Federal National Mortgage Association – named Fannie Mae – and the

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Federal Home Mortgage Corporation – called Freddie Mac – was among one of the main outcomes of these policies. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae operated from 1968 and were connected to the more institutionalized system of the owners of international entrepreneurs. The office bearer of Enron and Halliburton, Richard Cheney, in turn secured a leading role in decision-making. As a result of adopting this policy, the questions of banking liquidity were addressed by introducing the monetary policies of proprietary trading and fiat money.75 Proprietary trading is the policy when financial institutions and entrepreneurs trade on their own account, not for their customers. They buy assets on credit on their own account in order to increase profits so that they can pay huge bonuses. In order to make profits from these interactions, they have to borrow money at low interest rates, from country ‘A’. This borrowed money, called leverage, is used by the financial institutions to buy another currency with higher interest rates from country ‘B’. This currency with higher interest rates is used to buy assets in the same country ‘B’. This policy leads to the artificial creation of difference in the interest and exchange rates of currencies. Through these financial policies, these institutions grow globally oligopolistic. Similarly, in simpler terms ‘fiat money’ implies a full faith in the credit of a government without its being fully backed by gold or any other standard, other than the government’s ability to tax its citizens. Fiat money is created because there is not enough gold to support financial speculation.76 Gowan has explored the bases of this policy and traced the logic behind the policy of extending the domestic monetary system abroad. He argues that the formation of the DWSR can be traced to Nixon’s decision to take the dollar off gold in August 1971, establishing International Monetary Standards purely on dollar standards, giving the US political control over its currency exchange rates and increasing its leverage over advanced-capitalist countries. Therefore, the world of floating currencies it produced gave much salience to international markets in which the US investment banks played a significant role, with Washington and Wall Street compelling other states to adopt neoliberal policies that opened their economies to foreign capital.77 In addition to displaying the negative side of ‘casino capitalism’, it is also evident that these polices are only possible through the exploitation of the US’s own domestic economy and other economies in recession. These policies cannot be actively pursued unless some economies fall into recession. It is also evident that the brunt of financial imbalance at the international

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level is borne by the coalition partners in the global financial regime, because it is a mechanism for exporting US domestic financial problems abroad. Similarly, these policies may not be possible without the superpower’s network of international entrepreneurs and cartels and its control over gradually depleting natural resources. It can be argued that, with gold being replaced by fiat money, there still remained the need for valuable natural oil resources, upon which the whole global economy depends. Through the systematic replacement of the gold standard by the US dollar, and the gradual dominance of the dollar being complemented with the control of the major oil resources, the DWSR, through the manipulation of petrodollars,78 played a fundamental role in the promotion of the economic order and the financing of wars. In addition, the allies might be engaged to offer their services in the post-war reconstructions that will open another front requiring production from their domestic industries, while the target state, with no substantial monetary reserves, might pay for the reconstruction with its oil. The oil resources are the foundations of the global economy79 and, realistically, oil will be the cause of conflicts that may emerge in future. The unilateral US promotion of this financial regime has the potential to cause a global recession80 that might lead to further conflicts, but the formulators of the Wall Street System expect the cycle of hegemony to continue with the repetition of the pattern through the employment of war, territorial occupation and control over the world’s natural resources. Although these policies contributed towards US monopoly over international financial dealings, they caused economic disparities and divisions on the US domestic front and recession in the advanced capitalist economies. Recession is a recurring trend in this system; however, it is expected that through structural changes, comprising policies of privatization complemented with the state’s financial investments and international trading opportunities for private entrepreneurs, the system can be revitalized. Historically, after the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 led to depression, the New Deal was insufficient to rescue US capitalism; therefore, US policy-makers expected to find solutions in the construction of a liberal international order where US capital and commodities could freely flow, and through which European great power rivalries were minimized. Paradoxically, the combination of in-depth industrial strength and relative geopolitical isolation gave US capitalism the ability to establish global hegemony without creating its own formal empire.81 Christopher Layne, while advocating the theory of ‘extra

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territorial hegemony’, suggests that US pursuit of hegemony in regions outside the western hemisphere is primarily driven by ‘Open Doors’ – domestic considerations and not structural determinants.82 Layne’s reference to Open Doors is a policy of ‘exporting the American way of life’;83 however, despite the expectations of the neoliberal economists, there remains a constant risk of conflict due to unequal distribution of financial dividends. In the case of conflict over these dividends, the coalition partners may not be in a position to demand their rightful share, while the international financial system will be monopolized through the dominance of the dollar in the international market. Therefore, from an international strategic perspective, this policy is directed towards creating an international order where US allies bear the burden of the economic and financial imbalances, while the hegemon controls a network of financial entrepreneurs, necessary natural resources and pivotal geostrategic regions, along with maintaining its monopoly over war. From another geo-economics perspective, Philip Bobbitt argued that the US can be considered a welfare state in an ideal sense; however, as a result of this relationship between capitalism and entrepreneurialism, the nature of the US state is transformed into a market state.84 Bobbitt traces the emergence of these trends to various international developments, including the identification of human rights as a basic norm in international relations, widespread deployments of WMD, the proliferation of global transnational threats, the growth of international economic regimes and capital flows and the creation of global communication networks. These developments lead the community of states towards a new global order where it is also possible to manage the consensus on intervention by the great powers concerning low-intensity conflicts. Here, war becomes a product as well as the shaper of cultures. The hegemonic state commands domestic legitimacy if it has the capability to protect the homeland and its citizens against foreign threats. Bobbitt argues that the market state is a constitutional adaptation to the end of a long war and revolution in corporations, communications and WMD.85 He presents a relatively cosmopolitan perspective, while keeping in mind the arguments from the realist end of the continuum, but argues that the transformation in the nature of the state is not essentially an effort to extend the hegemony and dominance of the US, rather the desire to preserve the wider interest of the society of states and to maintain stability in the world economy. He extends the notion of the ‘unipolar moment’86 previously presented by the neoconservative commentator

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Charles Krauthammer. Bobbitt argues along the same lines and visualizes the strategic choices87 for the market state, emphasizing that a ‘new leadership’ had emerged – presumably an international US leadership. Affirming Krauthammer’s argument that the US should not exit from areas of strategic importance which are mired in conflict,88 Bobbitt also contributes to the liberal cosmopolitan discourses on humanitarian intervention and preventive war by the US. He argues that, considering the possible strategic choices, the US war on Iraq in 2003 was a necessary response by a hegemon for its survival and in order to prevent future threats to its security. It also sent a message to the terrorists that modern warfare cannot be waged without strategic weapons. Bobbitt considers the 2003 war to have been a plausible, political pretext and strategic initiative.89 On the contrary, this war could not further US plans for nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament and the prevention of nuclear programmes by nuclear threshold states. Moreover, it sent a negative message to the terrorists and anti-US forces. However, it strengthened the arguments among the mainstream US academics and policy-makers that there are possibilities of nuclear terrorism against the US. It can be observed that through the 2003 war and invasion of Iraq, the US had intended to control Iraq’s oil, unite the European coalition in the quest to fight the perceived threats to their values, promote a global liberal economic order and, in addition, had supplied military and logistic support for war and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as providing financial incentives to international cartels – as Bobbitt alludes to the shield and new armour of Achilles,90 which portrayed war as catalyst leading to societal transformations. Building a phantasm of war for the restructuring of the international order with a cosmopolitan approach, Bobbitt also promotes Krauthammer’s arguments of unipolar moment and the global responsibilities of the US.

The theoretical evaluation of US hegemony, the Wall Street System and military globalism In order to trace the rise of the Wall Street System, one of Nitze’s arguments can be analyzed, where he claimed that this international approach might be considered as the culmination of insight and the historical depth of western civilization and the accumulated experience and wisdom of the Judeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman and other European cultures. Through the amalgamation of theory and practice, such a structure could

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be constructed, which might be complex but not trivial.91 Therefore, US foreign policy is going through a process of evolution and development – learning from global change, transforming the world alongside and creating an international order in collaboration with international institutions and popular opinion. In contrast, Holsti critically evaluates the foreign policy of the G.W. Bush administration and terms it hard-headed realist rather than motivated by national and peace-building concerns; self-defined and not guided by anything as vague as ‘world opinion’, and prone to a repetitive ‘anti-predecessor syndrome’.92 Considering the cosmopolitan perspective, where a proactive realist policy by a dominant power may be regarded as a process capable of affecting changes in the international system, in turn leading to the creation of a workable and sustainable international order, Held and McGrew argue that hegemonic powers exercise limited realism, while simultaneously guaranteeing a significant role for international institutions in situations where governance beyond the state is largely contingent on the policies and interests of the most powerful states. The hierarchy of power moulds the architecture as well as the substantive purposes and priorities of global governance, which is not the transmission belt for US foreign policy, since the institutions are also the areas through which dominance is contested.93 However, it can be observed that during this process the international institutions do not merely remain the arenas for the contestation of dominance. Instead, because of the political dominance of the hegemon in the process of decision-making and its ability to promote a specific agenda coercively, international institutions are reduced to the status of subordinate offices. From a global perspective, James Rosenau claims that the hegemon governs by exercising authority in delineated ‘spheres of authority’, which may include states, international organizations and non-state actors. In this manner, the hegemon may affect domestic infrastructural changes in other states and introduce policies from outside. However, this policy is based upon the assumption that the spheres of authority and the domestic populace of the target states will support the introduction of policies from the outside. Internal dissent, multiple identities and political loyalties may conflict with the hegemon’s objective of promoting global agendas based on themes of human rights, democracy and open markets. Continuing from this point, Rosenau argues that ‘authority’ itself is undergoing disaggregation to a large degree.94 It can be observed that although there is a theoretical overlap of realism and liberal cosmopolitanism in the manner in which the hegemon’s international strategies

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are conceptualized, there are contradictions in the actual application of economic and financial strategies. The US, as a hegemon, while pursuing a geostrategic agenda, may employ economically progressive capitalist strategies; however, despite the collaboration of subordinate groups of states, and with the objective of promoting a global system, it cannot eliminate the manipulative and oligopolistic drives inherent in capitalism and the Wall Street System. Gowan argues that these drives are aimed at curbing further and wider economic progress, creating insecurities and scarcities and finding ways of exploiting maximum labour for minimum profit.95 This policy in principle conforms to the realist theorization of anarchy, survival of the powerful, promotion of national interests and the permanence of war in the international order. However, for the Wall Street System – unlike war – the purpose is not the elimination of adversaries and destruction of their infrastructure, but their financial submission and the coercion of coalition partners through the development of the international monetary supremacy of the hegemon’s currency and the transformation of the infrastructure of the target societies. In this sense, the Wall Street System portrays the strategic vision of a Chief Executive Officer,96 which in a global perspective is also complemented by military dominance. Jan Naderveen Pieterse analyzes the post-Cold War and post-9/11 change from neoliberalism to military globalism from the perspective of unilateralism and multilateralism, and explores the question of whether waging war, complemented by the promotion of an advanced capitalist order, can properly be observed as an extension of the unipolar moment in a manner that some liberals, cosmopolitans and neoconservatives posit; or, on the contrary, whether it could be regarded as a continuation of a long-term imperial episode. He argues that with the end of the Bretton Woods system the world order had turned more multipolar, but that the neoliberal globalization shaped by the Wall Street–Treasury– International Monetary Fund (IMF) complex and convergence with the World Trade Organization is an example of unilateralism with a multilateral facade. Therefore, the two hypotheses of unipolar moment and imperial episode converged during the G.W. Bush administration. The present constellation at the domestic, US level and the international level97 may be viewed as a unique opportunity to secure US primacy for the coming decades.98 Pieterse reached this conclusion after visualizing and critically analyzing these scenarios of power: ‘Made in Texas’, ‘Poststructuralist’, ‘Cold

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War Plus’,99 ‘Neo-Realist’, ‘Gramscian International Relation Theory’, the ‘Neoconservative approach’, ‘Offensive Realism’ and the ‘Leninist/ Marxist approach’. He has not presented the standards for including these different perspectives, but he locates the common approach in all of them, which is the explanation of post-Cold War US foreign policy through the perceptual lens of imperialism and realism. The purpose of employing this analytical framework had been to focus on the foreign policies of the two post-Cold War Republican Bush administrations. He argues that the ‘Made in Texas’ scenario explained the shift in the US foreign policy by creating an image of a ‘southern takeover’ of US politics, with southern Republicans outflanking the Democrats and Christian Right in tackling secular cosmopolitanism. From this perspective, he also claims that the post-structural approach can be employed to dissect and unpack the myth of southern dominance, by studying the domestic circumstances that led to the rise of southern Republicans, but at the same time he claims that post-structuralism may not be able to visualize the long-term rise of southern political power. Robert Cox also theorizes the simultaneous use of force and consent-building by an empire, as explained in Chapter 1. Cox employs the Gramscian theoretical construct and argues that hegemony is achieved through a combination of moral rhetoric for consent and the pursuit of policies through coercion. Therefore, through the calculated use of hard and soft power, the hegemon seeks to construct not only an order compatible with the attainment of its interests, through the regulation of inter-state conflict, but also seeks to promote a globally conceived civil society supported with the modes of production of global enterprise.100 On the contrary, Pieterse argues that this theoretical construct does not apply because US post-Cold War policy is more a case of hegemony-in-reverse, since by scrapping five international treaties the G.W. Bush government had not been trying to seek international legitimacy. Similarly, he claims that the neoconservative approach was a provincializing globalism that read global trends in line with American prejudices; therefore, it makes inaccurate military estimates and takes its own economic supremacy for granted. He criticizes the offensive realist and Marxist approaches, and argues that the wars of conquest and imperialism may not be sustained through the promotion of entrepreneurs and corporations because they cannot afford high financial risks.101 Although Pieterse spreads the theoretical domain wide, he focuses on impulses from the domestic politico-economic structure of the US, and

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observes their effects on the foreign policy strategies of the two Bush administrations. In view of Pieterse’s arguments, it can be observed that post-Cold War US foreign policy depicts an extension of the domestic experiment of capitalism at the international level, leading from hegemony and primacy to dominance. Unlike another example of a capitalist order – Europe until Munich 1938, which could not integrate the working class into the state – US capitalism had incorporated the working class, without the working class acquiring its own political identity and demanding a central place for its organization within the state. The US model encompassed mass-democracy and mass-consumerism by the working class, with workers producing the goods not only for the upper class, but also for their own mass consumption. This remained the formula for their political pacification. The European ruling classes, especially in the UK, had gradually, although reluctantly, included the labouring classes within the state, after approval from the US, therefore realizing the US unipolar deal. US primacy had remained a relatively successful policy during the post-Cold War years, and the US state, economy and social formation as a whole had been structured to promote it; therefore, the elites wanted it to continue. However, post-9/11, maintaining primacy requires military capacity, more-or-less constantly, to shape the environment of other main powers;102 hence, the exploitation of modern RMA and the employment of war to develop its military globalism had become fundamental features of US grand strategy. Considering US foreign policy, these strategies were developed simultaneously with the rise of a political ideology and an elite group of decision-makers: the neoconservatives. Among the neoconservatives, there was a bifurcation into realist and liberal groups. This bifurcation had led to the inclusion of realist and liberal discourses and objectives in US foreign policy.

Tracing the theoretical bases for strategic policies: realist and liberal neoconservatives in the decision-making structure Neoconservative ideology emerged in the US during the 1950s and 1960s. The domestic circumstances during these years propelled the rise of the ‘Sun Belt’,103 a ‘movement conservatism’, which emerged as a result of US involvement in the wars of Vietnam and Korea. It was formed to overturn a liberal establishment that was fragmenting following the

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disputes over these two wars, due to the war on poverty and questions over the degree of virtuousness and moral technocratic policy. The rise of neoconservatism as a political agenda in US domestic politics can be traced to this movement. Similarly, Strauss (as a political thinker) and Nitze and Wohlstetter (as policy-makers) had significantly influenced US policy-makers during the Cold War. Strauss questioned the logic of idealist and liberal themes and approaches towards building peaceful international order. While not adhering to the realist ideology, however, he emphasized the need for prudence and argued that the ‘Crisis of the West’ was due to self-forgetting romanticism. He denounced the spirit of moral tolerance that in his view had begun to dominate intellectual life in Europe and the US. Although Strauss, throughout his writings, did not explicitly visualize how his ideas might translate into foreign policy, he argued that liberal principles in practice faced a crisis because liberalism had abandoned its absolute basis and was trying to turn absolutely relativistic, believing that all points of view are equal and none are worth passionate argument, deep analysis or stalwart defence. In his writings, he argued that ‘a prosperous, free and just society in a single country or few countries is not possible in the long run. To make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic’.104 In Strauss’s view, liberals contradict idealist foundations when they object to the superiority of a distinctive moral insight, way of life or human type, calling it elitist or anti-democratic and subsequently immoral.105 Based on the reading of Strauss’s works and his scepticism about wide public debate on philosophical and theoretical issues, including the promotion of democracy, it can be observed that by ‘making the whole world democratic’ he implied that this objective might be unattainable; therefore, logically there are limits to how far the western model of democracy can be introduced into non-democratic or non-western societies. Nonetheless, his ideas played a significant role in the formation of the neoconservative discourses. Considering the ideological effects of debates comprising liberalism and realism, the conflicts between realist and liberal democratic principles caused a split among the neoconservatives. The ideological contradiction can be traced to Barry Goldwater’s political campaign when he contested the presidential election in 1964 against Lyndon Johnson. He lost the election, but his movement – called Young Americans for Freedom – and his declaration at the acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican convention that ‘extremism in defence of liberty is no vice’ had set the tone for

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conservatism to move from idea to practice.106 American neoconservatism gradually developed as a result of the inclusion of the realist ideals propagated by Irving Kristol, who is considered the founding father of this ideology in the US. He summarized the rise of neoconservatism as the renewal of traditional conservatism, centred on William F. Buckley’s National Review, which aimed to reprogramme the Republican Party into a solidly conservative political instrument, enabling it to cease playing defensive politics. Kristol considered that the emergence of religion-based, morally concerned political conservatism was a reaction against the popular counter-culture, the doctrinaire secularism of the Supreme Court and a government that taxed heavily while removing all traces of morality and religion from public education; for example, it subsidised all sorts of activities and programmes that were outrages against traditional morality.107 However, the end of the Cold War also led to relative euphoria among certain sections of the neoconservatives, who developed idealist discourses along with the realist ideals and inculcated them in neoconservative ideology. In the post-Cold War era, due to the success of the US in surpassing its strategic adversary, the traditional neoconservatives, including Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick, settled on traditional realism while others, including Charles Krauthammer and Norman Podhoretz, took on a ‘democratic imperialist’ mantle.108 In addition, Francis Fukuyama argued for the universalization of these ideas through utilization of advanced military means. While arguing that liberal democracy and capitalism had emerged victorious after the Cold War, Fukuyama further claimed that liberal democracy replaces the irrational desire to be recognized as greater than others with a rational desire to be regarded as equal. Criticizing realism, he argued that the realists striving to maintain the balance of power are more likely to seek accommodation with powerful enemies;109 therefore, the convergence of realism and liberal democracy might be problematic. In his opinion, the post-Cold War power vacuum could be filled by the remaining superpower, the US, allying with prospering economies through promoting a worldwide market economy. He traced the ideological bases of this form of conservatism to Edmund Burke, Ayn Rand, Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Von Hayek. This signified a combination of Burkean notion of ‘natural aristocracy’110 with neoclassical economics, based on economic freedom and the attainment of rights through the promotion of a market society. The neoconservative vision of an international mercantile society led by

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the hegemonic superpower had been promoted through the expansion of ideological discourses and engagement with academia, semi-academic institutions and think-tanks. Tracing the inclusion of these neoconservative ideas within the process of policy-making, Ben O’Loughlin views the rise of the think-tank Project for A New American Century (PNAC) as a sequel of these ideological shifts as well as an effort to advance the neoconservative agenda. In its statement of principles, the PNAC emphasized ‘a Reaganite policy of a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next’.111 Neoconservative think-tanks had gradually been developed in the US to provide new ideological bases for US foreign policy. Profiling the ideological orientations of neoconservatives, John B. Judis paints a picture of a ‘neocon’ as someone with a college education in Marxism, a fervent sense of anti-communism, support for civil rights and and who has experimented with radicalism before totally repudiating it.112 The neoconservative commentators working for these think-tanks portray the social sciences as failed ideologies, thus they try to justify the shift from objective to subjective by inducing a belief that no social science advice can fathom the complexities of societies, while unforeseen consequences can be all-damaging. In their opinion, a rational approach should be based on the organization and control of expertise towards political ends. The forging of public opinion by the inculcation of a specific set of virtues conforms to Strauss’s philosophy, where the ‘noble lie’ to the mindless mob keeps order and tranquillity.113 However, in this case it may be reductionist to argue that Strauss considers domestic society as a mindless mob, although he had initially been sceptical of engaging in wider philosophical dialogue. He argues for formulating the policies of state in a pragmatic, realistic manner. Popular sentiment may be employed for the moral legitimization of political agendas. The neoconservative think-tanks and political actors play a significant role in influencing public opinion and policy-making. Realistically, the ‘interest’ of the state remains the higher priority for policy-makers, and the noble lie which led to the creation of a manufactured public sentiment may pragmatically be utilized to attain the interest of the state. The leaders who strive for global hegemony are inclined to utilize the rhetoric or the popular sentiment to attain grand strategic objectives which, in the case of the post-Cold War US grand strategy, were ‘hegemony’, ‘primacy’ and ‘dominance’.

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Similarly, concerning US policy-makers professing a pragmatic and realist approach, Brzezinski argues that those directly involved in policymaking are different from the policy-oriented thinkers, because the former are subjected to all the pressures of time that the policy-making process engenders, while the latter have the time to reflect on and notice changes over time that require some adjustment and response. The former situation does not allow much time for reflection or revision; the latter creates opportunity.114 Therefore, it can be argued that Brzezinski considers it imperative for policy-makers effectively to utilize the knowledge from both situations. Regarding the role of ideologies, he argues that ideas are adopted; then they are dogmatized. They turn sterile and counterproductive when faced with reality, which refutes them, and hence alternative ideas appear to contest them. Finally, old ideas have to be changed. However, Brzezinski traces the rise of neoconservatives in the US administrations from the presidency of Reagan, when they drew upon the strong legacy of what preceded Reagan, human rights campaigns and earlier efforts to engage with the Soviet Union in a more competitive relationship that included, for the first time, direct US assistance to a resistance movement which had directly contested Soviet power. This approach, exemplified and promoted by Reagan, became dogmatized, and has culminated in a unilateral, highly doctrinaire and irrational pursuit undertaken by G.W. Bush and also those in his administration who were practitioners, and not necessarily the formulators, of neoconservative doctrine; neither had they declared their ideological affiliation to it – for instance, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Brzezinski claims that the framers of neoconservatism were Trotskyites, the distinguishing characteristics of which are virulence, militancy and even bloodthirsty Manicheanism. They moved to the right, while retaining the intellectual style, black-and-white Manichean militancy and oversimplification,115 a domain where intervention for regime change and promotion of democracy can be advocated. Referring to the role of political thinkers, Fukuyama initially argued that Strauss had contemplated the need for state intervention to address the negative and corrosive effect of certain economic policies, especially on the poor, but this cannot be interpreted as an advocacy for intervention for regime change.116 Fukuyama later moved away from the neoconservatives and argued that the neoconservatives working with G.W. Bush did not represent Strauss’s political thinking, but he did not address the issue regarding the national objectives presented by the neoconservatives in

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G.W. Bush’s administration. These objectives had been directed towards the accomplishment of the global and hegemonic role of the US, with the resonance of idealist and liberal ideas. Referring to the domestic inputs from the US, Gowan conceptualizes these trends in American history: the systemic amalgamation of leaders from the US business class and the state, and the rise of the neoconservatives as the creation of an ‘Agency’. Gowan further argues that G.W. Bush’s strategy directly addressed the concerns of the US business class. Susanne Soederberg contributes to Gowan’s argument and develops this point further. She explains the causes of US domestic financial and economic imbalance before 9/11 and the pattern of extension of domestic financial problems under the rhetoric of introducing American values abroad. The evolution of post-Cold War politico-economic policy was a result of fundamental economic factors. Similarly, D’Arista’s critical framework is relevant to explaining US domestic financial compulsions. The ‘housing bubble’ had contributed to the already existing problems, making it difficult to legitimize the US administration’s notions of neoliberal globalization. Considering the domestic economic slump, the US needed to expand production and financial activism beyond its domestic market. The Millennium Challenge Account and G.W. Bush’s ‘new global development compact’ were viewed as extensions of the government’s global economic agenda.117 The post-9/11 strategic alliance with the US required member capitalisms to open up their internal jurisdiction to all kinds of US public agencies and private businesses, and adopt internal regimes suitable to the US state and business classes. If successful, this system expected the materialization of an open international financial system with free flow of currency through the gradual transformation of core capitalisms, including Japan and Germany, along the same lines as the US domestic economy. The creation and sustainability of this system remains debatable; however, it hinges on the struggle for the control of oil. Gowan argues that the deeply embedded monetary and strategic interests that constituted the core of the ‘Agency’ played a significant role in affecting a dramatic shift in post-9/11, US foreign policy, which can be termed as ‘Bush Turn’.118 The fundamental factors leading to Bush Turn had domestic bases, and these factors had been effectively employed in the discourses by the neoconservatives. In this context, Gowan argues that since the two World Wars and US involvement in European affairs, and the gradual extension of its military as well as financial influence all over the world, the international role of

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the US has transformed from a growing superpower to a hegemon building its international primacy. However, this process was guided by the fundamental aspiration of configuring and reconfiguring the relations between the US state and its external and internal environment in a way that would assure a world order in which US capitalism can flourish as a socio-economic, political and ideological phenomena. Therefore, the strategic policy post-9/11 can be understood in the sequence of foreign policy developments over the past hundred years. Gowan relates the increasing US influence in the international events surrounding the two World Wars, leading to the occupation of two significant industrial centres (Germany and Japan), simultaneously building the anti-Communism rhetoric up to the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the European Union; leading to post-9/11 military strategy and gradual movement towards primacy. Until 9/11, these international events had provided the US with the option of isolation, collective engagement and cooperative security. As opposed to these options, primacy emerged as a rational policy, an effort to construct a US global government, a construction of security alliances in which the US takes charge of the main external security challenges confronting its allies. Similar to the theoretically emblematic ‘hub and spoke model’, each ally’s geopolitical orientation is directly shaped by its alignment with the US rather than cooperation with its regional neighbour and through bypassing the US. The code for this alliance approach in the US strategic discourse is a commitment to ‘strong alliances’ and to an ideology. During the Cold War years the ideology had been ‘anti-communism’; later, temporarily overshadowed by the euphoria that followed the disintegration of the USSR, a similar rhetoric of ‘anti-terrorism’ emerged post-9/11, and served as a justification for the US to muster political, strategic and economic collaboration in the name of the common interests of the civilized and free nations. Apart from the ideological and strategic reasoning, in practical terms this policy was designed to enhance the social power, wealth and security of the member capitalisms, and it is more appropriate to call them ‘members’ rather than ‘states’. This is what the neoconservatives mean when they say that their projected American empire is a benevolent empire.119 It is evident that this international order comprises the alignment of member capitalism with the US and is global and economically oriented in nature, but considering the international approaches and the nature of power and influence, this order can be classified as

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an empire rather than a cosmopolis. Economic and strategic alliances are formulated multilaterally; however, final decisions are not reached through mutual consensus. Strategically, NATO was projected as a set of states with equal rights governed by the principle of ‘consensus’ in decision-making but, in practice, the US was the deciding power, and the US did not support the formation of a European caucus on military and political policy;120 it is in this light that the Yugoslavia war of 1999 and the expansion of NATO can be explained. This primacy, in turn, reshaped US capitalism. Gowan traces the ‘Bush Turn’ to the international monetary policies formulated during the Reagan years, when the dollar had attained the status of a global monetary unit and the IMF had served as an insurance system and debt collector for the countries allied in the network of capitalism developed and led by the US. These financial policies had been matched by a tremendous increase in the US military budget, encouraged by the possibility of using western Europe as a key base and transmission mechanism for the expansion of US capitals and promoting those regimes favourable to US capitalism.121 The terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided the US administration with the opportunity for renewing a relatively successful international strategy; however, the international economic situation was not similar to that on the eve of the Cold War. Therefore, with the rise of new international economic actors in Latin America (Brazil) and South Asia (India), and the fact that they had been detached from the Atlantic institutions of economic management, a new strategic approach was required. The G.W. Bush administration developed US strategy by displaying its intentions of pre-empting any challenge and developing a new political cleavage of ‘with us or against us’ in the WoT, extending their control over Eurasia, deliberately challenging the international institutions, through material power projection and symbolic politics.122 The political cleavage was developed substantially between traditional Islamic and ‘western’ values. The US also attacked liberal internationalist values in the capitalist world, but the opposition from the Islamic world enabled the media to present it as a conflict between the Islamic world and the west.123 Therefore, similar to the Cold War rhetoric of defending the liberalism, freedom and values of the west against a tyrannical and undemocratic politic-economic system (an ‘evil’ empire), post-9/11, defending ‘western’ values and promoting democracy in the

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undemocratic and violent Islamic world was promoted as the principle that should strengthen the coalition. The liberal discourses on ‘evil’ by Elshtain and Walzer resonated in the statements of US policy-makers. Since the Kosovo war, NATO had been enlarged and US influence had gradually extended to the Eurasian land mass. Some critics of the G.W. Bush administration tend to ignore that this policy complied with Brzezinski’s argument for controlling the strategic Eurasian region. The war and invasion of Afghanistan and extension of the US bases into undemocratic and authoritarian central Asian states, including Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and support for the military regime of Musharraf in Pakistan, all had material and strategic objectives at their core. US presence in this Eurasian heartland had strategic implications for several countries, including Russia, China, India and Iran. The US extended its military bases in Eurasia in return for gaining support for its global war on terrorism. It ignored the humanitarian issues in Russia, China and India and their respective state-sponsored suppression of Chechens, Uyghurs and Kashmiris, in return for their political support for the WoT. Similarly, the presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan was employed to pressurize Iran’s government into curtailing its nuclear capability, in order to ensure the strategic superiority of Israel in the Middle East. The US strategy of war was complemented by theoretical debates for justification and the projection of a perceived strategic threat as well as plans for global politico-economic arrangements based on the Wall Street System, but fundamentally it can be observed that the conduct of the two Gulf Wars shows that these strategies were directed towards the promotion of a geopolitical order which ensured US monetary – but, more importantly, primacy and military – dominance. Huntington argues that the reason the west won the Cold War was that it demonstrated superiority in applying organized violence, not ideas, values or religion. He questioned how the conservative movement, which had been hijacked by democratic imperialism since 9/11, would find the practical limits to its own idealism.124 Meanwhile, the pattern from the 1991 Gulf War, the Yugoslavia war of 1999 and the 2003 Gulf War demonstrated that the US sought to monopolize not only the means, but also the justifications for war; it also sought to ensure that that the allies in Europe were able to form an economic alliance but able to unite in a military alliance; at the same time, the US offered incentives for capitalism and ensured that it physically controlled the regions that were rich in natural resources.

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Realism as a factor in the neoconservative discourses on war and US foreign policy A Neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality (Irving Kristol).125 Irving Kristol is considered to be the intellectual force behind neoconservatism in the US. In order to describe this ideology, he makes reference to the social critic Michael Harrington, who employs the term ‘neoconservative’ to describe the ideological orientation of those who had gradually moved away from liberalism because they thought it had lost its moral and political bearing. Kristol claims that the task and purpose of neoconservatism is to convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against its will, to a kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.126 Kristol builds various philosophical points of view in trying to define or explain neoconservatism, but most of his theories are directed towards refuting any commonalty between neoconservatism and other ideologies, including liberalism, Marxism and traditional conservatism associated with Edmund Burke and propagated in American political thought by thinkers such as Michael Oakeshott. Kristol claims that the factor most novel (or ‘neo’) about this strain of conservatism is that it is free of nostalgia; it is more ‘rabbinic’ or interpretative rather than ‘prophetic’; it has a detached attachment from bourgeois society and its ethos; it disagrees with the predominant model of market economy but admits that economic growth is indispensible for social and political stability; and it argues in favour of family and religion as the indispensable pillars of a decent society.127 Kristol disagrees with Oakeshott’s version of conservatism. He considers that it could lead to the exclusion of religion from society which, in Kristol’s view, goes against the American grain.128 Continuing with his stance that neoconservatives respect the market as an economic mechanism but are not similar to libertarians, including Milton Freedman and Friedrich Von Hayek, Kristol also criticizes the materialist aspect of capitalism, considering it the least romantic conception of public order that the human mind has ever conceived. However, he agrees that capitalism works in quite a simple material sense for those who subscribe individually or collectively to the social philosophy of a capitalist order.129 Kristol passed through phases in his ideological attachments, and the most significant changes were from Trotskyite to Marxist, becoming a radical

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then a conservative and finally a neoconservative, and his idea of neoconservatism seems more of an attitude than an ideology or a manifesto. He summarizes the neoconservative vision for US foreign policy as: there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favourite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War). These attitudes can be summarized in the following ‘theses’: First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing. Finally, for a great power, the ‘national interest’ is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal.130 The global role of the US figures prominently in Kristol’s arguments, but regarding the prospects of a world society – comparable to a peaceful cosmopolis – he argues that the ideal of a ‘world without war’ is utopian, and ‘making the world safe for democracy’ a futile enterprise.131 Kristol presents the neoconservative vision as a combination of classical, structural and offensive realist arguments supported by liberal principles.

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This theorizing leads to the creation of an image of the US in a perpetual state of war, with no definition of what constitutes victory.132 It can be argued that neoconservatism remained a problematic ideological enigma, considering that Kristol’s explanation of neoconservatism is based on the refutation of other ideologies and is not a clear and coherent presentation of the neoconservative alternative through the development of its own philosophical bases and principles, which could then serve to elaborate the kind of manifesto that may be developed from its basic principles, the kind of domestic policies that could be derived from it – and, above all, the foreign policy objectives that may be formulated according to a neoconservative international approach. Kristol agrees with the realist philosophy on the state and on various issues of domestic and foreign policy. He does not agree with the neoconservatives of liberal-democratic ideological leanings, therefore it can be argued that he does not advocate the neoliberal and capitalist policies; but he regards them as the best possible models currently, primarily because these models could prove useful in extending US financial influence and hegemony. HansHerman Hoppe referred to Kristol’s Two Cheers for Capitalism and his idea of conservative welfare state: The basic principle behind a conservative welfare state ought to be a simple one: wherever possible, people should be allowed to keep their own money – rather than having it transferred via taxes to the state – on the condition that they put it to certain defined uses. . . . [T]his view is essentially identical to that held by modern, post-Marxist European social-democrats. Thus, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), for instance, in its Godesberg Program of 1959, adopted as its core motto the slogan, ‘as much market as possible, as much state as necessary.133 However, it can also be argued that, following Kristol’s version of realism and neoconservatism, the US as a powerful state may disengage from the nostalgia of ideologies and pursue its national objectives, asserting the freedom and power of continuously defining and redefining its interests, conflicts, justice and the strategies necessary to build the international order. Therefore, the US might not feel obliged to commit to any ideology for formulating domestic and foreign policy; similarly, it might assume the free will to refute international legal obligations and interpret the rules and principles as it moves towards extending its global influence.

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However, this is not stated in these words by Kristol because he struggled to develop his notion of neoconservatism as a coherent ideology due to engagement with conflicting theoretical reasoning and one-sided refutations of existing ideological positions, without developing an original or alternative ideology. However, ironically, neoconservatives argued that complexities arising due to ideological debates demand that the neoconservatives themselves should coherently interpret the US interest within the ideological discourses. The above-mentioned arguments can be useful in tracing the common objectives of the administrations of G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush.

An appraisal of the discourses and policies of the two Bush administrations A majority of the post-Cold War realist commentators and scholars could not support the expansionism and promotion of a geopolitical order based on the strategies propagated during the government of G.H.W. Bush and further extended by the administration of G.W. Bush. Layne argues that these policies were specifically a prerogative of the US, to determine its grand strategy as a matter of choice and build its primacy in the post-Cold War era. This was an exception to the Waltzian arguments that foreign policies are driven by security threats posed in an anarchic inter-state system. However, the indistinct picture of the relationship between politics and markets under capitalism is not limited to American realists; liberals and Weberians are just as prone to visualizing the capitalist economy as having an autonomous logic, with politics figuring as an external restraint. In fact, the extension of business abroad is driven not by economic but a particularistic social-power logic, aiming at the political restructuring of the economic and institutional regimes of other capital centres. For the attainment of these objectives the extension of US hegemony is essential.134 Callinicos critically analyzes the overall ideological discourses and links the operative conclusions. This analysis can help to trace the continuation of moral rhetoric in the discourses of the two administrations and the realist conduct of their foreign policies. Post-9/11, the discourses comprising ‘terrorism’, ‘rogue states’, ‘Axis of Evil’, ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and ‘democracy’ were used to justify the WoT. The declaration by G.W. Bush to the world that in the WoT ‘you are either with us or the terrorists’ can be interpreted more as an ultimatum to the allies

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than to the competitors. The primary interpretation of the conflict not only justified the intimidating language, it also prevented and closed off any attempts to analyze its causes – thereby eliminating care and discrimination from the public debate.135 According to the definition of terrorism by the US Department of Defense, Israel could be included in the list of terrorist states, considering Israel’s track record of aggression against its neighbours, especially the Israel Defence Force’s war on Lebanon in 1982 and the humanitarian catastrophe that followed after the war. Ariel Sharon was in command of this operation, but because Israel remained a frontline ally of the US in the Middle East, with Sharon its Prime Minister since 2001, both were excluded from the debate on terrorism. The Iraqi irregular forces resisting the US forces’ invasion of Iraq were categorized as terrorists by both the US and the UK’s military spokespersons, as well as by the ‘objective’ media. The use of the term ‘axis’ in ‘Axis of Evil’ was a reminder of the ‘axis powers’136 during World War II, and the term ‘evil’ echoed Reagan’s branding the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’. Both these terms drew together the images of the two previous adversaries of ‘Anglo’ and ‘Western’ societies and civilizations. However, none of the states categorized in the ‘Axis of Evil’, Iraq, Iran and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK), shared any commonalties among themselves, neither did they have any similar pattern of antagonism towards the US. The ‘Axis of Evil’ was not a military alliance; Iran and Iraq had historically been ideological, political and strategic adversaries and had fought a long war. Considering the history of US involvement in the affairs between Iran and Iraq, US–Iraq relations during the Cold War were militarily strengthened by the US to counter the Iranian influence in the Gulf. The US had intervened in Iran through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and had removed the democratically elected government of Mossadegh,137 and this political intervention by the US had contributed to a reactionary Islamic revolution. The antagonism between Iran and the US had primarily arisen due to the Iranian support for militant groups fighting against Israel and Iran’s plans to develop its nuclear technology. However, unlike Iraq, where Saddam Hussein had ruled through the Ba’ath party, Iran had a system of electoral politics. The DPRK can be categorized as the last standing Stalinist state, which did not share any ideological, political or strategic commonality with Iraq and Iran, and its confrontation with the US was primarily on the issue of the US forces’ presence in South Korea and Okinawa and

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the DPRK’s nuclear programme. The ‘Axis of Evil’ rhetoric caused the states – including Iran and the DPRK138 – to proceed more actively in their quest to develop strategic arms. On 10 December 2002, Scud missiles smuggled from the DPRK to Yemen were seized by the US Navy, but they were allowed to proceed to Yemen, demonstrating that the US had remained passive to missile proliferation by a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ as long as the US’s ally Yemen was benefiting from the deal.139 Callinicos argues that the discourse on rogue states and the ‘Axis of Evil’ levied blame on the state in question and did not implicate outside forces. It sought to justify external intervention to overturn authoritarian regimes, since it had been argued that denial of democracy injured their citizens and also posed a danger to the society of democratic states. Therefore, these explanations implied that only intervention could produce a project of political transformation that could root democracy in failed states.140 The rogue states were categorized as those that violate international law so, in the case of Iraq, the US and the UK called for interventionist action against Iraq for alleged violation of the UN Resolutions. The US and the UK had themselves been violating the UN Resolutions at that stage, and the G.W. Bush administration’s efforts to win a UN Resolution to authorize the war on Iraq led to the creation of an anti-war coalition in the UN, comprising France and Germany. In addition, this political manoeuvring led to the withdrawal of support from the North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA) members, including Mexico and Canada, on the one hand, and strategic allies including Turkey, on the other.141 US policy remained unilateral, and the debate on WMD excluded the consistent support that the US had provided to Saddam Hussein for building Iraqi WMD infrastructure and capability and, on another front, it was an open acknowledgement of the possession of these devastating weapons by the Permanent Five, as well as the regional Middle Eastern power: Israel.142 It can be observed that the post-Cold War discourses questioning the relevance of international law and the UN and arguing for post-charter self-help and pro-democracy policies, along with policy objectives introduced and promoted by Nitze, the realist reasoning built by Kristol and the need to reconsider the US’s commitment to international treaties and the UN – as promoted in the Wolfowitz doctrine – could be collectively traced in the US policies as they developed during the two Bush presidencies. Regarding the role of academic debates and intellectual input, Henry Kissinger argues that US foreign policy suffers from relative rigidity,

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which is a symptom of psychological burden on policy-makers. On the other hand, the status quo has the advantage of familiarity, and so policy-makers face the dilemma of maintaining the status quo or moving towards change. Kissinger argues that an attempt to change and break the rigid pattern involves facing the prospect that the whole searing process of arriving at a decision will have to be repeated. The policymakers have to decide in a short span of time and, hence, ‘harassed by the policy-maker the intellectual has to compromise on creativity’.143 US foreign policy displays a retreat to realist policies in the face of the growing challenges of international order. In this chapter, I have continued the analyses of the post-Cold War and post-9/11 liberal and cosmopolitan discourses on US foreign policy and the two Gulf Wars, and have analyzed the same themes from the perspective of realism. I have identified the pattern of critical debates between liberal, cosmopolitan and realist academics and a similar pattern in the arguments of the realist and liberal-oriented neoconservatives. The engagements in ideological and official discourses served the purpose of pursuance of US national interests; however, this process also led to the creation of images of international order that went further than the rational pursuit of interest and led to strategic miscalculations of which the realist policy-makers had already warned. In the next stage, I will analyze the empirical and factual data comprising the official policy documents and statements on the two wars. I shall also trace the resonance of the academic debates in the official discourses. Finally, considering the broader aspect of discourse analysis I shall present my own analysis which will include the philosophical side of the discourses as they developed, and how they contributed towards the policy-making and conduct of the wars. In Chapters 3 and 4, which comprise Part 2, I shall analyze the texts in the official policy documents, official statements promulgated by the two Bush administrations and the speeches of Presidents G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush pertaining to the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, respectively. In both chapters, these analyses will be followed by an evaluation of the decision-making process pertaining to these wars and to the post-war policies. Therefore, moving further from the discourse analysis comprising the theoretical approach in Part 1, in Part 2 I shall critically analyze the texts144 with a discursive approach, and shall also analyze the role of discourses in the formulation and pursuance of US policies towards Iraq.

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3 PR ESIDENT G.H.W. BUSH’S ADMINISTR ATION AND THE 1991 GULF WAR

Consistencies of interests, objectives and policies: US’s evolving Cold War and post-Cold War global strategy In this chapter, I trace the continuity of the foreign policy trends and official discourses from the Cold War years and relate them to the 1991 Gulf War by analyzing the official documents and speeches during the presidency of G.H.W. Bush, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and comparing them with the policies during the Gulf crisis, conduct of war and approach towards Iraq after the war. Continuing from the argument in Chapter 2, I also highlight that, although neoconservatives had gradually gained prominence during the Reagan era, the realist approach of G.H.W. Bush’s administration distanced neoconservatives from policy and decision-making. However, I also relate the gradual resurgence of neoconservatism after the decisive victory of the US and its allies in the 1991 Gulf War. In order to analyze US evolving foreign policy objectives during the Cold War years, I focus on the arguments of two scholar-practitioners who served as National Strategy Advisors and worked for two different administrations and so played a significant role in the rise of the US as a global power during the Cold War years. Zbigniew Brzezinski is a Polish-American political scientist and geostrategist who, at the time of writing, is Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

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He served as National Security Advisor for Democratic president J.E. Carter. Brent Scowcroft is the founder and president of a Washington based think-tank, Forum for International Policy, and, at the time of writing, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also served as National Security Advisor for Republican presidents G.R. Ford and G.H.W. Bush. Brzezinski and Scowcroft share similar worldviews, despite serving two different administrations formed by two different political parties. In order to trace the relevance of their arguments, I elaborate their views on the Cold War, post-Cold War and post-9/11 foreign policy of the US, with special reference to the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars. The continuity of the patterns in US foreign policy and their agreement on the US policies vis-à-vis the USSR, Europe, the Middle East and Iraq, and on the issues of nuclear proliferation, can be observed in a recent series of debates and discussions between them.1 Regarding the US’s post-9/11 grand strategy, both emphasized the primacy of US national interests. Both had been significantly influenced by the superpower confrontations and nuclearization during the Cold War years, hence they had a strong fear of a nuclear holocaust. Therefore, both agreed that US strategic policy should be directed towards preventing and eliminating nuclear threats. In terms of US policy towards Iraq, both agreed that President G.H.W. Bush’s strategy during the 1991 Gulf War had been rational and directed towards the attainment and preservation of the US’s vital interests; however, they also agreed that, in the post-9/11 context, the US should neither have attacked Iraq nor invaded it, since there had been no credible evidence that Iraq posed a strategic nuclear threat. Both agreed that at the time when the decision was taken to invade the Gulf in 2003, trying to build a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was illogical because one was a religious extremist organization and the other a secular regime. Regarding US post-Gulf War (2003) strategy, they argue that deploying the US army in Iraq would be a grave miscalculation, because the army would be bogged down in a long-term conflict2 and therefore raising the costs of conflict tremendously. Regarding the situation in Iraq at the time of writing, they disagree slightly on the timeframe of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Brzezinski advocates a terminal date of exit and an early withdrawal,3 while Scowcroft argues for a slow and systematic withdrawal.4 However, both disapprove of a long-term US presence in Iraq.

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These points of agreement help in understanding the difference in the official discourses between the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars. While the overall discourses during the 1991 Gulf Crisis included themes of intervention,5 the official discourses had been carefully formulated to keep the long-standing US interest in perspective, and called for engagement with the UN for gaining legitimacy and employing multilateral approaches for attainable war aims. On the other hand, the official discourses on the 2003 Gulf War included the rhetoric of disregarding international law and UN authority, arguing further for unilateral strategies that visualized invading and occupying Iraq under the pretext of humanitarianism and the promotion of democracy – requiring long-term US presence in Iraq and the Middle East. Considering the analytical approach to both Gulf Wars, I place the Cold War, post-Cold War and post-9/11 policies in the overall perspective of the US’s evolving grand strategy. Therefore, in order to identify the commonalities in the evolving patterns in the Bush administrations, I also refer to Nitze’s global vision in the document National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68). The purpose is to identify and analyze the consistencies and continuation of objectives from NSC 68 to National Security Strategy 1990 (NSS 1990) and other policy documents formulated during the G.H.W. Bush administration and the strategy towards Iraq during 1990–91. Similarly, continuing this analysis in Chapter 4, I analyze the official documents promulgated after 9/11, and trace the consistencies between NSC 68 and the G.W. Bush administration’s National Security Strategy 2002 (NSS 2002), but will also highlight the differences between NSS 1990 and NSS 2002. It can be observed that while a consistency of trends and objectives in US grand strategy can be identified in NSC 68, NSS 1990 and NSS 2002, NSS 2002 and related official discourses differed from the previous two documents and related discourses, in the same vein as G.W. Bush’s administration displayed a drift from a pragmatic realism to idealism.6 Despite the continuity in the primary rational objectives directed towards the attainment of US national interests, post-9/11 policy towards Iraq had been constructed with a preference for a specific policy option calling for invasion, instead of a steady regime change within the Iraqi political infrastructure, or even the attainment of the status quo in the region, which had been considered a rational option by a significant number of foreign policy analysts, including G.H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, Brent

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Scowcroft.7 I also highlight the similarities in the stated policy objectives, discourses and strategies in NSC 68 and NSS 1990, and their differences with NSS 2002 and other fundamental official documents, in the concluding section of Part 2.

G.H.W. Bush administration: National Security Documents, official statements and presidential speeches pertaining to the 1990 Gulf Crisis and 1991 Gulf War There exist commonalities between NSC 68 and similar documents including National Security Directives NSD, 3, 26, 45 and 54, NSS 1990, Defense Planning Guidance 1991–92 and Regional Defense Strategy 1993, promulgated during President G.H.W. Bush’s term. I also analyze the significant policy statements, presidential speeches and CIA reports, with reference to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq’s defeat and eviction from Kuwait, the imposition of sanctions and post-war political strategies in Iraq. There is an observable continuation of objectives, policies and rhetoric from the National Security Council Report NSC 68. The report entitled National Security Council Report 68, promulgated on 14 April 1950, while envisioning a hegemonic role for the US, was primarily formulated to present strategic plans to confront the threat from the USSR, pursue offensive strategies to protect European allies and promote a worldwide neoliberal and capitalist economic system. Nitze built the theoretical bases of this policy on the principle of complementarity, which called for the unity of apparent opposites, where ‘harmony and truth were to be found in the tension of the opposites. This had been argued as a concurrent application of complementary ideas, which in primary observation seem contradictory’.8 Through engagement in theoretical discourses on the ‘complementarity of the opposites’, Nitze argued that a capitalist international order could serve as a positive and progressive international economic policy along with a realist US foreign policy. On the philosophical plane, this reasoning had been built to address the questions pertaining to the individual versus society, change versus continuing order, force versus consent and power versus responsibility. According to Nitze, the answers could be found in a balance in these issues and not in the elimination of one by preferring the other. Realist ideals along with liberal policies had been gradually inculcated in the discourses on power, national interest and US hegemony.9

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Regarding the international strategic scenario during the Cold War, NSC 68 describes the changes in the historical distribution of power and compares the USSR with previous strategic powers, including Japan and Germany, by declaring that the Soviet Union was animated by a new fanatic faith, with plans to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.10 NSC 68 also highlighted that Soviet efforts were directed towards the control of the Eurasian land mass.11 In view of these challenges from the USSR in section IV, the Underlying Conflict in the Realm of Ideas and Values between the US Purpose and the Kremlin Designs, subsection 3: Means, NSC 68 states: The integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or overt, violent or non-violent, which serve the purpose of frustrating Kremlin designs, nor does the necessity for conducting ourselves so as to affirm our values in action as well as words forbid such measures, provided only they are appropriately calculated to that end and are not so excessive or misdirected as to make us enemies of the people instead of evil men who have enslaved them.12 NSC 68 categorized the US as the principle centre of power which faced a threat from USSR: The United States, as the principal center of power in the nonSoviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.13 This analogy also implied that US policy-makers conceptualized and planned the emerging global role of the US during the Cold War years, as the strategic hub with the allies constituting the ‘spheres of influence’ as the spokes that support the hub, but are strategically dependent on and subservient to it. In view of the threats from the USSR and the chances of nuclear holocaust and presenting the alternative notion of American society and its universal values, NSC 68 states: The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfilment or destruction not only of this Republic but civilization itself.14

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Our determination to fight if necessary to defend our way of life . . . with the firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.15 The free society attempts to create and maintain an environment in which every individual has the opportunity to realize his creative power . . . But by the same token, in relations between nations, the prime reliance of free society is on the strength and appeal of its idea, and it feels no compulsion, sooner or later to bring all societies into conformity with it.16 Considering the implications of the words used in this document, the principle of complementarity or the unity of apparent opposites called for the US to use all kind of means to promote its own values and its politico-economic order throughout the world. It called for extending US geostrategic influence up to Eurasia and building a coalition of free and liberal states. It argued that the defence of the US’s free and liberal economic order should be complemented with the active promotion and introduction of these values and policies in other societies, but not to force them on other societies to bring them into conformity with the US system, because that might alienate the allies and lead to global resistance against the US. However, the adversary had been portrayed as fanatic, expansionist and evil – planning to destroy the free US republic and the whole civilization. Therefore, US efforts to extend its strategic and economic influence were projected not only as a progressive policy, but also as one necessary for the survival of wider social liberty and economic freedom. It is worth noting that the image of the adversary was a fundamental factor in the official documents formulating US foreign policy, which was later continued in President Reagan’s use of the term ‘Evil Empire’17 to portray the USSR.

The G.H.W. Bush administration’s global vision and policy towards Iraq Keeping in perspective the confrontation with the USSR and the emerging challenges, on 13 February 1989 G.H.W. Bush’s administration promulgated National Security Directive NSD 3, which laid out US policy objectives towards Afghanistan in the wake of the defeat and

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gradual withdrawal of the USSR from Afghanistan. It called for the US to ‘Prevent the emergence of an Afghan government that is pro-Soviet, pro-Iran or messianic-Islamic’.18 It is worth noting that the word ‘prevent’ implies the employment of proactive policies, suggesting interference and intervention, as will be evident in the forthcoming sections detailing G.H.W. Bush’s explanation for preventing the deployment of a regime in Kuwait after Iraq’s invasion. National Security Directive NSD 26, promulgated on 2 October 1989, further elaborated on US national interests, along with the need to protect and preserve them through the use of force. It also called for engagement with the allies in order to build multilateral support for necessary military actions and to minimize the possibilities for unilateral military action: Access to Persian Gulf oil and security of key friendly states in the area are vital to the US national security. The US remains committed to defend its vital interests in the region, if necessary and appropriate through the use of US military force against Soviet Union, or any other power with interests inimical to our own.19 The United States also remains committed to individual and collective self-defense of friendly countries in the area to enable them to play a more active role in their own defense and thereby reduce the necessity of unilateral US military intervention.20 The United States will sell US military equipment to help friendly regional states meet their legitimate defense requirements, so long as such sales do not present a security threat to Israel.21 It is fundamental to note that, although the grounds had been set for possible military action, emphasis had been on minimizing the necessity for unilateral military action. US policy towards Iraq during these years had been formulated in view of the Iran–Iraq War, and the primary US objectives were to moderate Iraq’s behaviour through continuing sanctions, which were likely to have the sustained effect of further deteriorating the already weakened Iraqi military tactical and strategic capability and pressurizing it economically, by denying Iraq its oil revenues. This policy was directed towards bringing a behavioural change in

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the Iraqi regime, to make it US-friendly or submissive to US influence in the Middle East: The US should propose economic and political incentives to moderate its behaviour and to increase our influence with Iraq . . . Any illegal use of chemical and/or biological weapons will lead to economic and political sanctions for which we will seek broadest possible support from our allies and friends. Any breach by Iraq of IAEA safeguards in its nuclear programme will lead to the same response.22 Considering background and context, this policy towards Iraq can be analyzed in the perspective of changing relations between the US and Iran. Since the fall of Reza Shah in Iran, the US had been compelled to rethink the patterns of its alliances in the Gulf region. From 1953 to 1979, the US had strengthened Iran and the dictatorship of the Shah as a pro-western bulwark against the USSR, a guarantor of access to Gulf oil and a protector and supporter of Israel.23 Similarly, as a consequence of the political developments between Iran and Israel, the US had felt the need to assert its influence over Israel, which had been supplying Iran with military equipment (aircraft parts) during the Iran–Iraq war, without US permission or approval.24 After the revolution that overthrew the Shah in Iran, leading to a drastic change in the political order in the region, the US had weighed its options regarding which party to support in the Persian Gulf to ensure the attainment of its strategic and economic interests. While the US had to consider the strategic importance of Iraq and Iran as significant regional actors, Kuwait had already displayed its own ambitions to consolidate its regional strategic position. Kuwait signed an arms deal with the Soviet Union in 1984, and later, in view of the conflict in the region, it demanded anti-aircraft stringer missiles and F-16 jet fighters from the US. These demands were turned down; instead, an US$82 million air-defence package was offered. Kuwait turned to the USSR and arranged for a purchase of arms worth US$327 million, making it urgent for the Reagan administration to sell military equipment to Kuwait worth US$1.5 billion by 1985.25 In 1987, the Reagan administration responded to a Kuwaiti request to place oil tankers under US protection and sent an armada that grew to 50 ships in the Persian Gulf region. In another incident, on 17 May 1987, the US frigate Stark was targeted by an Iraqi missile, killing

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37 soldiers. During these years, the US Navy had several confrontations with Iranian forces, providing the Pentagon with valuable battle experience with many sophisticated weapons, including a missile system that shot down an Iranian civilian military airliner on 3 July 1988, killing 291 people. The naval deployment was the final step in the steadily growing US effort to support Iraq in the war against Iran, and this helped bring about the cease-fire on Iraqi terms in August 1989.26 After the shooting down of the Iranian civilian airliner, the chances of mending ties with Iran were minimal, and with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as US-friendly Arab states in the region, engaging with another Arab state, Iraq, was considered a rational policy option. G.H.W. Bush was serving as vice president of the US and his refusal to apologize for the shooting down of an Iranian plane27 was indicative of the growing distance and hostility between the US and Iran. Similarly, although the US did not pursue a thorough enquiry, it could not be ascertained whether the US frigate Stark had intruded on the Iran–Iraq war zone, or whether Iraq needed to answer for unduly attacking US forces. However, it had become evident that the US could not develop ties with post-revolution Iran, and US policy-makers considered it rational and prudent to support the regional actor (i.e. Iraq) that could ensure attainment of US interests. The US prioritization of Iraq over Iran appeared a rational, calculated decision, irrespective of the fact that this decision discredited the deaths of US soldiers in the Stark incident; as following a perceived rational approach earlier it did not serve US interests to recognize Mossadegh’s government in Iran. The US had overthrown the democratically elected government of Mossadegh,28 and had supported and installed a dictator, Reza Shah, through the CIA’s intervention, leading to a reactionary revolutionary change in Iran. Similarly, the post-Shah, religiously-oriented regime in Iran was not likely to serve US interests. It can be argued that the benign preference of the US for Iraq over Iran also contributed towards the perception within Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath leadership that with US strategic and political support, Iraq might voice its claims over Kuwait and the Rumaila oilfields. This tacit US support also contributed to Saddam Hussein’s regional political ambitions and his exploitation of the rhetoric of Arabism, claiming as he did to have shielded the brotherly Arab states against a ‘Persian’ enemy, also portraying Shiites and the culturally different Iran as an erstwhile sympathizer of the Zionist state. In addition, the long-term objectives of G.H.W. Bush’s administration in the Middle East of promoting liberal-capitalist economic order

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through creating opportunities for the US entrepreneurs after the Iran– Iraq War also strongly resonated in NSD 26: We should pursue and seek to facilitate, opportunities for the US firms to participate in reconstruction of Iraqi economy, participating in every area, where they do not conflict with the non-proliferation and other significant objectives.29 Furthermore, National Security Strategy 1990 (NSS 1990), promulgated in March 1990, highlighted the commitment of G.H.W. Bush’s administration to extend the capitalist economic system and US global geostrategic objectives: My administration is committed to working with all nations to promote the prosperity of free trade market system and to reduce the barriers that unfairly inhibit international commerce.30 As the world’s most powerful democracy we are inescapably the leader, the connecting link in the global alliance of democracies.31 For most of this century, the US has deemed it a vital interest to prevent any hostile power or group of powers from dominating the Eurasian land mass.32 Outlining the interests and objectives for the 1990s, NSS called for a policy of deterrence and the defence of its interest and allies, the establishment of arms-control agreements and encouraging greater recognition of the principles of human rights, market incentives and free elections in the Soviet Union. The strategic military objectives also included preventing the transfer of WMD and other related technologies to hostile countries or groups. The economic objectives included promoting a competitive US economy, ensuring access to foreign markets, energy, mineral resources, the oceans and space. It called for supporting greater economic, political and defence integration in western Europe and closer relations between the United States and the European community, and making international institutions more effective in promoting peace, world order and political, economic and social progress.33 For a stable and secure world, it called for deterring other strategic competitors: ‘we seek to maintain a stable military balance to deter those powers that might seek regional dominance’.34 Regarding relations with its allies, the G.H.W. Bush administration emphasized in NSS 1990 that ‘we seek to strengthen and enlarge the commonwealth of free nations that share

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a commitment to democracy and individual rights’.35 Describing the role of international institutions, NSS called for making ‘international institutions more effective in promoting peace, world order, and political economic and social progress’.36 Regarding the emergence of a global economic order, it stated: ‘One of the dramatic developments of the 1990s will be the new role of Japan and Germany as successful democracies and economic and political leaders. US policy has long encouraged such an evolution.’37 The administration envisioned the US as a growing economic power that creates international political and strategic conditions where the options of unilateralism and economic coercion shall be gradually minimized: ‘A healthy American economy is essential to sustain that leadership role, as well as to foster global economic development and ease dangerous pressures for unilateralism, regionalism and protectionism.’38 The defence agenda was based on the strategies of: ‘Deterrence, Strong Alliances, Forward Defense and Force Projection’.39 The Bush administration was cognizant of the need for material as well as political support from the allies and remained assertive about not embarking on any unilateral military adventures. Elaborating on the international political agenda and its relations with alliances, it stated: Our first priority in foreign policy remains solidarity with allies and friends. We have never been able to ‘go it alone’, even in the early days of the Cold War when our main allies were still suffering from the devastation and exhaustion of World War II. Even to attempt to do so will alter our way of life and national institutions and jeopardize the very values we are seeking to protect.40 In this manner, NSS 1990 further developed the pragmatic principles and objectives in NSC 68 by emphasizing the need for building alliances joined in common interests, so that the aggressive pursuit by the US of its national strategies would not appear as unilateral. However, US policy remained directed towards building US financial and economic ascendency, and cautioned about the financial competitiveness from Japan and Germany. Promotion of the global free-market system had been considered as the long-term mechanism to resolve US domestic financial deficits. Japan and Germany continue to run substantial trade and current account surpluses; the United States has large deficits. For deficit countries like the United States, this requires action to reduce budget deficits and encourage private savings.41

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While addressing the domestic causes for trade deficit, we must also ensure that market forces are free to operate at home and abroad and that trade expands – rather than closing our markets.42 Regarding interests in the Middle East, NSS 1990 stated: The free world’s reliance on energy supplies from this pivotal region and our strong ties with many of the region’s countries continue to constitute important interests of the United States.43 It further elaborated the ‘interests’ as: Security of Israel and other moderate Arab states as well as the free flow of oil.44 Israel’s security remained a fundamental objective of US foreign policy, and the US had serious concerns regarding the possible threat from Iraq. On 3 March 1990, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater replied to Saddam Hussein’s threat to use chemical weapons: The President finds the statements about Iraq’s chemical weapons capability and his threatening Israel to be particularly deplorable and irresponsible. Such statements can only exacerbate tensions and further destabilize this already volatile region. What is needed in the Middle East is not inflammatory rhetoric but concrete steps to rid the region of chemical and other unconventional weapons and to move toward peace.45

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait In an exchange with press reporters on 2 August 1990, President Bush’s words resonated with language similar to that in NSC 68 about the preservation of US national interests through the employment of all available options.46 Similarly, G.H.W. Bush prioritized national interest above the sanctity of international law, humanitarianism, democracy or the idealist image of a cosmopolitan world: We remain committed to take whatever steps are necessary to defend our longstanding, vital interests in the Gulf, and I’m

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meeting this morning with my senior advisers here to consider all possible options available to us.47 It can also be noted that the same section of NSC 68 – calling for ‘any measures, covert or overt’ – also called for a calculated use of military force, discouraged military interventions to minimize mass revolt in target societies and, interestingly, had used the term ‘evil’ to brand adversaries.48 G.H.W. Bush’s administration carefully crafted their policy by taking the UN and US Congress in confidence, uniting the European allies, raising funds, keeping their war aims limited and attainable, avoiding the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention or the promotion of democracy. However, it is vital to note that they also continued with Reagan’s rhetoric of ‘Evil Empire’ and used the term ‘evil’ to describe Saddam Hussein and his regime,49 but only after Iraq had been evicted from Kuwait, thereby portraying the 1991 Gulf War by the US and its allies as a noble mission. In this manner, they were careful not to ignite any pre-war controversies among the European allies regarding the use of terminology for adversaries. The policy of G.H.W. Bush’s administration towards Kuwait displayed their strategic objectives and plans for military action. The administration made it clear that the US did not want to intervene in the domestic politics of Iraq, or to engineer a regime change. While asserting that the US did not intend to interfere in the domestic politics of Kuwait, however, President Bush’s words also benignly implied that the US and its allies had the ability and will to influence the domestic political scenario in Kuwait, when he stated that the US would not accept, and would even ‘prevent’, the installation of any regime50 by Iraq in Kuwait in the event that Iraq withdrew or was evicted without war. However, it is significant that the President’s statements and official documents were formulated not to argue for intervention or occupation. US insistence on the return of the Amir’s regime implied that the US wanted the status quo in Kuwait and would not have been open to an Arab solution to the crisis, if it meant the possibility of elections or the establishment of a caretaker regime in Kuwait through the efforts and supervision of the Arab League. In his address on 8 August 1990, G.H.W. Bush described the invasion of Kuwait and the necessity for prompt military action with the use of terms (‘Blitzkrieg’ and ‘Appeasement’) that had historical significance: No one commits America’s Armed Forces to a dangerous mission lightly, but after perhaps unparalleled international consultation

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and exhausting every alternative, it became necessary to take this action. Let me tell you why. Less than a week ago, in the early morning hours of August 2d, Iraqi Armed Forces, without provocation or warning, invaded a peaceful Kuwait. Facing negligible resistance from its much smaller neighbor, Iraq’s tanks stormed in blitzkrieg fashion through Kuwait in a few short hours . . . If history teaches us anything, it is that we must resist aggression or it will destroy our freedoms. Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbours.51 On 31 July 1990, Iraq moved its artillery forward, laid down communications and was reinforcing its forces logistically with stocks of fuel and ammunition. Identifying these three clear clues that Iraq was preparing to attack, General Colin Powell informed the Bush administration of Iraq’s intentions.52 G.H.W. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had assured numerous countries in the area that he would not invade Kuwait, but the invasion of Kuwait could not have been termed as being without warning or provocation, considering the interactions between Saddam Hussein and Ambassador April Glaspie,53 and Iraq’s repeated but contested claim over Kuwait, which had been voiced since the times of Iraqi King Ghazi bin Faisal to Abdul Karim Qassim54 up until Saddam Hussein, along with the evidence that Kuwait had exploited oil from the Rumaila oil fields.55 However, President Bush portrayed the invasion as a breach of international law and violation of the sovereignty of Kuwait, and had from the onset disregarded the possibility of an Arab League solution to the crisis and prepared the related parties for the chances of a limited war. Explaining the overall policy of the US towards Kuwait and the region, G.H.W. Bush declared: A puppet regime imposed from the outside is unacceptable. The acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable. No one, friend or foe, should doubt our desire for peace; and no one should underestimate our determination to confront aggression.56 It can be observed that President Bush emphasized the territorial integrity of Kuwait and the need to restore sovereignty. This principle became

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the basis for US arguments in the UN for the adoption of the Resolutions and in the US Congress for the authorization of using military force. However, it is evident from the cases of the US invasion of Grenada (1983) and Panama, under codename Operation Just Cause (1989–90) that US pleading was not essentially for the principle of sovereignty. During the Gulf Crisis of 1990–91, the exploitation of the principle of sovereignty served the attainment of US interests, which could not be served through intervention and regime change. However, this issue at the UN and the US Congress had also been the factor that laid limitations on US post-1991 strategy towards Iraq. Arguing for US policy as defensive and non-interventionist, G.H.W. Bush declared: ‘America does not seek conflict, nor do we seek to chart the destiny of other nations.’57 National Security Directive NSD 45 was promulgated on 20 August 1990, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. This document reiterated the importance of US interests in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and indicated that there was a likelihood of conflicts over these interests with other regional and global actors: US interests in the Persian Gulf are vital to the national security. These interests include access to oil and the security and stability of key friendly states in the Middle East. The United States will defend its vital interests in the area, through the use of military force if necessary and appropriate, against any power with interests inimical to our own.58 It was implied in the text that Iraq was perceived as a power with interests inimical to the US. Therefore, the invasion of Kuwait became a cause for concern for the US primarily because their vital interests (including oil) were at stake and not because it was a violation of international law, sovereignty of another state, human rights or the principles of ‘just war’. On Thursday, August 2, 1990 the government of Iraq, without provocation or warning, invaded and occupied the State of Kuwait thereby placing these vital US interests at risk.59 The United States now imports nearly half of the oil it consumes, and as a result of the present crisis, could face a major threat to its economy. Much of the world is even more dependent on imported oil and more vulnerable to Iraqi threats.60

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In response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf, NSD 45 called for the ‘withdrawal of Iraq, restoration of Kuwaiti government, a commitment to peace and security in the Persian Gulf and protection of the lives of American citizens abroad’. On diplomatic matters, it called for the Secretary of State to continue working ‘bilaterally with our allies and friends, and in concert with the international community through the United Nations and other fora to find a peaceful solution to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and to restore Kuwait’s legitimate government’.61 The US formed the Multinational Force for Saudi Arabia (MNFSA) to defend Saudi Arabia, and organized other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states against any further aggression by Iraq, and a Multinational Force to Enforce Sanctions (MNFES) for enforcing economic sanctions and an embargo on Iraq and Kuwait, seeking Soviet assistance for both. The US administration aggressively pursued economic sanctions against Iraq and portrayed the UN as the main authenticator of US policies: Since the UN Charter provides the legal basis for the conduct of this operation, I do not believe it is necessary now to obtain additional UN endorsement for the MNFES. Subject to the consent of the UNSC membership, I agree to allow US participation in discussions of MNFES operation for the enforcement of sanctions against Iraq and Kuwait by the UN military staff committee’.62 In order to gain multilateral support and project the issue as a common cause and interest of the western democracies and the world, G.H.W. Bush declared: Most countries share our concern for principle. And many have a stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf. This is not, as Saddam Hussein would have it, the United States against Iraq. It is Iraq against the world.63 The Bush administration did not alienate the allies through a unilateral approach or by giving them or the world an ultimatum while portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to world peace. Instead, it found an opportunity in the Gulf Crisis of 1990 to declare the grand plan for gathering support from all of the nations to work towards a New World Order: The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out

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of these troubled times, our fifth objective – a new world order – can emerge: a new era – freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.64 Despite the reiteration of the common threat to the world and the need for peace and prosperity, President Bush placed greater emphasis on the fact that there were vital US interests at stake and that there was a firm will to confront and defeat Saddam Hussein in attaining US economic ambitions: America and the world must defend common vital interests – and we will. America and the world must support the rule of law – and we will. America and the world must stand up to aggression – and we will. And one thing more: In the pursuit of these goals America will not be intimidated. Vital issues of principle are at stake. Saddam Hussein is literally trying to wipe a country off the face of the Earth. We do not exaggerate. Nor do we exaggerate when we say Saddam Hussein will fail. Vital economic interests are at risk as well. Iraq itself controls some 10 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that. An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbours – neighbours who control the lion’s share of the world’s remaining oil reserves. We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless. And we won’t.65 The US’s initial policy was to impose embargoes and sanctions through UN approval and then deny Iraq the chance to exploit its oil resources by approaching other international buyers: These sanctions, now enshrined in international law, have the potential to deny Iraq the fruits of aggression while sharply limiting its ability to either import or export anything of value, especially oil. Higher oil prices slow our growth, and higher defense costs would only make our fiscal deficit problem worse. That deficit was already greater than it should have been – a projected $232 billion for the coming year. It must – it will – be reduced.66 We will continue to review all options with our allies, but let it be clear: we will not let this aggression stand.67

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It is evident that, despite the plans for a ‘New World Order’, President G.H.W. Bush’s policy was dependent upon domestic US imperatives, and he was careful to send a message to Congress that the US defence budget must not be reduced, that this war was necessary to drive the US out of recession and lead the way to domestic financial and economic recovery, and that the consequences of delaying seizing control over Middle East oil would be catastrophic for the US economy: The Gulf situation helps us realize we are more economically vulnerable than we ever should be. Americans must never again enter any crisis, economic or military, with an excessive dependence on foreign oil and an excessive burden of Federal debt. First, the Congress should, this month, within a budget agreement, enact growth-oriented tax measures – to help avoid recession in the short term and to increase savings, investment, productivity, and competitiveness for the longer term. Second, the Congress should, this month, enact a prudent multiyear defense program, one that reflects not only the improvement in East-West relations but our broader responsibilities to deal with the continuing risks of outlaw action and regional conflict. But to go beyond such levels, where cutting defense would threaten our vital margin of safety, is something I will never accept. Third, the Congress should, this month, enact measures to increase domestic energy production and energy conservation in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil. This year, before the Iraqi invasion, US imports had risen to nearly 8 million barrels per day. And we’d moved in the wrong direction. And now we must act to correct that trend. Fourth, the Congress should, this month, enact a 5-year program to reduce the projected debt and deficits by $500 billion – that’s by half a trillion dollars. I hope we can work out a responsible plan. But with or without agreement from the budget summit, I ask both Houses of the Congress to allow a straight up-or-down vote on a complete $500-billion deficit reduction package not later than September 28. If the Congress cannot get me a budget, then Americans will have to face a tough, mandated sequester.68 While realizing the need to project domestic compulsions in order to gain approval from the US Congress, President Bush kept the UN in his confidence, ensuring that the war was seen as internationally supported

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by a majority of states, and where the US and the UN were working together. In a drastic shift from Reagan’s policy towards the UN, G.H.W. Bush, in his address to the UN, asserted: ‘We must join together in a new compact – all of us – to bring the United Nations into the 21st century, and I call today for a major long-term effort to do so.’69 Following his appeal for approval from Congress he asked for support for the deficit reduction bill: Our nation is standing together against Saddam Hussein’s aggression. But here at home there’s another threat, a cancer gnawing away at our nation’s health. That cancer is the budget deficit. The Nation’s business in Washington has been conducted as if these basic rules did not apply. Well, these rules do apply. And if we fail to act, next year alone we will face a Federal budget deficit of more than $300 billion, a deficit that could weaken our economy further and cost us thousands of precious jobs.70 At the time of the declaration of war on Iraq, National Security Directive NSD 54, was promulgated on 15 January, 1991. Entitled ‘Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf’, it stated, above all, that this war was a conflict of interests rather than a violation of international law or the sovereignty of Kuwait: Access to Persian Gulf Oil and security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security. Consistent with NSD 26 of October 2, 1989, and NSD 45 of August 20, 1990, and as a matter of long-standing policy, the United States remains committed to defending its vital interests in the region, if necessary through the use of force, against any power with interests inimical to our own. Iraq, by virtue of is unprovoked invasion of Kuwait of August 2, 1990, and its subsequent brutal occupation, is clearly a power with interests inimical to our own.71 The Bush administration argued against the continuation of sanctions to change Iraq’s strategy: Economic sanctions mandated by the UN Security Council resolution 661 have had a measurable impact upon Iraq’s economy but have not accomplished the intended objective of ending Iraq’s

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occupation of Kuwait. There is no persuasive evidence that they will do so in a timely manner.72 The document elaborated on all of the UN sanctions in order to project the idea that all amicable options had been exhausted: Pursuant to my responsibility and authority under the constitution as the President and Commander in Chief, and under the laws and treaties of the United States and pursuant to H.J. Res. 77 (1991), and in accordance with the rights and obligations of the United States under International Law, including Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, 677 and 678, and consistent with the collective right of self-defense in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, I hereby authorize military actions designed to bring about Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.73 It is critical to note that the Bush administration clearly laid out the purposes and objectives of this war in Paragraph 2, rather than leaving it as an open-ended mission: This authorization is for following purposes: a. to effect the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait; b. to restore Kuwait’s legitimate government; c. to protect the lives of American citizens abroad; d. to promote the security and stability of the Persian Gulf.74 Paragraph 2: To achieve the above purposes the US and it coalition forces seek to: a. defend Saudi Arabia and other GCC states against attacks; b. preclude Iraqi launch of ballistic missiles against neighbouring states and friendly forces; c. destroy Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities; d. eliminate the Republican Guards as an effective fighting force; and e. conduct operations designed to drive Iraq’s forces away from Kuwait, break the will of Iraqi forces, discourage the Iraqi use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, encourage defection of Iraqi forces, and weaken the Iraqi support for the current government.75

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In order to avoid political backlash from the Arab allies, it clearly restrained Israeli influence: The United States will discourage the government of Israel from participating in any military action. In particular we will seek to discourage any preemptive action from Israel. Should Israel be threatened by imminent attack or be attacked by Iraq, the United States will respond with the forces against Iraq and will discourage Israeli participation in hostilities.76 Regarding the territorial status of Iraq, the document stated: ‘The United States recognizes the territorial integrity of Iraq and will not support efforts to change current boundaries.’77 It is vital to note that the Bush administration was careful to ensure that the existing geographical status of Iraq should not be disturbed because that could have led to a Kurdish movement demanding its own territory, or stirred up similar movements in the Shiite majority in the oil-rich region of the south. This was indicative of the US objective of ensuring that the oil-rich areas of Iraq were not contested. Therefore, the US remained cautious not to send any messages of support to the independence or separatist movements in Iraq or hold elections in Iraq because a democratic transition in a post-war and post-Saddam Iraq could have led to the control of the region passing into the hands of ethnic or religious groups that were not US-friendly, especially the Shiite majority. It is worth noting that, since the deterioration of US –Iran relations, the possible rise of a Shiite majority government in Iraq post-1991 and in Azerbaijan, another Shiite majority and geographically proximate state in the region, there were US concerns about unfavourable changes in regional geopolitical dynamics. Moreover, a Kurdish movement for an independent state had the potential to demand the territorial demarcation between Iraq and Turkey, which would not have been in Turkey’s interest and, hence, it was not in US interests to alienate Turkey and initiate a territorial conflict, especially over an area with oil resources. While deciding to launch military action, the administration continued to propagate fears of a threat of WMD attack from Iraq. However, considering the US’s past experiences of nuclear surveillance, and incidents of nuclear confrontation with the USSR during the Cold War years, especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, it can be argued that the US strategic analysts, military leadership and intelligence could not have

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advised in favour of a war while having the knowledge and proof of Iraq’s nuclear capability. The analyses of nuclear threat from Iraq do not necessitate an inquiry into the evaluation of nuclear forward deployment postures, strategic delivery systems and strategic warning time, because the possibility of a confrontation between the allied and Iraqi forces was remote. Through the observation of Cold War confrontation between two nuclear powers, it is evident that the chances of a nuclear war between two nuclear states are minimal. Therefore, it can be argued that from its experiences of the Cold War, the US leadership had a degree of surety that Iraq did not pose a nuclear threat. It is logical to assume that the US military leadership would not have been ready to wage a war against a nuclear-capable adversary with even a 1 per cent chance of a nuclear attack or retaliation. It can, however, also be argued that the US had knowledge of a partially destroyed Iraqi nuclear capability after Israeli attacks on Osiraq, and it planned to ensure that Iraq’s nuclear capability was completely destroyed. Iraq’s nuclear capability had not been proved; however, the G.H.W. Bush administration continued with the propagation of a threat of WMD from Iraq in order to promote the necessity of the war: Should Iraq resort to using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, be found supporting terrorist acts against the United States or coalition partners anywhere in the world, or destroy Kuwait’s oilfields, it shall become an explicit objective of the United States to replace the current leadership of Iraq. I also want to preserve the option of authorizing additional punitive actions against Iraq.78 It can be noted that G.H.W. Bush gave a clear warning to Saddam Hussein regarding the punishable acts that would provoke the US to remove him from power. Therefore, Saddam Hussein was indirectly informed of the course most likely to lead to his removal. G.H.W. Bush justified the war and called for the urgency of evicting Iraq out of Kuwait by relating it to Iraq’s nuclear programme: While the world waited, Saddam sought to add to the chemical weapons arsenal he now possesses, an infinitely more dangerous weapon of mass destruction – a nuclear weapon. And while the world waited, while the world talked peace and withdrawal, Saddam Hussein dug in and moved massive forces into Kuwait.79

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While preparing for war, the administration acted prudently, kept the war aims limited and asserted the presidential authority to end the military operations in order to prevent being engaged in a long-term military operation: ‘Military operations will come to an end only when I have determined that the objectives set forth in paragraph 2 above have been met.’80

Post-1991 US policy towards Iraq The report entitled ‘Iraq: Domestic Impact of the War’, presented on 25 January 1991 by the CIA Office of Near Eastern and Asian Analysis, estimated the damage to Iraq’s military and economic infrastructure as well as the changes it would bring about in the political situation. It laid significant emphasis on Iraq’s oil-production capacity. It explained that one-third of Iraq’s 70,000 barrels per day oil-refining capacity had been put out of operation and strategic and nonconventional weapons facilities had been damaged.81 It can be gathered that the CIA report confirmed the attainment of the war objectives of minimizing Iraq’s oil refining capability, thereby minimizing the prospects of revenue for post-war rehabilitation and significantly weakening its military and strategic power, which the US and its western allies had helped to develop82 over the years. After Iraq’s defeat in the war, while addressing the American nation G.H.W. Bush emphasized the need for realism to go along with idealism for a further strengthening of American values and for justifications for the Gulf War, but concentrated more on the government’s achievements in saving the US economy from a recession, arguing for the promotion of American values globally and seeking to justify the war on Iraq: We are a nation of rock-solid realism and clear-eyed idealism. We are Americans. We are the nation that believes in the future. We are the nation that can shape the future.83 The strength of a democracy is not in bureaucracy. It is in the people and their communities. In everything we do, let us unleash the potential of our most precious resource – our citizens, our citizens themselves.84 . . . the cost of closing our eyes to aggression is beyond mankind’s power to imagine. This we do know: Our cause is just; our cause is moral; our cause is right.85

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It is significant to note that emphasis on ‘just cause’ became significant after the war had been waged, whereas during the crisis the administration did not indulge in moral arguments. While rhetorically and selectively utilizing the principle of ‘just war’, which, along with jus ad bellum – just cause to wage war – also includes jus in bello and jus post bellum, President G.H.W. Bush was careful not to declare any support for the post-war uprising against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which would have meant US intervention but could have prevented the mass murder of Iraqis and might have contributed towards the downfall of the Ba’ath absolutist and criminal regime. On 15 February 1991, President G.H.W. Bush addressed an audience at Raytheon Company, manufacturers of Patriot Missiles, and called the Iraqi regime’s offer to end the conflict a ‘cruel hoax’ and, in view of the Shiite and Kurd uprising in Iraq, declared: And there is another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.86 The allied army outmatched the Iraqi army by all standards, as became obvious in the first few hours of the hostilities. Ironically, two days before the above address, the US and its allies had targeted civilians, including women and children, at the Al Amariyah bomb shelter on 13 February 1991, therefore putting to question its compliance to jus in bello – justice in war – which requires the use of appropriate military means. Moreover, jus post bellum – justice after the war (for the Iraqi uprising) – had been overshadowed by other regional objectives and interests. Highlighting US post-war objectives, President Bush claimed: First, we must work together to create shared security arrangements in the region. Second, we must act to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles used to deliver them. Iraq must not have access to the instruments of war. Third, we must work to create new opportunities for peace and stability in the Middle East. This principle must be elaborated to provide for Israel’s security and recognition and at the same time for legitimate Palestinian political rights. Fourth, we must foster economic

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development for the sake of peace and progress. The Persian Gulf and Middle East form a region rich in natural resources with a wealth of untapped human potential.87 Highlighting the need for continuing the spending and investment culture for the extension of global advanced capitalist order, President Bush asserted: Our first priority is to get this economy rolling again. The fear and uncertainty caused by the Gulf crisis were understandable. But now that the war is over, oil prices are down, interest rates are down, and confidence is rightly coming back. Americans can move forward to lend, spend, and invest in this, the strongest economy on Earth.88 Regarding the post-war discontent and revolt in Iraq’s military ranks, the Bush administration had the option to support Iraqi society in its efforts to overthrow Saddam Hussein, as noted in another of the CIA’s reports entitled ‘Iraq: Implications of Insurrection and Prospects for Saddam’s Survival’, regarding the Shiite and Kurd revolt. The report stated: ‘If Saddam does not quell the rebellion, the chances of a serious outbreak in Baghdad will grow and his position will be more precarious.’89 President Bush urged the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but his strategy and policy displayed that the objective was not primarily to promote a change in the political order, but to maintain the status quo and sustain a militarily and economically weakened Iraq with Saddam Hussein as the leader. The CIA had warned of a Shiite takeover of Iraq, which ‘would revive Islamic revolutionary fervour in Iran and cause increased threat of Shiite subversion and terrorism to Sunni monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula’.90 Considering the Shiite uprising and the scenarios of a coup, this report further speculates: The prospects of a Shiite victory, or just prolonged internal strife, could also encourage disparate Sunni elements in Iraq, including anti-Baathist nationalists and pro-Syrian Baathists, and military elites to rally around Saddam as the only recourse to an Iranianinfluenced Shiite regime. It could also force political change on Saddam, including his overthrow.91

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G.H.W. Bush’s administration had been informed by the CIA that even mobilization by the Sunnis would inadvertently contribute to the Shiite uprising, which would not have favoured the US. This report further speculated upon the possibilities of a ‘Palace Coup’, with several probable scenarios: Saddam Hussein sharing power with a new regime; Saddam Hussein’s removal by insiders, revolution by outsiders and the destruction of the Ba’athist regime; or a change from the military or the Ba’ath Party and the prospects of a legal mechanism of succession without destruction. However, the report concluded that these options might lead to more problematic scenarios. From the US perspective, it can be gathered that the greatest threat envisioned was the rise of a Shiite movement in Iraq.92 Second, the G.H.W. Bush administration did not consider it rational to let the military or the Ba’ath Party effect a change in the regime, because it would have meant dealing with a new leadership. The post-war suppression of the Shiite and Kurdish revolt by Saddam Hussein served the purpose of continuing his rule, while the primary purposes of weakening the Iraqi army and establishing US bases in Saudi Arabia had been achieved. A report entitled ‘Iraq: Saddam Husayn’s Prospects for Survival over the Next Year’ was formulated in September 1991 by the Director of Central Intelligence. Regarding the possibilities of a coup, this report warned: The members of his extended family, the Cabinet, the government, and the Baath Party may dislike his policies and threats and may believe he should be removed, but they are unlikely to risk taking the first step against him. They will be constrained principally by fear but also by the belief that only a strong leader – perhaps only Saddam himself – can wield the kind of authority that will keep Iraq whole and protect their self-interest.93 The US post-1991 policy towards Iraq was based on the perception that Saddam Hussein still maintained a strong hold over the state infrastructure, and that the political as well as social groups were more likely to support him than try to overthrow him.

Influences of the Gulf War 1991 on the G.H.W. Bush administration’s global strategy From the broader perspective of US post-Cold War global strategy, the 1991 Gulf War played a significant role in formulating the policies that

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could not have been possible during the Cold War confrontation with the USSR. The Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) formulated from September 1991 to April 1992, in a drastic shift from post-Cold War and Gulf War 1991 policies, called for the reconsideration of US commitments to international treaties, international law and multilateralism in engagements with the UN and its specialized agencies. Paul Wolfowitz provided the ideological force for this policy, and therefore, in strategic terms, it was called the Wolfowitz Doctrine, preparing the US to assume a global leadership, preventing the emergence of a new rival, and reconstituting additional forces for building ‘disarming capabilities’ to destroy any rising threats, and, if necessary, for unilateral pre-emptive military action – with or without the approval of its allies.94 This document emphasized that the 1991 Gulf War enabled the US to strengthen its strategic alliances and coalitions, enabling it to emerge as a global power after the demise of the USSR. It also called for the US to maintain a forward presence in the region: Some regional powers, freed of the constraints of the Cold War, may feel more entitled for historical, cultural or other reasons to use force to establish local hegemonies – although the decisive nature of our victory in the Persian Gulf will hopefully discourage such actions.95 The Gulf War has greatly enhanced our security relations in that region and underscored their continued importance. Taken together, many facets of this experience – combat forces, logistic support and financial participation – and our subsequent cooperation on forward presence of US forces promise continued close ties with nations of the region on which we can build.96 Although it is an issue of debate whether the DPG was truly representative of a Pentagon document,97 since it had been leaked and found its way to The New York Times and other independent media, there is, however, a consistency between the DPG and other documents which can be identified as the dominant post-Cold War US ideology of building US hegemony by surpassing other major powers through warfare and related technologies, and by exercising politicoeconomic influence on its allies while promoting the global capitalist order.

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The Regional Defense Strategy of January 1993 was based on four elements: ‘Strategic Deterrence and Defense’, ‘Forward Presence’, ‘Crisis Response’ and ‘Reconstitution’ (i.e. the ability to create additional new forces to hedge against any renewed global threat).98 This strategic doctrine called for the preservation of US interests by garnering politicoeconomic support and exercising diplomatic influence on its European allies. Reflecting upon the military confrontation with Iraq, it called for stronger strategic alliances with European powers and the sharing of the military and financial burden of future conflicts: The threat of regional adversaries introducing nuclear weapons would greatly complicate future regional crises. As we learned from our experience with Iraq, it can be extremely difficult to know how far such efforts have progressed. Even relatively old technology, which in fact will characterize the vast majority of cases, can represent a tremendous challenge, as demonstrated by the Iraqi use of ballistic missiles in the Gulf War.99 As NATO continues to provide the indispensible foundation for a stable security environment in Europe, it is of fundamental importance to preserve NATO’s integrated military command structure.100 It is critical to US interests in Europe and those of our allies that we assist the new democracies in Eastern Europe to consolidate their democratic institutions, establish free market economies and safeguard their national independence.101 In his address at West Point on 5 January 1993, summarizing the postCold War global role of the US, G.H.W. Bush called for a more assertive role adopted by the US in future: A desire for international support must not become a prerequisite for acting, though. Sometimes a great power has to act alone. I made a tough decision – I might say, on advice of our outstanding military leaders who are so well known to everybody here – to use military force in Panama when American lives and the security of the Canal appeared to be threatened by outlaws who stole power in the face of free elections.102 Regarding the global role of the US and the possibility of employing military force for the attainment of US vital interests, he affirmed:

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A nation’s sense of idealism need not be at odds with its interests, nor does principle displace prudence . . . The United States should not seek to be the world’s policeman.103 G.H.W. Bush intended to set a precedent: that the burden of future military conflicts must be shared with the allies; in fact, a major part of the economic costs of the 1991 Gulf War had been borne by the allies, as G.H.W. Bush himself declared: ‘It is unreasonable to expect the United States to bear the full financial burden of intervention when other nations have a stake in the outcome.’104

Critical analyses of the justifications for the war on Iraq in 1991 The US administration later argued that the US and allied attack on Iraq was in accordance with the principles of ‘just war’, primarily because Iraq had invaded another state and so violated UN sanctions. Iraq had also attacked Israel using its short-range missiles, and over the years had victimized the Kurds and Shiites; therefore, there was cause not only to evict Iraq from Kuwait, but also to prevent it from threatening Israel and victimizing its own people. However, keeping in view these arguments, there was a greater cause to intervene on humanitarian grounds and prevent the massacre of Kurds and Shiites in 1991, which the US could not undertake because of strategic regional concerns, as will be explained in the forthcoming passages. Considering the concept of ‘just war’ and its moral justification and religious interpretations, James Turner Johnson observed that, from a broader perspective, the use or non-use of force might be justified provided it serves either justice or injustice, respectively.105 Iraq had violated Article 2 of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial independence of a state. Sanctions were imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, and so war did not violate the criterion of ‘last resort’. In the US, the debate regarding intervention – and, if necessary, the use of military force – started with the exploration of moral basis and motivation for the decision to go to war. It was not only religious institutions and moral arguments that were going to shape the debates over future US policy: they were also expected to bring a degree of moral wisdom. The remaining question was whether the war could be ended on terms that met the ‘just war’ criteria and the moral calculus

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of statecraft that satisfied Catholic understanding of just peace through other than military means.106 However, at the time of the decision to go to war, G.H.W. Bush’s administration had not engaged in the debates on ‘just war’ that could have laid some compulsions on waging war, but exploited the moral arguments when Iraq had been evicted from Kuwait; therefore, it had been careful in developing its official discourse. President Bush’s perception of Saddam Hussein’s behaviour was also informed by the insights gained from Egyptian President Husni Mubarak – at the time, a dependable US ally in the Middle East. Mubarak had insisted that Saddam Hussein did not intend to invade Kuwait. In his memoirs, President Bush maintained that Saddam Hussein provided false justification for invading Kuwait by claiming that the Sabah regime in Kuwait had feared a military coup and had asked for Iraq’s intervention. Bush argued that continuing leniency would give credence to Saddam Hussein’s conspiracy theory and encourage him to raise his demands.107 These arguments are indicative of Bush’s realist conviction in dealing with crises and adversaries. Bush also clarifies that his administration would not accept any political change in Kuwait brought about by the efforts of Arab states. The Arab solution to the problem had therefore already been pre-empted. These circumstances also contributed to the growing belief among King Fahd and other Arab leaders that Saddam Hussein was obsessed with power and was thinking only about his own survival, and that the only credible means to deal with such an actor was military force. However, President Bush also perceived that King Fahd did not want a short-term military solution to the Iraqi–Kuwait problem, and did not want a repetition of the quick exit of the US forces that had been the case after the bombing of US marines in Beirut.108 The texts of G.H.W. Bush’s speeches portray Saddam Hussein as an irrational actor who disregarded the fact that he had deliberately violated another state’s sovereignty, intended to gain control over vital natural resources, and was resorting to tyranny, deceit, rhetoric and political manipulation. This discourse contributed to the ‘anthropomorphizing’ of the Iraqi state and its administration to a single person – Saddam Hussein.109 Through the production and reproduction of discourses, Saddam Hussein was profiled as a tyrant who would only respect the strength of military power and was not open to political negotiations. However, not all of the decision-makers in Bush’s administration were in favour of war, and Colin Powell felt that Saddam Hussein did

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not want to confront the US and its allies; consequently, he had recommended that a small military presence in Saudi Arabia and an air option would compel him to retreat.110 Powell and Richard Armitage were members of Bush’s administration who, as military officers, had been engaged in long-term military conflicts and were cognizant of the negative impacts of long-term wars; therefore, they wanted war as the last option. In the light of claims that Saddam Hussein intended to strike a deal with Mubarak and the then President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to share the Kuwaiti oil resources – to which, according to Mubarak, Saleh may have agreed111 – the need to safeguard US economic interests had become more urgent. In his speech on 8 August 1990, Bush used the term ‘blitzkrieg’ to describe the Iraqi armoured assault on Kuwait, and termed any political solution to the problem as ‘appeasement’.112 In so doing, Bush equated Saddam Hussein with Hitler, who marched over Rhineland, violating the Versailles Treaty.113 This analogy was intended as a reminder that appeasement is a misplaced and misleading policy in the face of expansionist tyrants. Therefore, from the onset, war was projected as the only rational policy to deal with tyrants, while the US’s ulterior objectives, vital interests and domestic financial instability were overshadowed by the projected threat to world peace. These objectives remained consistent after the war, when the Iraqi army was reduced to a number where it could not pose any strategic threat to its neighbours. The post-war domestic turbulence in Iraq led to a revolt in the army ranks and an uprising in the south by Shiites. This also increased the likelihood of political interference and intervention by Iran. There was a chance of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the Ba’ath Party and the military, which meant there was an equal likelihood of a pro-Iranian opposition gaining political control, once Saddam Hussein had been removed. The Kurds had also joined the political resurgence and showed willingness to re-activate the March 1970 Accord on Kurdish autonomy; this process had the potential to lead to some political settlement in favour of the Kurds. In view of these critical developments, the US could have played an impartial and positive role and remained passive, instead of hindering the movement of resistance and political change in Iraq. Similarly, at the regional level, there were political power struggles between Washington and Riyadh on one side and Tehran on the other, both of whose objectives were to secure alliance with Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s brutal suppression of the Tehran-supported revolt had been tacitly supported by the US, which, instead of blocking

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the roads leading from the centre and south of Iraq and preventing Iraq from using its air-space, gave Saddam Hussein a free hand to eliminate the Shiite population. A few days before this attack, General Brandthner had declared at the Pentagon that the US would even allow Saddam Hussein to use his planes against the rebellion if he could get them back from Iran, as long as they did not threaten coalition troops.114 The justifications for the 1991 war, sanctions by the UN and the conduct of war and its aftermath display that US policy had primarily been guided by the pursuit of its own economic and strategic interests and the survival of a weakened Ba’ath regime under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, which suited them both regionally and internationally. The invasion and occupation of Iraq was not the objective because the US had attained its ulterior objectives of restoring Kuwait to its prior status of a friendly client state, eliminating the threats to the Saudi regime and Israel, curtailing the influence of Iran and leaving Saddam Hussein in power, with the capability to suppress any domestic secessionist movement that had the potential to cause regional geopolitical change.

Critical analysis of the discourses on the 1991 Gulf War Saddam Hussein had reaffirmed Iraq’s claim on Kuwait’s Rumaila oil fields that stretched out along the disputed Iraq–Kuwait border. During the Iraq–Iran war, Kuwait had moved its border towards the north and seized an additional 900 square miles of Rumaila. After the Iran–Iraq war, Iraq was nearly US$90 billion in debt. Colin Powell claimed that, by their manipulation, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had thrust a ‘poisoned dagger’ into Iraq’s back by breaking oil quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, thus driving prices down and reducing Iraq’s incomes. Kuwait had further siphoned off US$2.5 billion in oil from the Rumaila oil fields, which the two countries shared.115 The US had supplied Kuwait with slant-drilling technology, through which Kuwait had been overproducing and stealing oil from that part of Rumaila that was indisputably inside Iraq.116 Iraq’s revenues, which were 90 per cent dependent on oil, would have fallen to US$7 billion per annum, while the costs of serving the country’s debts would have risen to US$7 billion per annum; therefore, Saddam Hussein claimed that the invasion of Kuwait was in retaliation to this provocation and betrayal.117 Iraq had been denied its major oil revenues, while Kuwait had been selling the oil from Rumaila to Iraq’s customers.

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US geopolitical strategy in the Middle East can be summarized as classical realist: an approach making changes in the subservient balance of power by further weakening a regional actor – in this case Iraq, which had earlier been fighting and weakening Iran, which had been an erstwhile US ally – turned US adversary, after the fall of the Shah. The utilization of oil from Rumaila by Kuwait under the benign support of the US had manifold negative effects on Iraq’s economic and strategic standing. Therefore, Saddam Hussein claimed that invading Kuwait was not merely a strategy for acquiring more power, but for the survival of the Iraqi state itself. However, Saddam Hussein had also prudently painted this economic objective with a nationalistic rhetoric of Arabism, claiming to have shielded the Arab brothers from the Persian threat during his war with Iran118 and later, at the time of the Gulf Crisis, from the western threat. Therefore, Saddam Hussein’s objectives went further than attaining financial benefits. He had extended his rhetoric to gain wider support for his own personal ambitions, which went beyond the territorial annexation of Kuwait. Regarding territorial disputes and the question of the violation of sovereignty, Gowan argues that Kuwait’s sovereignty had been achieved through the strength of British military power and the influence of the empire that extended up to the 1960s.119 Similarly, considering the artificial divisions of the colonies and the continuation of imperialism in novel manifestations,120 Iraq’s claim over Kuwait could not be overruled, because neither the Ottoman Empire nor the Iraqi monarchy recognized the ‘protection’ of Kuwait.121 Saddam Hussein’s rhetoric of Arabism had been intended to nuance his expansionist agenda – the building of a union of ‘brotherly’ Arab122 states under the ideology that might appeal to the Arabs, and consequently portraying the resources of the region as shared by the Arab states, and he himself assuming the role of the champion of the Palestinian cause. This had proved to be a political ploy, because later he proposed to withdraw his armies from Kuwait in return for the pull out of Israeli forces from the territories it had occupied in Palestine, because it was obvious that neither Israel nor the US would have settled for such a bargain. However, it has been argued by some scholars that, had Saddam Hussein been successful in gaining control over Rumaila’s oil resources and had he garnered the political support of the European countries and Japan, this may have led to a fundamental restructuring of the international economic and financial order.123 Therefore, Saddam Hussein’s approach can be categorized as

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guided by self-interest and power, and the employment of all kinds of means and rhetoric for the attainment of his ends. The realist approach of G.H.W. Bush’s administration is revealed in its prioritization of US ‘interests’ over issues of sovereignty or breach of international law, and Iraq was primarily perceived as a power with interests inimical to their (the US’s) own.124 Since the proclamation of the Carter Doctrine, written by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1980, the US had assumed guardianship over the oil resources in the Middle East, while restricting the USSR’s access. Moreover, some scholars have argued that the US had promoted moderate regimes which could be toppled by domestic upheavals.125 Iraq had turned out to be an exception. Saddam Hussein and G.H.W. Bush were both aware of the international and regional monetary consequences of oil resources falling into Iraq’s hands. Not only would it have disrupted the balance of the alliance of the Muslim states, which are cemented together by the flow of Arabian finances from Pakistan to Morocco, but if Saddam Hussein had been successful in converting the exchanges from oil revenues from dollars to yen, the US would have lost the monopoly of the dollar over Japan and Europe.126 From a realist perspective, a war waged by the US to minimize the possibilities of such an order was a logical and rational policy. G.H.W. Bush argued that, initially, he did not expect that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait; in fact, Bush claimed that his first reaction was that he was resorting to coercive crisis bargaining by deliberately creating a crisis to finally make Kuwait concede to his demands.127 G.H.W. Bush did not favour personal channels to resolve the stalemate; his reference to the Logan Act (1799) discouraged the attempt made by Jimmy Carter to stop the UN Resolution to attack Iraq, where Carter had asserted that war would have great human costs.128 Chomsky argued that the issue had been raised to cosmic significance, with the vision of a New World Order of peace and justice held before us: if only the new Hitler could be stopped before he conquers the world (the US having failed to overcome post-revolution Iran despite the support of the USSR, Europe and its Arab allies). Secretary James Baker had declared, ‘We live in one of those rare transforming moments in history’, with the Cold War over and an ‘era full of promise’ just ahead, if we could avoid the self-defeating path of ‘pretending not to see’.129 Similarly, President Bush’s approach before the invasion displayed that he underestimated or ignored Saddam Hussein’s message to Ambassador Glaspie.

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President G.H.W. Bush’s multilateral strategy of mobilizing a coalition against Saddam Hussein had significant benefits for the US domestic economy. The coalition’s willingness to bear the costs of war diverted attention from US domestic financial problems, which loomed at that particular time, when the annual budget had been decided and the US was on the verge of entering recession.130 While the war served the purpose of weakening the Iraqi army and keeping Saddam Hussein in power as an actor who could be used to deter Iran, it also paved the way for the establishment of US bases in the Middle East, thereby extending US hegemony and physical presence even up to the Eurasian land mass. These objectives, or ‘national interests’, were achieved more efficiently through war, rather than negotiation with Saddam Hussein before his invasion of Kuwait. The war helped to provide a monetary boost to domestic financial problems, and US tax payers were led to believe that the wealthy allies were taking a ‘free ride’ while US forces were going to war to evict Iraq from Kuwait. In return for the US army fighting on behalf of the coalition, James Baker and Nicholas Brady collected US$55 billion from Japan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,131 and Baker earned the title of ‘mother of all fundraisers’; therefore, a multilateral approach initiated by G.H.W. Bush primarily served to sell the war to the US Congress and the public, while simultaneously projecting the strategic objectives132 that were imperative for the building of a New World Order, and required the US to take the lead in military planning and the execution of the war and the building of the post-war international order. It is evident that these objectives might not have been attained through political and diplomatic engagement with Iraq. Considering the confrontational US–UN relations during Reagan’s presidency, it is significant that on the road to the Gulf War the US rediscovered the UN. This can be explained by considering two crises. Earlier, with the introduction of the Helm and the Kassebaum Amendments, the US had contributed to the financial crisis that the UN faced during the 1980s, when all the US expectations from the UN (US hegemony, congruence, support for the status quo, unit veto, financial specificity, promotion of the market, pluralism and pre-emptive imperialism) had met with disappointment. However, during these years the US response was to withhold UN funds, focusing attention on the UN budget and management, but the financial crisis was a policy to display displeasure towards UN policies. However, during the Gulf Crisis the problem was

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very specific and easily comprehended by all actors. It was debated as an issue of sovereignty. The decision-makers were taken by surprise when confronted with a perceived imminent threat, believing they had a finite time to respond. These two crises displayed a low point between the US–UN, followed by a dramatic upturn in their relations. The financial crisis was only for the UN, while the Gulf Crisis was for both the US and the UN. Iraq created the latter by precipitating crisis-decision behaviour in both Washington and New York. The two crises are distinguishable by the way they engaged the US political process. The Gulf Crisis involved relatively few high-level decision-makers. Most of them were in the executive branch, the hearings were held by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the two houses of Congress ultimately debated and adopted a joint resolution. During the financial crisis there was a matter of funds that the US had to pay to the UN. Conversely, although the cost of the Gulf Crisis and war was incomparably greater than the US contribution to the UN over a comparable period of time, the burden on the US treasury was virtually nil. The US decision-making would have been different if Japan, Germany and others had been unable to pay for Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.133 G.H.W. Bush claimed that before the war the US had engaged with Iraq by continuing the Commodity Credit Cooperation to American exporters and trying to cap Iraq’s nuclear programme. Halliburton had been actively working in Iraq, while at the same time the US had initiated diplomatic efforts to block Iraq’s plans to build nuclear weapons or procure related equipment. President Bush claimed that these efforts were aimed at policy change in the Iraqi regime.134 By 1984, diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq, which had been severed ever since the Six Days War in 1967, had taken a U-turn to the extent that the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the list of sponsors of terrorism.135 It had been viewed as an effort for behavioural change, at the first stage, through a combination of coercion, persuasion and reward, a process of ‘mellowing’ with the ultimate objective of a regime change if behaviour change could not be achieved.136 The purpose of these strategic engagements was not essentially to promote a democratic change, but a US-friendly regime in Iraq; however, the invasion of Kuwait eliminated this possibility and opened another option for the US to engage with Iraq through force. With war as a probability, Saddam Hussein was easier to demonize, as compared with the previous efforts of Reagan to demonize the then leaders of Panama and Libya, Manuel Noriega and

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Muammar Gaddafi. This was because Saddam Hussein seemed to pose a real threat. The projected nuclear threat from Iraq and the clear warning to the nation on 2 October 1990 about the financial impacts due to an oil crisis were two of the vital factors that tipped the scales in favour of war, leading to the approval by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Considering the tactical and strategic perspective, neoconservative commentator Krauthammer coined the term ‘Weapon State’ and placed Iraq in that category, arguing that it posed the greatest danger to US interests. According to his categorization, these weapon states were of recent vintage and had arbitrary borders. Their state apparatus was extraordinarily well-developed, dominating civil society. Moreover, these weapon states held a grievance against the US and the world order it had been trying to build, therefore they were subversive to the international status quo. US policy towards such states should be based on denying, disarming and defending.137 From G.H.W. Bush’s perspective, the US involvement in the Gulf was seen not merely to be a compulsion to assume a global duty. The idea of a New World Order at that time was seen, at best, as a cooperative mechanism for the states of the world to follow, and at worst as a code for Pax Americana, and was therefore dismissed in the governmental statements.138 While Bush criticized Saddam Hussein for inhuman use of chemical and biological weapons against the Kurds,139 he ignored Saddam Hussein’s earlier unlimited use of these weapons against Iran, which had become the US’s strategic adversary. In fact, Donald Rumsfeld, serving as special envoy to the Middle East, met Saddam Hussein on 24 March 1984, the day the UN reported that Iraq had used mustard gas against Iranian troops.140 Rumsfeld declared that the defeat of Iraq in its war with Iran was contrary to US interests.141 Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and had used chemical and biological weapons in March 1988 against Kurdish civilians in Halabja, after which Donald Rumsfeld had travelled to Iraq to stress that US condemnation was ‘strictly in principle’, and that Washington ‘wished to improve bi-lateral relations, at a pace of Iraq’s choosing’.142 The US stance on the use of WMD was contradictory considering that, in 1995, it defended the use of nuclear weapons in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing that ‘the deliberate killing of a large number of people’ counts as genocide only if the aggressor sets out to destroy ‘in whole or in part, a national ethnic, racial or religious group’.143 US policy towards the issue of WMD, nuclear non-proliferation and rollback was selective. In early 1990, while still a friendly ally of G.H.W.

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Bush, Iraq had offered to destroy its chemical and biological weapons if Israel did the same, but the State Department welcomed Iraq’s initiative while conveniently rejecting the link to ‘other issues or weapon systems’. Similarly, in December the same year, at a joint press conference comprising James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, Shevardnadze proposed a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East if Iraq withdrew from Kuwait. Baker gave qualified support, while carefully avoiding the term Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, because it would have implied acknowledgement of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Acknowledging Israeli nuclear weapons would, in turn, have raised the question of US aid to Israel, which was illegal under the congressional legislation of 1970s that barred aid to any country engaged in clandestine nuclear weapon development.144 The US could choose to remain passive towards the use of WMD by Saddam Hussein as long as the targets were Iran or the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq. Similarly, not acknowledging an Israeli nuclear programme had served another strategic purpose. Israel’s nuclear programme had not remained a secret since the revelations about the existence of 200 nuclear weapons by Mordechai Vanunu to the British media145(The Sunday Times) in 1984. By not acknowledging Israel’s nuclear capability, Baker evaded any obligation to pressurize Israel to control its growing nuclear capability, and therefore inadvertently contributed to Israel’s nuclear ambiguity, which served as a source of deterrence against aspiring nuclear states in the Middle East. With its subtle and benign diplomatic support to Israel, the US sent a message to the Arab states that it could influence the Israeli state’s policies.146 Similarly, by deliberately remaining passive about Iraq’s nuclear programme and not agreeing on a reciprocal nuclear disarmament for a NWFZ in the Middle East, the G.H.W. Bush administration left room for further sanctions and a possible pretext for military action against Iraq, at some point in future. Sami Yousif argues that G.H.W. Bush had been aware of Saddam Hussein’s intentions to invade Kuwait months before the invasion, yet he ignored the warnings because the invasion – and, ultimately, the war – could suit US interests, as Saddam Hussein could serve as the perfect bogeyman from among the line-up of US-backed fascists. Saddam Hussein’s isolation had been swift and easy as he invaded one of the UN member states, and this could be used as the rationale for war when it suited the US.147

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G.H.W. Bush’s strategy of forming a coalition and calling for the implementation of UN Resolutions led to academics, including Donald Puchala, arguing that engagement with the UN had been a drastic change from the antagonistic policies of the US during the 1970s and early 1980s, and that this approach might have led to fundamental changes in the Cold War order.148 Puchala hypothesized that the US would engage in multilateral approaches along with UN sanctions to resolve future conflicts, and that US engagement with the UN would turn out to be a short-term objective of gaining approval for the war; however, the US did not invade Iraq in 1991, because of the limitations set by the UN Resolutions. By invading Iraq, the US would have been in violation of the UN mandate. There were also ethical limitations resulting from engagement in the discourse of the New World Order and affirming the validity of the UN and international law, but it is vital to note that the official discourses also excluded the option of invading Iraq. On the US domestic front, the policy had been directed towards saving the oil-producing countries from bankruptcy by raising the OPEC oil prices, boosting the military industrial complex following the end of the Cold War, giving the economy a jump-start to rescue it from a recession through a major war and large-scale military operations and, above all, removing the memory of the so-called ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ through a decisive military victory. Neither Grenada nor Panama had been sufficient to achieve these objectives, although they had laid the groundwork for US conduct during the Gulf Crisis.149 On the international front, the major objectives addressed were how to dominate the Middle East and the Gulf as part of the re-division of the world (following the collapse of the Soviet Empire), and acquire economic advantage over the rising economic power of Japan and a united Germany (and Europe) through controlling the oil of the Gulf and the Middle East, because 90 per cent of Japan’s and 75 per cent of Germany’s oil came from that region. The war served the purpose of terrorizing the Third World and clamping down harder on its peoples under the pretext of preventing the emergence of future expansionist tyrants. This precedent had been set at the time of the 1991 war, and the same rhetoric (of removing dictators and tyrants) continued afterwards, with wars waged to give strong symbolic messages to adversaries and the world.150 Similar to Gowan’s analysis of the employment of war for the promotion of a capitalist order, Richard Falk argues that US post-Cold War

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strategy finessed the perceived ‘danger’ that the end of the Cold War would produce a so-called ‘peace dividend’ that would, in turn, weaken the Pentagon and the military in US society. There was a concern among US decision-makers that this might lead to a shift in international relations from security to economics – an area where the US had been weaker than Japan and Europe. Therefore, Falk argued that the White House considered Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait before the deadline – a ‘nightmare scenario’.151 Policy-makers, including Brzezinski, Scowcroft and Richard Murphy, argued that Saddam Hussein still posed a strategic threat to the Gulf region, and they visualized a post-Saddam plan for Iraq. The plan comprised allowing Iraq to gain revenue from its oil exports, maintain its territorial consolidation and engage with Turkey to pacify the Kurdistan issue. This plan sent a message that the US would severely and effectively punish Saddam Hussein’s regime if it violated the UN Resolutions on WMD, but also that it would be willing to work with a post-Saddam Iraqi Ba’ath regime. It was considered that forceful US action (against Iraq) should not be conditional on approval by its allies, but neither should the US be perceived to be ignoring allies’ concerns or taking their support for granted.152 The US policy-makers had taken the approval of this war as setting a precedent for future military actions against Iraq, even without the approval of its allies. The 1991 war displayed the superiority of the US military arsenal, and strategically and monetarily allied the European powers with the US, extended US coercive influence over oil-producing countries – including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq – and led to the promotion of the capitalist system in Europe. This war also helped to achieve the geopolitical objectives expected by the policy planner Brzezinski, and was justified by the offensive realists. Before the 1991 war, the only territory that the US strategically controlled close to the Persian Gulf was the Island of Diego Garcia;153 after the war, the US found a reason to justify the extension of a vast network of its military bases all over the Middle East and Central Asia and South East Asia, and consolidate an informal empire.

Post-Gulf War 1991 US global role and policies towards Iraq Considering the emerging global role of the US, its relations with Russia (the former USSR) changed significantly after the 1991 war, with Gorbachev accepting a relatively less assertive role vis-à-vis G.H.W.

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Bush, leading to more informal interactions between the two leaders. G.H.W. Bush had asserted that personal diplomacy was vital for successful foreign policy, and Scowcroft argued that it was necessary to project President Bush as a prominent and decisive world leader by making significant decisions in the alliance with Europe.154 The case for the expansion of NATO can be attributed to these trends. This approach was also a continuation of Nitze’s image for the US president, where he had argued for the promotion of the US president as a world figure,155 which is an additional factor to the consistencies of objectives, rhetoric and trends from NSC 68 to the policy documents and directives promulgated during the era of G.H.W. Bush. Regarding the role of ideological factors, it can be observed that, despite the presence of decision-makers with neoconservative orientations and a combination of Wilsonian and military global aspirations (Paul Wolfowitz), the G.H.W. Bush administration, with regard to US foreign policy, displayed realist trends and strategy towards Iraq, guided by the rational calculation of the national interest. Although the theme of just war was debated in academic circles with reference to the sanction for war, the policy documents, official statements and presidential speeches before 1991 Gulf War did not specifically refer to jus ad bellum – justifications for war, or observance of jus in bello – justice in war (implying limitations on military means), or jus post bellum – justice after war – implying the social and political justice in Iraq. Similarly, the Bush administration had not committed the US to the cause of humanitarian intervention. The administration was aware that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a lingering and violent conflict with the US military, being an occupying power in a bitterly hostile terrain.156 The sanctions imposed on Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait were directed at weakening Saddam Hussein’s regime, to maximize the possibilities of internal dissent leading to his overthrow and the restriction of his influence in the region. Instead, the continuation of sanctions after the war caused severe humanitarian impacts on the Iraqi society and the death of thousands. The death of half a million Iraqi children due to the horrific impacts of sanctions – more children than the number who died in Hiroshima – seemed justified and ‘worth it’ to Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN.157 The US policy towards post-1991 Iraq and the sanctions contributed to the further fragmentation of Iraqi society and, ironically, the strengthening of Saddam Hussein’s regime, with his manipulation of the funds from the Oil For Food Programme.158 Therefore, there were minimal chances of

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a domestic change to overthrow the Ba’ath regime and more reasons for the US, later, to project Saddam Hussein as a tyrant and a threat to the region’s peace. Considering the geostrategic calculation by the US of its interests at the end of the war, an uprising might have led to the changes in the socio-political structure as well as the territorial boundaries of the Iraqi state. At the time of the Shiite and Kurdish uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney argued that, with the concerns of sectarian strife in Iraq, there had also arisen fears of Iran restarting a conflict with Iraq. Moreover, there were concerns that Kurds in the north and the Turkish leadership were not receptive to the idea of an independent Kurdistan; therefore, it had not been in US interests to disrupt its relations with Turkey. However, Cheney, who had defended the administration’s decision to keep Saddam Hussein in power,159 later shifted to advocate the invasion and promotion of democracy in Iraq at the time of the decision to wage the Gulf War in 2003. The re-emergence of neoconservative ideology and arguments for global dominance by the US had been a complementary theme contributing to the post-1991 Gulf War shifts in US foreign policy and the policy towards Iraq. Referring to the inquiry into the factors that led to war against Iraq in 2003, and further to invasion, the cases for authorization of war in 1991 can also be a useful guide. President G.H.W. Bush had not sought congressional approval for the deployment of 50,000 US troops in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region; however, the attack on the Iraqi army required congressional approval. The House Joint Resolution 77 was approved on 12 January 1991 by 52 to 47 in the Senate and 250 to 183 in the House.160 Despite the emphases on sovereignty, international law and national interest, the bill did not pass by a clear majority. The fear of escalation by Saddam Hussein was exaggerated in order to gain congressional approval for war. The debates on war and the necessity of military action gradually set the stage for further arguments on the waging of necessary wars to maintain world peace and US dominance. The neoconservatives also capitalized on the US and allied victory in the 1991 Gulf War, and they further strengthened their arguments for a global role for the US, the definition of national interest through the preservation of American pre-eminence and – by the same principle – application of the same approach to keep America at the pinnacle.161 Moreover, a gradual case for military action and intervention in Iraq was built by the neoconservative commentators.162 The victory of US and

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allied forces in the 1991 Gulf War had sent a symbolic strong message to other great powers about the emerging role of the US, and contributed to more assertive neoconservative discourses on US foreign policy, which had significant influence on the US Congress on decision-making regarding the use of military force in future. While the Authorization of Use of Force Resolution against Iraq in 1991 was approved by the US Senate, by 52:47 votes, and 250:183 in the House of Representatives, after 9/11 the Authorization of Use of Military Force Resolution (AUMF) in 18 September 2001 passed with a significant majority, with only one member, Barbara Lee, voting against it in the House of Representatives, and two members, Larry Craig and Jesse Helms, voting against it in the Senate. However, another vote on 12 September 2002, calling for the sanctioning of the war on Iraq, was more contested than in 2001, but less so than in 1991. In Chapter 4, I begin with the post-9/11 official discourse of the G.W. Bush administration and continue to the decision of the 2003 Gulf War – invasion, occupation and US policies in Iraq – until elections in January 2005.

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4 PR ESIDENT G.W. BUSH’S ADMINISTR ATION, 9/11, THE 2003 GULF WAR AND 2005 ELECTIONS IN IR AQ

In this chapter, I trace the G.W. Bush administration’s grand strategy objectives before 9/11 and the plan to effect regime change in Iraq and examine G.W. Bush’s post-9/11 strategy and the statements towards the future role of the US, gradually building a case and plan for attacking Iraq under the pretext of preventing a strategic threat directed against US and its allies despite no credible evidence of Iraq’s WMD; the official discourses were based on imminent strategic objectives and the possibility of transfer of WMD to Al Qaeda. Furthermore, the discourses were developed to build a case for humanitarian intervention, promoting democracy, neoliberal reforms and capitalism. I explain the post-war policies and strategies of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the decision to hold elections under the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) and also analyze the discourses on the 2003 Gulf War. Finally, I evaluate the role of the 2003 Gulf War from the perspective of US hegemony and the theoretical construct of empire.

G.W. Bush administration’s global strategic planning from 20 January 2001 to 9/11 In his first inaugural address on 20 January 2001, G.W. Bush highlighted the US global mission:

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We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors . . . We will defend our allies and our interests.1 G.W. Bush hinted towards US active involvement in the affairs of economically declining states where their people are victimized by tyrannical rulers. His words implied the willingness of his administration to intervene in the affairs of other states on humanitarian grounds – as perceived, identified and defined specifically by the G.W. Bush administration’s policy-makers: Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do. And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveller on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.2 On 23 January 2001, the US Department of State promulgated a memorandum entitled Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy, which acknowledged that regime change in Iraq was the US’s favoured policy, but that the US should encourage and support the Iraqi people to bring about this change.3 The idea of war, military intervention or the use of US military force to affect regime change was not promoted by the Department of State. Al Qaeda remained the top priority of US security agencies, and it is significant to note that states comprising Muslim populations had already been categorized with a specific terminology. It was expressed in the official discourses that Al Qaeda wanted to evict the US from the ‘Muslim world’. Similarly, on 25 January 2001 the National Security Council’s member Richard A. Clarke wrote the first memo for the G.W. Bush administration. It was entitled Presidential Policy Initiative/ Review – The Al-Qida Network. It highlighted the increasing influence of Al Qaeda and described its aims: • to drive out the US of the Muslim world, forcing the withdrawal of our military and economic presence in countries from Morocco to Indonesia; • to replace moderate, modern, Western regimes in Muslim countries with theocracies modelled along the lines of Taliban.4

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It is evident that the Department of State had projected the Taliban as an anti-democratic, anti-western, extremist and regressive movement, and exonerated the US from any responsibility in their creation and military support. Eventually, much later, in 2009, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that the US had created the Taliban,5 but that it had later abandoned them along with the collaborating military and pseudo-political regimes in Pakistan. However, it fulfilled the political objectives of G.W. Bush’s administration to exploit the rise of the Taliban for propagating the rhetoric of preserving the ‘western’ values of democracy, modernism and moderation. The same memo called for an urgent Principals Level Review on the Al Qaeda network. It described the approach in response to the attack on the USS Cole: We should take advantage of the policy that we will respond at a time and place and a manner of our own choosing and not be forced into knee jerk responses.6 On 30 April 2001, the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism compiled a report entitled Patterns of Global Terrorism – 2000, which warned of global terrorist threats and also named Osama bin Laden as one of the main threats to US security. It also warned the Taliban that they would be held responsible for any attacks undertaken by Bin Laden7 on US territory. These reports show that the G.W. Bush administration had been informed of a possible terrorist attack before 9/11. It can also be observed that although these reports identified Al Qaeda and Bin Laden as threats to the US, Saddam Hussein had been continually included in the official statements before 9/11, and parallels were drawn between Saddam Hussein and extremists. On 1 May 2001, while speaking at the National Defense University, G.W. Bush argued that Saddam Hussein was an ideological and strategic adversary and that the US must re-create its global military strategy: Like Saddam Hussein, some of today’s tyrants are gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America. They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough.8

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While G.W. Bush’s main focus was on Saddam Hussein, on 6 August 2001 he was informed in his daily brief that Bin Laden was planning an attack inside the US,9 and a few weeks later an attack occurred on 11 September 2001.

G.W. Bush administration’s ideological orientation and the post-9/11 and neoconservative resurgence G.W. Bush’s administration displayed a resurgence of a pattern that had been introduced at the time of Nitze and developed during Reagan’s presidency. Tracing the connection between Nitze’s systematic inclusion of the Wall Street System for building US hegemony and the inclusion of an elite group of neoconservative advisers, O’Loughlin observed a pattern from the formation of the Committee on Present Danger (CPD) under Paul Nitze and, later, to its members being granted prominent positions in the Reagan administration. Similarly Albert Wohlstetter’s thinking and writings had significant ideological and intellectual influence on Paul Wolfowitz, a neoconservative. As a student, Wolfowitz had also worked with Nitze. As explained in Chapter 3, Wolfowitz had been associated with G.H.W. Bush’s administration and was the architect of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, calling for a globally assertive role for the US. He later joined G.W. Bush’s administration. In addition, the team – which had earlier worked with G.H.W. Bush – re-emerged as the elite group of decision-makers under G.W. Bush, called the ‘Vulcans’, after the Roman god of fire, the forge and metalwork.10 They were not ideologically neoconservative, but they supported the neoconservative vision of a globally dominant role for the US and they broadly supported G.W. Bush’s ideas.11 The G.W. Bush administration had a hierarchy whereby Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were among the planners and decision-makers. With the exception of Colin Powell, they were predominantly inclined towards an assertive approach to building a global economic order, complemented with offensive military strategy.12 Rumsfeld took over charge of the office of Secretary of Defense, having held the same office under President Gerald Ford. He had served as a member of the White House staff under Richard Nixon. He was a staunch advocate of the offensive use of US military force.13 Vice President Richard Cheney had a long-term political association with Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld took charge of the Office of Economic

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Opportunity (OEO) in 1969, he included Cheney in his team of policymakers. Cheney later served as Secretary of Defense under G.H.W. Bush and was the CEO of the oil cartel Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Colin Powell was the Secretary of State from 2001 to 2006; he was a Vietnam veteran and the architect of the Powell Doctrine, which called for restrictive criteria in decisions for using military force.14 Powell did not favour war as the foremost solution to international conflicts because of the specific psychological orientation, particular to Vietnam veterans, which had been symbolized as a barrier ‘ten miles high and fifty miles long’ between those who fought the Vietnam War and those who avoided it.15 Powell opined that those who have never been in active combat should be cautious when arguing for offensive wars. Therefore, there were differences of opinion on the use of force between Powell and the rest of the Vulcans. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, another Vietnam veteran, also shared Powell’s views, and both wanted a cautious approach towards Iraq, especially with the lingering memory of ‘Operation Scorpion’16 from the 1991 Gulf War. Condoleezza Rice had the portfolio of National Security Advisor. She had earlier served as the Provost at Stanford University. She specialized in Russian politics and as a student had been influenced by Madeleine Albright’s father, Joseph Korbel. She had served as the National Security Advisor during G.H.W. Bush’s administration and therefore had firsthand experience in dealing with the Iraqi regime in 1990–91 and the diplomatic negotiations with the USSR. Paul Wolfowitz served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He had ideologically opposed the leftist revolution in the 1960s and was influenced by thinkers including Leo Strauss and L.L. Nunn17 and the strategist Albert Wohlstetter.18 Regarding post-9/11 strategy towards Iraq, Wolfowitz concurred with Rumsfeld’s inclination towards a proactive approach – based on his interaction with Saddam Hussein in 1983 and his experience during the Gulf Crisis 1990–91. While serving as advisor to Fred Ikle at the RAND institute, Wolfowitz’s opinion corresponded with those of Wohlstetter, Acheson and Nitze,19 and the same views resonated in building a case for preventive war against Iraq, where he had propagated a serious concern regarding US adversaries or potential adversaries acquiring nuclear weapons.20 Richard Perle was the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, and, similarly to Wolfowitz, argued for a proactive and offensive approach in foreign and defence policy. Stephen Hadley was the Deputy National Security Advisor and had served as the Assistant

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Secretary of Defense for the International Security Policy for G.H.W. Bush. Robert Blackwill was the National Security Council’s Deputy for Iraq. Dov S. Zaikheim served as Deputy Secretary for Planning and Resources and had been associated with the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Robert Zoellick held the office of United States Deputy Secretary of State.21 Wolfowitz, Zaikheim, Zoellick and Perle had been significantly influenced by the PNAC, and the policy objectives propagated by the PNAC were promoted as the ‘national interest’ by the neoconservatives among the Republicans. PNAC had already visualized the possibility of a catastrophic incident, ‘a new Pearl Harbor’,22 which would compel the US to launch aggressive wars and take the lead in asserting its global role. PNAC members had had a significant influence on the decision to wage the 2003 Gulf War.23 According to Robert Kagan, the new administration of G.W. Bush and their post-9/11 US policy overall had displayed an enlightened self-interest indistinguishable from idealism. America did not go through a transformation but rediscovered its original identity, and became more itself;24 and it turned into a powerful and progressive state. The Pentagon Party – as the Vulcans were also called – employed both realist and idealist cosmopolitan rhetoric. Cheney and Rumsfeld were realist in their approach; Wolfowitz, on the other hand, regarded power as a means for promoting liberal values. Pierre Hassner called him a ‘Wilsonian in Boots’.25 This was considered a new approach – an amalgamation of two opposing traditions – into the rise of ‘Reaganite-Wilsonianism’ or ‘interventionist-isolationism’, where the US administration chose to be isolationist and was not concerned about world opinion, and interventionist in the way that it chose to intervene wherever it deemed necessary.26 This approach was advocated by realist scholar practitioner Kissinger when he argued that realism needed to be coupled with a ‘vision’, providing a sense of ‘hope and possibility’ that were in a sense conjectural.27 The roots of this policy can also be traced to the disagreements between President Wilson and his domestic opponent, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge. They clashed over the military commitments of US forces overseas. This remained a matter of debate during the presidencies of F.D. Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, all of whom had a communitarian vision of world order which implied open doors, free trade, bilateral alliances, reduced tariffs, anti-statism, individual rights and democracy. This vision, along

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with the indoctrination of ‘American’ values and identity, was expected to form a conceptual bridge between the American sense of exceptionalism and international order.28 Kissinger argued that US power, will and moral impetus should be employed to shape the entire international system in accordance with its own values. G.W. Bush referred to American values in his inaugural address – ‘And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth’29 – as values that should be promoted universally. Kissinger argued that both schools of thought – one that saw America as a beacon and the other that saw America as a crusader – were ‘striving for a global international order based on democracy, free commerce and international law, and have emerged out of American experience’.30 In terms of post-Cold War international relations and the rise of liberal and cosmopolitan discourses, Kissinger argued that excessive realism produces stagnation, and that excessive idealism leads to crusades and eventual disillusionment because the pursuit of moral ends has different implications for international affairs than for domestic politics. Successful foreign policy requires the management of nuances in a continuous process; as Alexander Hamilton states, it is ‘the coolest calculation of national interest’.31 Visualizing the post-9/11 global strategy for the US, the G.W. Bush administration advocated a proactive military strategy coupled with the promotion of democracy and liberal economic policies in areas of conflict, especially in the Middle East, where societies have partially adopted ‘American’ culture and where economic prosperity through monetary competition and neoliberal market economy might be welcomed. From this perspective, post-9/11 US grand strategy under the G.W. Bush administration displayed a drastic shift towards militarily proactive global policy. This strategy was directed towards any entity that the US identified as hostile, aggressive and militarily capable. Although the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) was formulated before 9/11, it was formally promulgated on 30 September 2001. It laid out the central objectives as: To shift the basis of defense planning from a ‘threat-based’ model that has dominated the thinking in the past to a ‘capability-based’ model for future. The capability-based model focuses more on how an adversary might fight rather than whom the adversary might be or where the war might occur. Adopting this capabilities-based

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approach to planning requires that the nation maintain its military advantages in key areas while it develops new areas of military advantage and denies asymmetric advantages to adversaries.32 It is worth noting that the use of word ‘might’ – regarding the tactics of an adversary – implies that the US policy-makers wanted to retain the freedom to speculate upon the possibilities of an identified adversary’s plan of attack, military capabilities and the arena of conflict. The defined strategic objectives in the QDR also indicated that US foreign policy was going to benefit from advanced military capability, and that proactive military policies may help in achieving the objective of maintaining US hegemony and keeping the adversaries as well as the allies subservient to US military predominance. Regarding the need to form coalitions, QDR quoted the example of the 1991 Gulf War: The United States has demonstrated unmatched ability to develop coalitions of states to confront particular challenges, including Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. This ability will be critically important in responding to the events of September 11, 2001.33 The example of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, with reference to post-9/11 policy, had been indicative of the planning for the 2003 Gulf War and the need for building an allied military coalition. Among the defence policy goals, the QDR called for assuring alliances, dissuading future military competition and deterring threats and coercion against US interests, and stressed that the future strategy should be ‘If deterrence fails, decisively defeating an adversary’.34 Elaborating on the ‘Paradigm Shift in Force Planning’, the QDR explained one of the purposes of the new force-sizing construct as combining an aggressive approach with political objectives of regime change: Swiftly defeat aggression in overlapping major conflicts while preserving for the President the option to call for a decisive victory in one of those conflicts – including the possibility of regime change or occupation.35 While the G.W. Bush administration had already declared regime change in Iraq as its policy objective, the arguments for aggressive war

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and decisive victory had gradually built a case for the 2003 Gulf War, and 9/11 was carefully exploited to strengthen these policy objectives. This was in contrast to G.H.W. Bush’s approach, which had discouraged the notions of occupation or regime change through military intervention, especially in the case of Iraq. In November 2001, the US Department of State listed Iraq among the states sponsoring terrorism and building biological weapons.36 By 27 November 2001, Rumsfeld was working with Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith to link Iraq to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in the US in 2001. The plan for the invasion of Iraq had been formulated and included the destruction of the Iraqi strategic arsenal, leading to US control of the Iraqi oil industry.37 While the plans for an attack and invasion of Iraq were already in the pipeline before 9/11, on 18 December 2001 the Bureau of Intelligence Research acknowledged that military action against Iraq, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of links to the 11 September attacks, would create problems both for Paris and Berlin; however, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair would – at substantial political cost – publicly support a US decision to bomb Iraq.38 In the second State of the Union address on 29 January 2002, G.W. Bush called the war and post-war policy in Afghanistan a success and employed the rhetoric of ‘just war’, also implying that the WoT should be a continuous policy: ‘Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears and showed us the true scope of the task ahead.’39 Elaborating on the notion of war on terror, G.W. Bush claimed: Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice. And second, we must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom . . . Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror . . . This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.40

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Continuing the reference to Iraq, Bush claimed: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an ‘Axis of Evil’, arming to threaten the peace of the world . . . They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic . . . I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer.41 Supporting President G.W. Bush’s stereotyping and use of language, and stressing the urgency to prevent a perceived attack, the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) neoconservative commentator Newt Gingrich used the term ‘evil’ and argued that pre-emption was a necessity, and that there was a clear case for singling out Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘Axis of Evil’.42 Similarly, AEI’s Norman Podhoretz strengthened the neoconservative claim that 9/11 had ushered the US into a new era, where it should assume a global role.43 On 22 March 2002, at a press conference with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the Palacio de Gobierno in Monterrey, Mexico, G.W. Bush, referring to Saddam Hussein and proposing regime change in Iraq, stated: He is a dangerous man who possesses the world’s most dangerous weapons. And it is incumbent upon freedom-loving nations to hold him accountable, which is precisely what the United States of America will do. We’d like to see a regime change in Iraq. That’s been the longstanding policy of the US government.44 However, throughout 2002, G.W. Bush had laid greater emphasis on Saddam Hussein’s defiance of UN Resolutions and the use of chemical and biological weapons on Iraqis, thereby building a case for humanitarian intervention in Iraq. To strengthen the claims voiced by the G.W. Bush administration, on 20 June 2002 the Cabinet Office presented a document which claimed that Iraq retained prohibited missiles systems and chemical and biological weapons and was seeking WMD technology.45 The systematic information dissemination had a significant effect on governmental debates, leading to the classification of ambiguous evidence into ‘clear dangers’ and the overlooking of rational evaluations. From 31 July to 1 August 2002, the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the United States Senate held a hearing to examine threats, responses

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and regional considerations surrounding Iraq. The Chairman, Senator Joseph Biden, related 9/11 to Saddam Hussein: The attacks of 9/11 have forever transformed how Americans see the world . . . We must confront clear dangers with a new sense of urgency and resolve. Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, in my view, is one of those clear dangers. Even if the right response to his pursuits is not so crystal clear, one thing is clear. Those weapons must be dislodged from Saddam or Saddam must be dislodged from power.46 There had been an acceptance that the US’s ‘right response’ to Saddam Hussein’s ‘pursuits’ may not be crystal clear. This approach demonstrated how the gradual rise in official discourses had enabled a drastic shift from the previous approach in the memorandum on 25 January 2001, which had emphasized the need for a response in time and place and the manner of the US’s choosing, and not to be forced into a knee-jerk reaction, as well as changes in G.H.W. Bush’s administration’s strategy towards Iraq. In addition, there was an acceptance that the ambiguity of Saddam Hussein’s ‘pursuits’ should not hinder the planning for the war, the intervention to remove him and/or to eliminate the ‘unverified’ WMD and related capabilities. These debates were significantly influenced by the propagated need for urgent reaction to 9/11. Similarly, the discourse constructed through the employment of the terms ‘urgency’ to respond with a strong ‘resolve’ led to deliberately overshadowing the fact that G.W. Bush had also employed terminologies related to a ‘just war’, according to which the actual adversary and its intentions, as well his capabilities to inflict harm, had to be identified. The discourse had been affected and guided by a selective inclusion of specific factors, as a result of the systematic propagation of the sense of fear and imminent threat, the need for humanitarian intervention and the urgent duty to democratize failing states. During the same proceedings at the Senate, Senator Richard G. Lugar claimed that, at the time of the Gulf Crisis, he advised President G.H.W. Bush to ‘send our forces to Baghdad and finish the job. And, for a number of reasons, our President chose instead to pursue a policy of containment’.47 Similarly, regarding the threat of WMD or their transfer to terrorists, Ambassador Richard Butler argued that Saddam Hussein had the motive, means and opportunity to deploy them, as he had had liaisons with terrorists in the past.48 Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear

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physicist and the President of the Council on Middle Eastern Affairs, claimed that Iraq had an active nuclear and WMD programme, which could develop a weapon by 2005, and Bin Laden had been a frequent visitor to the Iraqi Embassy in Khartoum during his stay in Sudan until 1996.49 This was taken as credible evidence to draw a connection between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Fouad Ajami claimed that there was an indirect link between 9/11 and Iraq, and that the US would have to make a link and insist on its right to prosecute the war because it was debating this war (2003) as a consequence of 9/11. He further claimed that US forces invading Iraq would be seen as liberators: ‘We will be greeted with kites and boom boxes.’50 Ajami further argued that a Kemalist model – the government of the people, despite the people – had been successful in some Middle Eastern states; therefore, it should be experimented in Iraq. It could be inferred from Ajami’s argument that were the US able to install a pro-US regime in Iraq, that regime would sustain itself, in the same way as had other pro-US regimes in the Middle East. Ajami argued: Sometimes you just do things for the people despite the people. You modernize them, you tell them the truth . . . And the Egyptian revolution of Nasser, Sadaat and Mubarak has been in saddle for now half a century, and there is no evidence that anyone could overthrow these governments. They know. That’s one thing they know is how to stay in power.51 These claims overshadowed rational opinions. However, keeping in view his previous research findings describing the negative impacts of US intervention in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War,52 and credible facts that emerged after 9/11, Anthony H. Cordesman warned: It is very easy to be arrogant about trying to predict a war that no one has ever fought in the face of the kind of information you can obtain from unclassified sources. And, to be perfectly blunt, I think only fools would bet the lives of other men’s sons and daughters on their own arrogance and call this force a ‘cakewalk’ or a ‘speed bump’ or a war whose risks you can easily dismiss.53 He asserted that assessments regarding the nuclear capability and probable threat from a state cannot be clearly made, and therefore it might

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not be logical to argue that Iraq had the weapons or the intention to use them against the US and its allies.54 Morton H. Halperin called for containment plus a policy of a ‘new sanctions’ regime and opposed an invasion because US forces would find themselves in extremely hostile terrain.55 General Hoar opposed the idea of dependence on Ahmad Chalabi as the main leader in post-invasion Iraq.56 Samuel R. Berger, former National Security Advisor, noted that historically there was no relation between the Islamic fundamentalists and Saddam Hussein. The fundamentalists saw him as secular, believing that he had killed more religious clerics than Americans.57 Phoebe Marr warned of the potential fragmentation of Iraqi society once the Ba’ath regime was decapitated and questions of alternative leadership were raised. She claimed that, despite the ethnic and sectarian divisions, the chances of Iraqi society fragmenting into Kurdish north, Shiite south and Arab Sunni centre were inconceivable. She supported Chalabi as the alternative leader for Iraq, because of his pro-US views. She claimed that a coup or a change from within, without the actual presence of US forces in Iraq, would be destabilizing.58 Therefore, despite pointing to domestic and regional problems, Marr’s opinions strengthened US planning for invasion and the deployment of US troops in Iraq. Referring to the US interests relating to oil in Iraq and the competition with Russia, Biden highlighted the fact that the Russians were owed US$11 billion for the purpose of developing oil fields in Iraq, and that Gazprom and Lukoil had showed interest in a consortium with US companies, but warned that the Russians would also be wary, believing that if the US took over Iraq, Russia would lose these contracts.59 It became clear that Chalabi was the most suitable candidate to install a US-friendly regime in postwar Iraq and ensure US oil-related interests.60 Despite the concerns of violence and chaos as a result of war and US intervention, the overall debate was significantly influenced by the plans for the reconstruction and political restructuring of Iraq. Continuing with the post-war plans for Iraq, the Executive Director of the Iraq foundation, Rend Rahim Francke, drafted a plan for postwar political reformation and economic restoration in Iraq, calling for the eradication of remnants of the old regime’s institutions.61 The co-director of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the AUSA/CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Col. Scott R. Feil, called for reconciliation and justice62 in post-war Iraq, including rebuilding communities

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and ensuring human rights. Casper Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense, argued that ‘even if there is chaos in Iraq after Saddam, it will be better than Saddam’.63 It is evident that, after the shock of 9/11, the propagated ‘urgency’ to react and the idealist discourse of humanitarianism, democracy and liberal economics was utilized to attack Iraq and impose a reconstruction plan. It can be observed that a particular form of interpretation became acceptable. Official policy-makers seek to constitute themselves as having authority to speak about a foreign policy issue: their formal authority is derived from their institutional location, and authority is also built on knowing about a particular issue. Knowledge therefore becomes important for establishing authority and this, in turn, creates a new analytical optic for discourse analysis of foreign policy as different genres – policy speech, journalist reportage and academic analysis, for instance – establish a particular form of knowledge as acceptable.64 On 7 August 2002, the CIA promulgated a report, ‘Post War Occupations of Germany and Japan: Implications for Iraq’, which stated its basic principle to be ‘Obtaining an international mandate’ as ‘regional support will be key for any US occupation of Iraq’. Speculating further on the post-war reconstruction and transfer of authority, it stated: ‘A rapid transfer of authority to local officials is possible in Iraq because the country’s large bureaucracy probably would survive regime change’.65 Regarding Iraqi society, it declared: Iraq’s lack of national identity or homogeneous population renders Japan model difficult to use. The German model offer better parallel for Iraq, but implementation would require a large, extended US presence.66 The document employed the term ‘Denazification’,67 and it is worth noting that, since Saddam Hussein had already been equated to Hitler, the policy of de-Ba’athification was promoted as a rational post-Saddam strategy in Iraq. On 15 August 2002, Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter W. Rodman prepared a memo titled ‘Who Will Govern Iraq?’, which drew analogies with the post-World War II cases of Germany and Japan and related these to the experience of the occupation of Afghanistan. Rodman suggested that moderate forces in Iraq would have to be engaged to fill the post-war leadership vacuum, in order to prevent the militants from taking control.68

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On 29 August 2002, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research formulated a confidential memorandum titled ‘Problems and Prospects of “Justifying” War with Iraq’, which detailed the principles of ‘just war’ – with emphasis on jus ad bellum. This memo highlighted the fact that many countries allied with the US harboured grave doubts about the advisability of a reported US plan for an all-out attack on Iraq. It also stated: long-term post war reconstruction plans would have to be a part of any persuasive presentation. Otherwise, the prospects of the complete destruction of Iraqi society would be seen as unjustified.69 The discourse on ‘just war’ included the notions of ‘preventive war against a nuclear armed Iraq’ with a need for justice and democracy in post-war Iraq. This was in contrast to President G.H.W. Bush’s speeches and official discourses during the 1991 Gulf War and his efforts to keep US policy in line with UN Resolutions. G.H.W. Bush maintained a realist and rational/calculating approach towards the UN and for post-1991 Iraq, while G.W. Bush’s administration exploited liberal cosmopolitan reasoning by engaging in the debates of ‘just war’ and the arguments for rethinking and reformulating international law to confront global terrorists and to categorize rogue and failing states and declare them as illegitimate. The difference in discourse also indicated the changing US approach towards the UN. In his address to the UN on 12 September 2002, G.W. Bush claimed that ‘Al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq’.70 He further claimed that ‘Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminium tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon’ and that ‘Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150 kilometres permitted by the UN. Work at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is building more long-range missiles that could inflict mass death throughout the region’.71 However, giving an ultimatum to the Iraqi regime, Bush emphasized more on other issues related to justice, humanitarianism and liberty: If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi’a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.72

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While a case for invasion had been built, a few senior officials at the Pentagon raised doubts regarding the CIA’s campaign to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. On 12 September 2002, a memorandum from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP) was formulated to counter this criticism by Pentagon officials.73 G.W. Bush further reiterated the rhetoric of the US’s assumed responsibility to address the ‘emerging’ strategic danger from Iraq, emancipate the people and restructure Iraqi society to build a new democratic political order in the Middle East. He strongly related the imminent war to the plans for a new global order and an alternative – presumably – peaceful future for Iraqis and the world: If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world.74 After this speech, Iraq agreed to the inspection by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)75 on 16 September 2002, and later the Blix Report on 27 January 2003 certified that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons or delivery systems;76 but the G.W. Bush administration had committed itself to a preventive war, military intervention without UN approval and a significant financial contribution from its allies. Hans Blix’s report rebutted the claims about WMD and related delivery systems in Iraq. After extensive inspections of declared and undeclared production sites and mobile production facilities, no evidence was found of the proscribed weapons, activities or agents.77 Blix also undermined another claim regarding import tubes for centrifuge devices intended to process the uranium-235 needed for a nuclear explosion.78 Moreover, Iraq did not possess the capability to convert its L-29 remotely piloted vehicles to bombers with chemical or biological bombs. The only credible threat was the launching of missiles with chemical or biological weapon warheads. If Iraq had possessed medium-range Scud missiles; to fire them using a liquid-propelled fuel would have required at least 30 to 40 minutes of preparation, and if fired using solid-propelled fuel, would have required at least 45 minutes or more. If Iraq had prepared

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such missiles, this would have been discovered by satellites as well as the monitoring and surveillance systems installed by the allied forces, which were also equipped with the most modern and sophisticated missileinterceptors and so they could have identified and destroyed any missile fired on them. Iraq’s Al Samud missiles had already been destroyed. Blix asserted that the destruction of Al Samud missiles was genuine: 72 Al Samud missiles, including their combat warheads, launchers and engines, had been destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision.79 Later, Blix reiterated in an interview with CNN that the reports by Iraq about the destruction of its biological and chemical weapons were also accurate.80 Blix claimed that some elements of the Pentagon were behind a smear campaign against him.81 Despite the fact that the Blix Report had provided proof that Iraq did not possess WMD, the discourses comprising humanitarianism, democracy and liberal economy overshadowed the issue of strategic threat. The notion of preventive war was being related to the politicoeconomic objectives of US grand strategy, as became evident in the policy documents promulgated at the end of 2002. On 26 September 2002, G.W. Bush, quoting the UK government’s dossier,82 stated to congressional leaders: ‘The danger to our country is grave. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the orders were given.’83 This ‘45 minutes’ claim had been refuted by the UK government and, later, in the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report.84 However, AEI senior fellow Newt Gingrich strengthened the claim that Iraq could launch a tactical attack on US interests and had alluded as such to the UN weapon inspectors.85 In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency produced a report titled ‘Iraq – Key WMD facilities – An Operational Support Study’, which reiterated the claim that Iraq had an ongoing chemical weapons programme, and therefore it was vital that the UN inspections continue.86 Continuing to disseminate the post-9/11 threat from Iraq, the grand strategy also related the war on Afghanistan and the planned war on Iraq to the US global role and WoT. One of the most significant policy documents during G.W. Bush’s first term was the National Security Strategy 2002 (NSS 2002), promulgated in September 2002. It declared that the US had attained a status of ‘unparalleled responsibilities, obligations and opportunities’.87 Unlike the policy documents during G.H.W. Bush’s term and his rhetoric of New World Order, NSS 2002 called for the extension of the US global

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role along with waging a global WoT. It stated that ‘the war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration’.88 It called for an aggressive and preventive military policy: America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.89 Building a case for intervention and the reconstruction of the economic infrastructure of ‘weak states’, in order to ensure the US’s security and safeguarding of its national interests, G.W. Bush insisted: The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interest as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.90 NSS 2002, while continuing with the discourse of an aggressively preventive war and elaborating the goals of US foreign policy and national interest, declared that the US would: Ignite a new era of global economic growth through free market and free trade. Expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy.91 While alluding to the fall of the USSR and the demise of the militant visions of class, nation and race, NSS 2002 related the past trends to the emerging challenges: ‘America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.’92 It is worth noting that most of these failing states had been targets of US intervention and proxy wars, which had contributed to their socio-political degeneration, leading further to the rise of war-fatigued, militant reactionary movements: the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The global responsibility assumed by the US had remained undefined and unlimited; however, there was a continuity of rhetoric directed to creating an apocalyptic image of adversary, ‘to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil’.93 It further stated that the enemies of the US ‘reject basic human

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values and hate the US and everything for which it stands’.94 Declaring the intention of going against the UN and international law, NSS 2002 affirmed that the US is fighting ‘terrorists of global reach’;95 therefore, to counter these threats: We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country.96 While addressing the political grievances among conflict-ridden states and the rise of reactionary organizations, NSS 2002 declared ‘no cause justifies terror’.97 However, with the exploitation of 9/11 as an unexpected attack, the US implied that any violence against it was unjustified, but exempted itself from using pre-emptive and preventive wars and violence for promotion of the causes of humanitarianism, freedom, democracy and liberal economy. The discourses enabled the US administration to omit the terror on civilians that the wars were likely to inflict by subsuming them under the rhetoric of humanitarianism and democracy. By equating terrorists with tyrants,98 the administration drew parallels between despotic regimes and terrorists and alluded to the possibility of employing similar military means for dictators as for terrorists. NSS 2002 proclaimed: The struggle against terrorism is different from any other war in our history . . . our enemies have seen what civilized nations can, and will, do against regimes that harbour, support and use terrorism to achieve their political goals.99 It had been implied that the ‘civilized’ nations might exercise military force to overthrow dictatorial regimes. With the reference to Iraq, G.W. Bush reiterated the rhetoric of an imminent missile strike by Iraq on US interests or its allies or the transfer of WMD to rogue states or actors.100 In order to portray the 2003 war as a common interest and a strategic necessity of its allies, NSS 2002 referred to the previous allied operation, placed Iraq among the rogue states and emphasized the existence of WMD. It stated that ‘at the time of the 1991 Gulf War we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq’s designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also

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extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents’.101 In an effort to commit the allies for strategic action, NSS 2002 stated: ‘The attacks of September 11 were also an attack on NATO, as NATO itself recognized when it invoked Article V – “the self-defence clause” – for the first time.’102 NSS 2002 displayed traces of discourses mingling realism with idealism, power and principle, which also resonated in the statements of the policy planners in the G.W. Bush administration.103 This trend can be traced to the discourses developed by Nitze during the formulation of NSC 68. Ideologically, this approach called for creating a prism of conflicting ideals comprising realism, moral arguments and progressive policies. To those policy planners, an adequate strategic approach required the concurrent consideration of ends and principles, along with the speculations about the consequences which were likely to follow from a given line of action in a concrete and specific situation in which the action was proposed. It was projected not as the rejection of the extreme ‘idealist’ or the extreme ‘realist’ position but, rather, as the analysis and consideration of aims and assessment of consequences.104 The formulators of NSC 68 believed that the history of war also indicated that a favourable decision could only be achieved through offensive action. Defence is not of much use without offensive force to support it.105 The defence of the US was promoted as the greatest priority, to be achieved through any measures necessary; it was the nature of the propositions in NSC 68 that it remained a classified document and hidden from public view for 25 years.106 Although there are significant similarities between the policy objectives in NSC 68 and NSS 2002, however, NSS 2002 envisioned a relatively ambitious employment of US military for the attainment of US national interests. There is an observable consistency of certain trends from NSC 68 to NSS 2002. The policy-makers employed rhetorical language in the text of strategy documents. They introduced specific institutional practices to formulate, legitimize and implement their strategy and systematically sidelined credible insights. New key players from outside the administration were engaged to develop campaigns and execute respective plans.107 The introduction of specific players, especially from the market sector, was a trend introduced by Nitze and the introduction of key players during G.W. Bush’s term had been indicative of the rise of an ‘Agency’ and the administration’s efforts to favour the interests of the US business class. As explained earlier, Gowan had argued that deeply-embedded

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monetary as well as strategic interests that constituted the core of the ‘Agency’ had played a significant role in affecting a dramatic shift in post-9/11 US foreign policy – the ‘Bush Turn’.108 NSC 68 warned that the US and the other five nations might face a decline in economic activity, and had offered a Keynesian justification for the mammoth rise in arms spending it had proposed.109 NSC 68 prophesied the rise of the USSR as a destructive ideology which ‘calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin’.110 NSS 2002 repeated the same argument by replacing the USSR with terrorists, who, in a similar vein, were threatening western values and systems.111 It is vital to observe that while NSC 68 had clearly warned of competition between the US and the USSR over the Middle East’s oil resources, it had described the USSR’s geo-strategic objectives: ‘To overrun Western Europe, with the possible exception of the Iberian and Scandinavian Peninsulas; to drive toward the oil-bearing areas of the Near and Middle East; and to consolidate Communist gains in the Far East.’112 However, the formulators of NSS 2002 took care not to highlight these geo-strategic objectives but, instead, dwelt on the idealist, liberal and cosmopolitan arguments in order to portray US interests as the common interests of the allies. Therefore, unlike NSC 68 and NSS 1990, NSS 2002 concealed the vital importance of oil for the US through themes of justice, humanitarianism and democracy. However, US dependence on Middle Eastern oil had been reiterated in presidential statements. Moreover, another returning pattern can be identified by observing a consistency in policy through the creation of the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW) after the attack on Pearl Harbor113 and the Committee on Present Danger (CPD) at the time of the formulation of NSC 68. Similarly, after 9/11, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans (OSP) under the Iraq Intelligence Group were created to supervise decision-making. The special offices had assumed the role of guiding US policy and ratifying information which had not been verified. While drafting NSC 68, Nitze ensured that the direst claims about the hostile intentions of the Soviet Union were included, and the opinions of the experts on the Kremlin (including George Kennan, Llewellyn Thompson and Charles Bohlen), were systematically excluded;114 thereby, through the use of hyperbolic language the policy-makers presented a virulent and globally ambitious

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worldview of the USSR. Similarly, while drafting NSS 2002, Abram Shulsky, who headed the OSP, was able to ‘stovepipe’ dubious intelligence regarding Iraq’s alleged nuclear programme, assessing the costs of post-war reconstruction – details purchased from Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and transmitted to the senior officials in the administration of G.W. Bush. There had been a repetitive trend among the decision-makers promoting a specific agenda in policy documents. Nitze had been supportive of the Committee on Present Danger’s (CPD) call for the implementation of NSC 68, and Wolfowitz had been supportive of the findings of the OSP115 and subsequently an advocate of offensive military policy. On 7 October 2002, G.W. Bush reiterated that there was a significant strategic nuclear threat from Iraq: Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his ‘nuclear mujahideen’ – his nuclear holy warriors. Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. 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.116 There was a systematic campaign to draw a connection between 9/11, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and, furthermore, to strengthen these claims by using terms such as ‘last chance’ and ‘vengeance’ along with subtle allusions to the 1991 Gulf War. On 7 October 2002, George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, in a letter to the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Robert Graham, asserted that the threat from Iraq was real and Saddam Hussein was capable of attacking US interests, and was likely to transfer WMD to terrorist organizations: Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.117 This report also asserted that there was solid evidence of Al Qaeda’s liaisons with the Ba’ath regime and its presence in Iraq.118 On 8 October 2002, Bush’s arguments were supported by the Department of Defense, which provided a briefing entitled ‘Iraqi Denial

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and Deception for Weapons of Mass Destruction & Ballistic Missile Programs’.119 This report relied heavily on the British government’s assessment of the Iraqi WMD capability, and it estimated that Iraq had carefully hidden its WMD and missile technology arsenal and deliberately misled the UN weapon inspectors. The official documents and discourses contributed to the promulgation of the ‘Authorization of Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution 2002’, H.J. Res. 114, Public Law 107–243 on 16 October 2002, which repeated the claims of the Iraqi WMD programme that it violated UN Resolutions for inspection. Regarding the threats to the US in the post-9/11 era, the H.J. Res., 114 stated: Whereas members of al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests including attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq . . . Whereas The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105–338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.120 The propagated national interest of the US had been combined with the need to promote US-friendly regimes in the Middle East. On 28 October 2002, G.W. Bush stated: We are dependent upon foreign sources of crude oil and some of those sources of crude oil aren’t really friendly to the United States of America.121 From July to October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 2002, entitled ‘Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction’, was formulated, estimating that Iraq had WMD capability and that it was likely that it would be able to build nuclear capability and delivery systems within the decade.122 NIE 2002 played a major role in the G.W. Bush administration’s justification of the Gulf War 2003. Alongside the official discourses, on 3 October 2002 the AEI organized a conference entitled ‘The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq’, which included neoconservative policy-maker Richard Perle and commentators on Middle Eastern politics (Bernard Lewis, Oliver Roy and

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Kenan Makiya) along with Iraqi expatriates Ahmad Chalabi and Feisal Istrabadi. Makiya built a case for the US government’s stated policy of regime change in Iraq. While reiterating the assumptions that regime change could be at the expense of a large number of casualties (Iraqi or Israeli), he strengthened the presumptions that Iraq had the capability and/or intention to target Israel,123 thereby exaggerating Iraq’s arsenal and threat. Regarding the political transition to democracy, he argued for a federal structure as the first step for a state-system, resting on the principle that the rights of one part must not be sacrificed for the will of the majority. He asserted that federalism is about the rights of the collective parts of the mosaic that forms Iraqi society.124 Despite warnings from a wide range of sources about the complexity of the Iraqi situation and the dangers of war and occupation, the G.W. Bush administration chose to consult a select group of commentators. Makiya made the most intensive use of the misleading analogy with Nazi Germany and post1945 de-Nazification. Makiya and Richard Perle were clients of Benador Associates, a public relations firm which specialized in representing neoconservative personalities. Makiya had assumed the role of a house intellectual of Ahmad Chalabi and, by end of 2002, Chalabi’s record of corruption and financial embezzlement had been widely advertised.125 By November 2002, it had become clear from Bush’s statements that his administration would disregard the Blix Report and would lead the war and intervention in Iraq: Our goal is not merely to return the inspectors to Iraq; our goal is the disarmament of Iraq. The dictator of Iraq will give up his weapons of mass destruction, or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm him.126 In November 2002, to support the rhetoric on humanitarianism, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office promulgated a dossier which propagated the human rights abuses by Saddam Hussein’s regime.127 At the same time, the notion of WMD being transferred to terrorist organizations was being aggressively promoted to support the planned intervention in Iraq. The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction was produced in December 2002. It is evident that, unlike the policy documents promulgated during the period of G.H.W. Bush, the documents formulated during G.W. Bush’s administration laid emphasis on the right

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to redefine deterrence but, at the same time, deliberately maintained ambiguity about the adversaries, their capabilities and intentions: Terrorist groups are seeking to acquire WMDs with the stated purpose of killing a large number of people and those of friends and allies – without compunction and without warning.128 We will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the world’s most dangerous weapons.129 Explaining defence and mitigation, the document built a case for preempting any WMD threat: This requires capabilities to detect and destroy an adversary’s WMD assets before these weapons are used.130 The aggressive strategy was promoted as the only available option and other options of regime change were excluded: The requirements to prevent, deter, defend against, and respond to today’s WMD threats are complex and challenging. But they are not daunting. We can and will succeed in the task laid out in this strategy; we have no other choice.131 On 3 January 2003, Condoleezza Rice argued that the US knew Iraq was lying about its WMD programme.132 On 21 January 2003, the White House published a report titled ‘Apparatus of Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda 1990–2003’, and while it explained the disinformation of Saddam Hussein’s regime about its WMD programme, it defended the use of depleted uranium by the allied forces and armourpiercing ammunition during the 1991 Gulf War, which was also later used in Yugoslavia and Kosovo. It also stated that although the Ba’ath Party had a secular and atheist ideological agenda, Saddam Hussein had been exploiting the Islamic religious sentiments and exploited the expressions of faith in his public pronouncements.133 Considering the same argument, a connection between the Ba’ath regime and Al Qaeda was clearly contradictory, but the post-9/11 sentiment in the US was systematically exploited to overshadow the fact that creating a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq’s Ba’ath regime was problematic. As a rebuttal to the CIA and Pentagon reports, on 27 January 2003 the Chairman of the

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International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, reported on the status of nuclear weapons in Iraq and explained that major nuclear installations and equipment had been destroyed, removed or rendered harmless by 1992. He claimed that there was no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear programme.134 In his State of the Union speech on 28 January 2003, G.W. Bush stated: Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal dictator, with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to terrorism, with great potential wealth, will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States.135 While ignoring the UN Reports, G.W. Bush had employed the liberal and cosmopolitan discourses of ‘just war’, preventive war, restorative and distributive justice, humanitarianism and freedom to justify the planned invasion of Iraq: I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country; your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.136 G.W. Bush’s administration constructed Iraq as an identity split between two entities: the ‘regime’ of Saddam Hussein, the dictator and his ‘thugs’ who had committed ‘atrocities’; and, on the other hand, the ‘oppressed Iraqi people’ longing for freedom and ‘liberty’ to be provided by the American forces. The Iraqi regime constituted a ‘grave danger’ to ‘free nations’, it was ‘evil’ and composed of ‘mass murderers’ with ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and it was an enemy capable of plotting another 9/11. This representation gave Bush’s policy of intervention a stable underpinning. The materiality of nuclear weapons in the hands of a ‘mass murderer’, discursively linked with terrorists attacking the ‘free world’, warranted ‘defending our own security’. War was not only constructed in defence of the US, but also to ‘protect the world’ as well as the ‘Iraqi people’ and, hence, it was not only a matter of ‘traditional’ national security, but also morally sanctioned ‘great and just cause’.137 Bush combined sentiments that had prevailed since 9/11 with the manufactured links

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between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and related these to the notion of emancipating the Iraqi people from tyrants and dictators, to portray the 2003 Gulf War as a war forced upon the US, where the US had to assume responsibility for ‘liberating’ the people by waging a ‘just war’ according to the principles of jus ad bellum as well as jus in bello – just means and the safety of innocent civilians. It can be observed that the arguments developed by Elshtain and Walzer, both liberal-left and cosmopolitans, resonated in G.W. Bush’s declarations, where the notion of ‘just war’ had been selectively employed to build a case for preventive war against Iraq, humanitarian intervention and the introduction of democracy and neoliberalism. On 3 February 2003, Secretary Colin Powell, arguing in front of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), presented an audiotape and claimed that the individuals engaged in the conversation were associated with the Republican Guards and had used the word ‘evacuated’ instead of ‘destroyed’ for the materials, which were assumed to be WMD. He also added an anthrax vial to the evidence, claiming that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons capability. He claimed that while they had been in the Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 the previous autumn, they had known from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing a biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. He argued that Iraq had begun a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work. Powell also argued that Iraq possessed missiles and related delivery systems and Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). He also claimed that the Al Qaeda operatives moved from Afghanistan to Iraq after the US attack on Afghanistan.138 Powell later regretted these claims and described his UN speech as a lasting blot on his record.139 On another front, in an interview with former UK Labour Cabinet Minister Tony Benn on the UK’s Channel 4 news programme broadcast on 4 February 2003, Saddam Hussein stated: There is only one truth and therefore I tell you as I have said on many occasions before that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever . . . I would like to tell you directly and also through you to anyone who is interested to know that we have no relationship with al-Qaeda.140

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Saddam Hussein further claimed: The consecutive American administrations were led down a path of hostility against the people of this region, including our own nation and we are part of it. Those people and others have been telling the various US administrations, especially the current one, that if you want to control the world you need to control the oil. Therefore the destruction of Iraq is a pre-requisite to controlling oil. That means the destruction of the Iraqi national identity, since the Iraqis are committed to their principles and rights according to international law and the UN Charter.141 Considering the role of the UN, it had become evident from G.W. Bush’s statements that the US would not refer to the UN inspectors and would bypass the UN to wage a war against Iraq. At the same time, there was a re-emergence of Cold War rhetoric against the UN; in March 2003, the neoconservative commentator, William Kristol opined that the UN has gone from ‘useless’ to ‘harmful’.142 As war drew closer, G.W. Bush reiterated the rhetoric on humanitarianism and retributive and distributive justice. On 16 March 2003, in his statement to the Atlantic Summit, he insisted: Iraq’s talented people, rich culture, and tremendous potential have been hi-jacked by Saddam Hussein. His brutal regime has reduced a country with a long and proud history to an international pariah that oppresses it citizens, started two wars of aggression against its neighbors, and still poses a grave threat to the security of its region and the world.143 However, considering the decision-makers, Wolfowitz admitted later in May 2003 that WMD became merely a war banner because it was the one issue that everyone (in the US government bureaucracy) could agree on when citing why they were going after Saddam Hussein.144

Post-2003 Gulf War US policy leading to elections in January 2005 On 21 April 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established by the US Department of Defence145 with the objective of

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executing the post-war plans of politico-economic reforms. The CPA was a follow-up from the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which was established earlier in 20 January 2003. Lt Gen. Jay Garner continued from being ORHA’s chief executive to the same position in the CPA. However, he did not agree with the US government’s policy of de-Ba’athification of Iraq, because there was no plan of implementation for this policy.146 Due to disagreement on this issue, Garner was removed and L. Paul Bremer took charge on 13 May 2003. Bremer claimed to share G.W. Bush’s notion of America’s duty to deliver ‘freedom’ to the world.147 In order to apply the model from postWorld War Germany and the policy of de-Nazification, on 16 May 2003 CPA Order 1 for the de-Ba’athification of Iraq’s political and official infrastructure was promulgated, which started by removing all employees associated with the Ba’ath regime and banning them from future employment in the public sector.148 Before going to Iraq, Bremer was not cognizant of the plan for the elections and transfer of power to Iraq; however, considering the security situation, he realized that the number of US troops must be increased and therefore sent a summary to Rumsfeld, but this proposition was turned down.149 The objective of CPA Order 1 was to ensure that the new representative government was not threatened by the return to power of Ba’ath party; however, the CPA faced a greater challenge with the possibility of Shiite politicians coming to power after the elections. This had been cautioned even in the previous CIA reports150 during G.H.W. Bush’s presidency, and it was gradually becoming apparent that the primary objective of the CPA’s policies and political interference was to pre-empt the accession of what were deemed to be the religious and pro-Iranian Shiites. Considering the probability of Shiite political resurgence in 1991, G.H.W. Bush’s administration had not undertaken the ambitious task of intervening in Iraq and effecting political change through election but, rather, they had allowed a politically humiliated and militarily weakened Saddam Hussein to suppress and eliminate Shiites and Kurds. To the contrary, the G.W. Bush administration anticipated that the US and allied victory against Iraq, and later the euphoria surrounding Saddam Hussein’s removal from power, would make it possible for the CPA to induce a type of transitional regime, which would enable it to hold elections leading to the installation of a US-friendly regime in Iraq. However, it appeared that G.W. Bush’s administration also expected to benefit from the post-war shock and disorientation among the Iraqi people.151

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As the falsity of G.W. Bush administration’s claims of the WMD threat was being revealed, on 28 May 2003, a CIA Report titled ‘Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants’ claimed that Iraq still possessed some WMD-processing factories,152 but this report could not provide evidence of a strategic weapon. Therefore, there was an observable shift in the official discourse; in his address to the nation on 7 September 2003, G.W. Bush stated: In Iraq, we are helping the long suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions.153 On 11 August 2003, the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, defended NIE 2002;154 however, on 17 September 2003, G.W. Bush’s stance displayed incoherence when he claimed that there had been no evidence that Saddam Hussein had a link to 9/11, but the he had links with Al Qaeda: We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th. And al Zarqawi, al Qaeda operative was in Baghdad. He’s the guy that ordered the killing of a US diplomat. He’s a man who is still running loose, involved with the poisons network, involved with Ansar al-Islam. There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties.155 When the threat of WMD, including nuclear weapons, could not be ascertained, G.W. Bush, addressing the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2003, asserted that the primary goal was the introduction of democracy and self-government: The primary goal of our coalition in Iraq is self-government for the people of Iraq, reached by orderly and democratic means. And the United Nations can contribute greatly to the cause of Iraqi self-government.156 On 2 October 2003, the Iraq Survey Group’s (ISG) governing official, David Kay could neither confirm in his statement the existence of WMD or weapon delivery capabilities in Iraq, nor validate the pre-war

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report that the Iraqi military was prepared to use chemical weapons against Coalition forces.157 The detailed report by the ISG,158 also informally called the Duelfer Report, similarly could neither confirm the existence of Iraq’s WMD and related delivery systems, nor speculate on the chances of any WMD being found. The NIE 2002 had been employed to project a perceived WMD threat from Iraq; on 16 January 2004, Congresswoman Jane Harman, after a thorough examination of the 19 volumes of sources, declared it a ‘flawed document’ and asserted that the President should restore faith in the intelligence agencies.159 On 15 November 2003, the CPA proposed an agreement with the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to draft a new constitution by March 2004, holding national elections and transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people. The first point of contention was the notion of drafting a constitution before elections. This agreement had five basic provisions, which included the drafting of a ‘fundamental law’ to provide a legal framework for the Iraqi government, including a bill of rights, a federalist system for Iraq, independent judiciary, civilian control over the military and a statement that the fundamental law could not be amended. Second, an agreement was reached between the CPA and the IGC on the status of Coalition forces in Iraq. Third, was a selection of a Transitional National Assembly (TNA) through a caucus system. This was the most controversial issue because the CPA-appointed US-friendly actors were likely to be elected through caucus. Fourth, was the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by 30 June 2004 and, fifth, was the setting of a timetable to write a constitution for Iraq.160 In his State of the Union Address on 20 January 2004, G.W. Bush described the post-War policies in Afghanistan as evidence of successful US strategy. It is also significant to note that, continuing with the rhetoric and specific terminology, he described the adversaries as ‘killers’, implying that the US had embarked on a noble mission to emancipate the helpless and to civilize and democratize both Afghanistan and Iraq, which had been held hostage by Al Qaeda. Through the exploitation of 9/11 sentiment and the use of specific terminology, the administration sought to distract its global audience from the fact that the US had supported Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime in Iraq and, after the disintegration of the USSR, had been instrumental in promoting and supporting extremist militias161 in Afghanistan. Bush stated:

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The first to see our determination were the Taliban, who made Afghanistan the primary training base of Al Qaeda killers. As of this month, that country has a new constitution guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women. Businesses are opening. Health care centers are being established, and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school.162 On the contrary, the US’s neoliberal policies in Afghanistan were proving detrimental for the people and were serving the interests of foreign multinationals.163 Relating the Afghan experience to the US planning in Iraq, Bush stated: Having broken the Ba’athist regime, we face a remnant of violent Saddam supporters. Men who ran away from our troops in battle are now dispersed and attack from the shadows . . . We are dealing with these thugs in Iraq just as surely as we dealt with Saddam Hussein’s evil regime.164 Regarding the plans to introduce democracy, he further claimed: We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare. Yet it is mistaken and condescending to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government. I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom.165 Regarding the US’s global role: We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.166 The resonance of liberal cosmopolitan arguments on freedom, democracy, dignity, rights and dealing with ‘evil’ can be traced in G.W. Bush’s speeches. However, the extent to which these materialized into policies and strategies, and how these were perceived by the people concerned, could effectively be ascertained from the realities on the ground.

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The acts of aggression conducted by the US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq after 11 September 2001 revealed a more general regression affecting a substantial part of US society, of which the Bush administration itself remained the most obvious manifestation. In the US, torture and brutality gained acceptance as good entertainment and just punishment.167 While Bush was arguing about security, liberation and dignity for Iraqis, in November–December 2004 the US military conducted a military operation in Fallujah, where 39,000 homes were damaged and 10,000 destroyed. The US also admitted the use of banned phosphorous munitions in this operation.168 After Abu Ghraib (early in 2004), the Arab and general Muslim media equated western notions of freedom and democracy with the will to pursue acts of torture and inhumanity.169 Continuing with the plan to introduce democracy in Iraq, on 24 May 2004, while addressing the US Army War College in Carlisle, G.W. Bush explained the working of the CPA and the TAL, in a five point plan: The first of these steps will occur next month, when our coalition will transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens who will prepare the way for national elections. The second step in the plan for Iraqi democracy is to help establish the stability and security that democracy requires. The third step in the plan for Iraqi democracy is to continue rebuilding that nation’s infrastructure, so that a free Iraq can quickly gain economic independence and a better quality of life. Iraq has liberalized its trade policy, and today an Iraqi observer attends meetings of the World Trade Organization. Iraqi oil production has reached more than two million barrels per day, bringing revenues of nearly $ 6 billion so far this year, which is being used to help the people of Iraq. The fourth step in our plan is to enlist additional international support for Iraq’s transition. The fifth and most important step is free, national elections, to be held no later than next January. In that election, the Iraqi people will choose a transitional national assembly, the first freely-elected, truly representative national governing body in Iraq’s history.170 While Bush claimed that Iraq’s oil revenues were being utilized for the Iraqi people, International Petroleum Finance observed that during the invasion ‘the war in Iraq may have divided the world’s politicians

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but it united its oil executives – every one of them was wondering how and when the country’s 112 billion barrels of known oil reserves, not to mention its huge exploration potential, might be opened up to foreign participation’.171 From 2001–03 onwards, the central control of oil resources to achieve energy security and the strategic objectives of the US and the UK was evidently based on Vice President Cheney’s recommendations in the National Energy Policy and the UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s declaration for the need to bolster the security of British and global security supplies. After the war and invasion, despite the lack of information about oil resources, it was obvious to Iraqi oil industrialists that Kellogg, Brown & Root, which soon followed the US troops, was Cheney’s former company,172 and was working to serve the vested interests of international oil cartels. In order to implement the plans of the G.W. Bush administration, the CPA, headed by Paul Bremer, planned to create the Iraqi Interim Administration and formulate a constitution to replace the Ba’ath document. The ‘democracy paradox’ was in the Bush administration’s mind when it launched its campaign in the Middle East following 9/11. There was a blatant contradiction between the ideological claims – which only a few singular individuals among the neoconservatives gathered around the Pentagon actually seemed to believe – and the Bush administration’s real practices, like those of earlier administrations.173 Thomas Carothers described this classical Machiavellian contradiction as a ‘split presidential personality’ syndrome, whose bacilli seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the White House.174 Achcar argued that the G.W. Bush administration’s split personality on democracy-promotion was evident from its support of the military dictator, Musharraf, in Pakistan and autocrats in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. The enthusiastic effort by Bush to hype the rhetoric on democracy promotion was a consequence of the embarrassment caused by leaks emanating from the ISG about the absence of WMD in Iraq. On 6 November 2003, while addressing the US Chamber of Commerce, he spoke with pragmatic aspirations to the National Endowment for Democracy, a bi-partisan think-tank and large-scale funding agency set up in 1983 at the initiation of the Reagan administration. The promotion of democracy in the Islamic world became the theme of the speech and, in keeping with the split personality, he singled out praise for the leaders of a list of autocratic Arab countries – Morocco, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Kuwait, Jordan and the Saudi monarchy

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– for their democratic progress, while castigating ‘the Palestinian leaders who block and undermine democratic reform’. It is evident from the fact that, on 15 November 2003, Paul Bremer – whom London economists had already termed ‘the proconsul’ – had announced an agreement with the IGC that he himself had appointed.175 The agreement provided that the IGC would adopt an interim constitution drafted under the CPA’s aegis at the end of February 2004. The transitional national assembly would then be formed and would elect a provisional government that would assume ‘full sovereign powers’ and lead to the dissolution of the CPA by June 2004. Under this plan, caucuses would be organized in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces in order to choose the members of the transitional assembly which would, in turn, designate the provisional government. Participation in these caucuses would have to be approved by 11 out of 15 members of an organizing committee selected by the CPA-appointed IGC and by the local and provisional councils appointed directly by the CPA. Iraq’s most prominent Shiite theologian, Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, had already got in the way of Bremer’s designs as early as June 2003, by rejecting the project that he had initially put forward to have a definitive constitution approved by referendum before any direct elections were organized.176 Bremer sought to manufacture Iraq’s political future – as he did the economy through the ruinous ultra-liberal reforms that he had imposed – and ensure the necessary conditions that would enable the US to perpetuate its domination of Iraq indefinitely, before allowing any elections on the basis of universal suffrage. Inversely, Sistani wanted to allow Iraq’s Shiite community to exercise decisive influence on the government that it was entitled to aspire to under a democratic regime. Bremer was against the Iraqi constitution being written in a National Conference, as recommended by Abdul Aziz Hakim, a Shiite cleric and leader of interim government Iraqi Governing Council, because it meant that a Shiite majority could influence the drafting of the constitution in a manner that would ensure a Shiite government after elections.177 Bremer was also against the direct nationwide elections for the constitutional convention and revival of electoral politics for an elected assembly, as Sistani had demanded, on 26 June 2003. Sistani had declared in his fatwa: In the Name of the Almighty These forces have no jurisdiction whatsoever to appoint members of the assembly drafting the constitution. There is also not guarantee

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either that this assembly will prepare a constitution that serves the best interests of the Iraqi people and expresses its national identity, whose main pillars include the rightful Islamic religion and noble social values. The said plan is therefore unacceptable in essence. There must be, first of all, a general election so that every Iraqi eligible to vote chooses someone to represent him [‘generic’ masculine in original] in a Constitutional Assembly. Then the Constitution drafted by the Assembly shall be put to referendum. All believers must demand the accomplishment of this crucial matter and contribute to its achievement in the best possible way. May Allah, the Blessed and Almighty, guide everyone to that which is good and right. Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh.178 The nature of the US’s collaboration with the UN can be understood from the fact that the UN’s special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, reported that the caucus system was impractical and elections could not be held by the date of handover of sovereignty. In principle he agreed with Sistani; hence, Brahimi was criticized by neoconservatives in Washington, who portrayed him as an Arab nationalist, anti-Israel and an apologist for an Algerian military junta.179 It was the democracy-exporting US that was being reminded of the undemocratic character of its plans for the Iraqi constitutional process, and the fact that the CPA had no authority to write a constitution for Iraq.180 Continuing with its discourse of stabilizing and democratizing Iraq, G.W. Bush’s administration forcibly implemented its contradictory policies and supported its favoured political actors. In addition, during June 2003, by a public notice the CPA exempted itself, the US military and foreign contractors from falling under the jurisdiction of Iraqi laws,181 through which US forces and private security firms were later exonerated despite their involvement in the killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians. On 23 May 2004, by its Order 2 the CPA dissolved the defence ministry, security ministries, military formations, Republican Guards, Ba’ath Party militia and Fidayeen Saddam. Reiterating his loyalty to the US, the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani considered this the best decision taken by the CPA.182 Furthermore, in a move to stabilize the fluctuating value of Iraqi currency, the CPA introduced a single currency in Iraq and the Kurdish region. There was a proposition to dollarize the economy, but it was not implemented.183 After Sistani’s fatwa, the new plan adopted by the CPA provided that a definitive constitution would be drafted by an assembly – chosen

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through direct elections in March 2005 – before being submitted to a popular vote. Sistani considered this an insufficient concession. In this unprecedented tussle between the representatives of the world’s greatest power and a 73-year-old spiritual leader living as a recluse in Najaf, it was the Shiite theologian who wielded the argument for democracy against the occupier; despite the latter’s repackaging of its ‘civilizing mission’ as ‘democratization’.184 The paradox was heightened by the fact that Sistani, like the Ayatollah Khomeini before him, adhered to a literal, rigorous interpretation of Islam, which in the matter of daily life is far removed from modernity.185 To avoid elections, Washington reverted to a technical argument that no credible voter list was available before the elections, to which Sistani proposed using the rolls used for food rationing, which had been in use in the context of embargo on Iraq until 2003. The UN Secretary General Kofi Anan also confirmed the US standpoint, but Sistani refused to accept any plan short of nationwide elections. The UN appointed a mission under Brahimi to report on the possibility of elections. By this time, Sistani’s followers and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) had organized a mass demonstration in January with the slogan, ‘Yes to elections, No to appointments’.186 On 8 March 2004, Bremer forced through his draft interim constitution by promulgating a ‘Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period’, also called the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). On Condoleezza Rice’s recommendation, Larry Diamond joined the CPA for formulating the TAL and was assisted by Roman Martinez and Feisal Istrabadi. Diamond had long advocated democracy promotion in so-called failing states. After a few weeks, it was evident that there was a fundamental difference in the CPA’s policies and Diamond’s views. Diamond favoured the parliamentary system, but the CPA wanted to create a system where power was diffused among multiple centres, with veto power vested in the centre. Diamond was not in favour of power being centralized in one office – where a great degree of authority was vested in the office of the Prime Minister, while the parliament was supposed to be a passive body – which the drafters of the TAL had envisioned. Arguing for the elimination of the chance for any abuse of power by a single office, Diamond proposed the provision of a judicial review, especially to prevent the Supreme Court from gaining the level of authority that it had attained in Iran. Martinez opposed a judicial review, because such a legal provision could delay the treaties and the

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tactical and strategic agreements that the CPA planned to sign with the interim government. The CPA members disagreed on the type of government. Istrabadi wanted a strong centre, which could act as a deterrent to entrenchment by groups; Salem Chalabi favoured a Lebanon-type ethnically-based power-sharing formula for Iraq. This was due to his own liberal and ideological inclinations, which were partially a result of the influence of his uncle, Ahmad Chalabi.187 While they debated the issues ranging from human security, the appointment of judges and the role of the judiciary, the federal system of government, the executive commission, legislative powers, civil-military relations, the selection of a Transitional National Assembly (TNA) and the office of public integrity to the time table for transition, the CPA and the Governing Council were confronting the contradiction between aspiration for democracy and unilateral control.188 Diamond argued that a ‘model’ of democracy might serve as a starting point in Iraq189 as he believed it had in Africa, Latin America and some erstwhile communist states, which did not have the ideal conditions for democracy. The CPA’s myopic approach restricted them to delineating and classifying the causes of conflict through the lens of ethnic and sectarian divisions or Arab-Kurd-Turkmen-Assyrians and Shiite-Sunni. Diamond had earlier warned of US imperial overreach and the subsequent global wave of anti-Americanism, and called for adequate post-occupation reconstruction and democracy in Iraq,190 but it was evident that while proposing democratic reforms in Iraq, he did not have the necessary insight into the fundamental domestic social determinants and factors. Similarly, in order to gain influence in the US administration and to strengthen the convictions of neoconservative policy-makers further, Makiya argued for promoting federalism in Iraq,191 which in practice was not favourable because the Kurds viewed it as the dominance of a strong Shiite or Sunni centre. Taking an altruistic view of the CPA’s policies, it can be observed that they may have expected to forge a combination of federalism, proportional representation and alternative voting – requiring voters to rank parties and candidates preferentially – expecting it to lead to the formation of broad, multi-ethnic parties that, in turn, might campaign nationwide and thus slowly transcend the current religious and ethnic divisions in the country, and ultimately formulate a constitution to help with the consolidation of a strong judiciary. With the image of a western model of democracy, Diamond had earlier contemplated the review and reform of the legal code and the drafting of an interim law with the help

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of liberal and progressive Iraqi-exiled legal experts but, owing to his lack of comprehension of the Iraqi social structure, it was unfathomable to him that all the efforts to amend the laws for maintenance of order and for governance were viewed with scepticism by the majority of Iraqi political parties and religious leaders, especially as Sistani was not flexible regarding his demand that Islam was to be the main source of law. The majority of Iraqi politicians, religious clerics and social workers were not against a democratic system but, rather, were against the manner in which the CPA was promoting the agenda for caucuses, the TAL and TNA. It was obvious that the CPA was striving for a government where the Shiites did not form a majority, the Sunnis were given some representation to prevent them and Ba’ath members from being marginalized, and the Kurds were given provincial autonomy and a high-ranking but symbolic status with no authoritative powers. However, de-Ba’athification significantly contributed to political instability. Diamond criticized Bremer for the de-Ba’athification of Iraqi society – but he had, in fact, proposed this measure along with the de-Saddamization of Iraqi society.192 At the administrative level, the lack of empathy and the deliberately induced delusions of the US administration seemed an outcome of their efforts to mediate in a conflict which they had themselves initiated, and therefore they were not only party to, but also the primary cause of the worsening situation. The CPA members realized that the Shiite leadership would demand their singular religious authorities (Marji’) to be represented in a grand Marji’iyya (supreme religious authority). CPA orders for formulating a constitution and introducing a caucus system to elect a TNA were viewed by the Shiite community as efforts to prevent the formation of a Mari’jiyya. The IGC could not muster support from the Islamic parties, and the Marji’iyya and the TAL had been influenced by the western notion of the constitutional process. Moreover, the decision to introduce English as the operative language further alienated the Iraqi politicians,193 and displayed the fundamental deficiencies in the credentials of CPA policy-makers. Although the concepts of pluralism, gender rights and separation of power were not alien to Iraqi society, the formulators of the TAL were unable to elaborate on the relevance of these in a manner that was familiar to Iraqis. These issues displayed the fallacy in conceptualization and deficiency in execution of the G.W. Bush administration’s planning for Iraq as, primarily, the CPA did not include Arabists

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who comprehended the language and understood the society and culture of Iraq. In trying to minimize the Shiite influence and favour the Kurds, the IGC introduced a key Kurdish demand in the TAL, as Article 61 (C): The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.194 This article allowed the Kurds the option of rejecting a permanent constitution in a referendum if two-thirds of the voters of three provinces voted against it. Since the Kurds dominated three provinces within the Kurdistan Regional Government, this article gave the Kurds a veto power against any constitution that veered from the accepted the TAL. Sunni Arabs accepted it because it checked Shiite power and, despite Bremer’s interventions, Sistani opposed the Kurdish veto.195 The TAL could only be amended by a three-quarter majority of the TNA and the unanimous approval of a three-man presidential council. This was a practical impossibility, since the presidential council itself required a two-thirds affirmative vote in the TNA and the Kurds had effective veto power on anyone who might be a candidate for this post.196 By providing that a minimum of two-thirds of voters in at least three provinces could block the adoption of the constitution drafted by the elected National Assembly in the referendum on ratification, for which the deadline of 15 October 2005 had been set, the TAL considerably reinforced the religious dynamic in a country where most provinces were inhabited largely by members of one or another of the Iraqi population’s main components. This turned out to be the worst possible way to protect the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination. Instead of a US protectorate for the Kurds, a UN guarantee would have been a more feasible option. The TAL gave the Kurds and Washington the power to veto issues that did not include anything specific to them. Similarly, the introduction of veto power through the introduction of the clause of two-thirds of three provinces also gave this power to Shiites and Sunni Arabs, encouraging the respective leaders of these communities to address themselves to their co-religionists, rather than fostering a unitary dynamic encouraging political forces to address the different components of the population, which would have been a priority for any well-intentioned lawmaker. It would

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have been the case if the TAL, instead of demanding a ratification by simple majority vote linked to a regional veto, had required ratification by two-thirds of the entire electorate, without any regional veto.197 Similar controversial articles in the TAL included Article 7 (a), which declared that Islam would not be the main source of legislation but one of many. Article 7 (b) declared that Iraq was not an Arab State, but the Arabs of Iraq deemed themselves a part of an Arab nation. Article 9 elevated Kurdish to the status of national language.198 Plans to hold elections under a drafted constitution and the political gerrymandering with the Kurds and Shiites led to the alienation of the Sunnis, who perceived the IGC as a sectarian entity and the transition process as a rigged system.199 The Sunnis ultimately boycotted the elections under the TAL. The lack of support for the TAL and especially Article 7 (a) became obvious when, on 14 January 2004, during Abdul Hakim’s presidency of the IGC and in the absence of Adnan Pachachi, the IGC decided to reintroduce religious laws as the bases of Iraq’s personal and familial codes.200 This measure was dropped because of resistance from a secular women’s group, but it showed that the TAL was not supported by the majority of Iraqi leaders, and CPA efforts deliberately to undermine the role of religion were proving counter-productive. Adding to these debacles, G.W. Bush declared: ‘Democracy will spread from Iraq to nearby countries. A free Iraq also allows us to spread Jesus Christ’s teachings even in nations where law keeps us out.’201 The TAL included an essentially undemocratic time bomb: divide et impera. Washington had played the card of ethnic and religious divisions among the Iraqi people in order to perpetuate its ascendency as the arbiter among the people’s components and protector of its minorities.202 The US relied on its most faithful allies, the Kurdish leadership, who owed their real autonomy and the relative prosperity that Kurdistan enjoyed since 1991 to the US protectorate. Similarly, the US exploited dissentions between Shiite and Sunni Arabs as it saw further threats to its power in Iraq. Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician, had been appointed the Prime Minister of the provisional government on 28 June 2004. He advocated rehabilitation of the members of the Ba’ath apparatus. The aim of this approach was to use Sunni Arabs as a counterweight to the parties allied with Iran, who had majority support among Arab Shiites.203 Bremer and the CPA had no significant comprehension of the impact of historical experiences on the priorities of Shiite leaders, who did not want to repeat the mistake of missing the chances to bring political

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change from political mobilization, as in the case of the revolution of 1920 and similar political mobilization after the 1991 Gulf War. Similarly, the Kurds were not willing to share power with Sunnis, and the minority groups felt that a majoritarian system would put them at a disadvantage. In addition, CPA funding for Iraq was insufficient, and the idea of postwar reconstruction began months after the occupation, raising questions about their planning. The CPA was banking on Iraqi oil revenues to generate the funds for reconstruction and, at the same time, was interfering in the affairs of the Iraqi electrical power supply sector, when they transferred authority to a semi-independent commission headed by the CPA. The CPA also denied private companies access to their own funds, thereby deliberately hindering market reforms.204 During 2004, the CPA was able to ally with Kurdish leaders Talabani and Barazani, and Chalabi was politically sidelined. Chalabi claimed that he had lost favour because of raising the issue of a financial scam related to the Oil for Food Programme involving senior Arab UN figures. Chalabi was wary of the UN’s pro-status quo role in Iraq, while the G.W. Bush administration and Bremer wanted gradually to disengage from Chalabi because of the falsity of Chalabi’s Iraqi WMD reports and the Bush administration’s suspicion of his involvement with Iran.205 The US could not promote him as the US-friendly leader of Iraq. It is also vital to note that during this time the CPA were making efforts to form an interim government and engage with Pachachi, Talabani, Barazani and Allawi; Nouri Al-Maliki’s name did not figure anywhere among the future candidates. Much later, after the elections and much political wrangling, Al-Maliki assumed the office of Prime Minister. This showed that the CPA neither had any genuine support from Iraqi politicians, nor did they have any knowledge of Iraq’s political culture, history and social affiliations, but were seeking to raise and support any candidate from the Iraqi parties who would support US presence and ensure its interests in Iraq. The CPA was working on the hypothesis that mainline Sunni parties should be given enough time and leeway to convince the most amenable insurgents to participate in the elections but, in reality, the Shiite alliance and the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), along with the Kurdish parties, was likely to sweep up more than two-thirds of the seats in the new assembly and therefore determine the course of Iraqi politics. Due to the support of Sistani and his Wakils on the list, and because Allawi was out of Sistani’s UIA, the elections were turning into a contest between

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the UIA and Allawi’s Iraqiyya list. To the amazement of the CPA, the Shiite Kurds (Faylis) joined Sistani’s UIA, making the elections more of a referendum on identity,206 as they also showed that being identified as Shiite was more important for Fayli Kurds. However, the CPA may have perceived that the Faylis considered their interests would be better served by allying with the UIA. In either case, it was evident that the CPA had no clear knowledge of the political situation in Iraq. It is also worth noting that earlier, in July 2004, despite CPA efforts in appointing Pachachi as the leader of IGC, Bahr al Uloum was chosen as the head of the council because he belonged to the Shiite community. These factors were indicative of the fact that, despite the CPA’s political interventions, the Shiite leaders had significant influence in the political bargaining, but the CPA appeared to be supporting only the pro-US Shiite politicians. CPA Order 39 dealt with dismantling all control over non-oil foreign investments, with the exception of the banking sector, and also allowed unimpeded access to foreign investors. This order was debated in the IGC and was widely seen as an essential part of the gamut of measures that the CPA hoped would turn Iraq’s economy into an open-market economy from a state-centred economy. This initiated legal debates which questioned the status and the authority of the CPA. Being an occupation authority, it did not have the writ to change the fundamental laws of the country. In addition, this policy had led to the ‘Iraq for sale’ slogan from the Arab and international press and, above all, this order was rejected by the Iraqi private sector, contrary to the expectations of the CPA.207 Similarly, on 19 September 2003, the CPA authorized privatization of public enterprise, repatriation of foreign profits, opening Iraqi banks and businesses to foreign control and eliminating the trade barriers, but oil was exempted from these new terms.208 The US administration had deprived Germany, France and Canada of the right to bid for developmental contracts in Iraq. Bremer claimed this was not against WTO and other international obligations, because the reconstruction projects were funded by US taxpayers and the previous contracts, including Oil for Food, were being reviewed by Iraqi ministries.209 While introducing the western socio-economic models of freedom and liberalism to overhaul the industrial infrastructure, the CPA was oblivious to the political culture in Iraq. First, since the foundation of modern Iraq, the political thinking and organization in the country have drawn from Iraqi nationalism, socialism and Islam, together with Arab

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and Kurdish nationalism. In post-Saddam political developments, each of these strands contained strong emphases on solidarity and collective good in contrast to the US ideas of individualistic ‘freedom’. Second, with the possible exception of Kurdish nationalism, each of these strands pointed towards fundamentally different approaches to economics and, especially, oil policy from that favoured by the west.210 This point was clarified by Faleh al-Khayat, a candidate for the Oil Ministry. He advocated for state-owned companies over foreign contractors. He argued that state enterprise never declare force majeure, invoking a contractual clause that releases a company from its obligations if subject to circumstances beyond its control, such as war, terrorist attack or ‘Act of God’. Iraqi history showed that state-owned companies kept working and producing irrespective of circumstances, while a foreign company needed guarantees to work and, in the event of untoward incidents, would not go back to work immediately. Following the establishment of the IGC, the politics of interference and nepotism began to grip the Oil Ministry. The governing council increased the number of ministers for the CPA’s bureaucracies from 21 to 25. Most were family, allies or members of the same party and were not qualified or competent. Al-Khayat called it ‘the invasion of Chalabis’. One of the early victims of the new order was Mohammed Al-Jabouri, the head of the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), who was removed because he remained firm on the policy of selling Iraqi oil to end users (refineries) rather than traders. Ironically, Al-Jabouri was accused of corruption by Chalabi.211 By October 2003, Rob Mckee, the senior oil advisor to the CPA, appointed a Virginia-based company, BearingPoint, to design and implement a comprehensive privatization programme which focused on selling key firms and industries to ‘strategic investors’, ‘especially those in oil and supporting industries’. As expected, the BearingPoint report recommended privatization and controversial measures, including under-investment in other areas of Iraqi economy and potential limitations on oil sector transparency.212 Iyad Allawi’s guidelines excluded Iraqi companies and the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) from having any role in new ventures. Moreover, the International Tax and Investment Center (ITIC) published its report in 2004, entitled ‘Iraq’s Future: Fiscal Options and Challenges’; it favoured production-sharing agreements. If applied to many known Iraqi oilfields, for which there was no exploration risk, such an approach would effectively guarantee the foreign companies’ profits and any cost over-runs (even if they were the fault of the investor) would be paid by the state.213

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CPA intentions to engineer the elections were evident from its memo warning that ‘Elections could create a legitimate counter authority to the CPA, making its ability to govern more difficult and would largely sacrifice coalition control over the outcome’.214 As was predicted, the elections were a defeat for Washington and its favoured candidate (Iyad Allawi) and gave a parliamentary majority to the alliance dominated by Shiite parties close to Iran, the main US enemy in the region.215 The contradictory policies can be attributed to the conflicting factors in the discourse on the 2003 Gulf War. Ali Allawi related the failure of these policies to Robert Merton’s five contributing factors describing the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action: ignorance of true conditions, errors in inference, primacy of immediate interest, ideological imperatives and self-fulfilling prophecy.216

The 2003 Gulf War and the role of discourse The employment of themes comprising ‘unprecedented terrorist attack from an evil adversary’, ‘the need for rethinking international law and the role of the UN’, ‘the need for humanitarian intervention’ and ‘the promotion of democracy and capitalism’, all contributed to the development of the political discourse of ‘prime modernity’ – the way of life that is applicable to civilized societies. This enabled the G.W. Bush administration to project their motives on the scales of individual and ‘humankind’ rather than inter-state power politics.217 G.W. Bush used the term ‘evil’ in 319 separate speeches delivered from the time he took office up to 16 June 2003. He claimed that, by acting against Iraq, the US would send a signal to outlaw regimes that, in the new century, the boundaries of civilized behaviour would be respected. Through the emphasis on ‘evil’, it was projected that violation of natural harmony can only be restored through retribution. Bush and Blair argued that Saddam Hussein’s regime had lost legitimacy and immunity from punishment when it violated international law.218 Through analyzing the official discourse and strategic planning, it can be observed that the perception and misperception of an enemy may be affected by the deliberately created image of a diabolical enemy; a virile moral self-image, selective inattention, absence of empathy and military over-confidence.219 Analyzing the efforts of the G.W. Bush administration to relate Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and its waging the 2003 Gulf War with a discursive approach, it is observed that decision-makers may interpret the

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behaviour of their adversaries on the basis of prior evaluations about them. Psychologists argue that decision-makers invoke a number of shorthands or surrogates to compensate for the difficulties of interpretation. One of these is the ‘availability heuristic’ – interpreting the actions of others in light of our own concerns, needs and values, because these are available to us. Projecting our own values and goals upon another actor can lead to misjudgements. Another source of misperception is the ‘evoked set’ condition, when ambiguous information may be interpreted by decision-makers in a number of different disparate ways in accordance with whatever is in the forefront of their minds during existing circumstances.220 When President G.W. Bush declared Iraq, Iran and North Korea in the ‘Axis of Evil’ in January 2002, the use of deterrence against Iraq was deemed unethical and dishonourable – like taking counsel from fear, a submission to blackmail. It was projected by the US as presumptuous for a country such as Iraq to aspire to paralyze US power. It became a matter of US honour not to be deterred by someone they considered evil.221 The military strategy of ‘shock’ and ‘awe’ for Iraq implied inflicting the shock on Iraq and national self-aggrandizement based on techno-military superiority with the goals of glorification and superiority; awe implying the adversary’s inferiority.222 The 2003 Gulf War was projected as a punitive war with the intention of sending symbolic messages in collaboration with allies, under the pretext of a ‘just fear’ for the defence of propagated ‘universal values’. Anticipation and ‘just fear’ were portrayed as the necessities for the defence of common values, when G.W. Bush declared that ‘our values’223 were at stake. Language was carefully employed to draw parallels between 11 September and Iraq. The analogy of the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001 to 911, which had earlier been more associated with the police emergency call number all across the US, was a practice neither natural nor without consequences,224 because it widely induced a psychological reaction among the US public that they were facing a perpetual state of emergency. Similarly, the declarations that this was an ‘act of war’ and an armed response was the ‘only way’ because ‘we have no choice’225 but to respond militarily and ‘protect our values and life style’, were aimed at shaping a specific strategy. Therefore, the challenge to the ‘prime modernity’ was also portrayed as a threat to the hegemon’s power and global role. However, despite the propagation of common interests there were contradictions in the execution of policies. The Coalition of the Willing, formed under the rhetoric of ‘common values’226 was regarded as the ‘Coalition of the Coerced’.227

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Analyzing the effects of conflicting discourses, Achcar argues that the G.W. Bush administration was also inspired by ‘crackpot idealism’ – referring here to the traditional dichotomy in international relations theory between realism and idealism. If realists can be described as pragmatic opportunists and their ‘crackpot’ variant is composed of those who combine unfocused realism with ‘high-flying moral rhetoric’, then ‘crackpot idealists’ are those whose actions are directly inspired by the same ‘high-flying moral rhetoric’ adopted as a guiding focus of foreign policy in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs. In pursuing this goal for obvious economic and strategic reasons, the Bush administration was inspired in many of its concrete decisions – in the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively – by ideological factors of the kind that every true realist could only consider as utterly disastrous.228 The Bush administration acted on ideological views so contrary to the ‘reality principle’ that they could only lead into this major nightmare of US imperial policy, known since Vietnam as a ‘quagmire’.229 The world of the ‘neocons’ is itself a mixture of naïve and ingenuous ‘idealists’ and one of Machiavellian intriguers who typically use ‘democracy’ as an ideological pretext for less respectable goals.230 The discourse favoured the strategy of invasion over other options. For the de-Ba’athification of Iraq, Makiya advocated in March 2003 the ‘complete dismantling of the security services of the regime’ and the ‘decommissioning of the Iraqi army’, as well as the ‘dismantling of the forces of the republican guard’. This prospect was seriously threatened in the immediate prelude to the invasion: under State Department sponsorship, with CIA support, and with Saudi and Jordanian participation, attempts were made to reach a deal whereby the top circles of the Iraqi army would overthrow Saddam Hussein and seize power. The Saudi diplomatic activity in January 2003 and a public statement by Powell about granting amnesty to Iraqi generals, who would rise up against the tyrant, show that an option to remove Saddam Hussein was being contemplated. An investigation conducted by The New York Times showed that in the three months before the war, from late 2002, intensive contacts were held with high-ranking Iraqi military leaders, including the Defense Minister, General Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Tai, who offered to collaborate in ensuring a smooth transition into a post-Saddam Hussein, US-friendly era under Iraqi Army control. An Iraqi exile rival of Ahmad Chalabi, Iyad Alawi – like Chalabi, a Shiite member of the US-appointed Governing Council – played a key role in the operation. Alawi headed the Iraqi National Accord, a London-based opposition group of former

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Iraqi army officers who staged, with CIA assistance, an unsuccessful coup d’etat against Saddam Hussein in 1996. He is quoted in The New York Times report as saying: ‘Our idea was to take off the upper crust and leave the rest of the regime intact.’ The article related the outcome of the story as follows: ‘General Shahwani, the leader of the failed 1996 coup, said one of the early notions during the preparations for the latest war called for an uprising, at least partly within the army, prompted by Iraqi exiles and supported by American bombing.’ 231 The drastic shift in policy from G.H.W. Bush’s administration – calculated, rational and realistic – to the G.W. Bush administration – belligerent humanitarian and ambitious – can be explained through the analyses of discourses.

The 2003 Gulf War from a theoretical perspective and the discourses on US hegemony and empire I have traced the resonance of liberal and cosmopolitan arguments in the official discourses on the 2003 Gulf War and post-war policies in Iraq; to continue, referring to the arguments previously set out in Part 1, I analyze the realist discourses on the 2003 Gulf War. From the perspective of post-Cold War US hegemony, I also discuss the neoconservative discourses on the global role of the US along with the Marxist critiques of empire.232 The purpose is to analyze whether the war and the occupation of Iraq, along with the promotion of the Wall Street System, can be observed as mechanisms for building the US empire. According to the classical realists, the national interest was overshadowed due to three pathologies: first, the G.W. Bush administration’s inability to formulate interest intelligently and coherently outside the language of justice; second, hubris – which was evident in Rumsfeld’s termination of the State Department’s task force (including five experts on the affairs of the Arab world, which led to outcomes opposite to those intended); and, third, the choice of means.233 These factors contributed to the strategy of invasion and occupation. Regarding the debate on justification to prevent a nuclear threat from Iraq, Kissinger had claimed before 9/11 that Iraq possessed WMD and was working towards acquiring nuclear capability.234 Therefore, Iraq had been regarded as a potential nuclear state. Alluding to the neoconservative team of advisors and policy-makers, Richard Ned Lebow argued that acting outside the language of justice leads to the inability to identify interests in an intelligent and coherent manner, because such actors are moved by passion and hope, not reason and careful calculation.235 A distinction can be drawn

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between the realist policy-makers Brzezinski, Kissinger and Scowcroft on the one hand, and the neoconservative policy-maker Wolfowitz and commentator Krauthammer on the other. Brzezinski and Scowcroft opposed the idea of invasion because committing the US troops to a long-term war went against US interests. The Pentagon’s occupation plan was based on Rumsfeld’s optimistic scenario, primarily directed towards controlling the oil facilities with a superficial search for WMD. This led to the deliberate ignoring of the report by Hans Blix. Washington ignored the precious advice of the previous Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, who died in July 2003. Presented to the administration a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Hamdoon’s memo was excerpted later in The New York Times. It included advice such as: ‘Don’t throw thousands of officers and soldiers to the street. Their families will be with no income. They may well turn into terrorists or thieves.’236 After the invasion and occupation, Paul Bremer disbanded 48,000 members of the Armed Iraqi.237 These ex-army officers were allowed to retain their weapons, and they joined the insurgency.238 These decisions may be related to the policy-maker’s delusions about the military superiority of the US and its strategic strike ability, which had been one of the lessons learnt from the 1991 Gulf War. The neoconservatives induced the conviction that the US would be able to reconstruct the Iraqi infrastructure and promote a US-friendly regime. It can be observed that, similarly to G.H.W. Bush’s administration, the strategy of G.W. Bush’s administration for Iraq was guided by their rational calculation of national interests; however, in their effort to disguise national interests with moral arguments they planned ambitious strategies that realist policy-makers did not support. It can also be observed that the wars and the invasions of Afghanistan239 and Iraq were directed towards building the geopolitical order that the policymaker Brzezinski had visualized. Rumsfeld’s decision to terminate the State Department’s Strategic Task force ironically paved the way for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was militarily weakened after the 1991 war and ensuing sanctions. However, the case of the 2003 war also shows that the realist conceptualization of international relations based on power and interest does not effectively explain the strategic miscalculations that result due to the pursuit of interests and power. From an offensive realist perspective, considering the interpretation of US strategy based on geopolitics, the occupation of Iraq can be studied as another effort for the extension of geographic influence, control over

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natural resources and hence the placement of military bases.240 The vital importance of the Middle East’s oil to the US economy and US efforts to maintain global hegemony were reiterated by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987–2006, Alan Greenspan, when he admitted that the war on Iraq and invasion in 2003 had been motivated by the objective of acquiring and controlling the world’s current largest known oil resources – a fact also acknowledged by Paul Wolfowitz.241 The goal of G.W. Bush, his administration and the PNAC remained primarily strategic in nature. The link between the hold over Iraq and the objective of a new ‘American Century’ related to the importance, both economic and military, of controlling the oil of the Arab–Persian Gulf. Through its direct protectorate of the Saudi Kingdom and military presence in the emirates of Kuwait and Qatar, the US already controlled one-third of the world’s proven oil reserves. With the addition of Iraq, the share falling under its control would reach 43 per cent, and the Iraqi share of probable reserves is even higher.242 The extension of military bases indicates that even an informal, benign and non-territorial imperialism requires minimum territorial extension to allow it to project power globally; however, in the context of post-Cold War international relations, this trend can be observed from another historical perspective. Perry Anderson has conceptualized the US policy of geographic control by relating it to the comparable ‘concert of powers’ created by Metternich and Castlereagh. Building on this idea, Callinicos argues that, due to conflicts of interests between the advanced capitalist economies, US hegemony requires a continuous, creative, political effort and practical pursuit of divide-and-rule at the western end of the Eurasian landmass, where the two zones of advanced capitalism other than the US are found. US imperialism therefore displays the interplay of economic and geopolitical dynamics.243 Some scholars also argue that through the occupation of Iraq and control over its oil resources, expansion of military bases all over the globe and manipulating the electoral politics to ensure pro-US Shiite government in Iraq,244 the US expected to surpass the other major powers that require these resources in order to compete with the US.245 To develop this point, Callinicos refers to Brzezinski’s Eurasian Grand Strategy246 and two declarations in the NSS 2002: We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition. Several potential great powers are now in the

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midst of internal transition – most importantly Russia, India and China. In all three cases, recent developments have encouraged our hope that a truly global consensus about basic principles is slowly taking shape.247 Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in the hopes of surpassing or equalling the power of United States.248 The second quotation explains the nature of global consensus that may complement US hegemony in post-Cold War international relations. Similarly, considering the two cases of the Gulf Wars in particular, it can be observed that the US has extended an order that is geopolitical in nature and does not relate to the moral and legal justifications presented for these wars. Moreover, the discourses regarding the relevance of the UN and the restraints of international law have contributed to the reinforcement of US hegemony, as became evident in NDS 2005, which states: Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism.249 [Emphasis added] By emphasizing this, the G.W. Bush administration viewed international, cosmopolitan law and its institutions as strategies of the weak (listed along with terrorism), and believed that the US should avoid their pull.250 The decision to occupy was supported by the professed objective of promoting democracy in Iraq and the Middle East in general. Callinicos critically analyzes the idea of democracy-promotion as analogous to Bobbitt’s notion of a ‘market state’, and argues that the policies of the market state are directed towards maximizing the choices available to the individual instead of the traditional nation-state, which theoretically and practically deems itself responsible for the well-being of the group. Therefore, in the constitutional order of the market state the ‘best person’ is chosen to ensure the promotion of the market economy. The ‘interests’ that count are those that can mobilize money to buy candidates and elections – in turn, acquiring the right to shape the political process. This is an interesting insight into the assumptions shared by the US policy elites, irrespective of their political affiliations with the Republican or

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Democratic Parties. Therefore, with this background there is no contradiction between the aims of introducing democracy251 in Iraq and the US occupation authorities’ intentions of selling the Iraqi’s national assets to foreign entrepreneurs. Rumsfeld declared ‘the coalition will encourage moves to privatize state owned enterprise’.252 The objective behind the rhetoric of democracy-promotion was not to hold free and fair elections in Iraq but, rather, to ensure the appointment of suitable individuals, ‘best persons’, to promote the agenda of the global market state. Callinicos draws upon Nikolai Bukhrain’s and Giovanni Arrighi’s arguments to present an explanation for the post-9/11 US global strategy. Bukhrain, in his Imperialism and World Economy, argued that in the nineteenth century the geopolitical rivalries among states and the economic competitions between capitals fused together. Accordingly, war had become increasingly industrialized. As a result, the great powers could not maintain their hegemony without developing capitalist economic bases. Similarly, the growing concentration and industrialization of capital caused economic rivalries among firms; these rivalries spilled over across national borders and took the shape of geopolitical contests in which combatants sought the support of their respective powerful states or centres. Arrighi conceptualizes the hegemonic transitions as part of a quasi-cyclical philosophy of history, which explains the partial disassociation of military and economic competition after World War II, in the form of excessive defence-spending by the US and the UK, on the one hand, and lower defence spending and relatively higher spending on financial enterprise by Germany and Japan, on the other hand. This pattern re-emerged in the so-called ‘Second Cold War’ under US President Carter in the 1970s, and continued under Reagan until Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the USSR began to undermine the superpower partition of the world. This novel development – the bifurcation of military and financial capabilities – reduced the chances of war by creating a division of labour where the hegemon excessively spent on arms while its allies contributed towards increasing global capital flows. From the perspective of these two theoretical constructs formulated by Bukhrain and Arrighi, Callinicos drew upon Gowan’s visualization of the US as an imperial parasite able to attract foreign capital and maintain a kind of ‘racket’ underpinned by its military power. In this light, G.W. Bush’s administration seems to have been pursuing a rational, global, military and financial strategy based on its reading of the long-term economic and geostrategic threats facing US capitalism. This involved the

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decision to exploit 9/11 and utilize existing US military supremacy to shift the global distribution of economic and political power further to its own advantage.253 The enormous defence budget and excessive spending were justified as necessary for the national interest, leading to an inexorable cycle which was powered through a continuous promotion of an imminent threat of war. Considering this pattern of spending and warmongering, a revolution may be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control or the enforcement of Article 1, Section 9 of the US constitution, according to which no monetary resources may be drawn from the Treasury, except in consequence of appropriations made by law, and then the statements and accounts, receipts and expenditures to be published.254 In order to relate the policy of democracy-promotion, post-9/11 US hegemony and the attainment of national interests, neoconservative commentator Krauthammer has identified key areas: isolationism, liberal internationalism, realism and democratic globalism. Through a critical analysis of these alternatives, he argues that democratic globalism is the conservative alternative to realism because it can teach realism that democracy is not an end but a means for securing US interests. From this perspective, isolation and defending ‘Fortress America’ do not remain options after 9/11, and liberal cosmopolitan and the internationalist pursuit of a brave new Lockean world – where war may be eliminated – is futile. The US pursuit of global leadership is therefore taken as a practical strategy. Krauthammer argues that South Korea (ROK), Europe (with its cosy, arrogant community) and the Middle East are more secure as a result of the US military containment of North Korea (DPRK) and the USSR and the war against Saddam Hussein. Claiming to support realist philosophy on these issues, he argues that the US is the bulwark against barbarism and that, in a unipolar world, US power is indispensible, wielded if necessary, unilaterally or pre-emptively.255 On the other hand, contrary to his earlier argument in the End of History, liberal neoconservative Fukuyama criticized the combination of democracy and realism to argue that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected results and undermines its own ends.256 However, he insists that the post-9/11 conflict is a fight against Islamofacism, which is a radically intolerant and anti-modern doctrine. He claims that the first successful outcomes of the US’s post-9/11 military policy were Afghanistan and Iraq. Referring to historical examples, he claims that German Fascism did not collapse because of its internal moral

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contradictions; it died because Germany was bombed to rubble by the allied armies.257 Fukuyama considers aggressive military policy as necessary for the extension of US hegemony and he addresses the perceived dangers to the US. His interpretation of justice and morality is similar to Elshtain’s arguments on the post-9/11 threat to western values. Similarly, he agrees with Krauthammer when he criticizes isolationism, categorizes the terrorist as undeterrable and advocates for war and the promotion of democracy, neoliberalism and capitalism. Therefore, he relates the proactive military strategy to counter strategic threats with the promotion of a global, liberal, capitalist order. Considering the global geostrategic and economic role of the US post-Gulf War (2003), Krauthammer has further developed his arguments along the same lines as Bobbitt and describes the nature of the US empire as a growing ‘Commercial Republic’,258 with overwhelming global power – one that does not hunger after territory or usurp resources; instead, it encourages trade and wants to promote democracy. He extends his previous arguments by claiming that 9/11 heightened the asymmetry between the US and the other greater powers, including Japan, Germany, Russia and China. The US emerged as a latent military power, a resilient market economy and a global leader capable of accelerating the rearrangements of current great powers. Extending his previously proposed global strategy for the US – denying, disarming and defending – he argued that the growing hegemonic position of the US, confronted with the threat of a possible alliance between the ‘undeterrables’ (suicide bombers) and ‘undetectables’ (WMD), demanded a doctrine based on the US’s own perception of its strategic ends. Krauthammer further asserts that the liberal internationalist vision – the multilateral handcuffing of American power – is the dominant view not only in Europe, but also among the Democrats in American politics.259 In sum, both Krauthammer and Bobbitt regard war and global mercantile order as mechanisms of a growing US empire. Among the realist policy-makers, Brzezinski criticizes the mingling of idealist and moralist arguments and terms these the roots of the quagmire in Iraq. He criticizes the administration for levying heavy financial costs on the US by comparing the 2003 war (where the costs reached US$200 billion), with 1991, where 80 per cent of the costs were borne by the allies. As an exit strategy, he proposed that the US should finalize a plan for the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq and that the UN should be included in this process. The US should set a date for the withdrawal of

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its troops to minimize the reactionary attacks from various Iraqi factions. The Iraqi government that came to power after elections should be elected and not subject to doctrinaire American delusions. Moreover, for lasting peace in the region, the US must resume the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.260 On the other hand, emphasizing the need for the US to extend its influence and control over the natural resources of a swathe of Eurasia, he argues that in this region the US could slide into collusion with the world of Islam. In addition, the policy differences between the US and its European allies could even cause the Atlantic alliance to come unhinged, and collectively these two factors could pose risks to US hegemony.261 Similarly, he argued that the ongoing conflict in Iraq had the potential to expand into Iranian–US collusion, leading to additional unexpected developments.262 While Brzezinski called for the disengagement of the US military from regions of conflicts, to the contrary, he also emphasized the need for extending the US’s geostrategic influence and gaining control over regions rich in natural resources. Johnson maintained that through these strategies there is the risk of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against the US, loss of democracy and constitutional rights, the transformation into a Pentagonized presidency, the rise of systematic propaganda and disinformation, the glorification of war and military legion and bankruptcy due to the pouring of economic resources into more grandiose military projects.263 It can be observed from Brzezinski’s realist and rational approach that the pursuance of interests may conflict with the means employed to attain them, as the case of the 2003 war shows, where the pursuance of perceived national ‘interests’ was conducted through conflicting policies. Considering the gradual developments in the official discourses, initially, the post-9/11 debates comprising retributive justice, prevention and the elimination of a WMD threat and the promotion of democracy were gradually propagated. Later, emancipating the Iraqis from genocide, injustice, torture and persecution was developed as justification for humanitarian intervention. This was propagated as an objective that ‘ought’ to form the basis of foreign policy-making.264 Elshtain employed the analogy of Melian Dialogue, but reversed the roles and categorized the US as Melians. Similarly, Jack Donnelly employed the same analogy, but argued that, similarly to Melos – which had not posed a threat to Athens – Iraq’s nuclear capability was doubtful, but it was projected as a strategic threat because the powerful have the ability to propagate their justifications for a war, and the weaker have to submit to the

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unilateralism of the powerful. Donnelly did not include US negotiations with Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War and his victimization of Iraqis after the 1991 war. He did not refer to the US’s support for Iraq when it was using WMD again Iran. The US policy of employing the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention to emancipate the Iraqis from a probable WMD threat was in contradiction to its own previous policies of supporting Saddam Hussein. Based on these facts, there could not have been a moral justification for this war; however, the US conformed to the traditional Machiavellian doctrine that a prince should be prepared to launch a ruthless war, which may be seen as evil, but it should not make the prince himself evil. Reinhold Niebuhr categorizes this as a synthesis between ‘wisdom through evil’ and idealistic ‘virtuous foolishness’.265 The waging of preventive war and the invasion of Iraq for a regime change to emancipate the people from a tyrant was conceptualized as ‘an interaction between ideational factors and interests, defined in power related terms’.266 The US invasion of Iraq complied with Mearsheimer’s argument that great powers act as short-term power maximizers and utilize the option of conquest. However, Mearsheimer had also argued that the offensive policies of the great power are counterproductive, the costs of physically invading a territory are high and the dividends are minimal; therefore, failure of such strategies ultimately weakens the coalitions built by the hegemon.267 The 2003 Gulf War remains a vivid reminder of the material and moral hazards of the use of force by a ‘liberal empire’; it revealed the role of liberal ideology in fuelling the war and shows the American approach to warfare in action.268 However, the US’s post-Cold War strategic policy displays a genuine effort to transform itself in view of the emerging geopolitical changes, but also displays ‘adjustment failures’ which involve overly competitive behaviour leading to strategic exposure, self-encirclement and overextension269 which are, in turn, related to the delineation of its national interests.

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CONCLUSION

I began this book with an inquiry into the rationale behind a ‘humanitarian war’, leading to the study of causes and objectives behind the 2003 Gulf War. This led me to a broader inquiry of the post-Cold War use of force by the US, and I began by critically analyzing the moral justifications for ‘humanitarian wars’, presented by liberal and cosmopolitan thinkers in post-Cold War international relations. Through the extensive exploration of various arguments in the domain of international relations theory, the ‘just war’ doctrine, cosmopolitan interpretations of Kant’s vision of Perpetual Peace and global cosmopolis, and the liberalleft’s arguments for a global role for the US, I developed a theoretical perspective by placing the liberal cosmopolitan arguments along with the realist and Marxist theoretical argumentation on post-Cold War US grand strategy. In order to focus the theoretical point of view on specific case studies, I compared the 2003 Gulf War with the 1991 Gulf War, and analyzed liberal cosmopolitan, neoconservative, realist and Marxist discourses on these two wars, the conducts of these wars and the US’s overall post-Cold War foreign policy and grand strategy. I began with, and went on to develop, a theoretical approach comprising the analysis of liberal cosmopolitan arguments on just war, cosmopolis, democracy and liberal economic order and have also conducted an analysis of realist and Marxist critiques of the same themes. Conducting discourse analysis, I combined the theoretical analysis with the factual/data analyses, and demonstrated that discourses played a significant role in shaping and constraining post-Cold War US foreign policy towards Iraq. The difference in the outcomes of the 2003 Gulf War can be explained through critically analyzing and comparing the official discourses on this war with the official discourses on the 1991 Gulf War, as well as the actual policies of the two Bush administrations. In addition, the analysis of official discourses in view of theoretical and historical perspective, and

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through a critical analysis of the conduct of policies, can be employed as a method to fathom the objectives of states in specific situations. Considering a relatively recent example, unlike the employment of rhetorical and liberal discourses by the G.W. Bush administration at the time of the 2003 Gulf War, the Obama administration’s use of the term ‘orderly transition’1 signifies a return to a prudent and realist approach in US policy, for the continuation of a military dictatorial regime with a change of face, in practice, to minimize the chances of representative government and democracy in post-revolution Egypt. Considering the comparison of empire and cosmopolis in a theoretical analysis comprising liberal cosmopolitanism, realism and Marxism, there are points of convergence in the two different discourses on the US’s post-Cold War use of force. The promotion of the Wall Street System and advanced capitalism as mechanisms of expansion of empire through the employment of war can be studied in terms of hegemony and dominance. On the other hand, some liberal cosmopolitan scholars expect the transforming power of capitalism and the global liberal economy, along with the rise of a global civil society, to overcome the imperialist tendencies of hegemonic powers, despite their employment of war to build and extend empires. In addition, it can be inferred from their arguments that the emergence of a global civil society is a gradually growing phenomenon whose globally transforming effect cannot be hampered despite the launching of modern hegemonic and imperial wars. However, it can also be observed that the WoT has, to a certain degree, negatively affected this process. I have concluded that despite the employment of necessary means and ‘rational’ strategies, the realist approach might not ensure the attainment of interests of powerful states. Similarly, the rise of the global, non-state movements and an international civil society is a process that cannot be attributed solely to the common bond of humanity and ideals that all human beings, across all borders, share or be expected solely from the transforming power of the liberal global economic order. It might benefit from a sustained, broader and popular revolution to transform the global order of empire into a global cosmopolis, and these ends may be achieved through engagement with the UN and development of international law. Considering the case studies, while US interests and liberal discourse converged at the time of the 2003 Gulf War, unlike that of 1991, the liberal empire set higher store on maintaining its influence at Iraq’s domestic level and ensuring its control of its natural resources. As can

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be ascertained from the analysis of the case study of the 2003 Gulf War, the US forestalled the democratic process from taking its course in Iraq, although a democratic electoral process may have had the potential to facilitate a representative government in leading further towards a growing economy. Through the identification of patterns of post-Cold War US strategy towards Iraq, from the Gulf Crisis of 1990 to the elections in 2005, it can be argued that US strategy displayed the quest for expansion of its ‘hegemony’, ‘primacy’ and ‘dominance’, which can be regarded as the identifiable determinants of an empire. Liberal cosmopolitan as well as realist thinkers have engaged in broader discourses on hegemony and cosmopolis to develop international relations as a discipline in the postCold War era, because the Cold War models do not effectively explain evolving global changes. Similarly, analyses of the official discourses on the two Gulf Wars show that the US is transforming its foreign policy and grand strategy in view of global developments, but that the policy-makers revert to the Cold War models and realpolitik when confronted with circumstances that require the US to pursue its national interests. Moreover, the priorities and policies of decision-makers are not primarily shaped by their discourses; however, once discourse has developed, they do lay certain limitations on the execution of policies. Therefore, through the analyses of two Gulf Wars, I have argued that US foreign policy displays evidence of prudent realism while referring to discourses of global cosmopolitan and a global civil society.

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NOTES

Introduction 1. This perspective comprises a specific combination of literature from international relations (IR) that draws on Marxist theory and arrives at a realist conclusion over the centrality and vitality of material interests in constituting discourse/s of power in world politics. Engaging with a materialist approach common to both the Marxist and realist traditions, it delivers an immanent critique of US foreign policy-making. Therefore, I am not referring to critical realism as a methodological approach of social sciences developed within the Anglophone tradition by Andrew Sayer, Andrew Collier, Andrew Brown, Roy Bhaskar, Mervyn Hartwig and Margaret S. Archer (among others), which engages with transcendental realism, critical naturalism and the language of ‘deep structures’ or ‘emergence’. 2. G.H.W. Bush on 11 September 1990, addressing a joint session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit, envisioned a New World Order in which the US would take the lead in transforming the world by building wider alliances, removing dictatorial regimes, preventing the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and by extending and maintaining its influence in the Middle East, to ensure the supply of the vital natural resource: oil for the US economy. He also stated, in reference to the budget deficit, that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had led to severe imbalances in US imports (accessed 11 March 2010). In addition, in his speech to the UN on 12 September 2002, President G.W. Bush declared: ‘If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world’, (accessed 21 March 2010).

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3. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 1 and Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’, International Organization 46/2 (spring 1992), pp. 391–425. Also Emanuel Adler, ‘Constructivism and International Relations’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons (eds), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2006), pp. 95–103. Adler delineates ‘modernist linguistic approach’ in constructivism, which regards language as the medium for construction of ‘intersubjective meaning’, implying sense of right, obligation, duty and so on and ‘speech acts’ that have illocutionary – doing something by saying something, implying that description may contribute to creation of a reality. Moving further to constructivism’s ‘strong programme’ where discourse is considered power in the sense that it makes us understand certain problems in a specific way and pose questions accordingly. Moreover, considering the premise that language expression represents a potential for new constitution of reality, discourse is also considered a source of change. 4. Adler: ‘Constructivism and International Relations’, p. 102. See also Emanuel Adler, The Power of Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 11–14. 5. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 5 and Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52/4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 887–917. 6. Adler: ‘Constructivism and International Relations’, pp. 103–04. Also John Gerard Ruggie, ‘What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge’, International Organization 52, 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 855–7, 862–78. 7. Martha Finnemore, ‘International Organisations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation and Science Policy’, International Organization 47/4 (Autumn 1993), pp. 565–97. 8. Helle Malmvig, State Sovereignty and Intervention: A Discourse Analysis of Interventionary and Non-interventionary Practices in Kosovo and Algeria (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. x–xv, 3–4, 14, 24, 45–76, 105–37. 9. Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1–6, 17. 10. Malmvig: State Sovereignty and Intervention, p. xv. 11. Peter Gowan, ‘The Euro-Atlantic Origins of NATO’s Attack on Yugoslavia’, in Tariq Ali (ed.), Masters of the Universe?: NATO’s Balkan Crusade (London: Verso, 2000), p. 11. Also Peter Gowan, ‘The NATO Powers and the Balkan Tragedy’, New Left Review I/234 (March–April 1999), pp. 83–105. 12. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 1–11. 13. Goran Therborn, The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (London: Verso and New Left Books, 1980), pp. vii, 1–25, 116. Therborn has proposed a model

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15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

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to explain the formation of human subjectivities through an interplay of subjectivities of ‘in-the-world’ (i.e. inclusive and positional) and ‘subjectivities of being’ (i.e. existential and historical). He categorizes the evolved subjectivities as inclusive-existential, inclusive-historical, positional-existential and positional-historical, formed in the universe of ideological interpellations. To explain ‘interpellation’, Therborn refers to Louis Althusser’s argument that ideology has always interpellated individuals as subjects. Interpellation is viewed as a process where ideology addresses pre-ideological individuals and produces them as subjects. Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (London: Verso, 2004), pp. 9–10: responding to Donald Rumsfeld’s notion of ‘Unknown Unknowns’, Žižek’s classification of ‘Unknown Knowns’, implying ‘the things we do not know, we know. Charles Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1960), p. 60. Mills classifies ‘crackpot realism’ as a high-flying moral rhetoric joined with opportunism crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. Gilbert Achcar, ‘Self-deception and Selective Expertise: Bush’s Cakewalk into Iraq Quagmire’, Counterpunch, 5 May 2004, (accessed 1 July 2009). Achcar: ‘Self-deception and Selective Expertise’. Michael C. Desch, ‘Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters’, International Security 27/2 (Fall 2002), pp. 20–1. Alejandro Colas, Empire (London: Polity, 2007), p. 28. Mary Kaldor, Human Security: Reflections on Globalisation and Intervention (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), pp. 134–52, 154–5, 173. For arguments on humanitarian war and cosmopolitan humanitarian law, see also Mary Kaldor, Public Lecture 9, The Ideas of 1989, ‘Bringing Peace and Human Rights Together’ (December 1999) delivered at The Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics, pp. 11–13. For advocacy of democracy and cosmopolitanism, see David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), Governing Globalisation: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), pp. 2–9. See also David Held, Globalisation/Anti Globalisation (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), pp. 40–51; David Held, Global Covenant (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 2–11; and Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), pp. 133, 193–4. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality’, Die Zeit, 29 April 1999, reprinted in Constellations 6/3 (September 1999), trans. Stephen Maver and William E. Scheuerman, p. 264. Habermas argues that according to the ‘Western interpretation of the premise of the politics of human rights, the armed peacekeeping operation (i.e. by NATO in Yugoslavia and the war in Kosovo, authorised by international

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community but without UN mandate) could signify a leap from the classical international law of states to a cosmopolitan law of a global civil society’. 23. Ray Kiely, Empire in the Age of Globalisation: US Hegemony and the Neoliberal Disorder (London: Pluto, 2005), pp. 67–87. Kiely seeks to analyze the global transforming effects of US hegemony from a broader theoretical perspective, which calls for a critical rethinking of realism, Marxism and cosmopolitanism. 24. For detailed accounts of history and theoretical development as well as the flaws within neoliberalism as a politico-economic practice, see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 25. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation (London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1999), pp. 10–14 and Larry Diamond, ‘Universal Democracy?’, Policy Review 2003, 119, (accessed 25 May 2010). Also Larry Diamond, Can the Whole World Become Democratic? Democracy, Development and International Policies (Irvine: Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, 2003), (accessed 18 May 2010). Also Larry Diamond, ‘Global Implications for Democracy of 9/11’, Policy Paper, 25 October 2001, Hoover Digest (accessed 20 January 2010); Larry Diamond, ‘A Political Strategy for Winning the War On Terrorism’, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (accessed 20 January 2010); and Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy in Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005), pp. 16–22.

Chapter 1. The Post-Cold War Academic and Intellectual Arguments on the Use of Force by the US: Development of Liberal Cosmopolitan Discourses 1. Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 5–10, 103. For relatively recent arguments, see Robert Cooper, ‘Why We Still Need Empires’, The Observer, 7 April 2002. 2. Robert J. Rotberg, ‘The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention and Repair’, in Robert J. Rotberg (ed.), When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 1–7 and Rachel Stohl and Michael Stohl, ‘The Failed and Failing States and the Bush Administration: Paradoxes and Perils’, Policy Paper, Center for Defense Information, April 2001, (accessed 3 July 2010). See also Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 3–14, 221–31.

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3. I. William Zartman (ed.), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), pp. 1, 5–11, 267–73. 4. For the text of the UN resolution 3379 passed on 10 November 1975, in the 2400th plenary meeting: (accessed 11 November 2010). 5. Robert W. Gregg, About Face? The United States and the United Nations (London: Lynne Reinner Publishing, 1993), p. 43. 6. Gregg: About Face?, p. 68. 7. Gregg: About Face?, pp. 63–8. Arthur Goldberg argued: ‘If any member can insist on making an exception to the principle of collective financial responsibility with respect to certain activities of the organization the United States reserves the same option to make exception, if in our view, strong and compelling reason exist for doing so.’ Regarding anti-UN discourses, Gregg referred to the article by Charles Krauthammer, ‘Let It Sink’, The New Republic, 24 August 1987, pp. 18–23. 8. Gregg: About Face?, p. 101. 9. The liberal, liberal-left and cosmopolitan theorists share an approach that is liberal and anti-realist and does not claim to view world affairs from a statecentric perspective; therefore, it can be classified as global and internationalist. Anthony Burke has used the term ‘New Internationalism’ to categorize the strategy of war as advocated by liberal ‘just war’ theorists. See Anthony Burke, ‘Against the New Internationalism’, Ethics and International Affairs 19/2 (2005), pp. 73–89. 10. Anthony Clark Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 4–5, 11–25, 178. Arend and Beck quote John Norton Moore, who identified six phases in the emergence of the new legal paradigm on self-defence: ‘just war’ (c.330 BC–AD 1650); Positivist – Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes (1700–1919); League of Nations (1919–1928); Kellogg– Briand Pact (1928–39); UN Charter (1945); post-UN Charter period. 11. Arend and Beck: International Law, pp. 192–3. 12. The first principle of the ‘just war’ tradition, jus ad bellum, requires a just cause, legitimate authority, right intentions, reasonable hope of success, public declaration, employing war as the last resort and proportionality. Proportionality is the amount of force and military arsenal allowed in comparison with the threat. 13. Cosmopolitan scholars prefer measures short of war with the authorization of the UN. 14. Robert W. Cox and Timothy J. Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 497–513. 15. Arend and Beck: International Law, pp. 41–2, 93. 16. Cox and Sinclair: Approaches to World Order, p. 504.

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17. Arend and Beck, International Law, pp. 179–81. Also Thomas M. Franck, ‘Who Killed Article 2(4)? Or ‘Changing Norms Governing The Use of Force by States’, American Journal of International Law 64/4 (October 1970), pp. 811–19. 18. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which states: ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.’ 19. Michael J. Glennon, ‘Why the Security Council Failed’, Foreign Affairs 82/3 (May/June 2003), p. 20. 20. Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘How to Fight a “Just War”’, in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds), Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 263–9 and Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th edn (New York: Basic Books, 2006), pp. 251–5. Also Judith Lichtenberg, ‘Some Central Problems in “Just War” Theory’, in R. Joseph Hoffman (ed.), ‘Just War’ and Jihad (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006), p. 23 and Neta C. Crawford, ‘The Justice of Preemption and Preventive War Doctrines’, in Mark Evans (ed.), ‘Just War’ Theory: A Reappraisal (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 26–7. 21. Arend and Beck: International Law, pp. 177–88. 22. Article 51 states: ‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.’ 23. Gong: The Standard of Civilization, pp. 5–10. 24. Arend and Beck: International Law, p. 193. 25. Colin Flint and Ghazi-Walid Falah, ‘How the US Justified its War on Terrorism’, Third World Quarterly 25/8 (2004), pp. 1381–2. 26. Kiely: Empire in the Age of Globalisation, pp. 67–87. 27. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 130–3, 150, 263. Referring to Augustine’s City of God, Elshtain argues that St Augustine outlaws wars of aggression and aggrandisement as unacceptable, but that in certain cases resorting to force is necessary, especially in the cases of protecting the innocent who cannot defend themselves. See also Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘Reflection on War and Political Discourse: Realism, “Just War” and Feminism in a Nuclear Age’, in Jean Bethke Elshtain (ed.), Just War Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 268.

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28. Elshtain: ‘How to Fight a “Just War”’, pp. 263–9 and Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 53–9. 29. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, p. 53. 30. Elshtain: Women and War, p. 255. Elshtain suggests that Kant viewed war as an enemy of peace. 31. Anthony Burke, ‘Just War or Ethical Peace? Moral Discourses of Strategic Violence after 9/11’, International Affairs 80/2 (2004), pp. 334–44 and Burke: ‘Against the New Internationalism’, p. 86. 32. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, 87. UNICEF reports confirming infant mortality due to malnourishment and diseases can be found on the website, (accessed 23 March 2009). 33. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, p. 186. 34. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, p. 63. 35. Anthony Burke, ‘For a Cautious Utopianism’, Ethics and International Affairs 19/2 (2005), p. 97. Reply to Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘Against the New Utopianism’, Ethics and International Affairs 19/2 (2005), pp. 91–5. 36. Elshtain: ‘How to Fight a “Just War”’, p. 269. Elshtain quotes Michael Ignatieff, who calls the terrorists ‘apocalyptic nihilists’: see Michael Ignatieff, ‘It’s War – But It Doesn’t Have to Be Dirty’, The Guardian, 1 October 2001. 37. Elshtain: Just War Against Terror, p. 1. 38. Joseba Zulaika, ‘The Self-fulfilling Prophecies of Counterterrorism’, Radical History Review 85 (Winter 2003), p. 198. 39. Zulaika: ‘The Self-fulfilling Prophecies of Counterterrorism’, pp. 194–8. 40. St Aurelius Augustine, de Civitate Dei (The City of God against the Pagans), trans. Henry Bettenson (London: William Heinemann, 1966), Book IV, pp. xi–xii; Book II, p. 317 and Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 3–6, 19. Also Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York, London: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 146–53 and R.H. Barrow, Introduction to St Augustine: The City of God (London: Faber & Faber, 1950), pp. 19–25. 41. Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, Public Interest (spring 2003), p. 93. 42. St Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts, Disputations, V de Veritate I, trans. Thomas Gilby (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 231. See also Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 17 and Robert Holmes, ‘Can War be Morally Justified? The “Just War” Theory’, in Jean Bethke Elshtain (ed.), Just War Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 197–8. 43. Gilbert Achcar, ‘The Evolution of the “Responsibility to Protect”’, Dialogue No. 8, Medecins Sans Frontiers publication, Responsibility to Protect

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44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58.

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(n.d.), p. 4, (accessed 12 August 2009). Burke: ‘Just War or Ethical Peace?’, p. 340: quoting Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘A “Just War”?’, Boston Globe, 10 June 2002. William V. O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger Press, 1981), p. 3. Also Russell: The Just War in the Middle Ages, pp. 3–6. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, ‘Abu Ghraib and Insaniyat’, Monthly Review, December 2007, (accessed 4 July 2010). Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 76, 105, 116–17, 149. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, p. 83. Noam Chomsky, ‘Who Are the Global Terrorists’, in Ken Booth and Timothy Dunne (eds), Worlds in Collision (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 128–37. Elshtain: Women and War, pp. 130–3, 150. Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, What Kind of Liberation? Women and Occupation of Iraq (London: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 5–10. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, pp. 150–60. Walter Laqueur, Age of Terrorism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), p. 13; Leonard Weinberg and Paul Davis, An Introduction to Political Terrorism (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1976), p. 87; and Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne, The Terrorists (New York: Facts on File, 1982), pp. 18–19. Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: New Press, 2002), p. 10. Burke: ‘Just War or Ethical Peace?’, p. 348. Burke quotes Elshtain: ‘We are just going to provide iodine or band aids or might it be necessary, as Bonhoeffer put it, to ‘cut off the head of the snake?’: Jean Bethke Elshtain. ‘Commentary: Thinking about War and Justice’, Religion and Culture Web Forum, Martin Marty Center, May 2003). Elshtain: ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, p. 86. Elshtain: ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, pp. 86–93. Elshtain argues that the trauma of 1960s Vietnam syndrome nurtured an antiwar sentiment among liberal and leftist academics, but during those years it was unfashionable to argue that communism was the real threat. She implies that similar theories led to undue sympathy for the movements that are disguising their own political objectives by painting them in anti-imperialist and revolutionary hues. Elshtain: ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, p. 90. Elshtain quotes one of her favourite headlines during the war: ‘Taliban pinned down, dancing in Kabul.’

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59. ‘What We’re Fighting for: A letter from America’, February 2002, Institute for American Values, (accessed 5 July 2010). The signatories had voiced caution regarding waging war. 60. Elshtain: ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, p. 90. 61. Elshtain: ‘Intellectual Dissent and the War on Terror’, p. 92. 62. Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘International Justice as Equal Regard and the Use of Force’, Ethics and International Affairs 17/2 (2003), p. 64. 63. Elshtain: Just War against Terror, p. 6. 64. Elshtain: ‘Against the New Utopianism’, p. 93. 65. Burke: ‘For a Cautious Utopianism’, p. 98. 66. Michael Walzer, ‘All God’s Children Got Values’, Dissent, spring 2005, (accesssed 14 November 2009). 67. Michael Walzer, Arguing about War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 3. 68. Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 51–255 and Arguing about War, pp. 33–4. 69. Michael Walzer, ‘Moral Ambiguities in the Gulf crisis’, in Herbert H. Blumberg and Christopher C. French (eds), The Persian Gulf War: Views from Social and Behavioural Sciences (London: University Press of America, 1994), p. 375. 70. Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars, p. 229 and Arguing about War, p. 14. 71. Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 41. 72. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. ix, 2–6, 21, 26–39, referring to the distinction between thick and thin morality, based upon the morality of acting for yourself and accepting personal risks as compared with acting on behalf of your family and clan or, on the other hand, acting generally on behalf of strangers. 73. Walzer: Arguing about War, pp. 54–6. 74. Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 130. 75. Walzer: Arguing about War, pp. 130–42. 76. Walzer: Arguing about War, pp. 35–40. 77. Walzer: Arguing about War, pp. 5; also Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 144– 51, 239–42, 251–5. 78. Lichtenberg: ‘Some Central Problems in “Just War” Theory’, pp. 18, 23 (emphasis added): quoting the unpublished papers by Jeff McMahan, ‘Preventive War and the Killing of the Innocent’ and David Rodin, ‘Ethics of Prevention’. 79. Michael Walzer, ‘Can There Be a Decent Left?’ Dissent, spring 2002, (accessed 6 November 2009). 80. Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 38. 81. Walzer: ‘Can There Be a Decent Left?’. 82. Michael Walzer, ‘The Argument About Humanitarian Intervention’, Dissent, winter 2002. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=629 (accessed 26 July 2010).

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83. Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 39. 84. ‘The confusing of Crusades and ‘just war’, resonating in the speeches of G.W. Bush, a consequence of forces of “good” perceived to be fighting the forces of “evil”’: Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 10. 85. Burke: ‘Just War or Ethical Peace’, p. 34, referring to the negligence of the US forces that led to the brutal killings by suffocation of hundreds of captured Taliban who had been inhumanly confined in containers in Niazi Qala, and the torture of Iraqi soldiers in Abu Ghraib in Iraq. 86. The recorded details of 681 civilian deaths in post-occupation Iraq were a result of ‘escalation of force’, where civilians driving towards military checkposts or with their vehicles blocking US convoys were killed without any reason, because the US forces suspected them of being suicide bombers. The US forces in Iraq had been responding to the same stereotyping and brainwashing that had been forged to build the justification of a preventive war against a ‘perceived’ threat. See ‘Iraq files reveal checkpoint deaths’: Wikileaks secret files at Al Jazeera News, 24 October 2010, (accessed 24 December 2010). 87. Walzer: Arguing About War, p. 151. 88. Michael Walzer, ‘Just and Unjust Occupations’, Dissent, winter 2004, (accessed 6 November 2009). Also Walzer: Arguing about War, p. 167. 89. Thomas Cushman, inspired by Berman, used this term to describe the perpetrators of 9/11. See Thomas Cushman (ed.), A Matter of Principle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 3. Francis Fukuyama also uses this term in his article ‘History and September 11’, in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds), Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 32. 90. Walzer: ‘Can There Be a Decent Left?’. 91. Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), pp. xix, 5–17, 28–35, 43, 110–11. 92. Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), pp. xxvi, 308. Also Maxime Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, trans. Roger Veinus (London: I.B.Tauris, 1987), pp. 83–121. 93. Berman: Terror and Liberalism, p. 68. 94. Dobson and Payne: The Terrorists, pp. 18–19: quoting Frantz Fanon: ‘Violence alone, violence committed by the people and educated by its leaders, makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the key to them.’ 95. Richard Seymour, The Liberal Defence of Murder (London: Verso, 2008), p. 14. 96. Berman: Terror and Liberalism, p. 6. 97. Mehdi Mozaffari, ‘Just War against an “Outlaw” Region’, in Cushman: A Matter of Principle, pp. 120–1.

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98. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 5, 90–1. Rawls’s theory was based on the assumption that western civilization comprises reasonable states complying with the reasonable law of people, i.e. international law. 99. Rawls: The Law of Peoples, pp. 7, 93. 100. Scott Macleod, ‘In the Wake of ‘Desert Storm’, in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (eds), The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents and Opinions (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 412–22. 101. Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), p. 3. See also ‘Full Text: Blix briefing’ Story from BBC News, 7 March 2003, (accessed 1 October 2009). 102. For the text of UN Resolution 36/27, see and (accessed 13 September 2010). 103. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003), p. 25. 104. Jeffery Herf, ‘Liberal Legacies, Europe’s Totalitarian Era, and the Iraq War’, in Cushman: A Matter of Principle, p. 46. 105. The signatories included the UK, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Portugal, Denmark, Poland and Hungary. For the text of ‘Letter of Eight’, see (accessed 5 April 2009). 106. These states included Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. For the statement by these states, see (accessed 5 April 2009). 107. Thomas Risse ‘Beyond Iraq: The Crisis of the Transatlantic Security Community’, in David Held and Marthias Koenig-Archibugi (eds), American Power in the Twenty First Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), pp. 229–33. 108. Paul Berman, ‘A Friendly Drink in a Time of War’, in Cushman: A Matter of Principle, pp. 148–9. 109. P.W. Singer, ‘Corporate Warriors: The Rise of Privatised Military Industry and its Ramifications for International Security’, International Security 26/3 (winter 2001–02), pp. 186–220. 110. Samir Amin, Beyond US Hegemony? Assessing the Prospects of a Multipolar World (London: Zed Books, 2006), pp. 96–111. 111. Peter Gowan, The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance (London: Verso, 1999), pp. 141–86. For extensive historical accounts and details of the global mechanism of maintaining global dollar supremacy, see

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112. 113.

114.

115. 116. 117. 118.

119. 120.

121.

122. 123. 124. 125.

126.

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Vassilis K. Fouskas and Bulent Gokay, The New American Imperialism: Bush’s War on Terror and Blood for Oil (London: Praeger Security International, 2005), pp. 11– 27. Simon Sheppard, ‘Foot Soldiers of the New World Order: Rise of the Corporate Military’, New Left Review I/228 (March–April 1998), pp. 128–38. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitcs: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 8, 37 and Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity Press: 2003), pp. 1–9, 25–6, 111–27. Also Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), pp. 1–11. Ulrich Beck, The Brave New World of Work, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 110, 176–8. Also Ulrich Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), pp. 2–7, 147. Mary Kaldor, The Imaginary War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 4. Mary Kaldor, Human Security: Reflections on Globalisation and Intervention (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), pp. 173–4. Beck: Cosmopolitan Vision, p. 147. By use of force, Kaldor argues primarily for measures short of war, and for aggression only under strict UN sanction and supervision (meeting and discussion with Prof. Kaldor on 29 June 2010). Glennon: ‘Why the Security Council Failed’, pp. 20–6. As argued by Aquinas: ‘not all the moral precepts belong to the Law of Nature’. He interpreted the additions to the natural law by virtue of the developments in human law, arguing further that ‘human law is the same in all men while the moral institutions are various for various people’: M.C. D’Arcy (ed.), Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (London: Everyman Library, 1964), p. 89: quoting Summa Theologiae). Similarly, Grotius argues that ‘justice does not have its origins in nature itself, but the very nature of man, which even if we had no lack of anything would lead us to the mutual relations of society, is the mother of the Law of Nature’. See Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli As Pacis–On Law of War and Peace, Prolegomena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 15. Kaldor: Human Security, pp. 154–5. Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 84: quoting Kaldor: New and Old Wars, p. 130. Beck: The Brave New World of Work, pp. 110, 176–8. Ulrich Beck, ‘Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Emerging from a Rivalry of Distinctions’, in Ulrich Beck, Natan Sznaider and Rainer Winter (eds), Global America? (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), pp. 21–5. Daniele Archibugi and Mathias-Archibugi (eds), Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso Press, 2003), pp. vii, 5.

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127. Kiely: Empire in the Age of Globalisation, pp. 4, 46, 54. Kiely refers to commentators who consider US policy of war as anti-globalist. 128. Held and McGrew: Governing Globalisation, pp. 2–9. See also Held, Globalisation/ Anti Globalisation, pp. 40–51 and Held: Global Covenant, pp. 2–11. 129. Susan Strange, Casino Capitalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 1–24. 130. UNICEF report State of the World’s Children, ‘650 million children lives on less than 1 dollar a day’, , also (accessed 22 April 2010). 131. Gowan: The Global Gamble, pp. 19–39. 132. Timothy Brennan, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism’, in Archibugi and Mathias-Archibugi: Debating Cosmopolitics, p. 45. 133. Nadia Urbinati, ‘Can Cosmopolitan Democracy be Democratic?’, in Archibugi and Mathias-Archibugi: Debating Cosmopolitics, p. 77. 134. Urbinati: ‘Can Cosmopolitan Democracy be Democratic?’, p. 77. 135. Peter Gowan, ‘The New Liberal Cosmopolitanism’, in Archibugi and MathiasArchibugi: Debating Cosmopolitics, pp. 79–80. 136. Held: Global Covenant, p. 171. 137. Horst Siebert, The World Economy (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 273. 138. Horst Siebert, Rules for Global Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 89. 139. The ‘Rules of Origin’ (ROO) are designed to establish the origin of the manufacturing country of a tradable product while the ‘Country-of-Origin’ principles are related to the applicability of the laws and quality standards of the country where the action or service is performed. 140. Peter Gowan, ‘The Neoliberal Cosmopolitanism’, New Left Review 11 (2001), p. 87. 141. Susan Strange, Mad Money (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 1–11. 142. Cheah and Robbins: Cosmopolitics, pp. 8, 37. 143. Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journey into New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), p. 13. 144. Walzer: Arguing about War, pp. 171–91. 145. Kaldor: Human Security, p. 168. Kaldor refers to Walzer while arguing that a minimum human rights framework needs to be applied in the argumentation on war. 146. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan Press, 1977), pp. 25–6. 147. Bull: The Anarchical Society, p. 82. 148. Corneliu Bjola, Legitimising the Use of Force in International Politics: Kosovo, Iraq and the Ethics of Intervention (Oxford: Routledge: 2009), pp. 26, 98.

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149. Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age (London: Penguin Books, 1995). This term had been used by Stephenson and since then this idea has gained currency and has been employed in more than a geopolitical sense for identification of the states that support the principles of common law and civil rights. 150. David Held opined in Barry Buzan and David Held: ‘Realism vs. Cosmopolitanism: A Debate between Barry Buzan and David Held’, conducted by Andrew McGrew, Review of International Studies 24 (1998), p. 395. 151. Buzan and Held: ‘Realism vs. Cosmopolitanism’, pp. 396–7. 152. Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival, pp. 11–49. 153. Robert W. Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method’, in Stephen Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 52, 61–3 and Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), pp. 169–70. 154. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 325–6. 155. Seymour: The Liberal Defence of Murder, pp. 24–35. 156. Chomsky: Deterring Democracy, p. 147. 157. Gowan: ‘The Euro-Atlantic Origins of NATO’s Attack on Yugoslavia’, p. 11. 158. Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), pp. xi, xiv, 39 (Ultima Ratio Regum–the last argument of Kings).

Chapter 2. Post-Cold War Realist and Neoconservative Discourses on US Foreign Policy 1. Robert J. Antonio, ‘After Postmodernism: Reactionary Tribalism’, American Journal of Sociology 106/1 (July 2000), pp. 64–5. 2. Robert G. Gilpin, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, International Organisation 38/2 (spring 1984), p. 290. 3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard E. Flathman and David Johnson (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), pp. 70, 72. ‘During the time when men live without a common power to keep them in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre.’ ‘Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes – The war of all against all.’ ‘And consequently it is a precept, of a generall rule of Reason, That every man ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and if he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use, all helps and advantages of Warre.’ 4. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: McGraw Hill, 1985), pp. 10–13. 5. Robert G. Gilpin, ‘The Theory of Hegemonic War’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18/4 (Spring 1988), pp. 591. Also Robert G. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 10–11.

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6. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 227–52. 7. Gilpin: ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, pp. 295–6. 8. Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, pp. 227–52. 9. Cox and Sinclair: Approaches to World Order, p. 498. 10. John Lewis Gaddis, ‘A Grand Strategy of Transformation’, Foreign Policy 133 (November/December 2002), pp. 50–7. In post-Cold War and post-9/11 international relations, European opposition to US hegemony was not significant, and there were no counter-strategic coalitions. Gaddis claims that many political scientists agree with G.W. Bush’s explanations for this tendency: ‘First, the other great powers prefer the management of international system by a single hegemon as long as it is a benign one. Second, the US’s hegemony is acceptable because it is linked to certain values that all states and cultures – if not all terrorists and tyrants – share.’ 11. Robert O. Koehane and Joseph S. Nye Jr, ‘Power and Interdependence Revisited’, International Organisation 41/4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 725–53. 12. Gilpin: ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, 297–8. 13. Kaldor: Global Civil Society; also Human Security; also Held: Governing Globalisation and Democracy and Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Seyla Ben Habib, Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 67–92. 14. Colas: Empire. Also Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (London: Phoenix Press, 1987), pp. 56–83, 302–27. 15. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), ch. 5. 16. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004), p. xii. 17. Michael Cox, ‘The Imperial Republic Revisited: The United States in the Era of Bush’, in Alejandro Colas and Richard Saull (eds), The War on Terrorism and the American ‘Empire’ after the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 117–8. One of the central themes of American historiography has been that whatever else one might call it, the last thing Americans were likely to call it was empire. Also Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), pp. 6–10. 18. Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment’, Foreign Affairs 70/1 (1990–91), pp. 23–33. 19. Jan Naderveen Pieterse, ‘Scenarios of Power’, in Colas and Saull: The War on Terrorism and the American ‘Empire’ after the Cold War, p. 180. 20. Alex Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power (London: Polity Press, 2003), pp. 100–1 and Making History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34.

35.

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1987), pp. 122–31, chs 3–5; and John Lewis Gaddis, We Know Now (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. viii, 13, 288–9. Johan Galtung, ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’, Journal of Peace Research 8/2 (1971), pp. 81–117. Hardt and Negri: Multitude, pp. xi–xii. Peter Gowan, ‘Crisis in the Heartland’, New Left Review 55 (January–February 2009), pp. 7–17. Morgenthau: Politics among Nations, p. 13. Ole R. Holsti, Making American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 315–17. Tim Dunn, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith, International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Randall L. Schweller, ‘Democracy Promotion: Realists Reflections’, in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi (eds), American Promotion of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 46. Stephen van Evera, ‘Offense, Defense, and Causes of War’, International Security 22/4 (spring 1998), pp. 5–43 and Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited’, International Security 25/3 (winter 2000–01), pp. 128–61. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), pp. 1–5, 20–1. Peter G. Peterson and James K. Sebenius, ‘The Primacy of Domestic Agenda’, in Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton (eds), Rethinking America’s Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), pp. 57–93. Referring to the National Security Council, created in 1947, and its legislative mandate: ‘It had been clear that the US national security interests must include the development of policies that will increase our economic strength and domestic stability.’ Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and the Military Conflict (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 515. Alex Callinicos, ‘System Failure: Economic Turmoil and Endless War’, Socialist Review, October 2008, (accessed 28 October 2010). This term was coined by Hubert Vedrine, Foreign Minister of France under Lionel Jospin (1997–2002); however, it was employed by commentators after the 1991 Gulf War to describe the global status of the US. Gilbert Achcar, ‘Balance-Sheet of US Imperialism’, International Socialist Review, September–October 2008, (accessed 8 October 2008). Military Keynesianism is the formula which designates military expenditure for economic stimulus. Ivo H. Daaldar and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), p. 3.

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36. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 15–16. 37. G. John Ikenberry, ‘Liberal Hegemony or Empire? American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’, in Held and Koenig-Archibugi: American Power in the Twenty First Century, p. 86. 38. Scott Burchill et al., Theories of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 1, 8. 39. John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Disorder Restored’, in Allison and Treverton: Rethinking America’s Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order, pp. 213–23. 40. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 1–5. 41. Jack Donnelly, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 11, 31. 42. Amin: Beyond US Hegemony?, pp. 4–5 and Dilip Hiro, After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World (New York: Nation Books, 2010), pp. 1–11, ch. 2, 10. 43. Donnelly: Realism and International Relations, p. 126. 44. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 1–5. 45. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 50–3, 140–8. 46. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 247. 47. Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival, pp. 71–2. 48. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 39–41. 49. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘A Geostrategy for Eurasia’, Foreign Affairs 76/5 (September–October 1997), pp. 50–64. 50. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (New York: Basic Books, 1987), p. 41. For further readings, Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Living with China’, National Interest (spring 2000), pp. 5–20; ‘Living with a New Europe’, National Interest (summer 2000), pp. 17–32; ‘Living with Russia’, National Interest (Fall 2000), pp. 5–16. 51. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Dominance or Global Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 2004), pp. vii, 218. 52. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 6. 53. NSC 68, ‘To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass’, Naval War College Review XXVII, May–June 1975, (accessed 6 November 2010). 54. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. xi–xii. 55. Michael Hardt, ‘Folly of Our Masters of the Universe’, The Guardian, 18 December 2002, (accessed 18 November 2010). 56. Hardt and Negri: Multitude, p. xii. 57. Antonio Negri, ‘The Order of War’, Generation Online, (accessed 28 October 2010) (emphasis added).

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234 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

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PAGES 83–88

Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 100–3. Negri: ‘The Order of War’. Colas: Empire, p. 161. Callinicos: Making History, pp. 122–31. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 100–3. Amin: Beyond Hegemony?, pp. 9–23, 98–120. Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire (London: Verso, 2003), p. 13. Paul H. Nitze, ‘The Strategic Balance between Hope and Skepticism’, Foreign Policy 17 (winter 1974–75), pp. 136–56 and ‘Deterring Our Deterrent’, Foreign Policy 25 (winter 1976–77), pp. 195–210. Also Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Rivals but No “Race”’, Foreign Policy 16 (Autumn 1974), pp. 48–92. Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Is There a Strategic Arms Race?’ Foreign Policy 15 (summer 1974), pp. 3–20 and ‘Optimal Ways to Confuse Ourselves’, Foreign Policy 20 (autumn 1975), pp. 170–98. Also Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Spreading the Bomb without Quite Breaking the Rules’, Foreign Policy 25 (winter 1976–77), pp. 88–96, 145–79. Paul H. Nitze, ‘Modern President as a World Figure’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 37 (September 1956), pp. 114–23. Paul H. Nitze, Hiroshima to Glasnost (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p. 9. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. ix. See also Paul H. Nitze, ‘The Role of the Learned Man in the Government’, Review of Politics 20/3 (July 1958), pp. 275–88. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. xii. Having gone through an agonizing experience of migration along with his family from Germany after World War I, Nitze displays in his writings that he did not consider it of much value to delve into the causes of wars and the social injustices that may follow; rather, he considered war as a permanent feature of international relations and conceptualized how the world may be positively transformed by great powers during times of relative peace. This is similar to his experience as an immigrant to the US and growing up in Chicago’s gangster neighbourhood, where he joined the Italian gang the ‘Scotti Brothers’ in order to avoid being bullied in the future. This also meant that he was aware that, in return for protection from the Scotti Brothers, he might have to participate in gang fights alongside them in the future. It can be argued that he had a realist approach based on the nature of power and the need to ally with a power structure, which he acknowledged and credited to the decision he made as a young boy, when he later wrote his memoirs at an advanced age. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. xviii, xix. Nitze associated closely with Wall Street entrepreneurs more than with academics, economists, and foreign policy and military experts. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 7.

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73. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 8. Roosevelt’s inner circle included Thomas G. Corcron and Benjamin V. Cohen. 74. Alex Callinicos, Imperialism and the Global Political Economy (London: Polity, 2009), p. 166. 75. Jane D’Arista, The Evolution of US Finance, vol. 1 (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), p. 32. For a detailed explanation of Fiat Money and Proprietary Trading, see vol. 2. 76. Jane D’Arista in an interview to Paul Jay, ‘Anatomy of Casino Capitalism’, Real News, (accessed 12 and 18 November 2009). 77. Alex Callinicos, ‘Marxism and Global Governance’, in Held and McGrew: Governing Globalisation, p. 259. 78. William R. Clark, Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar (Gabriola Islands, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2005), pp. 1–38. 79. Kenneth M. Pollack, ‘Securing the Gulf’, Foreign Affairs 82/4 (July–August 2003), pp. 2–16. Also Michael Klare, Blood and Oil: How America’s Thirst for Petrol is Killing Us (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004), pp. x, 118–36. For a detailed account of the subsequent terminal decline of oil production as determined by geological and technological factors, see John Bellamy Foster, ‘Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism’, Monthly Review, July–August 2008, (accessed 31 October 2010). 80. Robert H. Wade, ‘The Invisible Hand of the American Empire’, Ethics and International Affairs 17/2 (2003), pp. 77–88. Also Robert H. Wade, ‘A New Global Financial Architecture?’, New Left Review 46 (July–August 2007), pp. 113–29. Wade has classified the global financial regime as a ‘standard-surveillancecompliance-system’, which has been drafted by a US-led institutional complex, including western governments and multilateral organizations such as the IMF and the Basel Committee on Banking supervision, the Financial Stability Forum, G20 and a gamut of non-official bodies as well as financial firms and think-tanks from advanced capitalist states. The global south has no representation and the income is distributed upwards to wealthy industrialized countries. 81. Callinicos: Imperialism and the Global Political Economy, pp. 166–68. 82. Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions (London: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 37. 83. Peter Gowan, ‘A Radical Realist’ (book review), New Left Review 41 (September– October 2006), pp. 127–37, (accessed 6 February 2010). 84. Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. xxi. 85. Bobbitt: The Shield of Achilles, pp. xxv–xxxi, 216, 228. 86. Krauthammer: ‘The Unipolar Moment’, pp. 23–33 and Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment Revisited’, The National Interest (winter 2002–03),

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87.

88.

89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99.

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PAGES 92–95

pp. 5–17. Krauthammer argues that the ‘unipolar moment’ meant that, with the close of the (twentieth) century’s three great northern wars (World Wars I and II and the Cold War), an ideologically pacified North seeks security and order by aligning its foreign policy with that of the US, as in the case of the 1991 Gulf War. Bobbitt: The Shield of Achilles, pp. 127–246, 301. The strategic choices include the New Nationalism, New Internationalism, New Realism, New Evangelism and New Leadership. Krauthammer: ‘The Unipolar Moment’, p. 27. Krauthammer argues that it is absurd to imply that the road to solvency is to, say, abandon El Dorado, evacuate the Philippines or get out of the Gulf. America’s involvement abroad is in many ways an essential pillar of the American economy. The new international order is not an imperial dream or a ‘Wilsonian Fantasy’, it is sheer prudence. This is Krauthammer’s idea of democratic imperialism. Bobbitt: The Shield of Achilles, pp. 215–33. Bobbitt: The Shield of Achilles, p. xxxi. As described in Iliad, after Hector claimed Achilles’s armour, which he took as a trophy after slaying Achilles’s cousin Patroclus, the new armour for Achilles had been forged by Hephaestus, the Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. This armour had images of feasts, weddings, market places, dancing, athletics, law courts, battles, art, culture, wine brewing and the cultivation of fields – depicting war as a social phenomenon and a product, as well as shaper, of cultures. Kenneth W. Thompson and Steven L. Rearden, Paul H. Nitze on Foreign Policy, vol. XIV (London: University Press of America, 1989), p. 82. Holsti: Making American Foreign Policy, pp. 275–6. Held and McGrew: Governing Globalisation, p. 12. James N. Rosenau, ‘Governance in a New Global Order’, in Held and McGrew: Governing Globalisation, pp. 75–6. Peter Gowan, ‘The Ways of the World’, interview with Mike Newman and Marco Bojcun, New Left Review 59 (September–October 2009), p. 60. Gowan: ‘The Ways of the World’, p. 68. Gowan called this the strategic vision of a CEO for a whole class. The ability of the G.W. Bush administration to contrive domestic political support for the war on terrorism after 9/11, with no significant international opposition or strategic rivals or coalitions (as there were in the Cold War years), and the advanced military superiority of the US, all presented an unusual opportunity to the US. Pieterse: ‘Scenarios of Power’, p. 180. Pieterse: ‘Scenarios of Power’, p. 180. Pieterse argues that the ‘Cold War Plus Scenario’ should not be interpreted in a manner where the promotion of worldwide neoliberal policies may be considered as an interruption to the imperial episode. It can be gathered from his analysis that promotion of neoliberal

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100. 101. 102.

103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

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policies cannot be regarded as the means of building an economically just and fair world order. He argues that such an analysis may reduce neorealist theory to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it overlooks the fact that neorealists had developed alliances with Saddam’s authoritarian regime in the Middle East for the sake of stability and the flow of oil, because free democratic elections could have brought radical Islamists to power. Cox: ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations, pp. 52, 61–3, and Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 169–70. Pieterse, ‘Scenarios of Power’: pp. 186–91. Peter Gowan, ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, in Colas and Saull: The War on Terrorism, p. 150. Also Alex Callinicos, ‘England’s Transition into Capitalism’, New Left Review 207 (September–October 1994), pp. 124–33. Ben O’Loughlin, ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, in Colas and Saull: The War on Terrorism, p. 91. ‘Sun Belt’ refers to a populist counterrevolution among the white working class which was against the New Deal and civil rights. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 1. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 26. O’Loughlin: ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, p. 95. Irving Kristol, ‘American Conservatism: 1945–1995’, Public Interest 121 (Fall 1995), pp. 80–2. O’Loughlin: ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, p. 91. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992), pp. xx, 245–53. O’Loughlin: ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, p. 93. The Project for A New American Century, Statement of Principles, 3 June 1997. PNAC website. (accessed 6 October 2009). The 25 signatories include Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who later became members of the Bush administration. The other signatories are Norman Podhoretz, Francis Fukuyama, Jeb Bush and former members of the Reagan administration. Stephen Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 44. O’Loughlin: ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, pp. 91–8. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Dogmatic Dangers: When Policymaking Rigidifies Ideas’, Harvard International Review (Summer 2006), pp. 66–6. Brzezinski: ‘Dogmatic Dangers’, pp. 67–8. Francis Fukuyama, After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads (London: Profile Books, 2002), p. 28.

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PAGES 101–109

117. Susanne Soederberg, ‘The War on Terrorism and American Empire: Emerging Development Agendas’, in Colas and Saull: The War on Terrorism and the American ‘Empire’ after the Cold War, pp. 155, 164–5. 118. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, p. 149. 119. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, pp. 131–4. 120. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, p. 141. Similarly, from the time when Nitze was involved in strategic policy-making he had shown serious concerns about the chances of German influence in Latin American States. See Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 9. In the post-Cold War era, Nitze argued for strengthening NATO and maintaining a balance between the European powers and Russia. See Paul H. Nitze, ‘What Bush should do to solve the NATO flap’, Washington Post, 14 May 1989. 121. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, pp. 142–3. 122. For thorough analyses of the reproduction of discourse in the perspective of language and power, see Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-terrorism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 2–7, 21–3, 123, 153–86. 123. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, pp. 146–7. 124. O’Loughlin: ‘The Intellectual Antecedents of the Bush Regime’, p. 103. 125. Sidney Blumenthal, ‘Mugged by Reality’, Salon, 14 December 2006 (accessed 7 November 2010). 126. Irving Kristol, ‘The Neoconservative Persuasion’, Weekly Standard 8/47, (accessed 19 June 2009). 127. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 75–7. 128. Irving Kristol, Neoconservativism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1995), pp. 374–5. 129. Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. x. 130. Irving Kristol, ‘The Neoconservative Persuasion’, Weekly Standard 8/47, 25 August 2003. 131. Kristol: ‘American Conservatism’, pp. 80–2. 132. Halper and Clarke: America Alone, pp. 1–11. 133. Hans-Herman Hoppe, ‘The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservativism’, Mises Daily, 4 March 2005, (accessed 15 December 2010). 134. Gowan: ‘A Radical Realist’, pp. 127–36. 135. President G.H.W. Bush’s remark while talking to new reporters on 5 August 1990 – ‘This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait’ – had been intended to heighten the strategic urgency and overshadowed the fact that Saddam had been militarily supported by Bush’s own government and his

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136.

137. 138. 139.

140. 141. 142. 143. 144.

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government did not take any significant measures to prevent the invasion of Kuwait. Similarly, on 20 September 2001, G.W. Bush declared: ‘On September 11, the enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country’, while distracting attention from the fact that his administration did not act promptly to prevent 9/11. (accessed 26 December 2009). For elaborate and analytical accounts of the strategic implications of G. H. W. Bush’s support to Saddam, see also Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy (London: Hamish Hamilton: 2007), pp. 18–25, ch. 3. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 13–14, 32. The State Department’s definition of terrorism is: ‘The calculated use of unlawful violence or the threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological.’ Chomsky and Achcar: Perilous Power, p. 27. Ahmed Ijaz Malik, ‘North Korea: Brinkmanship to Nuclear Threshold’, IPRI Journal 5/1 (Winter 2005), p. 15. Mann: Incoherent Empire, p. 53. See also B. Raman, ‘Inception of Yemenbound Scud Missiles’, South Asia Analysis Group, Paper 53, 12 December 2002, (accessed 1 June 2010). Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, p. 15. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 14–18. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 21–2. Henry Kissinger, The Necessity of Choice (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1960), pp. 347–8. This analysis will be conducted while considering the awareness of power within the texts. For references to the discursive analytical approach, see Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour (London: Sage, 1987), pp. 1–31, 25, 158–76; Ian Parker, Critical Discursive Psychology (London: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 1–18 and Ian Parker, ‘Discursive Resources in the Discourse Unit’, (accessed 17 November 2010).

Chapter 3. President G.H.W. Bush’s Administration and the 1991 Gulf War 1. See Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World. 2. Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, pp. ix, 2–3, 21–2. 3. Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, p. 50.

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4. Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, p. 45. 5. Stephen J. Solarz, ‘The Case for Intervention’, in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (eds), The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Times Books, 1991, pp. 269–83 and Charles Krauthammer, ‘Nightmare from the Thirties’, in Sifry and Cerf: The Gulf War Reader, pp. 134–6. 6. Gilbert Achcar has termed this version of foreign policy ‘Crackpot Idealist’. 7. Brent Scowcroft, ‘Don’t Attack Saddam’, Wall Street Journal, 16 August 2002, A12. Also Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, pp. 220–52. 8. Thompson and Rearden: Paul H. Nitze on Foreign Policy, vol. XIII, p. 7: quoting Nitze’s Groton Commencement Address, 1953. 9. Thompson and Rearden: Paul H. Nitze on Foreign Policy, vol. XIII, p. 7. 10. National Security Council Report 68, Naval War College Review XXVII (May–June 1975), pp. 51–108 (hereafter NSC 68). Also in US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1950 I, (accessed 6 November 2010). 11. NSC 68, pp. 51–108. In his earlier article, Nitze had asserted that the ‘US is vulnerable to direct attack (from the USSR) only from Eurasian land mass and submarines’. See Paul H. Nitze, ‘Atoms, Strategy and Policy’, Foreign Affairs 34/2 (January 1956), p. 192. 12. NSC 68. 13. NSC 68. 14. NSC 68. 15. NSC 68. 16. NSC 68. 17. The ‘Evil Empire’ speech by Ronald Wilson Reagan in his address to the National Association of Evangelicals, Orlando, 8 March 1983, (accessed 26 December 2010). 18. National Security Directive, NSD 3, 3 February 1989, George Bush, Presidential Library and Museum, 1 (hereafter NSD 3), (accessed 23 December 2010). 19. National Security Directive, NSD 26, 2 October 1989 (hereafter NSD 26), George Bush, Presidential Library and Museum, (accessed 23 December 2010). 20. NSD 26. 21. NSD 26. 22. NSD 26. 23. John Ehrenberg, J. Patrice McSherry, Jose Ramon Sanchez and Caroline Marji Sayej, The Iraq Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. xxix–xxx. 24. Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World, pp. 225–60, 69–70. 25. Theodore Draper, ‘American Hubris’, in Sifry and Cerf: The Gulf War Reader, p. 47.

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26. Joe Stork and Martha Wenger, ‘From Rapid Deployment to Massive Deployment’, in Sifry and Cerf (eds), The Gulf War Reader, pp. 37–8. 27. Michael Kinsley, ‘Rally Round the Flag, Boys’, Time, 12 September 1988,

(accessed 29 December 2010). 28. Chomsky and Achcar: Perilous Power, p. 27. 29. NSD 26. 30. National Security Strategy, NSS 1990, March 1990, p. 1 (henceforth NSS 1990), (accessed 21 December 2010). 31. NSS 1990, p. 1. 32. NSS 1990. 33. NSS 1990, pp. 2–3. 34. NSS 1990, p. 2. 35. NSS 1990, p. 3. 36. NSS 1990. 37. NSS 1990, p. 6. 38. NSS 1990. 39. NSS 1990, p. 23. 40. NSS 1990, p. 15. 41. NSS 1990, p. 21. 42. NSS 1990, p. 22. 43. NSS 1990, p. 13. 44. NSS 1990. 45. Marlin Fitzwater’s statement on 3 March 1990, (accessed 28 December 2010). 46. NSC 68, Section IV, Underlying Conflict in the Realm of Ideas and Values between the US Purpose and the Kremlin Designs, subsection 3: Means. 47. G.H.W. Bush’s remarks and exchange with press reporters after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 2 August 1990, (accessed 23 December 2010). 48. NSC 68, Section IV, Subsection 3: Means. 49. State of the Union Address, 29 January 1991, , and address before a Joint Session of Congress at the end of the Gulf War, 6 March 1991, (accessed 26 December 2010). 50. Remarks and exchanges with reporters on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 5 August 1990, (accessed 23 December 2010). In reply to the question: ‘How can you and the other world leaders prevent the installation of what you call a puppet regime?’, G.H.W. Bush replied: ‘Just wait. Watch and learn.’

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51. G.H.W. Bush’s address on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 8 August 1990, (accessed 21 December 2010). 52. Colin L. Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 461. 53. The Glaspie Transcript, 25 July 1990, in Sifry and Cerf: The Gulf War Reader, pp. 122–33. 54. Glenn Frankel, ‘Lines in the Sand’, in Sifry and Cerf: The Gulf War Reader, pp. 16–20. 55. Pierre Salinger and Eric Laurent, Secret Dossier: The Hidden Agenda Behind The Gulf War (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 1–2. 56. G.H.W. Bush’s address on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 8 August 1990 (hereafter Iraq’s invasion address, 8 August 1990). 57. Iraq’s invasion address, 8 August 1990. 58. National Security Directive, NSD 45, 20 August 1990 (hereafter NSD 45) (accessed 22 December 2010). 59. NSD 45. 60. NSD 45. 61. NSD 45. 62. NSD 45. 63. G.H.W. Bush’s address to Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis, 11 September 1990 (hereafter Address to Congress, 11 September 1990), (accessed 23 December 2010). 64. Address to Congress, 11 September 1990. 65. Address to Congress, 11 September 1990. 66. Address to Congress, 11 September 1990. 67. Address to Congress, 11 September 1990. 68. Address to Congress, 11 September 1990. 69. G.H.W. Bush’s address to the UN 1 October 1990, (accessed 21 December 2010). 70. G.H.W. Bush’s address to the nation on the Federal Budget, 2 October 1990, (accessed 23 December 2010). 71. National Security Directive NSD 54, 15 January 1991 (hereafter NSD 54), (accessed 25 December 2010) 72. NSD 54. 73. NSD 54. 74. NSD 54. 75. NSD 54. 76. NSD 54.

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77. NSD 54. 78. NSD 54. 79. G.H.W. Bush’s address to the nation after the allied attack on Iraqi forces, 16 January 1991, (accessed 23 December 2010). 80. NSD 54. 81. Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Near Eastern and Asian Analysis, Report 11, Iraq: Domestic impact of the War, 25 January, 1991, National Security Archive, (accessed 1 February 2011). 82. Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq (London: Fourth Estate, 1992), pp. ix, 275–309. Also Barry M. Lando, Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush (New York: Other Press, 2007) 83. G.H.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, 29 January 1991 (hereafter State of the Union address, 29 January 1991) (accessed 21 December 2010). 84. State of the Union address, 29 January 1991. 85. State of the Union address, 29 January 1991. 86. ‘A Cruel Hoax’, G.H.W. Bush’s speech on 15 February 1991, in Sifry and Cerf: The Gulf War Reader, pp. 343–4. 87. G.H.W. Bush’s address before a joint session of Congress at the end of the Gulf War, 16 March 1991 (hereafter Address to Congress, 16 March 1991), (accessed 22 December 2010). 88. Address to Congress, 16 March 1991. 89. CIA Report by Directorate of Intelligence, Iraq: Implications of Insurrection and Prospects for Saddam’s Survival, 16 March 1991, National Security Archive, (accessed 1 February 2011). 90. CIA: Implications of Insurrection. 91. CIA: Implications of Insurrection. 92. CIA: Implications of Insurrection. 93. CIA, Director of Central Intelligence’s Report, Iraq: Saddam Husayn’s Prospects for Survival over the Next Year, SNIE 36.2-91 (September 1991), The National Security Archive, p. 1, (accessed 1 February 2011). 94. Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, Defense Planning Guidance, National Security Archive, (accessed 1 February 2011). 95. Defense Planning Guidance. 96. Defense Planning Guidance.

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97. Gilbert Achcar, ‘The Strategic Triad: USA, China, Russia’, in Tariq Ali (ed.), Masters of the Universe?: NATO’s Balkan Crusade (London: Verso, 2000), p. 108. 98. Defense Strategy for the 1990s: Regional Defense Strategy, January 1993, National Security Archive, p. 11, (accessed 1 February 2011). 99. Defense Strategy for the 1990s, p. 16. 100. Defencse Strategy for the 1990s, p. 20. 101. Defense Strategy for the 1990s, p. 20. 102. G.H.W. Bush’s address at West Point, 5 January 1993 (hereafter Address at West Point), (accessed 21 December 2010). 103. Address at West Point. 104. Address at West Point. 105. James Turner Johnson, Just War and Gulf War (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991), p. 6. 106. Johnson: Just War and Gulf War, pp. 30–47. 107. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 308, 314. 108. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, p. 325. 109. Gowan: The Global Gamble, p. 142. 110. Gowan: The Global Gamble, p. 328. 111. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, pp. 339–42. 112. G.H.W. Bush’s address on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 8 August 1990, (accessed 21 December 2010). ‘Blitzkrieg’ in German means ‘lightning war’. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, western journalists used the term to describe the massive military assault with tanks. 113. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, pp. 339–43. 114. Gilbert Achcar, Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror (London: Pluto Press, 2004), pp. 236–9. 115. Powell: My American Journey, p. 459. 116. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), pp. 2–4, 14. 117. Salinger and Laurent: Secret Dossier, pp. 1–2. 118. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Iran in World Politics: The Question of Islamic Republic (London: Hursh and Company, 2007), pp. 111–16, and International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 36–8, 57–8. 119. Gowan: The Global Gamble, pp. 148, 183. 120. The post-World War II artificial divisions of ‘colonies’ have prolonged the border disputes, which have led to interventions by Cold War superpowers

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121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

130.

131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

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through the divisions into spheres of influence. Galtung: ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’, pp. 81–117. Gowan: The Global Gamble, pp. 148, 183. It is a custom among Arab states to refer to each other as ‘brothers’ and (ideally) the non-Arab states as ‘friends’. Gowan: Global Gamble, pp. 141–87. NSD 54. Gowan: The Global Gamble, p. 158. Gowan: The Global Gamble, p. 159. See Fouskas and Gokay: The New American Imperialism, pp. 11–33. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, p. 303. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, p. 414. Noam Chomsky, ‘The US in the Gulf Crisis’, in Haim Bresheeth and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds), The Gulf War and the New World Order (London: Zed Books, 1991), p. 14. Lawrence J. Korb, ‘The Direct and Indirect Costs of the Persian Gulf War’, in Marcia Lynn Whicker, James P. Pfiffner and Raymond A. Moore (eds), The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War (London: Praeger, 1993), pp. 201–3. After having spent US$8 trillion, 7 per cent of the GDP over the period of 40 years (1950–90), the US was looking for ‘peace dividends’. From the early mobilization of the coalition, it was clear that the war would be an American operation; despite high-sounding rhetoric, it was mainly about economics. Korb: ‘The Direct and Indirect Costs of the Persian Gulf War’, pp. 205–6. Gilbert Achcar, ‘Hours and Woes of World Organisations: The UN over US Objectives’, Le Monde Diplomatique (October 1995), pp. 8–9. For US national security objectives, see Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton, ‘National Security Policy Review’, and B.R. Inman and Daniel F. Burton Jr, ‘Technology and National Security’, in Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton Rethinking America’s Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992). Gregg: About Face?, pp. 1, 65, 129–30. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, pp. 306–7. Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1994), p. 25. Robert S. Litwak, Regime Change: US Strategy through the Prism of 9/11 (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), pp. 7, 29. Krauthammer: ‘The Unipolar Moment’, pp. 30–2. Freedman and Karsh: The Gulf Conflict, p. xlv. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, pp. 303–6. Bruce Jentleson, With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush and Saddam, 1982– 1990 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).

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141. Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of Republic (London: Verso, 2004), p. 221. 142. Andrew Buncombe, ‘Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks’, The Independent, 24 December 2003, (accessed 13 February 2010). 143. Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, p. 291. 144. Chomsky: ‘The US in the Gulf Crisis’, p. 22. 145. Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme to the British press in 1986. While still in the UK, he was lured to Italy by an Israeli Mossad agent Cheryl Bentov, masquerading as an American tourist ‘Cindy’. In Italy, he was drugged and subsequently kidnapped by Israeli intelligence agents and transported to Israel, where he was ultimately convicted after a trial held behind closed doors, based on charges of treason and espionage. He spent 18 years in prison and was released in 2004 and, since then, there have been restrictions on him leaving Israel, having interaction with citizens other than Israel, use of phones and internet or approaching foreign consulates/embassies or coming within 500m of any international border crossing, port of entry or airport. For a follow-up of the story, see BBC News, ‘Israeli Nuclear Power exposed’, and (accessed 18 February 2010). 146. Chomsky and Achcar: Perilous Power, p. 206. 147. Sami Yousif, ‘The Iraqi–US War: A Conspiracy Theory’, in Bresheeth and Yuval-Davis: The Gulf War and the New World Order, p. 66. 148. Donald Puchala, ‘The President, the Persian Gulf War and the United Nations’, in Whicker, Pfiffner and Moore: The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War, pp. 13–227. Also Donald Puchala ‘American Interests and the United Nations’, Political Science Quarterly 47/4 (winter 1982–83), pp. 571–88 and ‘World Hegemony and the United Nations’, International Studies Review 7/4 (2005), pp. 571–84. 149. Yousif: ‘The Iraqi–US War: A Conspiracy Theory’. See also Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival, pp. 20, 100–18. 150. Mary Kaldor has called US modern wars ‘Spectacle Wars’, or ‘demonstrative wars’; see Mary Kaldor, ‘American Power: From ‘Compellence’ to Cosmopolitanism’, in Held and Koenig-Archibugi: American Power in the Twenty First Century, p. 199. Also Kaldor: The Imaginary War, p. 4 and New and Old Wars, pp. 155–91. 151. Richard Falk, ‘How the West Mobilised for War’, in John Gittings (ed.), Beyond the Gulf War: The Middle East and the New World Order (London: Catholic Institute for International Affairs, 1991), p. 14.

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152. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and Richard Murphy, ‘Differentiated Containment’, Foreign Affairs 76/3 (May/June 1997), pp. 24–6. 153. Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, p. 285. 154. Bush and Scowcroft: A World Transformed, pp. 60, 81. 155. Nitze: ‘Modern President as a World Figure’, pp. 114–23. 156. G.H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, ‘Why we didn’t remove Saddam’, Time, 2 March 1998. 157. David Handerson, ‘The Economics of Sanctions on Iraq’, Library of Economics and Liberty, 26 May 2012, (accessed 31 January 2013) 158. Faleh A. Jabar, ‘Shaykhs and Ideologues: Detribalization and Retribalization in Iraq: 1968–1998’, Middle East Report 215 (Summer 2000), pp. 28–31, 45 and Phoebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2004). The Oil for Food Programme was initiated by the UN in 1995 with the intention of allowing Iraq to sell its oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine and other basic necessities, while preventing Iraq from receiving any materials that might help in developing its military capabilities. 159. ‘Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense for President George H.W. Bush, defends the administration’s decision to keep Saddam Hussein in power’, Frontline interview aired on 28 January 1997, in Ehrenberg, McSherry, Sanchez and Sayej: The Iraq Papers, pp. 13–14. 160. Library of Congress, (accessed 12 February 2010). 161. Robert Kagan, ‘American Power–A Guide for the Perplexed’, Commentary, April 1996, in Ehrenberg, McSherry, Sanchez and Sayej: The Iraq Papers, p. 15. 162. William Kristol and Robert Kagan, ‘Bombing Iraq isn’t enough’, The New York Times, January 1998, in Ehrenberg, McSherry, Sanchez and Sayej: The Iraq Papers, pp. 26–7.

Chapter 4. G.W. Bush’s Administration, 9/11, the 2003 Gulf War and 2005 Elections in Iraq 1. G.W. Bush’s first inaugural address on 20 January 2001, Miller Center of Public Relations, University of Virginia, Presidential Speeches Archive, (accessed 27 December 2010). 2. G.W. Bush’s first inaugural address. 3. United States Department of State Information Memorandum, 23 January 2001, (accessed 5 March 2011).

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4. Memorandum for Condoleezza Rice, 25 January 2001, National Security Archive, (accessed 8 February 2008). 5. Anwar Iqbal, ‘US created Taliban and abandoned Taliban, says Hillary’, Daily Dawn Pakistan, 25 April 2009, (accessed 27 April 2009). 6. Memorandum for Condoleezza Rice. 7. Patterns of Global Terrorism – 2000, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, 30 April 2001, (accessed 8 March 2011). 8. Address to the National Defense University, 1 May 2001, (accessed 11 July 2009). 9. President’s daily briefing, ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US’, 6 August 2001 (declassified 10 April 2004), (accessed 14 October 2009). 10. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, pp. ix–x, 30–6. 11. G.W. Bush, A Charge to Keep (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1999), pp. ix, x, 5, 6–11, 28, 57, 104. G.W. Bush believed that people at all levels were ‘starved of faithfulness and for a leader’. He believed in building a foreign policy through the materialization of ‘Texan Values’, which he explained as honesty, loyalty, respect and tolerance towards others. G.W. Bush foresaw his ability to fill the leadership gap in US politics and, ultimately, in the world. In addition, he emphasized the need for making moral judgements on all issues, believing that his faith freed him to take actions that might not be appreciated by others. He wanted a team that shared his own conservative ideas and philosophy. 12. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, p. xiv. 13. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, p. 4. 14. Litwak: Regime Change, p. 38. 15. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, p. 40, quoting Robert Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song. 16. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, pp. 187–9. During the 1991 Gulf War, Henry S. Rowan had devised a plan called ‘Operation Scorpion’ to invade Iraq from the western border, just as the British had launched during World War II. The aim was to increase the costs of fighting for Iraq. Richard Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were in favour of the plan, but Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf opposed it as unfeasible and ambitious and considered it as overriding the military’s authority in tactical decision-making. 17. Robert Jervis, ‘Explaining the Bush Doctrine’, in Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis (eds), International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues (New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2005), p. 440.

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18. Wolfowitz was the architect of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) (1992) under G.H.W. Bush and the intellectual force behind the neoconservative ideology in the Republican Party. For the post-Cold War international order, he argued for the reconsideration of US commitments to international treaties, international law and multilateralism in engagements with the UN and its specialized agencies. His propositions in the DPG were termed the ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’ (preparing the US to assume a global leadership and reconstitute additional forces for unilateral pre-emptive military action, with or without the approval of its allies. These measures had been considered necessary to prevent the emergence of any potential rivals and secure access to vital natural resources in the Persian Gulf) (accessed 27 December 2010). He continued the propagation of the ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’ in the report ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, published by Project for the New American Century, September 2000, pp. 6, 49, 57–73 (accessed 27 December 2010). In this report, he argued that the defence budget should be raised by US$100–110 billion, to retain the substantial military forces with the ability to launch and win large-scale wars, to expand US strategic control of outer space and deny it to other nations, and to establish a unilateral US foreign policy both to promote American values abroad and to target states like Iraq that were dictatorial in nature and had posed strategic threats to US interests in the Persian Gulf. The formulators of this document, however, including William Kristol, had also warned that the justification for such strategies would require a catastrophic event like a new Pearl Harbor. 19. Mann: Rise of the Vulcans, p. 36. 20. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 89–100. 21. Daaldar and Lindsay: America Unbound, pp. 20–1. 22. ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy Forces and Resources for a New Century’, a report of the Project for the New American Century, September 2000,

(accessed 21 April 2009), p. 51. 23. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, ‘American neo-conservatives pushed war’, Middle East Roundtable, Bitter Lemons International, 2/27, 15 July 2004, (accessed 24 June 2009). 24. Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), pp. 78, 85. 25. Risse: ‘Beyond Iraq’, p. 227. 26. Abdul Wahab El-Afendi ‘Waiting for Armageddon: The “Mother of All Empires” and its Middle East Quagmire’, in Held and Koenig-Archibugi: American Power in the Twenty First Century, p. 266.

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27. Kissinger: Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, pp. 234, 286–7 and The Necessity of Choice, pp. 347–8. 28. John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 205, 217–26. 29. G.W. Bush’s first inaugural address on 20 January 2001, Miller Center of Public Relations, University of Virginia, Presidential Speeches Archive, (accessed 22 December 2010). 30. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 17–18. 31. Kissinger: Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, pp. 234, 286–7. 32. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 30 September 2001, Department of Defense, USA, p. iv, (accessed 22 February 2010). 33. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, p. 5. 34. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, p. 11. 35. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, p. 17. 36. ‘Terrorism: Threat Assessment, Countermeasures and Policy’, US Foreign Policy Agenda 6/3, pp. 26, 34, (accessed 11 July 2009). 37. Donald Rumsfeld’s notes in meeting with Wolfowitz and Feith, 27 November 2001, National Security Archive, (accessed 3 March 2011). 38. US Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Europe: Key Views on Iraqi Threats and Next Steps, 18 December 2001, and (accessed 3 March 2011). 39. G.W. Bush’s second State of the Union address on 29 January 2002, Miller Center of Public Relations, University of Virginia, Presidential Speeches Archive, (accessed 27 December 2010). 40. G.W. Bush’s second State of the Union address. 41. G.W. Bush’s second State of the Union address. 42. Newt Gingrich, ‘US must Pre-empt further evil’, AEI, 11 February 2002, (accessed 14 January 2010). 43. Norman Podhoretz, ‘America at war: One thing needful’, AEI, 13 February 2002, (accessed 14 January 2011). 44. G.W. Bush’s conference with Mexican President Vincinte Fox at the Palacio de Gobierno in Monterrey, Mexico, (accessed 11 July 2009). 45. British Government Briefing Papers on Iraq, Coalition Information Centre, National Security Archive, (accessed 27 December 2010).

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46. Hearing to Examine Threats, Responses and Regional Considerations Surrounding Iraq, S. HRG. 107–658, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, 31 July and 1 August 2002 (hereafter Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), (accessed 11 July 2009). 47. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), p. 4. 48. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), p. 12. 49. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 15–18, 38. 50. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 126, 147. 51. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 154–5. 52. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and the West: Strategic Relations and Military Realities (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1988), pp. 15–45, 81–114, 309–13. 53. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 25–35. 54. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 25–35. 55. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 84, 98. 56. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), p. 97. 57. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), p. 257. 58. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 165–76. 59. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 157–8. 60. Greg Muttitt, Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (London: Bodley Head, 2011), pp. 81–2, 100–1. 61. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 183–8. 62. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), pp. 205–7. 63. Hearings (Committee on Foreign Affairs), p. 236. 64. Hansen: Security as Practice, p. 8. 65. The Post War Occupations of Germany and Japan: Implications for Iraq, Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, 7 August 2002,

(accessed 1 February 2011). 66. The Post War Occupations of Germany and Japan. 67. The Post War Occupations of Germany and Japan, p. 4. 68. Rodman, Memo for the Secretary of Defense, ‘Who Will Govern Iraq?’, 15 August 2002, (accessed 1 February 2010). 69. US Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, ‘Problems and Prospects of “Justifying” War with Iraq’, 29 August 2002, (accessed 3 March 2011). 70. G.W. Bush’s speech to the UN, 12 September 2002 (hereafter G.W. Bush’s speech to the UN, 12 September 2002), (accessed 27 December 2010).

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71. G.W. Bush’s speech to the UN, 12 September 2002. 72. G.W. Bush’s speech to the UN, 12 September 2002. 73. Presentation – The Case for Action, Intro: Looking at Iraq through the lens of 9/11, (accessed 22 December 2010). 74. G.W. Bush’s speech to the UN, 12 September 2002. 75. Iraq: Weapons Threat, Compliance, Sanctions, and US Policy, Issue Brief for Congress by Kenneth Katzman, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, 10 December 2002, p. 3, (accessed 27 December 2010). 76. An Update on Inspection, report presented by Dr Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, (accessed 9 November 2007). 77. Blix: Disarming Iraq, p. 3. See also ‘Full Text: Blix briefing’ BBC News: Published 7 March 2003, (accessed 9 November 2007). 78. Paul Reynolds, ‘Blix: Good man, wrong place’ BBC News online, 30 June 2003, (accessed 11 December 2007). 79. Blix: Disarming Iraq, p. 7. See also ‘Full Text: Blix briefing’: Blix stated, ‘We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed’. 80. ‘Iraq’s claim of destroying bio, chemical weapons true, says Blix’, The News Islamabad, 10 September 2003. 81. Richard Roth, ‘Blix takes Washington to task’ CNN News, 12 June 2003,

(accessed 25 December 2007). 82. ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government’, National Security Archive, p. 19 (accessed 3 March 2010). 83. Remarks to Congressional leaders, (accessed 11 July 2009). 84. ‘The Decision to go to War in Iraq’, House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Ninth Report of Session 2002–3, Vol. 1, p. 27 (accessed 3 March 2010). 85. Newt Gingrich, ‘Smoke Screen on Weapon Inspections’, AEI, Articles & Commentary, 31 October 2002, (accessed 14 January 2010). 86. DIA Report, Iraq – Key WMD facilities – An Operational Support Study, September 2002, (accessed 8 February 2010).

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87. ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, White House, 17 September 2002, p. 1 (hereafter ‘The National Security Strategy’) (accessed 21 December 2010). 88. ‘The National Security Strategy’, opening statement by G.W. Bush. 89. ‘The National Security Strategy’. 90. ‘The National Security Strategy’. 91. ‘The National Security Strategy’, pp. 1–2. 92. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 1. 93. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 5. 94. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 14. 95. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 5. 96. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 6. 97. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 5. 98. ‘The National Security Strategy’, opening statement. 99. ‘The National Security Strategy’, p. 5. 100. Colin Robinson, ‘Military Action in Iraq since 1990–2003’, Center for Defense Information (CDI), (accessed 5 January 2008). 101. NSS 2002, p. 14. 102. NSS 2002, p. 25. 103. Condoleezza Rice, ‘Rethinking the National Interest: American Realism for a New World’, Foreign Affairs 87/4, July–August 2008, (accessed 26 July 2008). 104. Thompson and Rearden: Paul H. Nitze on Foreign Policy, vol. XIV, pp. 60–1. 105. Thompson and Rearden: Paul H. Nitze on National Security and Arms Control, vol. XIV, p. 22. 106. Gordon R. Mitchell and Robert P. Newman, ‘By “Any Measures Necessary”: NSC-68 and Cold War Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy’, in William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell (eds), Hitting First: Preventive Forces in US Strategy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), p. 71. 107. Mitchell and Newman: ‘By “Any Measures Necessary”’, p. 71. 108. Gowan: ‘The Bush Turn and Drive for Primacy’, p. 149. 109. Callinicos: Imperialism and the Global Political Economy, p. 174. 110. NSC pp. 68, 4. 111. NSS 2002, p. 14. 112. NSC 68, p. 13. 113. Nitze: Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 15–16. The BEW had been in charge of controlling imports and purchasing raw materials for the allies, British and others.

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114. Mitchell and Newman: ‘By “Any Measures Necessary”’, p. 73. 115. Mitchell and Newman: ‘By “Any Measures Necessary”’, pp. 72–89. 116. G.W. Bush’s statement in the outline of the Iraqi Threat given at the Cincinnati Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, (accessed 12 July 2009). 117. CIA’s letter to the Senate on Baghdad’s intentions, National Security Archive, (Doc. 17) (accessed 8 May 2011). 118. CIA’s letter to the Senate on Baghdad’s intentions. 119. US Department of Defense’s Report, Iraqi Denial and Deception for Weapons of Mass Destruction & Ballistic Missile Programs, 8 October 2002, (accessed 8 February 2011). 120. Authorization of Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution 2002, H.J. Res. 114 (S.J. Res. 45) (S.J. Res. 46) Public Law 107–243, 16 October 2002, (accessed 12 July 2009). 121. G.W. Bush’s remarks at Colorado Welcome, (accessed 13 July 2009). 122. Director of Central Intelligence, National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 2002-16 HC, (accessed 22 March 2011). 123. Kanan Makiya, ‘A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq’, paper presented at AEI’s conference on The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq, 3 October 2002, (accessed 14 January 2010). 124. Makiya: ‘A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq’. 125. Achcar: ‘Self-Deception and Selective Expertise: Bush’s Cakewalk into Iraq Quagmire’. Chalabi, whose Petra Bank in Jordan collapsed and who consequently fled the country, was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 on charges of embezzlement, fraud and misuse of depositor funds. On 13 December 2002, the Financial Times devoted a full-page article to him written by Stephen Fidler and Roula Khalaf. Its title says: ‘Bank fraud, botched rebellions, intrigues: the controversial record of Saddam’s most prominent opponent.’ See also Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (New York: Nation Books, 2008), pp. ix–x, 185–212, 241–87. 126. G.W. Bush’s radio address to the nation, 16 November 2002, (accessed 12 July 2009). 127. Saddam Hussein: Crimes and Human Rights Abuses, a report on the Human Costs of Saddam’s policies, British Foreign and Commonwealth

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128.

129. 130. 131. 132.

133.

134.

135.

136. 137. 138.

139.

140. 141. 142.

143. 144.

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Office promulgated, November 2002, (accessed 12 July 2009). National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, December 2002, p. 1, and (Doc. 19) (accessed 2 February 2011). National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 1. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 3. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 6. Condoleezza Rice, ‘Why we know Iraq is lying’, The New York Times, op-ed, 3 January 2003, (accessed 3 January 2011). White House Report, Apparatus of Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda 1990–2003, (accessed 27 December 2010). Mohamed ElBaradei, ‘The Status of Nuclear Inspection in Iraq’, 27 January 2003, (accessed 8 February 2011). G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address on 28 January 2003, Miller Center Archives, (accessed 27 December 2010). G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, 28 January 2003. Hansen: Security as Practice, pp. 28–9. Secretary Colin Powell’s remarks to the UNSC 5 February 2003, National Security Archives, (accessed 2 January 2011). Steven R. Wiseman, ‘Powell calls his UN speech a lasting blot on his record’, The New York Times, 9 September 2005, (accessed 2 January 2011). Full text of Benn interview with Saddam, 4 February 2003, (accessed 11 November 2010). Benn interview with Saddam, 4 February 2003. Wes Vernon, ‘Kristol: UN Gone from “Useless” to “Harmful”’, NewsMax.com, 11 March 2003, (accessed 22 January 2011). For G.W. Bush’s statement see: (accessed 12 July 2009). News transcript of Wolfowitz’s interview in Vanity Fair, US Department of Defense, 9 May 2003, (accessed 18 October 2011). Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 29 April 2004, (accessed 22 October 2009), pp. 10–11.

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146.

147.

148.

149. 150.

151. 152.

153. 154.

155.

156. 157.

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The CRS report also attributed the formation of the CPA to UN Resolution 1483; however, it was not defined whether the CPA was a federal agency, an executive department or a government corporation. Jay Garner’s interview with United Press International (UPI), 8 July 2003, (accessed 12 February 2011). L. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 8. After assuming the charge of the CPA, in his first meeting he said to G.W. Bush: ‘Freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It is God’s gift to mankind.’ Coalition Provisional Authority Order number 1: De-Ba’athification of the Iraqi Society, Federation of American Scientists website, (accessed 18 April 2011). Bremer: My Year in Iraq, p. 10. CIA Report by Directorate of Intelligence, Iraq: Implications of Insurrection and Prospects for Saddam’s Survival, 16 March 1991, (accessed 1 February 2011). Considering the Shiite uprising and the scenario of a coup, this report further speculated: ‘The prospects of a Shiite victory, or just prolonged internal strife, could also encourage disparate Sunni elements in Iraq, including antiBaathist nationalists and pro-Syrian Baathists, and military elites to rally around Saddam as the only recourse to an Iranian-influenced Shiite regime. It could also force political change on Saddam, including his overthrow.’ Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). CIA Report, Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plant, (accessed 2 February 2011). Address to US nation, 7 September 2003, (accessed 11 July 2009). Statement by George J. Tenet on 11 August 2003, regarding the NIE 2002 WMD threat from Iraq, (accessed 8 February 2011). Remarks to the press after meeting with the members of Congressional committee on Energy Legislation, (accessed 21 March 2008). G.W. Bush’s Address to the UN, 23 September 2003, (accessed 23 December 2010). Statement by David Kay on the interim progress report on the activities of the Iraq Survey Group before the House Permanent Select Committee on

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159.

160. 161.

162.

163.

164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174.

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Intelligence, the House Committee on Appropriations, the Subcommittee on Defense, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 2 October 2003, (accessed 22 May 2010). WMD in Iraq, Final Report by the Iraq Survey Group, 30 September 2004, (vol. 1), (vol. 2), (vol. 3), (key findings) (accessed 27 December 2010). US House of Representatives press release, 16 January 2004, ‘Harman Calls on President to Restore Faith in Intelligence Community in State of the Union Address – calls the National Intelligence Estimates 2002 a “flawed document”’, (accessed 20 December 2010). Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 214–15. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2000 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address on 20 January 2004, (accessed 25 December 2010). For details of the negative impacts of US occupation and ‘neoliberal’ reforms on the lives of Afghans, see Elaheh Rostami-Povey, Afghan Women: Identity and Invasion (London: Zed Books, 2007). G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, 20 January 2004. G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, 20 January 2004. G.W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, 20 January 2004. Gilbert Achcar, The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder, 2nd edn (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), pp. 123–4. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, p. 130. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 124. Speech at Army War College, (accessed 24 November 2009). Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, p. xxii. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. xxiv, 76, 133. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 132. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 132.

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258 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180.

181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189.

190.

191.

192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206.

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Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 134. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, pp. 134–5. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, pp. 132–5. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 136. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 226–7. Noah Feldman, ‘The Democratic Fatwa: Islam and Democracy in the Realm of Constitutional Politics’, Oklahoma Law Review 58/1 (spring 2005), pp. 6–9. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 160. Bremer: My Year in Iraq, p. 58. Bremer: My Year in Iraq, p. 75. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 137. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 137. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 138. Diamond: Squandered Victory, pp. 141–5. Diamond: Squandered Victory, p. 62. Larry Diamond, ‘Preparing for the Worst’, Hoover Digest 2002, No. 2, (accessed 18 May 2010). Diamond: Squandered Victory, pp. 228–30; Larry Diamond, ‘Endgame’, Hoover Digest 2002, No. 1, (accessed 19 February 2013). Larry Diamond, ‘Can Iraq become a Democracy?’, Hoover Digest 2003, No. 2, (accessed 18 May 2010). Diamond quotes Makiya: ‘No future state in Iraq can be democratic if it is not at the same time federal in structure.’ Diamond: ‘Can Iraq become a Democracy?’. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 220. Transitional Administrative Law, Article 61, (accessed 9 June 2010). Bremer: My Year in Iraq, p. 302. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 222–4. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, pp. 139–40. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 224. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 220. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 225. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, p. 226. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 138. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, pp. 138–9. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 228–9, 250, 258, 269. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 281–2. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 389–91.

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PAGES 200–205

259

207. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 196–7. 208. Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 6. 209. Paul Bremer’s Press Roundtable with reporters in 13 December 2003, Global Security Online, (accessed 19 April 2010). 210. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. 72–3. 211. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. 81–2, 100–1. Chalabi’s corruption had become common knowledge by then. 212. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. 115–16. 213. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. 135–7. 214. Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire, pp. 94–5. 215. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 139. 216. Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 1–3. 217. Flint and Walid-Falah: ‘How the US Justified its War on Terrorism’, p. 1379. 218. Cain O’Driscoll, ‘Re-negotiating the Just War: The Invasion of Iraq and Punitive War’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19/3, (September 2006), pp. 409–10, 412. 219. Stephen Chan, Out of Evil: New International Politics and Old Doctrines of War (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005), p. 11. 220. David A. Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 27. 221. Richard K. Betts, ‘Suicide from Fear of Death?’, Foreign Affairs 82/1 (January– February 2003), pp. 39–41. 222. Flint and Walid-Falah, ‘How the US Justified its War on Terrorism’, pp. 1379–80. See also Klein: The Shock Doctrine. 223. Address to the National Defense University, 1 May 2001. 224. Jackson: Writing the War on Terrorism, p. 7. 225. Jackson: Writing the War on Terrorism, p. 140. 226. NSS 2002, p. 26. 227. Bjola: Legitimising the Use of Force in International Politics, p. 130. 228. This was evident from the opposition of the war by Brzezinski and Scowcroft. See Brzezinski and Scowcroft: America and the World. 229. Achcar: ‘Self-Deception and Selective Expertise’ (‘Whether the Bush administration’s policy toward Israel also fits in the same category or is rather deeply Machiavellian is debatable’). 230. Achcar: ‘Self-Deception and Selective Expertise’: quoting Victor Davis Hanson, ‘Democracy in the Middle East: It’s the Hardheaded Solution’, in one of the neocons’ magazines, The Weekly Standard, 21 October 2002. 231. Achcar: ‘Self-Deception and Selective Expertise’: quoting Douglas Jehl with Dexter Filkins, ‘US Moved to Undermine Iraqi Military Before War’, The New York Times, 10 August 2003.

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PAGES 205–210

232. Colas: Empire, pp. 104–15. 233. Richard Ned Lebow, ‘Classical Realism’, in Tim Dunn, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 54, 66. 234. Kissinger: Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, p. 298. 235. Lebow: ‘Classical Realism’, pp. 54–66. 236. Achcar: ‘Self-Deception and Selective Expertise’. 237. Bremer: My Year in Iraq, pp. 240–2, 297–330. 238. Lebow: ‘Classical Realism’, pp. 54–67. 239. Ex-Ambassador of Taliban regime to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef quoted to Al Jazeera that US planning and construction of bases in Afghanistan displays plans of long-term occupation, 24 May 2010, (accessed 5 February 2011). 240. Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, pp. 221–47. 241. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence (London: Allen Lane, 2007), p. 463. Also George Wright, ‘Wolfowitz: Iraq was about Oil’, 14 June 2003, (accessed 12 March 2010) and Barry Gould, ‘The real reason for Iraq war’, The Guardian, 25 January 2010, (accessed 12 February 2010). 242. Achcar: The Clash of Barbarisms, p. 130. 243. Callinicos: Imperialism and the Global Political Economy, pp. 193–4, 218. 244. Raider Visser, ‘Towards a sectarian separatism in Iraq?’ HISTORIAE, 13 December 2005, ; ‘A disunited Iraqi Alliance triumphs in the South’, 22 December 2005, ; ‘US Senate votes to partitions Iraq, softly’, 27 September 2007, (accessed 22 October 2009). 245. Callinicos: Imperialism and the Global Political Economy, pp. 193–4, 218. 246. Brzezinski: The Grand Chessboard, p. 41. 247. NSS 2002, p. 26. 248. NSS 2002, p. 28. 249. The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, March 2005, (accessed 14 December 2007), p. 6. 250. Amy Bartholomew, ‘Empire’s Law and the Contradictory Politics of Human Rights’, in Amy Bartholomew (ed.), Empire’s Law: The American Imperial Project and the ‘War to Remake the World’ (London: Pluto Press, 2006), pp. 161–2. 251. Diamond: ‘Can Iraq become a Democracy?’. 252. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 30–2. 253. Callinicos: The New Mandarins of American Power, pp. 104–26. 254. Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, p. 12.

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261

255. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2004), pp. 3–18. See also Charles Krauthammer, Cutting Edges (New York: Random House, 1985), p. 99. 256. Fukuyama: After The Neocons, pp. xxvii, 4–5. 257. Francis Fukuyama, ‘History and September 11’, in Booth and Dunne: Worlds in Collision, pp. 32–4. 258. Krauthammer: Democratic Realism, p. 3. 259. Krauthammer: ‘The Unipolar Moment Revisited’, p. 5. 260. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Lowered vision’, The New Republic, 7–14 June 2004, pp. 16–18. 261. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Hegemonic Quicksand’, National Interest (winter 2003/04), p. 5. 262. Jonathan Power, ‘War, Peace, and American Politics: interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski’, World Policy Journal 24 (September 2007), p. 78. 263. Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire, p. 285. 264. Donnelly: Realism and International Relations, p. 108. 265. Donnelly: Realism and International Relations, p. 170. 266. Ruggie: Constructing the World Polity, p. 206. 267. Mearsheimer: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 38–40. 268. Theo Farrell, ‘Strategic Culture and the American Empire’, SIAS Review XXV (Summer–Fall 2005), p. 13. 269. Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (London: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 3–14. Kupchan argues that the root cause of self-defeating behaviour of great powers is the perception of high metropolitan vulnerability resulting from rapid and adverse shifts in the international balance of power, which creates the need for strategic adjustment but also prevents adjustment from taking place. States endeavour to adjust their grand strategy by bringing economic and military resources (means) into balance with international commitments (ends).

Conclusion 1. Gilbert Achcar, ‘The Muslim Brothers in Egypt’s “Orderly Transition”’, Le Monde diplomatique, March 2011, (accessed 11 March 2011).

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INDEX

9/11 2, 13, 17, 19, 21–28, 31, 33–38, 43, 45, 49, 52, 57, 59, 61–63, 68, 74, 82–83, 94, 96, 101–04, 108, 111, 116–17, 157–58, 160–69, 171, 173–76, 178–80, 182–83, 187–88, 190–91, 202–03, 205, 209, 210, 211, 212, 231n10, 236n97, 239n135 Abu Ghraib 39, 190, 226n85 Achcar, Gilbert 8, 191, 204 Adler, Emanuel 218n3 Afghanistan 30, 31, 33, 37–39, 46, 47, 50, 82, 92, 104, 120–121, 166, 171–75, 184, 188–90, 206, 210, 217n2 Ajami, Fouad 169 Alawi, Iyad 204 Albright, Madeleine 155, 162 Algeria 5 Al-Jabouri, Mohammed 201 Al-Khayat, Faleh 201 Allawi, Ali 202 Allawi, Iyad 198, 201, 202 Al-Maliki, Nouri 199 Al Qaeda 28, 31–32, 34, 40, 42, 116, 158–60, 172, 175, 179–80, 182, 184, 187–89 Al-Sistani, Sayyid Ali 192–94, 196, 197, 199, 200 Wakils 199 Al-Tai, Hashem Ahmed 204

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Amin, Samir 83, 84 anarchy 4, 58, 65, 74, 78, 94 Anderson, Perry 207 anti-Americanism 11, 41, 72, 82, 195 anti-Imperialism 20, 224 Aquinas, Thomas 31, 51, 228 Arabism/Arabists 123, 147, 196 Archibugi, Daniele 27, 52 Arend, Anthony Clark 25, 221n10 Arendt, Hannah 33 Armitage, Richard 145, 162 Arrighi, Giovanni 209 Australia 58 ‘Axis of Evil’ 108–10, 167, 203 Ayatollah Khomeini 194 Azerbaijan 135, 191 Ba’athism/Ba’athists 28–29, 33, 40–41, 43, 109, 123, 138, 140, 145–46, 154, 156, 170, 179, 182, 186, 191, 193, 196, 198, 256n150 anti-Baathism 139, 256n150 de-Ba’athification 40, 171, 186, 196, 204 Ba’ath Party 43, 109, 186 Ba’athist regime 28–29, 40, 41, 140, 146, 154, 156, 170, 179, 182, 186, 189 Bahrain 191 Baker, James 148, 149, 152 Balkan War 5, 6 see also Bosnian War

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288

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Bank of England 88 Bank of New York 88 Baradei, Mohamed El 183 Beck, Robert 25, 221n10 Beck, Ulrich 27, 50– 52, 58 Belgium 34 Benn, Tony 46, 184 Berger, Samuel R. 170 Berlin Wall 2 Berman, Paul 27, 40–43, 45, 47 Biden, Joseph 168, 170 Bin Laden, Osama 28, 31, 32, 160, 161, 169 Bjola, Corneliu 58 Blackwill, Robert 163 Blair, Tony 166 Blix, Hans 45, 173–74, 181, 206 Bobbitt, Philip 91, 92, 208, 211 Bohlen, Charles 178 Bosnian War 5 see also Balkan War Brady, Nicholas 149 Brahimi, Lakhdar 193, 194 Brazil 103 Bremer, L. Paul 186, 191–92, 194, 196–200, 206 Brennan, Timothy 54 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 80, 81, 100, 104, 115–16, 148, 154, 206–07, 211–12 Bukhrain, Nikolai 209 Bull, Hedley 59 Burke, Anthony 221n9 Burke, Edmund 98, 105 Bush, G.H.W. 1, 12, 14, 19, 23, 60, 62–63, 72, 108, 111, 115–18, 120–24, 126–30–33, 136–38, 140, 142–44, 148–53, 155–56, 161–63, 166, 168, 172, 174, 181, 186, 205–06, 217n2, 238–39n135, 249n18 Bush, G.W. 1, 8, 12, 23, 47, 51–52, 56, 62–63, 69, 72, 82, 93–95, 100–01, 103–04, 108, 110–11, 117, 131, 157–61, 163–68, 172–77, 179–91, 193, 196, 198–99, 202–09, 215, 217n2, 231n10,

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GULF WARS

236n97, 239n135, 248n11, 256n147 Bush Turn 101, 103, 178 Butler, Richard 168 Buzan, Barry 58, 59 Callinicos, Alex 73, 76, 80, 83, 88, 108, 110, 207, 208, 209 Camus, Albert 30, 40 Canada 79, 80, 110, 200 capitalism/capitalists 2, 12–13, 18, 21, 26, 47, 49, 51, 53–54, 56–57, 60, 72–73, 76, 82–85, 89–91, 94, 96, 98, 102–05, 107–08, 118, 123–24, 139, 141, 153–54, 158, 202, 207, 209, 211, 215 advanced 12, 53, 84, 207, 215 casino 53, 89 Carothers, Thomas 191 Carr, E.H. 71, 78 J.E. (Jimmy) Carter 116, 148, 209 Central Asia 154 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 109, 118, 123, 137, 139–40, 171, 173, 179, 182, 186–87, 204, 205 Chalabi, Ahmad 170, 179, 181, 195, 199, 201, 204, 254n125 Chalabi, Salem 195 Cheney, Richard 89, 100, 156, 161–63, 191, 237n111, 248n16 Chile 23 China 43, 83, 104, 208, 211 Chomsky, Noam 46, 60, 80, 148 Christianity see religion civilians 28–29, 31, 39, 50, 138, 151, 176, 184, 193, 226n86 innocent 29, 31, 39, 184 civil rights 99, 230, 237 civil society 10, 47, 49, 52, 55, 59, 66, 70, 71, 77, 87, 95, 151, 215, 216 Clinton, William 5, 40, 63, 77 Clinton, Hillary 160 coalition 43, 46, 68–69, 79, 80, 82, 84, 87, 90–92, 94, 104, 110, 120, 134, 136, 146, 149, 153,

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INDEX 165, 181, 187, 190, 202, 209, 231n10, 236n97 245n130 of the coerced 203 of the willing 46, 203 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) 158, 185–86, 188, 190–96, 198–202, 256n145 Colas, Alejandro 83 Cold War 1, 2, 9, 10, 12–13, 17, 18– 28, 32, 35, 49–50, 57, 59–64, 66–74, 76–81, 83–85, 87, 94–99, 101–104, 106, 108–11, 115–17, 119, 125, 135–36, 140–42, 148, 153–54, 160, 164, 169, 185, 205, 207–09, 213–16, 231n10, 236, 238n86, 238n97, 244n120, 249n18 second 209 collateral damage 31, 38, 50 Committee on Present Danger (CPD) 161, 178, 179 communism 25, 51, 85, 99, 102, 224n57 anti-communism 99, 102 conservatism 63–64, 96, 98, 105 constructivism 2–4, 8, 218 Cooper, Robert 80 Cordesman, Anthony H. 169 cosmopolitanism 1, 9–13, 20–22, 26, 27, 49–61, 63–64, 67–68, 70– 71, 73, 77, 80, 87, 91–95, 111, 126, 163–64, 172, 178, 183–84, 189, 205, 208, 210, 214–16, 219n20, 220–21n22, 221n23 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) 116, 163 Cox, Robert 59, 95 Craig, Larry 157 Cushman, Thomas 27, 43, 46, 48 D’Arista, Jane 88, 101 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) 118, 141, 249n18 democracy 2, 13, 17, 20–21, 25–28, 35, 45–46, 48–49, 52–54, 56–60, 62, 64, 71–73, 82–85, 87, 93, 96–98, 100, 103–08, 110, 117, 124–27, 135, 137, 142, 150,

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156, 158, 160, 163–64, 171–76, 178, 180–81, 184, 187, 189–96, 202, 204, 208–12, 214–16, 219, 236n88, 237n99 Western model of 97, 195 de-Nazification 181, 186 de-Saddamization 196 Desert Storm 150 developed countries 53–56, 59 developing countries 53, 54, 55, 56 see also Third World Diamond, Larry 194, 195, 196 disarmament 92, 152, 181 Dollar Wall Street Regime (DWSR) 53, 57, 89, 90 Donnelly, Jack 212, 213 Durkheim, Emile 42 Eastern Europe 142 economic growth 53, 69, 82, 105, 175 economic infrastructure 44, 53, 137, 175 economic prosperity 56, 78, 164 economic strategy 49, 55, 57, 88 Egypt 43, 215 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 163 Elshtain, Jean Bethke 26–34, 37–40, 42, 44–45, 50, 104, 184, 211– 12, 222n27, 223n30, 223n36, 224n57, 224n58 embargoes 29, 131 empire American 102 building 32 global 58, 69, 72 entrepreneurialism 91 entrepreneurs 47, 53, 85–91, 95, 124, 209, 234n71 epistemology 3 equality 58 ethnicity 41 Europe 2, 33, 42–43, 46, 53, 59, 78, 80, 86, 96–97, 103–104, 116, 124, 142, 148, 153–55, 178, 210, 211 European Commission 58 European Court of Justice 55

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European Union 43, 46, 48, 55, 57, 83, 102 ‘Evil Empire’ 62, 109, 127 failed and collapsing states/regimes 17, 21, 50, 57, 81 110 failing states 168, 172, 175, 194 Falk, Richard 153, 154 Fanon, Frantz 42, 226 Far East 178 fascism/fascists 40–42, 48, 210 fatwa 192–93 Federal Home Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) 89 Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) 88–89 Federal Reserve and Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) 88 Federal Reserve Bank 88 Feil, Scott R. 170 Feith, Douglas 166 feminism 32 fiat money 89–90 Finnemore, Martha 4 Fitzwater, Marlin 126 Ford,G.R. 116, 161 Forrestal,James V. 87–88 Fox, Vicente 167 France 23, 43, 48, 67, 110, 200 Freedman, Milton 105 freedom 28, 34, 37–38, 40–42, 58, 98, 103, 107, 120, 160, 165–67, 176, 183, 186, 189–90, 200–01, 239n135 civic 34 religious 34, 40–43, 98, 104–05, 193, 198 free press 60 free trade 53–55, 124, 163, 175 Fukuyama, Francis 98, 100, 210, 211, 226n89, 237n111 Gaddafi, Muammar 151 Gaddis, John Lewis 68, 69, 231 Garner, Jay 186 gender rights 196 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 55

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geostrategic interests 6, 8–9, 67–68, 79, 82, 91, 94, 120, 124, 156, 209, 211–212 Germany 34, 43, 48, 101–02, 107, 110, 119, 125, 150, 153, 171, 181, 186, 200, 209, 211, 234n70, 244n112 Gingrich, Newt 167, 174 Glaspie, April 128, 148 Glennon, Michael 51 globalism 12, 56, 92, 94–96, 210 globalization 11, 52, 70–71, 73, 77–78, 81, 83, 94, 101 Goldberg, Arthur J. 18, 221n7 Goldwater, Barry 97 Gorbachev, Mikhail 154, 209 Gowan, Peter 6, 54–55, 60, 84–85, 87–89, 94, 101–03, 147, 153, 177, 209 Graham, Robert 179 Gramscian 59, 95 Greece 55 Greenspan, Alan 207 Grenada 129, 153 Gross Domestic Products (GDP) 53, 245n130 Gross National Products (GNP) 53 Grotius, Hugo 51, 60, 61, 228n121 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 130, 134 Gulf Crisis 1990 23, 45, 117–18, 129–30, 147, 149–50, 153, 162, 168, 216, 217n2 1991 45, 117 Gulf War 1991 1–2, 9, 13–14, 19, 21–24, 26, 29, 31, 35, 41, 45, 60, 62–64, 71–73, 104, 111, 115–18, 127, 140–41, 143, 146, 154–57, 162, 165, 172, 176, 179, 182, 199, 206, 208, 214, 216, 232n33, 236n86, 248n16 2003 1–2, 8–9, 12, 14, 19, 21–22, 26, 41, 43, 45, 60, 62–64, 71–74, 92, 104, 111, 116–17, 157–58, 163, 165–66, 176, 180, 184–85, 202–03, 205–06, 208, 211–16

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INDEX Hadley, Stephen 162 Hakim, Abdul Aziz 192, 198 Halperin,Morton H. 170 Hamdoon, Nizar 206 Hamilton, Alexander 164 Hamza, Khidhir 168 Hansen, Lene 5, 6 Hardt, Michael 81, 82, 83 Hassner, Pierre 163 Hayek, Freidrich Von 98, 105 hegemony 8–11, 21, 23–24, 26, 32–34, 46, 48–49, 52, 55–57, 59–62, 64, 66–69, 71–86, 90–96, 99, 101–02, 107–08, 118, 141, 149, 158, 161, 165, 203, 205, 207–13, 215–16, 220n23, 231n10 Held, David 27, 49, 52–55, 57–59, 93 Helms, Jesse 18, 157 Herf, Jeffry 46 Heritage Foundation 19 Herz, John 78 Hitler, Adolf 145, 148, 171 Hobbes, Thomas 11, 58, 61, 65, 71, 74, 76, 86, 221n10 Leviathan 65 Holsti, Ole 93 Hoppe, Hans-Herman 107 humanism 32, 49, 52 humanitarianism 2, 6, 10, 12, 17, 20–21, 25–29, 33, 35, 38–39, 41, 43–44, 48–51, 57, 64, 71, 84, 92, 104, 109, 117, 126–27, 143, 155, 158–59, 167–68, 171–72, 174, 176, 178, 181, 183–85, 202, 205, 212–14 human nature 10 human rights 10, 20, 46, 48–51, 54, 58, 80, 91, 93, 100, 124, 129, 171, 181, 219n22, 229n145 Hussein, Saddam 1, 8, 13, 28–29, 33, 35, 40–41, 45–46, 50, 109–10, 116, 123, 126–28, 130–31, 133, 136, 138–40, 144–52, 154–56, 160–62, 167–71, 173, 179, 181–89, 202, 204–05, 210, 213, 237n99, 256n150 hyperpower 77

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idealism/idealists 8, 10–11, 20–21, 26, 52, 67, 86, 97–98, 101, 104, 117, 126, 137, 143, 163–64, 171, 177–78, 204, 211 identity 5, 10, 12, 42, 96, 106, 163–64, 171, 183, 185, 193, 200 cosmopolitan 10, 12 national 171, 185, 193 split 42 Ikenberry, G. John 77 imperialism 42–43, 47, 73, 79–81, 95, 104, 147, 149, 207, 236n88 India 83, 103, 104, 208 Indonesia 47, 159 information technology 73, 79 injustice 25, 30, 33, 42, 66, 143, 212 innocence 36, 38, 39 insurgency 206 interdependence 70, 73, 77–78 international currencies 53, 57 international economic policy 56, 118 international financial markets 53 international law 2, 9–10, 17–20, 35, 44–45, 48–51, 57–60, 110, 117, 126, 128–29, 131, 133, 141, 148, 153, 156, 164, 172, 176, 185, 202, 208, 215, 249n18 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 64, 94, 103, 235n80 international politics 24, 58, 73, 87 International Tax And Investment Center (ITIC) 201 interstate relations 11, 17, 65 Iran 41, 104, 109–10, 121–24, 135, 139, 145–49, 151–52, 156, 166–67, 176, 194, 198–99, 202, 203, 213 Iran–Iraq War 122–23, 146 Iraq 1, 12–14, 21–23, 28–31, 33, 35, 37, 39–41, 43, 45–47, 50, 63, 71–72, 76, 92, 104, 109–11, 115–18, 120–24, 126–31, 133–40, 142–59, 162–63, 165–74, 176, 178–217, 226n85, 247n158, 248n16, 249n18, 256n150 invasion of 76, 92, 109, 155, 166, 183, 213

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Iraq – continued occupation of 14, 146, 171, 205, 206, 207 post-Saddam 135, 154, 171, 201, 204 post-War 170, 172 Iraq Survey Group (ISG) 187–88, 191 Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) 188, 192, 196–98, 200–01 Iraqi National Accord 204 Iraqi National Congress (INC) 179 Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) 201 Islam see religion Islamofacism 41, 210 isolationism 163, 210, 211 Israel 18, 29, 40, 45–47, 104, 109–10, 121–22, 126, 135–36, 138, 143, 146–47, 152, 181, 193, 212, 246n145 anti-Israel 18, 193 ‘Operation Opera’ 45 Six Days War 150 Istrabadi, Feisal 181, 194, 195 Japan 83, 101, 102–19, 125, 147–50, 153–54, 171, 209, 211 Johnson, James Turner 143, 212 Johnson, Lyndon 97 Jordan 45, 191, 254 judiciary 52, 188, 195 Judis, John B. 99 justice 10, 13, 17, 19–21, 23–27, 29, 30–36, 38–40, 45, 49, 51–52, 56–58, 62–63, 65, 82, 107, 131, 138, 143, 148, 155, 166, 170, 172, 178, 183, 185, 205, 211–12, 228n121 distributive 10, 13, 17, 20, 23, 29, 38–40, 49, 51–52, 56–57, 63, 183, 185 restorative 10, 13, 17, 20, 23, 29, 38–39, 49, 51–52, 56, 63, 183 retributive 10, 17, 20, 27, 29, 37, 49, 51, 63, 185, 212 just war see war Kagan, Donald 106 Kagan, Robert 163

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Kaldor, Mary 27, 49, 50, 58, 229, 246 Kant, Immanuel 12, 54, 214 cosmopolis 9, 10, 12, 49, 52, 54, 64, 71–73, 103, 106, 214–16 holy war 61 Kantianism 10, 21, 28, 46, 49, 54, 58, 61 Perpetual Peace 10, 12, 21, 49, 54, 214 Kassebaum, Nancy 18 Kay, David 187 Kazakhstan 104, 191 Kennan, George 178 Kennedy, Paul 76 Keynes, John Maynard 88 Keynesianism 77 Kiely Ray 220 Fahd, King 144 Kirkpatrick, Jeane 98 Kissinger, Henry 110, 111, 163, 164, 205, 206 Kofman, Daniel 46 Korbel, Joseph 162 Korea Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) 109, 110, 210 Korean War 31, 183 North 166–67, 203, 210 South 109, 210 Kosovo 5, 31, 60, 104, 182, 219n22 Krauthammer, Charles 92, 98, 151, 206, 210–11, 236n86 Kristol, Irving 98, 105–08, 110, 185 Kristol, William 249n18 Kupchan, Charles A. 261n269 Kurdistan 154, 156, 197, 198 Kurdistan Regional Government, 197 Kurds 29, 40, 41, 135, 138–43, 145, 151, 152, 156, 170, 172, 186, 193, 195–201 Kuwait 35, 115, 118, 121–23, 126–31, 133–34, 136, 143–50, 152, 154–55, 165, 191, 207, 217n2, 238–39n135 Kyrgyzstan 191

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INDEX language 2, 3, 13, 32, 109, 126, 167, 177, 178, 196–98, 205, 218n3 Lawrence, Bruce 32 Layne, Christopher 90–91, 108 Open Doors 91 Lebow, Richard Ned 205 Lee, Barbara 157 Lewis, Bernard 68, 180 liberalism 1, 9–10, 12, 13, 20–22, 25–28, 32, 34–35, 37, 40–41, 43–49, 51, 56–64, 67–68, 70– 73, 76–78, 83–87, 90, 92–93, 96–98, 101, 103–07, 111, 118, 120, 123, 163–64, 171–72, 174, 176, 178, 183–84, 189, 195–96, 205, 210–11, 213–15, 221n9, 224n57 Libya 150 Lichtenberg, Judith 38 Little, Richard 6 Locke, John 60, 210 Lugar, Richard G. 168 Lukes, Steven 7 Machiavelli, Niccolò di Bernardo dei 71, 74 Machiavellian 1, 11, 61, 191, 204, 213 Machiavellianism 26 Makiya, Kenan 181, 195, 204 Malmvig, Helle 5, 6 Mann, Michael 84 market economy 18, 76, 98, 105, 164, 200, 208, 211 Marr, Phebe 170 Martinez, Roman 194 Marxism/Marxists 1, 6–10, 12–13, 21, 34, 43, 48, 57, 73, 83, 95, 99, 105, 107, 205, 214–15, 217n1, 220n23 Marxist critiques of dominance 9, 10–11, 34, 47, 51, 53, 56–57, 65–68, 75, 76, 90– 91, 93–96, 99, 104, 124, 156, 195, 215–16 of hegemony 8–10, 57, 34, 214 of imperialism 9, 10, 28, 56, 58, 60, 64, 71–73, 81–85, 90, 95,

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102–03, 147, 154, 158, 189, 205, 211, 213, 215–16 McGrew, Anthony 27, 49, 52, 54, 57, 93 Mckee, Rob 201 Mearsheimer, John J. 77–79, 213 Merton, Robert 202 Mexico 79, 80, 110, 167 Middle East 29, 32, 40–41, 43, 48, 104, 109, 116–17, 122–23, 126, 129, 132, 138–39, 144, 147–49, 151–54, 164, 169, 173, 178, 180, 187, 189, 191, 207–08, 210, 217n2, 237n99 military action 23, 121, 127, 135, 141, 152, 156, 166, 249n18 bases 68, 104, 154, 207 doctrine 82 planning 149 superiority 37, 79, 85, 203, 206, 236n97 Mills, Charles Wright 8 crackpot realism 8, 219n15 Mises, Ludwig Von 98 monetary resources 53, 210 morality 30, 32, 36, 38, 51, 98, 211, 225n72 moral justification for war 2, 10, 13, 21, 22, 60, 143, 213 Morgan, J.P. 88 Morgenthau, Hans J. 71, 75, 78 Morocco 47, 148, 159, 191 Mossadegh, Mohammad 109, 123 Mozaffari, Mehdi 43–45 Mubarak, Husni 144, 145, 169 multilateralism 11, 46, 64, 67, 70, 72, 78, 82, 94, 141, 249n18 multinational banks 53, 86 multi-national corporations (MNCS) 55 Multinational Force for Saudi Arabia (MNFSA) 130 Multinational Force to Enforce Sanctions (MNFES) 130 Murphy, Richard 154 Musharraf, Pervez 104, 191 Mussolini, Benito 40

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National Intelligence Estimate 2002 (NIE 2002) 180, 187, 188 nationalism 41, 56, 200–01 anti-nationalism 56 Nazism 42 Negri, Antonio 81, 82, 83 neo-colonialism 73 neoconservatism/neoconservative 1, 2, 12, 62–64, 71, 73–74, 91, 94–102, 105–08, 111, 115, 151, 155–57, 161, 163, 167, 180–81, 185, 191, 193, 195, 204–06, 210, 214, 249n18 neoliberalism/neoliberals 2, 12–13, 21, 26–27, 49, 53–55, 57, 60, 64, 72, 77, 83–84, 86, 89, 91, 94, 101, 107, 118, 158, 164, 184, 189, 211, 236n99 New World Order 2, 59, 63, 80, 130, 132, 148, 149, 151, 153, 174 New Zealand 58 Nicaragua 23, 60 Niebuhr, Reinhold 213 Nitze, Paul H. 87–88, 92, 97, 110, 117–18, 155, 161–62, 177–79, 234n70, 238n120, 240n11 Nixon, Richard 89, 161 non-combatants 21, 27–31, 33, 38–39 non-democratic regimes 52, 54 non-state actors 2, 11, 19, 24, 69, 70, 82, 93, 215 Noriega, Manuel 150 North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA) 64, 110 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 5, 6, 31, 58, 60, 80, 103, 104, 142, 155, 177, 219, 238n120 nuclear capability 104, 136, 152, 169, 180, 205, 212 non-proliferation 92, 151 war 136 weapons 46, 134, 136, 142, 150–52, 162, 166, 173, 177, 183, 187, 246n145 see also weapons of mass destruction

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Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) 152 Nunn, L.L. 162 Oakeshott, Michael 105 Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) 186 Office of Special Plans (OSP) 178–79 oil 35, 90, 92, 101, 121–22, 126, 128–29, 131–32, 135, 137, 139, 145–48, 151, 153–54, 162, 166, 170, 178, 180, 185, 190–91, 199–201, 206–07, 217n2, 237n99, 247n158 control of 101, 191 fields 123, 128, 136, 146, 170, 201 prices 131, 139, 153 oligopolistic 86, 89, 94 O’Loughlin, Ben 99, 161 Oman 191 Operation Desert Shield 150 Operation Just Cause (1989–90) 129 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 153 Osgood, Robert E. 115 Osgood 115 Pachachi, Adnan 198, 199, 200 Pacific Union 54 Pakistan 37, 104, 148, 160, 191 Palestine 29, 40, 42, 45, 138, 147, 173, 192, 212, 217n2 Panama 23, 60, 129, 142, 150, 153 ‘Operation Just Cause’ 23 peace 10, 18, 20, 24–26, 28, 34–35, 40, 45–46, 57–58, 60, 65–66, 71, 93, 124–26, 128, 130–31, 136, 138–39, 144–45, 148, 154, 156, 167, 172, 189, 212, 222n22, 234n70, 245n130 Perle, Richard 162, 163, 180–81 Persian Gulf 41, 121–22, 129–30, 133–34, 139, 141, 154, 156, 207, 217n2, 249n18 Pieterse, Jan Naderveen 94, 95, 96, 236n99 pluralism 58, 149, 196

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INDEX Podhoretz, Norman 98, 167, 237 Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) 178 poverty 40, 53, 97, 159, 175 Powell, Colin 128, 144–46, 161–62, 184, 204, 248n16 primacy 11, 66–68, 76, 80, 94, 96, 99, 102–04, 108, 116, 216 privatization 90, 200, 201 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) 99, 163, 207, 237n111 Puchala, Donald 153 Qatar 191, 207 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 164, 165 Qutb, Sayyed 41, 42 Ramadan, Tariq 40 Rand, Ayn 98 Rawls, John 36, 43, 44–45 Reagan, Ronald 18, 19, 22–23, 62, 77, 100, 103, 109, 115, 120, 122, 127, 133, 149–50, 161, 191, 209, 237n111 ‘Evil Empire’ 62, 109, 127 realism/realists 1, 6–9, 11–13, 18, 20– 22, 28, 32, 34, 48, 56–81, 83– 86, 91, 93, 95–98, 100, 106–08, 110–11, 115, 117–18, 137, 144, 147–48, 154–55, 163–64, 172, 177, 204–06, 210, 211–12, 214–16, 217n1, 220n23, 221n9, 234n70 classical 11, 74, 205 critical 1, 8, 13 offensive 77, 84, 95, 106, 206 realpolitik 48, 65, 78, 216 recession 89, 90, 132, 137, 149, 153 reforms 19, 20, 26, 63, 158, 173, 186, 192, 195, 199, 217n2 reification 4–6 religion/religious affiliation Christianity 27, 39 Islam 40, 41, 187, 194, 196, 198, 200, 212 Muslim 32, 41, 42, 43, 47, 148, 159, 173, 190, 217n2

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Shi’a 172 Shiite 29, 41, 123, 135, 138, 139, 140, 143, 145–46, 152, 156, 170, 186, 192, 194–200, 202, 204, 207, 256n150 Sunni 139–40, 170, 172, 195–99, 256n150 Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) 49, 83, 96 rhetoric 8, 12–13, 23, 33, 34, 41, 45, 50, 57, 59–60, 63, 66, 72, 74, 84, 95, 99, 101–03, 108, 110, 117–18, 123, 126–27, 144, 147–48, 153, 155, 160, 163, 166, 173–77, 181, 185, 188, 191, 203–04, 209, 213, 215, 219n15, 245n130 ‘evil’ 7, 30, 39, 50, 103–04, 109, 127, 167, 183, 189, 202 moral 8, 23, 34, 50, 59, 66, 74, 95, 108, 204 Rice, Condoleezza 100, 161, 162, 182, 194 Ricolfi, Luca 42 Risse, Thomas 46, 218 Rodman, Peter W. 171, 237n111 rogue states 108, 110, 176 Roosevelt, F.D. 88, 163 New Deal 88, 90, 237n103 Rorty, Richard 33 Rosenau, James 93 Rowan, Henry S., ‘Operation Scorpion’ 248n16 Roy, Oliver 180, 217 Rumsfeld, Donald 100, 151, 161–63, 166, 186, 205–06, 209, 219, 237n111 Russia 43, 48, 83, 104, 154, 170, 208, 211, 238n120 Said, Edward 46 Saleh, Ali Abdullah 145 sanctions 29, 118, 121–22, 130–31, 133–34, 143, 146, 152–53, 155, 170, 206 Saudi Arabia 40, 43, 48, 123, 130, 134, 140, 145, 149, 154, 156, 191, 207

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Schroder, Gerhard 46 Schweller, Randell L. 75 Scowcroft, Brent 116, 118, 154–55, 206 security 4, 10, 20–21, 24–25, 31–32, 34, 37, 49, 56, 62, 70–71, 75, 80, 88, 92, 99, 102, 108, 121, 126, 129–30, 133–34, 138, 141–42, 154, 159–60, 175, 183, 185–86, 190–91, 193, 195, 204, 222n22, 232n30, 236n86 economic 88 Shah, Reza 122–23 Sharon, Ariel 109 Sheppard, Simon 48 Shevardnadze, Eduard 152 Shields, Paul 88 Shulsky, Abram 179 socialism 25, 84, 200 Soederberg, Susanne 101 South East Asia 154 sovereignty 5, 18–19, 24, 46, 64, 80–81, 83, 128–29, 133, 144, 147–48, 150, 156, 188, 190, 193, 211 State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) 201 St Augustine 27, 30, 222n27 Strange, Susan 53 Strauss, Leo 63, 97, 99, 100, 106, 162 Straw, Jack 191 suicide bombers 40, 42, 211, 226n86 superpower 60, 66, 67, 68, 75, 84, 90, 98, 99, 102, 116, 209 Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) 194 sustainability 55, 65, 79, 101 Syria 41 Tajikistan 104 Talabani, Jalal 193, 199 Taliban 33, 37–38, 159, 160, 175, 189, 226n85 Tamil 42 Tenet, George 179, 187 terrorism/terrorists 20, 24, 28, 30, 32–37, 40–45, 50–51, 81–82, 92, 102, 104, 108–09, 139, 150, 166–67, 172, 175–76, 178–79,

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182–83, 206, 208, 212, 231n10, 236n97, 239n136 Therborn, Goran 7, 218–19n13 Third World 18, 22–23, 53, 55–56, 73, 153 Thompson, Llewellyn 178 Thucydides 34, 71, 74, 106 totalitarianism 40, 41, 48 Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) 158, 190, 194, 196, 197, 198 Transitional National Assembly (TNA) 188, 195, 196, 197 Truman, Harry 163 Turkey 58, 110, 135, 154, 156 Turkomans 172 Uloum, Bahr Al 200 unilateralism 11, 46, 56, 64, 67, 72, 77, 80, 82, 94, 125, 213 unilateralist 47 United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) 199, 200 United Kingdom (UK) 23, 58, 67, 96, 109–10, 174, 184, 191, 209, 246n145 United Nations (UN) 9, 17–25, 33, 45, 48, 50–51, 58, 60, 64, 84, 110, 117, 127, 129–34, 141, 143, 146, 148–55, 167, 172–74, 176, 180, 183–85, 187, 193–94, 197, 199, 202, 206, 208, 211, 215, 217n2, 222n22, 247n158, 249n18 anti-UN 19, 221n7 Charter 9, 17, 19–20, 24, 25, 45, 50–51, 60, 130, 143, 185, 222n10 Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 18 General Assembly (UNGA) 22, 45, 60, 187 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 46 Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) 173–74 Security Council (UNSC) 12, 23, 60, 85, 117, 118, 130, 133–34, 159, 163, 172, 184, 222n22, 232n30

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INDEX Resolutions 18, 33, 45, 48, 60, 84, 110, 153, 154, 167, 172, 180 United States (US) Committee on Foreign Affairs 167 Congress 18–19, 127, 129, 132–33, 149–50, 157, 179–80, 217 Defense Planning Guidance 1991–92 118 grand strategy 2, 12, 22–23, 52, 57, 96, 99, 108, 116–17, 158, 164, 174, 214, 216, 261n269 Monroe Doctrine 1823 79 National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) 12, 81, 85, 87, 117–19, 12–27, 155, 177–79 National Security Directive 3 (NSD 3) 118, 120 National Security Directive 26 (NSD 26) 118, 121, 124, 133 National Security Directive 45 (NSD 45) 118, 129, 130, 133 National Security Directive 54 (NSD 54) 118, 133 National Security Strategy 1990 (NSS 1990) 12, 14, 85, 117–18, 124–26, 178 National Security Strategy 2002 (NSS 2002) 12, 14, 85, 117–18, 174–79, 207 Regional Defense Strategy 1993 118 Senate 150–51, 156–57, 167–68 Congress 18–19, 127, 129, 132, 149, 157 US–Iraq relations 109 USS Cole 160 USSR 18–19, 22, 33, 62–63, 69, 72, 77–78, 81, 87, 102, 109, 116, 118–22, 135, 141, 148, 154, 162, 175, 178–79, 188, 209–10 US–UN relations 18, 149 Urbinati, Nadia 54 utilitarianism 36, 39 Uzbekistan 191 Vanunu, Mordechai 152, 246 veto 149, 194, 197, 198

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Vietnam 31, 33, 96, 153, 162, 204, 224n57 Vietnam War 31, 33, 162 Wall Street Crash 90 Wall Street System 73, 84–87, 90, 92, 94, 104, 161, 205, 215 Waltz, Kenneth 75, 78, 108 Walzer, Michael 27, 31, 35–40, 42, 44–45, 50, 57–58, 104, 184, 225n72 war casus belli 28 humanitarian 17, 50, 214 jus ad bellum 12, 21, 24, 25, 26, 31, 38–39, 138, 155, 172, 184, 221n12 jus in bello 31, 39, 138, 155, 184 jus post bellum 31, 39, 138, 155 ‘just cause’ 17, 26, 27, 48, 138 justifications for 11, 12, 19, 20, 104, 155 just 9, 12, 20–27, 29–39, 41, 43, 49–50, 61, 66, 129, 138, 143–44, 155, 166, 168, 172, 183–84, 214, 221n9, 221n10, 221n12, 226n84 necessary 10, 31, 68 preventive 19, 21, 24, 36, 40, 46, 51, 57, 74, 82, 92, 162, 172–75, 183–84, 213, 226n86 self-defence 19–21, 24–25, 36, 51, 177, 221n10 War on Terror (WOT) 13, 21, 30, 37–38, 45, 52, 74, 84, 103–04, 108, 166, 174–75, 215 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 50, 81, 91, 110, 124, 135–36, 138, 151–52, 154, 158–59, 166–69, 173–74, 176, 179–85, 187–88, 191, 199, 205–06, 211–13, 217n2 Weinberger, Casper 171 Wight, Martin 61 Wilson, Woodrow 155, 163, 236n88

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298

US FOREIGN POLICY

Wilson, Richard 45 Wohlstetter, Albert 87, 97, 161, 162 Wolfowitz, Paul 110, 141, 155, 161–63, 166, 179, 185, 206–07, 237n111, 248n16, 249n18 Wolfowitz doctrine 110, 141, 161, 249n18 World Trade Organization (WTO) 55, 94, 190, 200 World War I 34, 101

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AND THE

GULF WARS

World War II 22, 24, 33, 42, 102, 109, 125, 171, 209, 244n120, 248n16 Yemen 110, 145, 191 Yugoslavia Federal Republic of 6, 60 1999 War 103–04 Zaikheim, Dov S. 163 Zionism 18, 40, 47, 123 Zoellick, Robert 163 Zulaika, Joseba 30

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