On the embroiled conflicts of international relations

War, realism, and the reality in between

Several things to keep in mind

I was against the Iraq war. The entire time. Many of the reasons are things that realists are very familiar with. The fact that I was and use a "Sun Tzu" nom de plume, for example, should not be taken as accidental. Sun Tzu is probably one of the foremost thinkers of classical realism, if not still often applicable to modern warfare (see for example his thoughts on torture and treatment of prisoners).

Many of the common and retrospective objections to the Iraq War now relate more strongly to its conduct and planning (ie, lack thereof) than its actual decision making (though there is much reference to the deceptions used there as well). This isn't very surprising. People will not feel a great need to re-examine the decision making process when there are more obvious flaws staring them in the face as far as the execution of that process that followed. The decision to invade Iraq is a decision that was made publicly after years of hostility, bombing, and international suppression or inspections. So in reality, many of those deceptions were not that necessary a push in the environment leading up to this invasion. People allowed themselves to be deceived because there just wasn't a great and obvious reason to them not to be. Saddam was evil, we must fight the Axis of Evil in the Holy Name and Banners of Freedom. And thus avenge the deaths that we have suffered in a great crusade.

I don't think the realist argument has any illusions that Saddam wasn't a shady character who was vilified (rightly so) by Western press and many of the regional powers around him. But I also don't think it made any sense to push for regime changes all over the Middle Eastern map. Especially regimes that were not a direct threat to our interests in their present state. A realist objection makes perfect sense here. Do not divide your attentions and thus overextend the use of blood and treasure in foreign policy objectives. Particularly when it does not clearly advance your interests to do so.

That more or less sums up the problems with Wolfowitz's deliberately ignored argument. Which brings us to a plethora of real world issues now.

Firstly, the on-going wars. These, as we can plainly see, expend a great deal of national energy and expense to maintain. I am heartened by a change in strategy and on the whole approve of these types of tactics in waging a counter-insurgent battle. But that change in strategy is coming about 6-7 years later than it should have and shows signs in Iraq of not providing us with sustainable growth in the institutions that we might ordinarily associate with independent nation states governed by democratic practices anyway (at least over a time frame that the American public, or a Sun Tzu based generalship, has any patience for). What makes us think that Afghanistan, of all places, has a greater seed and more fertile ground for the institutions of democracy such that a rather large investment in troop deployments and public infrastructure is going to pay dividends in the form of a free and stable country in the midst of a region that has lacked either of those two features as a historical fact? That we've been there longer? Our enemies there have been better organised, probably better funded, and have more to gain than in Iraq. Iraq is probably not in a position where its various separatist groups could sway the balance of power from among each other in such a way that any one of them will be in control, and it thus benefits none of them to defeat the status quo, only to try to topple it slowly and painfully. Afghanistan by contrast has a very real and very recent history that suggests the single group we're most engaged in fighting can do so and very probably will do so without outside interference.

Which brings us to problem #2. Iran. Prior to an invasion of Iraq and the apparent reverse domino theory applied by Wolfowitz et al to the issue of state-sponsored terrorism, Iran was partly governed by a moderate, Khatami. This moderate did not like the instability and chaos on Iran's northern border and their regional ally in Afghanistan was being crushed under foot by the Taliban, with help from well organised assassins and/or terrorists. As such, after we were attacked, Iran offered to help with intelligence assets they already had on the ground. We, despite the incongruity of being aided by "the Axis of Evil", more or less agreed to this assistance. And combined with the firepower and lethality of quick special operations strikes, it was actually a pretty successful campaign in the most objective terms. We used a fraction of manpower, augmented by large numbers Afghani rebels and warlords of course, and good ground game intelligence to hit important targets and effectively control the country in a matter of months. It's possible that level of success (and the previous level with the 1st Gulf War) fed a notion of overconfidence in the planning of the later Iraq War. But then, you'd still have to have arrived at the notion that this later war was in fact necessary at all. More importantly, there are evident calculations of the impact upon the region itself if we were to start going around knocking off nation-states who opposed us in a critical way. In the case of Iran all one has to do is watch them go from a state-sponsor of terrorist organs in parts of the Middle East (effectively a regional power struggle against Israel and Saudi Arabia) to a possible nuclear player with stronger ties to nation states with a greater degree of opposition to American international goals (Russia or China) in order to gain some appreciation for the amount of effect that a vigorous American intervention as a stated national policy does have. This effect was not to our benefit. If you leave aside an invasion of Iraq, perhaps just leave that on the table as a calling card threat, Iran probably does not see an eminent threat to its internal power arrangements and stability. If they do then proceed to go ahead with a nuclear program in that atmosphere, then its much easier to make a case for any of the following
1) bombing those nuclear program facilities if necessary with some international support for doing so in the interest of preserving existing quasi-stable power arrangements in the region.
2) rally strong international isolationism upon a nation state still emerging as a regional player with some level of democratic self-rule internally that it must account for as it makes its foreign policy decisions, something it will wish to avoid
3) make diplomatic approaches with an otherwise still "moderate" government in the same way we did with India over their nuclear program, with the idea being to head off weaponization of uranium where possible.
It's even possible under that arrangement to play Iraq off on Iran. I doubt very much Saddam Hussein wanted to see a nuclear Iran on his borders any more than Israelis do now.

All this is well and good one can say, and of course, we went into Iraq and alienated Iran more strongly so it is entirely academic, but what of the plight of the Iraqi people under Saddam. Is not this a sufficient moral ground and improvement to introduce a self-ruling democratic state where once there exists only tyranny and repression? Well yes and no. A self-ruling democratic state ruled in France for a few years once also. It ended up with a lot of rolling heads and a little guy in a marshal's costume roaming around Europe conquering his way into the Kremlin. Democracy as a forcibly established system doesn't have a long history of working out either. Latin America has hardly a sterling reputation for the consistency of rule of law institutions. Basic things like protection and enforcement of contracts or private property, the ability to police the police, free press, etc, are still very hard to come by in this entire region. And these are countries which in one form or another have been free from colonial influences for decades longer than the Middle East, have clearer regional examples around them of the benefits of such things (Mexico is right on our border and still fails miserably at some of the simple things we take for granted like starting a business), and are relatively free from regional power struggles and wars (with some exceptions of course). Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran et al have almost none of these advantages. Iran does have some in the fact that it has a Constitution and people normally seem to abide by some of its rules (though this has become less of a certainty in recent years). Iraq had been ruled by a dictator for decades. Afghanistan has basically been ruled by no one at all for decades. All of this is not good raw material in which to plant the flag and seeds for democracy.

Sure a crusade of liberty, in defense of freedom, sounds good for the headlines. But it turns out that not everyone really gets democracy on the first go around. It's not exactly easy for us now. And we have a 200+ year head start on most of the world. All of this is apparent if you watch how a democratic country unfolds in the pages of history rather than pretend you know how it worked and arbitrarily try to make other people behave like we know better what it is they want. Now we can argue that the benefits of democracy outweigh these costs of it being really hard to do sure. But it's a still larger cost to impose than to develop and promote it. Somehow, and I'm not sure how this happened and who allowed it to do so, the only way considered legitimate to promote democracy and human rights around the globe was to step in and impose them. Not only does that seem deeply and tragically contradictory, it's also really inefficient in practice.

And this is before we arrive at how we presumed to do it. Elections are a core element of a free society. But they do not a free society make. Building and re-building infrastructure like schools, roads, prisons, power plants and setting up sanitation and health care are certainly nice investments. But even in countries as backward as Afghanistan they have a few people who know how to build a road system or lay out a school building. What they don't have is the stability of basic rights and safety to use a private car on that road, to start a business to transport legal cargo along it, or to educate children in that school. Now it's true that installing a democratic government might be useful for the development of these things. In practice, installing a government of the people is more like a refinement or a culmination of these things. That is, they already exist or are understood in some measure by the people who live in an area, and the people eventually figure out that they can make their leaders even more accountable if they have more influence over who they are at a given time. A country like China or Russia with rather limited individual freedoms in democratic terms will often have good or decent school systems for example (perhaps not too good). They will even have some limited freedoms of press and expression that are tolerated and some clear idea of where the lines are at any given time. The reasons for this are actually somewhat obvious and predictable by Western economic thinking. A monopoly of power benefits from predictable conditions where they do not push too hard over the subjects of that power. Just hard enough. Brutality and abuses still occur of course, but they are reduced and often symbolic instead of clearly arbitrary exercises of power that are like unpredictable mood swings of a tyrant. A level of trust, or least predictable level of mistrust, is much more manageable for both those in power and those without. Even this sort of uneasy stability has not been, in the main, present for a very long time in much of the Middle East. And it can easily be regarded as a basic marker and building block for democracy of any kind. In its absence, it makes less sense to expend the energy to build it from without, particularly by the use of force.

To summarize a proposed execution in future
1) Let Iran deal with Afghanistan, if they even want to. Preferably after something like a "normal" relationship develops again. That part will take a while. We sort of poisoned the well and they've decided to poison it back in some very nasty ways, over many years. The shouting of "OUR WORDS ARE BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!" from the older Civilization games tended to annoy me too. Had we not settled on a path of head on collision, it's very probable we'd be dealing with some easier folks over there first of all, second, the nuclear question would be less combative and thorny, and third, they might serve some useful purposes in reigning in Palestinian militants (in return for us reigning in Jewish settlers). We may have to instead work completely backwards on these matters. Which will be a lot harder to do. (in summary, never ever let people who use Biblical quotations as a basis for selling a war set up the game plan for both the invasion and occupation)
2) Help deal with Pakistan, which at least has some semblance of democracy in the states around Punjab and some entrenched and trained internal security forces from years of wars with India (ie, we wouldn't have to train them). If we can try to resolve the threats between these two that would help (though in practice I don't see that the Kashmir question is any easier than the Palestinian question).
3) Figure out how to counter or, at worst, cooperate in a way which serves mutual interests, with an increasing amount of Chinese influence around the globe. Tying down our resources in Afghanistan and Iraq has limited our ability to engage in useful diplomacy over things like humanitarian crisises in Africa or parts of Asia and even Latin America. Of course our economic policies haven't helped here either. China has a huge surplus thanks to US debt with which to throw around some cash, never a bad thing if you want to grease the foreign policy wheels. But then one can argue those economic policies were further rendered counter productive by trillions of dollars spent on military commitments overseas in the first place.