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Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

But I remained immersed in other regions, other issues, other problems. Iraq was peripheral, best left for Middle East experts which I am not. Then for the second time in a decade, Iraq invaded a neighboring state, bullying its way to the attention of the world.

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Army Command and General Staff College. For a few months, at least, Iraq mattered greatly to me. But afterwards, it faded again.

I returned to other projects. As another major war between the United States and Iraq approached in the late winter of , I joined a study team from the U. Our mission was to enter Iraq as soon as possible after combat subsided and undertake an initial strategic assessment.

Our team established a base in Kuwait then made five trips into Iraq. It was electrifying to see the country that had so dominated the headlines for the previous year, experience the immediate aftermath of a major war, and talk to military leaders and soldiers from both sides while their memories were fresh.

The sight of exhausted U. This was an afterthought to our project, added by a senior Army general after approving the study. As events in Iraq unfolded, the complexity of the project exploded beyond control.

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What will American strategy look like after U.S. troops leave Iraq? Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy examines the ways in which the Gulf War. What will American strategy look like after U.S. troops leave Iraq? Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy examines the ways in which the Gulf War, the.

I worked frenetically just to keep abreast of breaking developments. My office filled with notes, articles, maps, briefing slides, reports, and transcripts. I could not finalize the report. Each draft was obsolete before I could distribute it. Still, this was the right issue for me at the right time: I was one of a handful of scholars or analysts who studied insurgency and counterinsurgency during the previous decade.

This served me well as the insurgency in Iraq grew. But the idea that that I would spend a few months on the Iraq project and then return to my normal research and management concerns collapsed under the onslaught of events. Third, the process of strategy formulation in the United States requires a degree of transparency, openness, and participation by multiple government agencies.

Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

Eccentric as an old goat, Mister B could care less about being politically correct. That realization inspired this book. So a discussion of threats without identified interests is an appeal to fear. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. As events in Iraq unfolded, the complexity of the project exploded beyond control.

The combination of the three, however, means that the process is also rather complex. Unfortunately, the book does not go into detail on the last point.

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The conceptual exploration of strategy is the prelude for a cursory discussion of American relations with Iraq dating as far back as the Carter Administration. This discussion explains how the United States became increasingly interested in the stability of the Persian Gulf region, and how this led them into a longer conflict with Iraq. Many would be tempted to accuse the United States government of being interested in the region due to the presence of oil, and therefore the rationale for the invasion of Iraq in While such comments are not inaccurate in terms of the reason for an increased interest in the region, they do not represent the situation accurately.

The United States has sought to maintain political stability in the region as it has an effect upon the supply and price of oil worldwide, and, therefore, it could have had global economic ramifications. It was not so much an attempt to ensure control of the supply of Persian Gulf oil as it was an attempt to deny any one power the same control. There is an underlying message throughout this section — that the Administrations with a realist approach to Iraq tended to fare better that those that did not take such an approach. Bush Administration approached the issue of Iraq in the manner befitting a realist approach, but it also came to be known by its friends in the Islamic world, namely the conservative monarchies.

The former believed that the use of military power would permit the inherent appeal of political and economic liberty to occur, whereas the latter believed that military power could be used to directly transform a totalitarian state. He notes that the American defence establishment was reshaped to work on the Global War on Terror, but it focused against the perceived state sponsors of terror.

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With the emergence of a global network of terrorists, and the belief that a state sponsor with the capacity to provide parts of that network with weapons of mass destruction WMDs , the perception of threat grew immensely. He also observes that the conservative idealists within the George W. Bush Administration believed they could transform countries through the direct use of force.

To summarize, the invasion was undertaken to eliminate a government that was seen to be a state sponsor of terror, and to replace it with an example of democracy to encourage the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East. Metz points out that there are three competing explanations for the failure to transform Iraq from a totalitarian dictatorship into a healthy secular democracy in five years.

He noted that these explanations are crucial, as they contain the potential solution for future cases.

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If it is the first explanation, the failure to plan, then the solution would be to ensure that the successors to the George W.