In reading this article, and studying for my exam tomorrow, I think I’ve finally come up with a concise, non-emotionally loaded explanation of the fundamental strategic problem I see with the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine.
A nuclear Wal-Mart does not necessarily sell only to rogue nations. It might also sell directly to terrorist groups. And a state, however brutal, will not wage a direct nuclear attack on us if it wants to continue to exist. So the two plausible scenarios for a nuclear attack on the U.S. are:
1. nuclear supplier (e.g. Russia, Pakistan, North Korea*) to non-nuclear rogue state (e.g. Iraq, Syria) to terrorists
2. nuclear supplier to terrorists
Our strategy, from summer of 2002 to the present, has been to direct a huge majority of our resources to eliminating the middle-man of scenario #1–and only one middle-man at that, and not the middle-man who was closest to getting nuclear weapons or the middle-man who had closest ties to terrorists. (In fact, one of the suppliers–to wit, Pakistan–has closer ties to Al Qaeda than Iraq ever did.) We knew all this at the time. Now, of course, we also know that he had no chemical or biological weapons.
So the war in Iraq is an incomplete response to scenario #1. It does absolutely nothing about scenario #2. I’d say it did worse than nothing, given the credibility problem, the “hearts and minds” problem (at least in the short run) and the overextended military problem.
You can argue that there were other justifications for invading Iraq. Fine. I’m not convinced by them, but what’s done is done. The problem is, I see very little indication that the administration has changed its strategy going forward. I get the impression that we’re delaying confrontations with say, Syria, because of public opinion, allied opinion and lack of manpower–not because we think there was a fundamental problem with our strategy or intelligence.
That really worries me, to put it mildly.
*North Korea seems to be in transition from a non-nuclear rogue state to a nuclear rogue state, and they already are in a position to sell some nuclear technology & material. Also note that I’m listing these countries as geographical locations where the nuclear material is, not necessarily as governments. The nukes could be stolen from a poorly guarded facility, or sold illegally by a corrupt or extremist individual with access to them.
P.S.I wonder if this story would have gotten the same amount of attention if El-Baradei had not been clever enough to use a memorable soundbite? Probably not; good for him. Would that the Democratic presidential candidates could make these arguments with similar flair. “Nuclear Wal-Mart” gets people’s attention in a way that “To reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation we must increase the funding of the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program!” never will.
My opposition to going to Iraq in the first place was based on the idea that the odds of one of the many things that could go wrong doing so, and the actual threat to the U.S. presented by Saddam, in conjunction with the resentment in the intelligence community and hostility generated overseas made Iraq an unlikely enemy to put at the front of the line.
Most of the worst-case scenarios which I worried about, thankfully, did not come to pass. However, we now have Tacitus opining that the occupation is ending, and not on terms favorable for us, and Bird Dog suggesting that “Without serious reform [of the OSP], our ability to build future coalitions in the War on Terror is hampered.”
Hearing these sort of things from the other side of the fence does little to put me at ease about the state of affairs. The world is a better place with Saddam in custody. However, if we have stretched our military too thin on thise endeavor, if we have weakened our ability to recruit or maintain enlistments, and have, through choice of targets, undermined the general concept of striking a perceived threat before massive damage is incurred, without dealing with the terrorist sponsor states of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, we have failed to address the greatest threats to our, and the world’s, security.
With a decade to prepare and a massive amount of resources at their disposal, the advocates for war in Iraq are leaving an extremely shaky situation in several regards. If the war could have been sold on the issue of freeing Iraqis from the evils of Saddam and his family, perhaps many things would have gone differently. I am not confident the American public would have supported this, though. Now, what many citizens took as prime justification, WMD, has well and truly evaporated, and we are left feeling spun.
I am hoping that Libya will be and indicator of future positive fallout, but concerned that we have missed some important opportunities in the past year. But then again, I tend to be a worrier, so here’s hoping I’m wrong.
Sorry, links to Tacitus’s and BD’s actual posts here and here