What Was the War About?
The Bush administration’s goals in starting a war in Iraq are beginning to become clearer. This week, in articles in the economist, NPR, and the Atlantic Monthly, a few things have come to light that show that the war in Iraq was about more than just the liberation of Iraqis from an oppressive dictator. In fact, it almost seems that liberation, terrorism and weapons of mass distraction were a sideshow from the real goals of the war. The public goals of the war were useful in building support for the war with the public and to pull foreign governments into a ‘coalition of the willing’, but were not the main reasons the war was undertaken. The real reasons are much more mundane and harder to raise public passions about.

In large part, we are seeing in the results of the war a shift in international relations as fundamental as the end of the cold war. In fact, this is probably an extension of the changes that were occurring at the beginning of the 1990’s, but were put off for 10 years during the Clinton administration. The war in Iraq might have been only three weeks long, but it was a three weeks that changed the world. Perhaps that is why people were glued to their televisions for those three weeks, in order to see something that might show what the world would look like after it was over.

The Failure of Containment
The goals of the war in Iraq were threefold: to change relations of power in the middle east; to change relations of power globally, especially between the US and Europe; and to control the price of oil. Since 1998, the neo-cons have argued that the policy of containment in Iraq was unsustainable. For the most part, they were correct. It was extremely expensive, relied on unstable allies in the middle east, notably Saudi Arabia, and increased anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. On top of that, the policy of containment was destroying Iraqi society while doing nothing to remove Saddam Hussein.

The Europeans liked containment because they bore none of the costs while still reaping some of the benefits. France, Germany and Russia were selling goods to Saddam’s regime both under the oil-for-food program and illegally. To be certain, other countries were selling to Iraq as well, but these three are the major players in international relations. The US could not sell to Iraq in part because Iraq would not buy from the US and Britain, who were also the main opponents of lifting sanctions. France, Germany and Russia were all increasing their ties to Iraq before the war in order to have a foothold there when sanctions were lifted.

This relationship was played out in the diplomatic debate that led up to the war. The anti-war coalition wanted to keep the status quo because it imposed no costs on them other than lost opportunity. In addition, the status quo allowed them to recoup some of the lost opportunities through the oil-for-food program and illegal sales. The US and Britain, on the other hand, were bearing the sole burden of maintaining the containment policy. In addition, the policy relied on the military deployment in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The Instability of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is an inherently unstable country. It is essentially a very expensive piece of desert which is, according to an article in the Atlantic Monthly, “run by an increasingly dysfunctional royal family that has been funding militant Islamic movements abroad in an attempt to protect itself from them at home.” The Atlantic Monthly article describes a corrupt and vulnerable regime. It was formed in 1932 when Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, a powerful tribal leader, declared himself king. Since he died, his sons have run the country. The current king, Fahd, suffered a near fatal stroke in 1995 and has been incapacitated since then. Rumors say that he is kept alive only to prevent a power struggle among his brothers and his son Abdul Aziz.

Right now, Fahd’s brother Abdullah is next in line to be king if Fahd dies but his half brothers will not allow him to be king, according to the Atlantic Monthly article. In addition, Fahd’s son Abdul Aziz had been increasing his popular support and is increasingly looking like he is planning to take over after his father’s death. Abdul Aziz had been funding radical Wahhabi causes as well as clerics and causes associated with Osama bin Laden, including coordinating an aid package to the Taliban in 1997. It appears that the House of Saud is on very shaky legs and might be taken over by a member supported by radical Islamicists whose chief gripe against the current regime is that they allow American troops on Saudi soil.

Al Qaeda is the main supporter of anti-American terrorism throughout the world. The bulk of al Qaeda members and funding comes from Saudi Arabia. Rumors continue that Saudi Arabia is dragging its feet in helping the US fight the war on terror. Much of this is probably because of the Saudi relationship with the Wahhabi movement. The Wahhabis are a fundamentalist sect of Islam from which both al Qaeda and the Taliban get their ideology. It was ibn Saud’s alliance with the Wahhabi movement that brought him to power in the middle of the 20th century. This is a very unstable ally that the US has been relying on as the centerpiece of its middle east policy. Therefore, in the eyes of the neo-cons, the containment policy in Iraq had to be scrapped. Something had to replace it and that something is the goal of the war in Iraq.

Changing Relations in the Middle East
The containment policy could not be scrapped by simply walking away from Iraq. To do so would make the costs that the US bore for ten years meaningless with nothing to gain for it. It would leave a repressive dictator in place with the public perception that he had stood up to the most powerful country on earth and won. Obviously, this would not have been acceptable to the American foreign policy establishment or the American people, for that matter, especially at a time when the US was nominally at war against terrorism. The war in Iraq was begun in order to establish a new power relationship in the middle east, with the US as the major power player.

One result of the war is that there will be less pressure on the Saudis to support America. This week, the US announced that it will immediately move troops out of Saudi Arabia and eventually will remove all troops. This is not to say that the US will completely move troops out of the middle east. In fact, since 1990, the US has been reducing its troop presence throughout the world except in the middle east. All new US military bases established since the cold war have been in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Kirgizstan. It seems clear that any bases removed from Saudi Arabia will be replaced by bases in Iraq.

It’s Not About Oil, It’s About the Price of Oil
The new power landscape in the middle east also means less US support for Saudi Arabia and a new balance of power between the Arabs and Israel. Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, has said that the war in Iraq was not about oil, it was about the price of oil. What he meant was that oil producers were perfectly willing to provide as much oil as the west required, but they would prefer to sell it at their price, which would be higher than at present. The largest supplier of oil in the world is Saudi Arabia. By managing production, Saudi Arabia has kept the price of oil low, mainly to the benefit of the US.

Iraq has oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia but has been unable to sell on the world market for ten years because of UN sanctions. The oil for food program was the only legal method for Iraq to sell oil and coincidentally, the only lever the UN has in Iraq right now. If Iraq were able to increase production, then according to an article in the Economist this week, within a decade it could “crank out so much oil that Saudi Arabia . . . would lose its market power.” This depends a lot on the makeup of postwar Iraq. The US is pushing for a democratic, liberal Iraq with a privatized oil sector. A privatized oil sector means selling off the government controlled oil industry and subjecting oil production to market forces. If the US forces Iraq to sell off its oil industry to private buyers, then multinational, mostly American oil companies are the most likely buyers. It is certain that there will be few indigenous Iraqi buyers.

Why would the US turn against its old ally and attempt to set up a new oil power broker? Precisely for the reasons outlined above. Saudi Arabia is unstable and increasingly unreliable. The Saudis opposed the war in Iraq, perhaps because they feared this sort of power restructuring. This week, a Heritage Foundation spokesman said that there has to be some kind of rewards for those who support US policies and punishment for those who oppose it. It seems there may be a day of reckoning approaching for Saudi Arabia now that a new power relationship is developing in the Arab world.

Israel and Palestine
The new power relationship affects the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. All politics in the middle east are colored by this conflict. It has raged for over 50 years, since the end of World War II. The US has been receiving international pressure to do something to solve the impasse that has been the order of the day since the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in the 1990’s. There is a wide perception that the intransigence of the Palestinians was responsible for the breakdown. It is a debatable point, but since we are talking about why the Bush administration is acting as it is, it is the perceptions that matter, not necessarily the facts.

If the perception is that the Palestinians were responsible for the breakdown in talks with Israel, then it was because of the power relationship within the Palestinian community and in the Arab world as a whole. The PLO could not compromise with Israel so long as radical Palestinians such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad were increasing in popularity and power within the Palestinian community. After the breakdown of the peace process, it was these groups that began to take the lead in establishing the relationship with Israel through suicide bombings, or martyrdom operations, as they called it. Israel refused to negotiate with the Palestinians so long as these bombing continued.

It was in this atmosphere that the Bush administration was called on to bring a settlement. Bush refused for the first couple years of his administration to do anything. It was only after September 11, 2001 that he began to look at the middle east. He still refused to focus on the Palestinian issue because of the war on terror in Afghanistan, then the war in Iraq. In fact, he supported Israel’s crackdown on Islamic Jihad and Hamas by including these organizations as well as Hizbullah in Lebanon on the list of terrorist organizations, making the war on terror much wider than simply a war on al Qaeda or even just anti-American terror.

In this atmosphere, the US, the UN, the EU and Russia put together a plan called the Road Map to Peace, but did not publish it. Instead, they specifically waited until after the war in Iraq to do so. Why wait? It was not simply that the US did not have the diplomatic resources to wage war in Iraq and push the Road Map, they could have pushed the Road Map first, then done the war in Iraq. They waited specifically until they had established a new power relationship in the middle east. The US defeated Iraq quickly and decisively in part to remove Saddam Hussein as a supporter of Islamic Jihad and Hamas and in part in order to show who was boss in the region. Since the war, we see Syria much subdued and cooperating with the US. Colin Powell’s trip to Damascus this week is likely to increase pressure on Syria to move towards peace with Israel.

Iran is also more subdued, though less cooperative. Mainly we see less support for Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Palestine. It is now, in this atmosphere that the Bush administration is beginning its push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This week, the Palestinian Authority has installed a new Prime Minister and the Road Map has been officially published. It was only after the relations of power had changed in the middle east that the Bush administration would attempt to settle the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys
So how does the war in Iraq change the relations of power globally? The quote from the Heritage Foundation regarding international rewards and punishments was aimed at a report this week that the US would be closing bases in Germany and moving American military resources to the east in Europe. The main beneficiaries of these moves would be Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all of which supported the war in Iraq. There have also been reports recently of the US reviewing its policy towards France, outlining possible changes in the US relationship with that country. (See my Blog April 23, 2003.) Possible policy changes would be to shift NATO decisions away from France and limit French participation in meetings with US allies.

These moves are not simply immediate punishments for allies that didn’t toe the line, but are part of a larger shift in American foreign policy. American policy towards Europe is shifting towards a policy of ‘disaggregation,’ according to senior official in the Bush administration. This means that the US is dropping its 50 year policy of supporting European integration and might even be actively attempting to undermine it. It also means that the US will look less for a unified EU foreign policy and more for support from individual countries. The Bush administration had already opposed new international treaties such as the global warming treaty and the international criminal court and scrapped old ones such as the cold war era START treaty to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

In part, the new policy direction is in reaction to the perceived lack of support by certain European countries for the war. In part, it is fueled by a fear of an ascendant Europe. Throughout the cold war, European integration was in America’s interest because it provided a united front to oppose the communist east. Nowadays, the Bush administration fears that a united Europe will be a rival to the US in international affairs. These fears are exacerbated by President Jacques Chirac of France when he says things like, “We need a means to struggle against American hegemony.”

Undermining the United Nations
One forum for the struggle against American hegemony was at the UN last winter in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Conservatives in the US have never cared much for the UN because it often took positions opposed to the US. In many cases, the US prevented the UN from taking positions by exercising its veto in the Security Council. The UN is widely perceived among conservatives as an obstacle to America acting freely in the world. It is a debatable point. In fact, the UN might actually have made it easier to act in the world by giving legitimacy to certain actions, such as the Gulf War I. However, the neo-conservatives have little need for international legitimacy, so the UN is merely an obstacle to them.

This shed a new light on the debates in the UN preceding the Iraq war. The Bush administration set a very short timeline on getting UN approval for invading Iraq. The UN did not want to play that game and it is likely that the Bush administration knew this going into the debates. Britain and other coalition allies as well as the American and world public wanted international legitimacy for the war. France, Russia, China and others set out the conditions for legitimacy and that was to find weapons of mass destruction or for Iraq to fail to come fully clean regarding the weapons. The arms inspectors said it would take months, but the Bush administration gave them only weeks. It appears to have been a policy which was intended to fail. American unilateral action in the face of apparent UN failure was intended to make the UN irrelevant, which seems to be the continuing attitude of the US towards UN attempts to involve itself in the reconstruction of Iraq.

The problem with this new foreign policy is that, by weakening the international institutions that have ensured peace and security for the past half-century, we are increasingly making the world less secure. While these institutions may have been an obstacle to America having a free hand to act as it wishes in the world, they also acted to protect American interests. We depend on international institutions to fight the war against terror and to safeguard the international economic system that the US relies on.

The war in Iraq is in the process of redrawing the lines of power in the world. It appears that the US will rely less on ‘old Europe’ in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, and more on the ‘new Europe’, which are those countries in central Europe that supported the US war on Iraq. Also, we are seeing a shift in power in the middle east away from relying on Saudi Arabia as the provider of oil price stability and towards building an Iraq in America’s image to do the job for us. We are also seeing pressure being brought to bear on Syria and radical Palestinian movements in order to force a settlement on the Palestinians. While some of these shifts may be for the good, others might be less beneficial. Still others might not work out as planned. Whatever the case, the world will be a very different place from now on.