Ep 09 – World Politics with Chapman and Wolford, Part 4

[0:00:02 Speaker 0] In 2003 the United States initiated a long term commitment of ground troops in the Middle East. Was this necessary? Was it a good decision? Were there alternatives? Might the world look different today, given different decisions back then? Welcome back to the connector, where we bring together innovative, groundbreaking and collaborative research inside the U. T. Austin political science universe. I’m your host, Stewart Tendler. Concluding our discussion with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford, we analyzed the 2003 war against Iraq. We begin by talking about what might have happened without a U. S. Intervention on that count. History suggests a strong possibility of a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran. And no matter how bad things have gone in the Middle East, it would be hard to find someone who thinks such an arms race would be beneficial for international security. Despite knowledge of the fouled intelligence leading up to the war. We can only speculate, if ultimately, deterrence would have kept Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. And if we were to say that deterrence ultimately would have failed, we cannot easily say that going to war in Iraq was the wrong decision. despite any consequences that have followed. But opponents of the war maintained that the United States could have continued to turning Iraq without resorting to military

[0:01:18 Speaker 2] force. The

[0:01:20 Speaker 1] big thing was the invasion into Iraq right after 9 11 That see, that seemed to sort of, like start the new era, remain in my kind of completely missing that you had, like, post 1991 1991 and then September 11th. And then we got into the Middle East. I don’t correct me if

[0:01:40 Speaker 2] I mean in a long in an open ended ground commitment. Yeah, I think so. The U. S had troops in the Middle East, right? Just designed to deter a rock. But we switch from trying to deter it to tryingto remodel it, right. So yeah, well, it seemed

[0:01:57 Speaker 1] to be the main political debate anyway, right? Like, should we or should we not invade Iraq? And then we did. And you know, the world, his world, his progress. So I guess my khanna, my last just sort of free for all questions, right? Is something to the tune of like, Was that a mistake? Or like what do you hypothesize? The world looks like if that war hadn’t happened, does it look drastically different or was sort of right mo mentum just kind of going where it was going. And I know it’s not a fair question.

[0:02:33 Speaker 2] No, I think this is interesting. I’ve got some early thoughts on that. If if you don’t mind me jumping in here Yes. So, oddly, this came from talking to hairs and Wagner. We were talking about the Iraq war of 03 because we have been reading a book and talking about a book about the Iran Iraq war from the eighties, which for the U. S. Are when we thought about the Middle East from August of 1990 up through 03 right. It was thinking about this kind of rivalry, if you will. Between the U. S. And Iraq and Iraq was worried about the U. S. But the whole time they’re looking next door to this regional adversary that they fought this horrific Lee bloody war against for eight years and that as soon as the U. S. Got bored of the region, it was gonna face again, right? And the point got brought up. Is weather absent the US intervening in Iraq and 03 We wouldn’t now be looking at kind of a renewed security competition, right? Maybe an arms race, maybe a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran. Right now, that’s unsettling. If we look at how badly the Iraq war’s consequences went for the US right cause that’s one amongst many, many possibilities. But the dominant security access and that region was going to be Iran in Iraq. And I think it’s really two countries fighting eight year war there off each other for a bit. I mean, a lot of times we would take any two random countries. We knew that about think things were going to get pretty bad between them again. You know, war tends to cluster in space and time. The same countries frequently fight over and over. That’s one piece of the background that I don’t know that we’ve thought a lot about.

[0:04:13 Speaker 3] Yeah, that’s a good point. I was sort of in the Saddam Hussein could be deterred in his regional ambition camp. And I guess you know, broadly speaking, if you had to put a label on sort of I half baked conjectures about this maybe not half baked but like not this fully developed as I would like to be to be totally confident, I guess I’d put like an old label. I’m kind of a realist in the sense that I like the status quo. I think that countries could be deterred. I think it was important for us interest to try to prevent Iraq from getting a nuclear weapon and everything we know about intelligence setting aside the failures of intelligence before the 2003 Iraq war. Everything we know is that there was a widespread consensus that Iraq was trying to the choir and mill nuclear weapons. There were different estimates about when that would happen and when it would culminate ranging from I’ve seen anything from like, they were going to get it within a couple of years to they would have them by, like, 2016 or something like that. But setting that aside, you know, everybody believed that it didn’t end up being true that they were doing that. But that doesn’t mean that if the US had not intervened that they might not have their appearance toe, all external actors that they were trying to acquire nuclear weapons might not have sparked a nuclear arms race with the man which would have made it even harder. I mean, we would not have seen something like the Iranian nuclear deal that we’ve recently seen, which I think is actually a huge success of the Obama administration. There are a lot of critics of it. I mean, I’ve read the details of it. I’ve read lots of analyses of it. I think it’s actually a pretty good international agreement and there’s lots of reason to believe that there will be consequences of Iran doesn’t comply and Iran fully understands that and so will likely comply. But we wouldn’t have likely had that in a region with Saddam Hussein still in power unless the U. S were to use course of diplomacy short of war to push the inspections regime even further. And I think that’s where the decision in 2003 sort of rested on a knife edge between different camps, the Bush administration and the sort of more neoconservative camp led by Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld and those types. I thought that the inspections regime had outlasted its usefulness right and that Iraq was continuing to find ways to frustrate it and would continue to not complain. Others, like Colin Powell and some other people, thought that, and I’m sort of in that camp when I go back. And I read details about what was going on in those months running up, that there was still ample opportunity for the inspections regime to be effective and that would in turn prevent a larger regional arms race. I’m not 100% sure of that. We can’t be. But that’s sort of sort of my beliefs so. But we know that those regimes air not effective without some credible threat of force. And so the decision to go to war was a decision that largely grew out of me. Bush said this in his speech at the General Assembly. I think in November 2000 to that, you know, this institution is going to be is gonna be a relevant in the future, or is it going to enforce its mandates? Right. And if you’re not gonna enforce them, somebody has to. So they have definitely made up the decision that the threats of enforcing this inspections regime was were no longer credible and they needed to show that it was credible. The final point I do want to make is that there’s a good reason why the current nuclear powers want to stop other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. And the rhetoric about it is all about controlling the danger of the spread of nuclear war. Right, And that’s fine. But there’s actually a direct national interest. Rees and in our former colleague from the LBJ School, Frank Cabin is written about this in his recent book about nuclear diplomacy, and that is that having nuclear weapons actually allows you to credibly resist conventional course of diplomacy. Right? And so when we’re talking about how the world might be different in the nuclear age, despite the fact that the U. S. Has a large advantage in terms of conventional forces, nuclear weapons complicate that because it’s possible that when Tracy’s get very severe countries can use nuclear weapons is an effective defensive deterrent, they say. If you push this further, we’re going to start a nuclear war right again. There are problems of credibility with making that threat, but those aside, it changes the dynamic of it. They’re not very good for offensive threats, right, because of Iraq wants to invade Kuwait again. It can’t say we’re going to drop nuclear weapons on Kuwait and that invade its oilfields. Right? Because you can’t use the oil from the oil fields for thousands of years afterwards, right? So the main advantage to the U. S. And other current nuclear powers of not proliferation is that it allows them to continue to use conventional coercive diplomacy, right? And so preventing Iraq from obtaining nuclear weapons if the 2003 Iraq war were the only way to do that, I think is in the U. S. National interest. The question is whether actual ground invasion regime change was the only way of doing that, right? Right. And that’s where I I don’t believe that’s necessarily the case. I think WMD programs were set back by again, a war in 1991 that ended up with a limited victory for the West, right without toppling the regime. And so, yes, the Bush administration defended the actual decision to change. The regime was saying this has been a brutal regime and its gas, its own citizens and all these things and all the l. That’s true. But the question is whether than the cost that have been unleashed as a result of that were worth the benefit of ending the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons or whether there was a less cost intense alternative.

[0:10:12 Speaker 2] Ultimately, I think that is the question right. Had the invasion not happened, we would not be happy sitting here if there had been a massive arms race between Iran and Iraq, right? Nobody would be happy about that, right, and none of us would know what the consequences. None of us would know what 2016 looks like right after 2003. That’s what makes it really hard. But is the final thing one thing that an argument I’ve seen recently that was interesting, which is that ultimately the outcome of the 2003 Iraq war was to win the 1980 Iran Iraq war for Iran, because what happens? You have a Shia dominated government in a state that will not challenge anybody for regional dominance, and it’s not going to build nuclear weapons. It’s up soon, and I think, Terry pointed out rightly that was almost a precondition for Iran signing the nuclear deal. They do not do this if there’s an Iraq governed by Saddam Hussein, right? A Sunni that’s hostile to the Shi ar regime. There it next door. All right, so that

[0:11:13 Speaker 3] the big problem is that sort of regime next door does not appear to be a very, very stable governing coalition.

[0:11:20 Speaker 2] That’s right. Yet they they just retook Fallujah from from

[0:11:24 Speaker 3] I s when I was good, that was good on there. That’s not a good sign, right? The fact

[0:11:27 Speaker 0] that they had to do

[0:11:28 Speaker 3] that exactly that’s so ultimately to answer

[0:11:31 Speaker 2] your question, I don’t think we have any any earthly idea. Well, I know, but I think we can. I think we

[0:11:37 Speaker 3] can pin it down, Teoh 22 conditions, right. It’s whether, if you believe that the US could have continued to use coercion, conventional coercion to make sanctions and inspections effective right to eliminate any threat that Iraq would produce a nuclear weapon by today, and it could actually bring Iran into the fold and cooperating with that, then I think we have actually much better Middle East than we do today. Right now, I think that if you believe that the sanctions were ineffective and would and all the signals pointed to their continued ineffectiveness. Then you have to conclude that, at least in terms of the Iran Iraq power struggle in the region, that the 2003 Iraq war was good for producing more stability. The cost of that has been the sectarian disintegration and the ability of groups like Isis to kind of wage insurgency. That’s right.

[0:12:34 Speaker 0] We’ve reached the end of our four episode discussion with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford. This’ll last episode hopefully highlights a theme or two that have come through in these discussions. Three. Complexities of international politics and how international relations scholars seek to use carefully constructed method. Illogical approaches toe answer difficult questions in systematic ways. And now we’re not blame you if you conclude after listening to these episodes that decisions in international politics often boil down to choosing between bad and worse. Thanks again for listening to leave feedback. You can find me at Gov dot utexas dot edu