4: Contemporary Wars from Iraq (1991) to Iraq (2003)

Question 1

end of the cold war: new peace or end of ‘long peace’?

Answer 1

diffusion of power, US decline, new antagonisms, clashes of civilisation

• system evolving towards multipolarity
• widespread assumption that the US was in decline
• common assumption was the winners were Europe and Japan
• new age of conflict
• new competition and civilisational antagonisms

obsolescence of major war, end of history and perpetual peace

• optimists claimed that this was the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy/capitalism
• on the verge of the extinction of war
• institutionalisation of government and order-building

success of non-proliferation, management of post-Soviet arsenal, middle east diplomacy, stable, US-centric increasingly integrated new world order

• controlling nuclear weapons and avoiding proliferation by transferring nuclear weapons from former Soviet countries
• countries giving up nuclear arsenals which were then placed under international control
• US-led new global order

Question 2

first gulf war as a key watershed

Answer 2

clear mandate and broad multinational coalitions
- large/multilateral forces legitimising the war

reluctance and cautiousness: UN resolution and US congress
- just, necessary and legal war

opening of a new world order presented by the US

scholars, intellectuals and politicians politically distinct from Bush supported intervention

first post-modern conflict
- tight control on the flow of information and images that were shown

clear lesson of Vietnam applied to the war
- control of information to influence domestic public opinion

US air power and technological superiority: a smart war
- argument presented to the public that with technological superiority, you limit civilian casualties to a minimum and strike surgically

US triumphalism and patriotism

• overcoming the parlaying legacy fo the Vietnam syndrome
• rediscovery of WWII as the good and just war

Question 3

main contradictions of the first gulf war

Answer 3

new US hypernationalism and exceptionalism

• tension between internationalism justifying the war and US hypernationalism
• monumental military power gap between the US and allies (primarily an American war even with a large multilateral international coalition)

embedded journalism and censorship, invisible painless videogame-like narrative and representation of the war
- tight control of the narrative to hide the true face of war

dual standards and collateral damages, war from the sky
- based on the fact that the legal/just war which was promoted was based on the assumption that the lives on one side had a different value

geopolitical hierarchies and limits of international law

• new world order based on rule of law should have been based on the equality of nations
• clear hierarchy of rights in the way the UN security council worked with monumental exorbitant privilege of the 5 permanent members
• just wars promoted and undertaken where there was the possibility to do it or where there is significant strategic interest

Question 4

post-1991 main failures of the international community discrediting Bush’s new world order

Answer 4

Somalia (1992-1993)

• overthrow of the regime and civil war so an influx of humanitarian aid
• Bush attempted to insert 25,000 troops into a complicated and messy civil conflict with limited knowledge of the situation on the ground with an unclear definition of objectives
• major humiliation for the US and allies which limited desire and willingness to promote these types of humanitarian intervention

Rwanda (1994)

• massacre happening under the eye of the international community
• made the new order not very credible as a new world order based on the rule of law

Yugoslavia (1991-1999)
- civil war reminiscent of WWII taking place under the total inability of the international community to devise/enforce a solution

Question 5

alleged lessons of failures of the international community in the new world order - Rwanda and Somalia

Answer 5

deploying force quickly to avoid being enmeshed (if necessary being unchecked by legal and international constraints)

professional military to be more powerful and less controllable (delegating operational responsibility)

‘liberate’ US power and escape constraints of the international community

limit US casualties to preserve domestic consensus which changes when there are casualties

assume moral responsibility (humanitarian war = just war)
- morality replaces legality as a key determining principle to justify war

Rwanda as a negative template

Question 6

allalleged lessons of failures of the international community in the new world order -Bosnia and Kosovo

Answer 6

adaptation of the lesson of Munich vs. the moral and strategic failure of appeasement

• cannot engage diplomatically with an aggressive dictator
• must be willing and ready to use/deploy forces

a just war can and sometimes must be an illegal war

• no resolution from the UN SC
• can be illegal but legitimate/just

responsibility to protect (R2P) and follow up of international interventions morally driven/justified
- international community in theory has a responsibility to protect every human being

Question 7

main tenets of the 1990s humanitarian interventionism

Answer 7

war and legitimisation of the use of force

• full legitimisation of violence
• if that is the only way to save lives, you have to take lives and go to war

celebration of individual HR

violation of sovereignty

• clear tension between this and national sovereignty which is a basic foundational organising principle of IR
• if the international community has the responsibility to protect citizens threatened by governments, there is a full right to violate national sovereignty

new universalism/globalism and exceptionalism, marginalisation of UN

• value of individual human life projected an occidental logic, rhetoric and ideology
• new kind of celebration in the west of the US and allies

Question 8

main limits, dilemmas, contradictions of this new humanitarian interventionism

Answer 8

invisibility of war and embedded journalism

ambiguity of a humanitarian war (killing the name of life), air bombing, doctrine of minimum risk/maximum result
- main ambiguity anticipated is that you take life to save lives

instrumental approach towards UN
- just a stage/theatre where actors speak in front of world public opinion with the attempt to justify positions and choices

practicability of new universalism, a new civilisational and occidentalise discourse for the west and atlantica

power gap and operational issues

Question 9

official justifications for the intervention in Iraq in 2003

Answer 9

WMD credibility and international legitimacy
- fake intelligence to make the argument for war in the UN

connection to terrorism
- no real connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda but the idea played well in the US

threat to regional stability and equilibria: geopolitically vital region

mission to export democracy and freedom

easy ‘cakewalk’
- Iraq alleged extremely weak after the rigid embargo, severe sanctions, limited sovereignty and no-fly zones

humanitarian and democratic argument

Question 10

consequences of the Iraqi fiasco

Answer 10

destabilisation of the middle east and a major rebalancing of the power equilibrium
- Iraq became very influential

major fracture in the international community

• fracture and no consensus that the legitimacy vs. legality argument could not be used
• US separated, isolated and ostracised as never before
• had not even close to a qualified majority in the UN SC

major strategic defeat for the US

anti-interventionism and anti-globalism

• national public opinion and US public opinion shifted to an anti-interventionist, anti-globalist protectionist mood
• sovereignty had to be protected vs. the logical flow of interventionism that drove international politics in the prior 2 decades