The U.S. war in Iraq is over. Who won?
The end of America’s combat mission, after seven and a half costly years, has raised questions that will provide fodder for argument for a long time to come: Was it worth it? And who, if anyone, won?
It’s too early to answer the first question, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a man of sober judgment. “It really requires a historian’s perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run … How it all weighs in the balance over time remains to be seen.”
For a sizeable group of Middle East experts, the second question is easier to answer than the first. “So, who won the war in Iraq? Iran,” says the headline over an analysis by scholar Mohammed Bazzi for the Council on Foreign relations, a New York-based think-tank. His argument: “The U.S. ousted Tehran’s sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. Then Washington helped install a Shi’ite government for the first time in Iraq’s modern history.
“As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over all of Iraq’s Shi’ite factions.” As a consequence, U.S. influence has been waning, Iran’s has been rising, and there are predictions that Iran will fill the vacuum created by the drawdown of U.S. troops to 50,000 who will “advise and assist” the Iraqis.
When President Barack Obama announced the completion of the drawdown in a somber speech on August 31, he made no reference to Iran – a curious omission – but said that “in an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners.” In the case of Iraq, only optimists find it easy to see shining success.
Six months after national elections, there is still no Iraqi government, with Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds unable to agree on how to share power and, as importantly, the country’s enormous oil wealth. A squabbling, deadlocked parliament is not much to show for more than 4,000 American, up to 100,000 Iraqi deaths and $1 trillion in war spending.
Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, and the neoconservative war hawks who agitated for an attack on Iraq, predicted that the country would become a model of democracy that would inspire the rest of the Arab world, largely run by autocratic regimes, to follow suit. That proved a pipedream. Instead, in the words of Wathiq al-Hashemi, a political analyst in Baghdad, Iraq has become a theatre for settling foreign disputes.
U.S. military power: When is enough enough?
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. —
The numbers tell the story of a superpower addicted to overwhelming military might: the United States accounts for five percent of the world’s population, around 23 percent of its economic output and more than 40 percent of its military spending. America spends as much on its soldiers and weapons as the next 18 countries put together.
Why such a huge margin? The question is rarely asked although there is spirited debate over specific big-ticket weapons systems whose conception dates back to the days when the United States was not the only superpower and large-scale conventional war against the other superpower, the Soviet Union, was an ever-present possibility. Those days are over.
Now, the U.S., deep in deficit and grappling with the aftermath of the worst recession since the 1930s, is reaching a point where the only way the country can maintain its role as the world’s towering military giant is to borrow money from the country many military planners see as a potential future adversary – China. “Obviously, this is not a tenable arrangement over the long run,” says Loren Thompson, CEO of the Lexington Institute, a think tank with close ties to defense contractors.
The Pentagon, he says, must wean itself from the idea that the American military can go anywhere and do anything equally well.
Whether that weaning process will ever happen is open to doubt. “America’s interests and role in the world require Armed Forces with unmatched capabilities,” according to the just-published Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a report required by Congress on the future of U.S. national security strategy.
“Unmatched” is one thing, dwarfing the rest of the world is another. The U.S., for example, has 11 aircraft carriers in service; the rest of the world has eight. China is building one but analysts say it won’t be completed before 2015. “The United States,” notes the QDR, “remains the only nation to project and sustain large-scale operations over extended distances.”
There have been many arguments thus far that seem to promote an idea of one vs. the other…that too much military investment is taking away precious resources that could otherwise be used for other needs such as infrastructure. The biggest problem with this approach is that it fails to acknowledge that at the highest strategic levels, these issues are often interrelated.
It doesn’t have to be a “one vs the other” proposition. The military is only one of several instruments of national security, but for some reason we as Americans have a tendency to think that military exclusively equals national security. For those of you who want to win over the “hawks”, you can’t just make it a “military vs infrastructure/education/etc” issue, because with this simplistic dichotomy, the furthest you will ever get with the “hawks” is a stalemate. You have to bring it up to the strategic level. For instance, investing in civilian infrastructure can actually go a long way toward supporting the security of our nation and our allies.
There have been numerous historical precedents. Take for instance the Civil War; the railroad and telegram were two infrastructure projects that gave the Union the upper hand in re-supply and command/control against an enemy that was significantly more adept at tactical warfare. Another example is WWII; a significant factor in our success was our industrial might. Or the Cold War, which gave birth to our space program (with lots of spinoff benefits to society, like GPS) and even the Internet (which takes root from DARPA’s ARPANET).
Yes, Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex…but this didn’t mean he totally opposed investing in dual-use capabilities…capabilities that had significant civilian benefit as well as military application. His concern (correct me if I am wrong) was military arms development become the major impetus for decisions by policymakers. We need to present the case for prioritizing investments in infrastructure, etc, not only because of the domestic and economic benefits, but also in terms of how they ultimately actually support better security for our nation and our partners.
U.S. military giant, diplomatic dwarf?
— Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own —
The U.S. armed forces, the world’s most powerful, outnumber the country’s diplomatic service and its major aid agency by a ratio of more than 180:1, vastly higher than in other Western democracies. Military giant, diplomatic dwarf?
The ratio applies to people in uniform (or pin-striped suits). In terms of money, the U.S. military towers just as tall. Roughly half of all military spending in the world is American. Even potential adversaries in a conventional war spend puny sums in comparison. The 2010 defense budget now before Congress totals $534 billion, not including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. China’s defense budget is $70 billion, Russia’s around $50 billion.
Is the huge imbalance between the size of the U.S. armed forces and the civilian agencies that make up “soft power” — chiefly the foreign service and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — destined to remain a permanent fixture in the political landscape?
The gap is not likely to shrink dramatically, despite a growing internal debate over how to balance the instruments of power. Ironically, the man who has provided some of the most memorable statistics illustrating the hard power-soft power gap is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only holdover from the cabinet of George W. Bush and President Barack Obama’s most inspired choice.
One of Gates’ favorite examples: The 6,600 foreign service professionals of the State Department equal the number of personnel of one (out of 11) aircraft carrier strike group.
The Pentagon spends slightly more on health care for the military than the State Department spends on looking after foreign affairs. And the United States employs more military musicians than professional diplomats.
The saddest thing about all this is we still have wide open borders and essentially zero security there despite the daily drug war shootouts 10 miles away.
our goals were met. therefore the United States of America, NATO, and the International Security Assistance Force have meta victory in the no man’s land out there in the east. Israel is sure happy about all the dead iraqis. iran is surely happy about all of the dead americans. so desicevly the US wo. get over it, liberals.