Dark victory

But perhaps the most egregious legacy of the Bush doctrine and the war on Iraq is their effect on the moral legitimacy of American leadership. By embracing a doctrine of preventive war, by exhibiting ill-concealed contempt for the very institutions that for half a century have served to reassure the rest of the world that American power would be employed with restraint, and by redefining allies and enemies on the basis of whether "you are with us or against us," the United States threatens to forfeit its moral leadership. Former European Union commissioner Etienne Davignon has summed up the dismay of many in Europe and elsewhere: "After World War II, America was all-powerful and created a new world by defining its national interest broadly in a way that made it attractive for other countries to define their interests in terms of embracing America's. In particular, the United States backed the creation of global institutions, due process, and the rule of law. Now, you are again all-powerful and the world is again in need of fundamental restructuring, but without talking to anyone you appear to be turning your back on things you have championed for half a century and defining your interest narrowly and primarily in terms of military security." Former European Union ambassador to the United States Hugo Paemen is blunter: "Domestically you have a wonderful system of checks and balances, but in foreign policy you are completely unpredictable, and your pendulum can swing from one side to the other very quickly, while those of us who may be deeply affected have no opportunity even to make our voice heard, let alone to have any influence. This is really worrying because while your intentions are usually good, your actions are frequently informed by ignorance, ideology, or special interests and can have very damaging consequences for the rest of us."

"Americans," wrote Francis Fukuyama on the first anniversary of 9/11, "are largely innocent of the fact that much of the rest of the world believes that it is American power, and not terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, that is destabilizing the world." If so, then the Bush doctrine and the war on Iraq can only reinforce that belief.

Indeed, the doctrine and war reflect a preliminary but by no means final answer to a much larger question, perhaps the most important question of the beginning decades of the twenty-first century: How will America employ its unprecedented global military primacy? With restraint and due consideration of the interests and opinions of others? Or with arrogance and contempt? Ironically, it was presidential candidate George W. Bush who declared: "Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that's why we've got to be humble and project strength in a way that promotes freedom. . . . If we are an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us."

(7) Perhaps the most important lesson of America's second war with Iraq is that successful military operations are not to be confused with successful political outcomes -- or to put it another way, the object of war is not military victory per se but a better peace.

Though Carl von Clausewitz correctly observed that war is a continuation of politics by other means, Americans have traditionally viewed war as a substitute for politics. They like their wars unadulterated by politics. For this reason they have tended to define war's success or failure in terms of combat outcomes rather than in broader grand strategic terms, and accordingly have discounted the importance of war termination and the transition to peace. This outlook is reflected in civilian decision-makers' failure to accord war termination adequate priority and in the professional military's disdain for so-called operations other than war, especially those entailing peacemaking and nation-building responsibilities.

Regrettably, the United States was no better prepared for war termination in the Gulf in 2003 than it was in 1991, and though the George W. Bush administration is rhetorically committed to rebuilding the Iraq state, it remains to be seen whether it is really prepared to go the distance in terms of time, resources, and blood. The record in Afghanistan is not encouraging. It is moreover clear that the Defense Department's civilian leadership, which is still running the show in Iraq, despite the replacement of Jay Garner by Paul Bremmer, grossly underestimated the responsibilities, costs, and dangers the United States would encounter in a post-Saddam Iraq. The situation will surely and sorely test a White House and Pentagon that are viscerally opposed to nation-building, notwithstanding the administration's commitment to the Middle East's political transformation.

Anthony H. Cordesman, in his assessment of conflict termination in Iraq, contends that the United States is paying the price for its "failure to look beyond immediate victory on the battlefield. Much more could have been done before, during and immediately after the war," he argues, "if . . . the US had not seen conflict termination, peacemaking, and nation building as secondary missions, and if a number of senior policymakers had not assumed the best case in terms of Iraqi postwar reactions to the Coalition attack." Cordesman concludes with an appeal and a warning: "This should be the last war in which there is a policy-level, military, and intelligence failure to come to grips with conflict termination and the transition to nation building. The US and its allies should address the issues involved before, during and after the conflict. They should prepare to commit the proper resources, and they should see political and psychological warfare in grand strategic terms. A war is over only when violence is ended, military forces are no longer needed to provide security, and nation building can safely take place without military protection. It does not end with the defeat of the main enemy forces on the battlefield."

Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the second war against Iraq will be the last one marked by failure to come to grips with conflict termination and the transition to nation-building. The Defense Department is pushing a transformation of U.S. military power that would actually widen the divide between military operations and politically successful wars. In seeking to substitute the technologies of aerial precision strike at ever greater standoff distances for traditional ground forces, the Pentagon is moving toward capital-intensive force structures that are actually counterproductive to meeting the challenges of the kind we faced in Iraq once Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Frederick W. Kagan argues that the reason why "the United States [has] been so successful in recent wars [but] encountered so much difficulty in securing its political aims after the shooting stopped" lies partly in "a vision of war" that "see[s] the enemy as a target set and believe[s] that when all or most of the targets have been hit, he will inevitably surrender and American goals will be achieved." This vision ignores the importance of "how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what the enemy's country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying." For Kagan, the "entire thrust of the current program of military transformation of the U.S. armed forces . . . aims at the implementation and perfection of this target set mentality." But bashing targets is insufficient in circumstances where the United States is seeking regime change in a manner that secures support of the defeated populace for the new government. Such circumstances require large numbers of properly trained ground troops for the purposes of securing population centers and infrastructure, maintaining order, and providing humanitarian relief. "It is not enough to consider simply how to pound the enemy into submission with stand-off forces. . . . To effect regime change, U.S. forces must be positively in control of the enemy's territory and population as rapidly and continuously as possible. That control cannot be achieved by machines, still less by bombs. Only human beings interacting with human beings can achieve it. The only hope for success in the extension of politics that is war is to restore the human element to the transformation equation."

Excerpted with permission from "Dark Victory: America's Second War Against Iraq" by Jeffrey Record (Naval Institute Press).

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