Stumbling Into War

James P. Rubin

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Why did most of the world abandon Washington when it went after Saddam Hussein? The war in Iraq could never have been an easy sell, but nor should it have been such a difficult one. The Bush administration badly botched the prewar maneuvering, presenting a textbook study in how not to wage a diplomatic campaign.

James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.

A DIPLOMATIC POSTMORTEM

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States put together a historic, worldwide coalition to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan and destroy al Qaeda. China, India, Japan, Pakistan, and Russia all supported the enterprise, as did Europe. The subsequent war may have scattered al Qaeda rather than destroyed it -- key operatives remain at large today -- but the mission was widely seen as a success.

Eighteen months later, the Bush administration went to war again, this time to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On this occasion, however, most of the same countries that had backed the United States in Afghanistan bluntly opposed the campaign -- as, indeed, did most of the world. Washington's failure to muster international support to depose a despised dictator was a stunning diplomatic defeat -- a failure that has not only made it harder to attract foreign troop contributions to help stabilize post-Saddam Iraq, but will more generally damage U.S. foreign policy for years to come.

Support for the Bush administration's Iraq policy should not have been so hard to gain. After all, Baghdad was in clear violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions. And Bill Clinton had also deemed Iraq a substantial threat, both because of its apparent capability to field weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and because of its demonstrated willingness to use them. For those reasons, coupled with Saddam's history of gross human rights violations and his refusal to comply with the demands of the international community, the Clinton team had also supported regime change in Iraq.

Of course, an invasion of that country was never going to be an easy sell, even after the attacks of September 11. Legitimizing the use of force and preventing the United States from being seen as an aggressor would have required a comprehensive game plan. And the Bush administration did seem to recognize this fact at first, when, last fall, it managed to unite the world around its demand that Iraq finally disarm. But despite months of subsequent international debate and diplomacy, Washington did not then muster much support for its policy before actually going to war. The United Kingdom and Spain remained stalwart allies, as did most states in central and eastern Europe. But these countries, like Australia, had been on the United States' side from the beginning.

What went wrong? Why, when the leader of the free world went to war with a brutal and hated dictator, did so many countries refuse to take America's side? How much collateral damage was caused in the process? And what lessons can be learned from this debacle? After extensive debriefings of key participants in Europe and at the United Nations, as well as of a number of informed American diplomats, some important lessons from the recent crisis are starting to emerge.

First, the fact that Washington's justification for war seemed to shift as occasion demanded led many outside observers to question the Bush administration's motives and to doubt it would ever accept Iraq's peaceful disarmament. Second, the United States failed to synchronize its military and diplomatic tracks. The deployment of American forces in the Middle East seemed to determine American policy, not the other way around, and diplomatic imperatives were given short shrift. Third, the failure to anticipate Saddam's decision to comply partially with UN demands proved disastrous to Washington's strategy. Fourth, the belated effort to achieve a second Security Council resolution could still have succeeded, had the United States been willing to compromise by extending the deadline by just a few weeks. But such a compromise was not forthcoming, which leads to the last lesson: the Bush administration's rhetoric and style alienated rather than persuaded key officials and foreign constituencies, especially in light of Washington's two-year history of scorn for international institutions and agreements.

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