By Joseph
Cirincione, Director, Non-Proliferation Project
Originally appeared in
the San
Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2003
We already have a fairly good idea of
what the world will look like after the Iraq War is
concluded and the Iraq Occupation begins. If President
Bush's vision of a quick military victory, a benign and
untroubled occupation and the quick construction of a
democratic Iraq is correct, then the rules and
structures of the international system may be completely
rewritten in favor of a U.S.-centric system.
However, the future is unlikely to be
so obliging. The reason so many governments and experts
urged Iraqi disarmament short of war is that the
consequences of the invasion are likely to be mixed at
best and possibly catastrophic. This concern does not
underestimate the brutality of the Iraqi regime, but
reflects a fear that the war cure is worse than the
Saddam disease.
Here are four likely consequences of
America's first pre-emptive war.
Mideast Instability Will Grow
For administration hawks, Iraq is the beginning, not the
end. Iraq is the start of a plan to change all the
regimes in the Middle East. "There is tremendous
potential to transform the region," says Richard
Perle, "If a tyrant like Saddam (Hussein) can be
brought down, others are going to begin to think and act
to bring down the tyrants that are inflicting
them." U. S. troops will be there to help in these
transformations, operating from new, more secure bases
in Iraq.
It is more likely that the mass movements in the war's
wake will be anti- American, not pro-democracy. Arab
citizens, already inflamed over what they consider the
brutal military assaults of Ariel Sharon's government
and willing to excuse suicide bombers, will see American
troops as Israeli reinforcements, not Iraq's liberators.
Fatwas are already flowing from
mainstream clerics urging Muslims to resist the U.S.
invasion. Governments may indeed fall, but it may be the
rulers in Jordan that are threatened, not the
dictatorship in Syria.
Terrorism Will Increase
For the president, terrorism is the new communism.
"Freedom and fear are at war," he says
"and we know that God is not neutral between
them." There are no credible connections between
Baghdad and al Qaeda, but in the president's mind the
two are one and thus, he promised the nation, "The
terrorist threat to America and the world will be
diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is
disarmed."
But the war -- whatever the outcome -- will likely
increase both amateur and organized terrorism. Much of
the terrorism will be spontaneous outrage at the
invasion and deaths, striking out at close by,
identifiable American targets.
Some will certainly be sophisticated attacks on the
American homeland. "An American invasion of Iraq is
already being used as a recruitment tool by al Qaeda and
other groups," a senior American
counterintelligence official told The New York Times.
"And it is a very effective tool."
Alliances Will be Weakened
Never before has a U.S. president so scorned world
opinion. Truman had the United Nations with him in the
Korean War, Kennedy had the Organization of American
States backing his blockade of Cuba; Clinton had NATO in
the war in Kosovo. Bush goes almost alone. The United
Nations and NATO will never be the same. They and other
multilateral institutions are now under pressure from
both sides.
U.S. neoconservatives have already targeted the United
Nations for destruction. "The United Nations is not
a good idea badly implemented. It is a bad idea,"
says columnist George Will.
On the other side, there is deep
distrust of Bush and his vision to transform the world.
The staid Financial Times of London opined, "The
measure of this diplomatic fiasco is that a perfectly
arguable case about one of the most despicable dictators
of modern times was so mishandled that public opinion
internationally came to worry more about the misuse of
U.S. power than about Saddam Hussein."
Of the 200 countries in the world, U.
S. claims 40 governments support the war. And the people
of almost all these nations actually opposed the attack
in overwhelming majorities.
If the war goes well, world publics
may fear emboldened, postwar U.S. intentions even more.
The Bush doctrine seems likely to generate exactly the
anti-U.S. coalitions that it was designed to discourage.
Proliferation May Grow
What lesson will North Korean or Iranian leaders draw
from the war? Will they curtail their nuclear ambitions,
or speed them up?
If inspections had been given a chance to work, if
Hussein had been disarmed without war, it would have
been seen as a tremendous victory for Bush and as the
world's enforcement of international treaties.
This is now Bush's War, a highly
personal vendetta and exercise in raw power. Worse, to
justify war, the Bush administration has disparaged
inspections, thus undercutting future applications in
Iran or North Korea.
But the impact may be more immediate.
If the war destabilizes Pakistan,
nuclear weapons, materials or scientists may flow to
other nations or terrorist groups. North Korea, ignored
during the crisis, may go overtly nuclear, pushing
nuclear ambitions in South Korea or even Japan. Iraqi
military officers or scientists, fearing war crime
trials, may flee invading U.S. troops carrying their
knowledge or even weapons with them to other nations or
groups.
The "bold stroke" so long
sought by administration hawks has now hammered not only
Hussein's regime but the international institutions so
patiently constructed by Democrats and Republicans over
the past 60 years. It will destabilize the region,
increase terrorism, decrease alliance unity and make the
spread of deadly weapons more likely without measurably
increasing our national security.
That will be the postwar world.
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