The pandemonium that we witness in Iraq today can be traced back to WW1 when British officials in a secret deal with the French drew the borders of the post-Ottoman Arab world and formed the new state of Iraq. The Mesopotamian regions were administered very differently during the Ottomans as three distinct provinces. The mountainous northern province of Mosul was linked economically to Anatolia and Greater Syria, whereas the central province of Baghdad supported agriculture and trade primarily with Iran and the Southwest. The southern province of Basra was orientated toward the Persian Gulf and overseas trade with India. British policymakers were interested in protecting the Iraqi and Iranian oil fields as well as the security of their imperial communications with India. This motive led them to transform the region by forcing the amalgamation of modern day Iraq creating a new state of Iraq under a British mandate in 1920. [1]
Just as Britain attempted to shape the Arab Middle East to serve their interests in the post-Ottoman era, the post-cold war period began with the United States seeking to do the same. The three pillars of US Cold War policy towards the Middle East since the 1950s had been to; 1) Ensure the security and prosperity of Israel 2) Contain the Soviet ambitions 3) Secure access to the petroleum resources of the oil-producing states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, America had emerged triumphant in its goals. The next question that arose for US policymakers was how to maintain these achievements. Whilst the objectives have remained the same throughout each US administration, the styles adopted to achieve these objectives have varied from one administration to the other. A closer look at these styles will help explain the turmoil in Iraq and the current style the US is using to achieve these objectives.
The Reagan Administration
Throughout the 1980’s the US relied on local power to serve as a surrogate enforcer of US Persian Gulf Policy as it had done with the Shah of Iran before the revolution of 1979. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfield turned a blind eye to Iraq’s development of chemical weapons and supported Saddam Hussein to act as a bulwark against Iran. They provided Iraq with intelligence obtained using satellite imagery and helped shift the balance of power in favor of Iraq just as Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. [2] Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the administration to do “whatever was necessary and legal” to prevent Iraq losing the war.[3] A 1994 congressional inquiry found that dozens of biological and chemical weapons had been shipped to Iraq by US companies under licenses from the commerce department. In 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m worth of pesticides to Iraq despite knowing that they would be used for chemical warfare. Thus the style US used was a “hands-off” approach by funding and supporting Saddam Husain to create a regional balance of power between Iraq and Iran.
The Bush and Clinton Administrations
After the Cold-War, the Bush administration continued to pursue the same foreign policy objectives designed to secure Middle Eastern oil and ensure the prosperity of Israel, but using a “hands-on” approach. The US appointed itself as the protector of the Gulf. US ships patrolled the waters East of Suez, its warplanes made daily surveillance flights over Iraq and its troops remained permanently stationed in the region. This was part of a “Dual Containment policy” which intended to isolate both Iraq and Iran using economic sanctions and modest restrictions. The Bush coterie viewed Iran as a destabilizing force in the region and impeded its ability to develop its military by enforcing economic sanctions that would keep Iran’s revenues down. The US government barred American companies from undertaking trade and investment in Iran. As Saddam’s ambitions grew, the US’s former ally was now a threat to the region and so the Bush administration insisted on maintaining crippling economic sanctions until Iraq was deemed to be in compliance with the UN Security Resolution 687 which called for a destruction of Iraq’s entire arsenal of chemical and biological weapons as well as the missiles capable of delivering them. During the Clinton administration, the Bush “Hands-on” approach continued. Saddam’s refusal to comply invited a concentrated three-day bombing campaign led by a US-British coalition that intended to weaken the Iraqi regime and overthrow Saddam Husain. Thus the style used by the Bush and Clinton administration was a “hands-on” approach in which it used its military and political institutions to achieve its foreign policy objectives in the Gulf.
The George W. Bush Administration
The bombing of Iraq was an embarrassment to America’s Arab allies, particularly as the anti-American public opinion boiled in the Middle East over decades of neglect. William Cleveland (author of A History of the Modern Middle East) in his book explained how the dual containment policy executed in the Bush and Clinton administration was a “poorly conceived strategy”. The “ceaseless bombing” of Iraq revealed a “bankrupt US policy” that substituted force for diplomacy. In order to deflect these grievances of the neglected population of Iraq which would cause Iraq to implode thereby creating problems for US foreign policy in Iraq, the Bush junior administration blamed all the problems on Saddam Husain triggering a new discourse based on “human rights”, “democracy”, “freedom” and exaggerating the extend of Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, ironically the same WMD’s that the US provided to Iraq during the 80s, to justify a military invasion of Iraq so that US companies could continue pumping oil and protect US corporate interests. The Bush administration called for regime change and along with Britain launched “Operation Enduring Freedom” deploying over a 100,000 troops to raid Iraq. The war lasted longer than expected, cost trillions of dollars and Iraq was bombed to the stone ages. The “Hands-on” approach to protect US objectives in Iraq continued until US domestic opinion was fed up with the intervention and a historic economic crisis forced both Bush and Blair into the dustbins of history.
The Obama Administration
On the 15th December 2011, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta brought a formal end to the American military presence in Iraq. The Obama administration told Americans that their departure from Iraq showed that they are leaving behind a country strong enough to stand on its own feet even though the US knew they were leaving it on its head. The Whitehouse knew that Nouri al-Maliki was an inept ruler that used his deep sectarian tendencies and Shi’a chauvinism to exploit political power but Obama had no appetite to get embroiled in Iraq’s internal affairs and had decided to shift the remaining bulk of the troops from a lost war in Iraq to a losing war in Afghanistan. Iraq’s constitution confirmed sectarian divisions and left a Shi’a run government that suffered heavily under Saddam Husain to take revenge. Obama’s exit strategy from Iraq left an authoritarian regime and a failed state. The Iraq policy was then handed over to the Vice president Joe Biden who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden made a prediction in 2006 that Iraq would not survive and advocated the “Balkanization” of Iraq, a plan to split Iraq into three independent states along ethno-sectarian lines, a Kurdish North, a Sunni Centre and a Shi’a South.[4] Vali Nasr (Author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat) a former senior advisor to Richard Holbrook who was appointed by Obama had first-hand experience in watching Obama’s policy for Iraq unfold. In his book he explains how Obama has turned Bush’s Iraq policy “on its head”. He writes “America went into Iraq to build democracy, but left building authoritarian state as an exit strategy” and discussed how Obama was not “committed to democracy in the Middle East”.
The style to achieve US objectives in Iraq have thus turned from a “hands-on” to a “hands-off” approach with the current administration managing events in Iraq without an intervention. This explains why the US has said it will not intervene in the implosion of Iraq even though the “largest, “most organized” Jihadi group has declared an “Islamic State”. The emergence of a Sunni led state in the Anbar province and the successes of the Kurdish Peshmerga in securing control of the North of Iraq also fall perfectly in line with the recommendation of US Vice President Joe Biden to split Iraq. The recent events in Iraq should therefore be viewed as simply a change in style that US policy makers are using to protect their interests in Iraq.
Kasim Javed
Notes
[1] http://lostislamichistory.com/how-the-british-divided-up-the-arab-world/
[2] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/opinion/01biden.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0