The decline of American Power
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 2/11/11 Section: Ed-Op
This coming month will mark the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. It seems a fitting moment to place this long adventure in historical perspective and with it the waning fortunes of American empire.
Most people think of the lightning assault Desert Storm in January 1991 as a campaign in itself, and the Iraq War as having begun with George W. Bush's invasion of the country in March 2003. But the military operations that began in 1991 were never suspended in the interim. The United States imposed a no-fly zone over most of Iraq and routinely bombarded the country. On the day of President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, Baghdad was bombed, and there were eight fatalities. The U.S.-sponsored embargo that spanned the interval between 1991 and 2003 resulted in an estimated 500,000 child fatalities. Few Iraqis will be in any doubt that we have been continuously at war with them for a generation - or that we still are.
From the point of view of American imperial, or if you prefer, strategic interests in the Middle East, our engagement in Iraq over the past 20 years makes sense only in terms of a single, continuous war. Desert Storm had two immediate consequences: the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, which he had attacked with our tacit consent in July 1990, and the basing of large numbers of American troops in neighboring Saudi Arabia. It has been argued by others as well as myself that the latter was the intended purpose of the former. Senior policymakers in the George H. W. Bush administration had concluded that American interests required a permanent military presence in the region that could guarantee the flow of oil. The Saudis were understandably reluctant to invite the fundamentalist backlash such a presence was bound to provoke. Desert Storm was designed to force their reluctant consent.
American forces could easily have driven Saddam from power during Desert Storm; the Iraqi army was shattered and the road to Baghdad lay open. This, however, was precisely what Bush officials wished to avoid: the open-ended occupation of an ethnically and religiously divided country of less strategic importance (read: fewer proven oil reserves) than Saudi Arabia, where military occupation entailed no civil responsibilities and where it could be presented as a consensual security alliance against a still-menacing aggressor. This in turn meant propping Saddam up as a bogeyman and so leaving him in power.
Most people think of the lightning assault Desert Storm in January 1991 as a campaign in itself, and the Iraq War as having begun with George W. Bush's invasion of the country in March 2003. But the military operations that began in 1991 were never suspended in the interim. The United States imposed a no-fly zone over most of Iraq and routinely bombarded the country. On the day of President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, Baghdad was bombed, and there were eight fatalities. The U.S.-sponsored embargo that spanned the interval between 1991 and 2003 resulted in an estimated 500,000 child fatalities. Few Iraqis will be in any doubt that we have been continuously at war with them for a generation - or that we still are.
From the point of view of American imperial, or if you prefer, strategic interests in the Middle East, our engagement in Iraq over the past 20 years makes sense only in terms of a single, continuous war. Desert Storm had two immediate consequences: the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, which he had attacked with our tacit consent in July 1990, and the basing of large numbers of American troops in neighboring Saudi Arabia. It has been argued by others as well as myself that the latter was the intended purpose of the former. Senior policymakers in the George H. W. Bush administration had concluded that American interests required a permanent military presence in the region that could guarantee the flow of oil. The Saudis were understandably reluctant to invite the fundamentalist backlash such a presence was bound to provoke. Desert Storm was designed to force their reluctant consent.
American forces could easily have driven Saddam from power during Desert Storm; the Iraqi army was shattered and the road to Baghdad lay open. This, however, was precisely what Bush officials wished to avoid: the open-ended occupation of an ethnically and religiously divided country of less strategic importance (read: fewer proven oil reserves) than Saudi Arabia, where military occupation entailed no civil responsibilities and where it could be presented as a consensual security alliance against a still-menacing aggressor. This in turn meant propping Saddam up as a bogeyman and so leaving him in power.
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