Behind the U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making to Invade Iraq (2003): Insider Accounts Two Decades On

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ABSTRACT The aim of the article is to analyse – via U.S. senior official perspective – why in 2003 the United States had chosen to go to war with Iraq; how the decision-making process developed and was justified; and what mistake were made, which prevented the selection of a more prudent course of action. The central hypothesis tested in this study is that three factors contributed most to the erroneous decision to invade Iraq. These were: a) a foreign policy process distorted by internal powerpolitics; b) a disdain towards multilateral institutions and consultative solutions c) unilateralism in relations with key U.S. allies. The article also situates the interviews in a larger theoretical debate driven by the question whether the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq was motivated more by security considerations or by the pursuit of hegemony.