US-led Invasion Of Iraq Research Articles

EU Policy on Iraq: The collapse and reconstruction of consensus-based foreign policy

At first glance, Europe's discord over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a foreign policy debacle. And when a majority of Member States publicly broke ranks with a tenuously reached common position, skeptics argued that the EU's consultative and consensus-based process of foreign policy making was either fictitious or irrevocably broken. But in fact, the Iraq crisis triggered a normative reframing of security and defense policy and renewed a commitment to consensus decision making. Rather than a lowest common denominator outcome, a compromise position was reached in the form of EU-coordinated economic and humanitarian assistance to rebuilding Iraq that has exceeded 200 million euros per year since 2004. This was possible because normative commitments to develop the EU as a global actor and to promote democracy and the rule of law worldwide legitimated EU action and constrained Member States with ‘do nothing’ and/or ‘let the UN do it’ preferences. The foreign ministers’ ability to reach agreement on coordinated recon aid to Iraq also displays the Union's principled commitment to make decisions in a norm-governed and consensus-based institutional environment of cooperative bargaining.

Out of sync: Bush's expanded national security state and the war on terror

The US national security state was fashioned at the beginning of the Cold War to contain the global threat of the rival superpower, the Soviet Union. However, this security framework did not wither away with the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR. The events of September 11 starkly exposed the limitations of a state-centric approach to international security in a globalizing world. But the Bush administration falsely assumed that the traumatic events of 9/11 came out of a clear blue sky, and that a rejuvenated national security state would eventually overwhelm the ‘new’ threat of terrorism. The dangers of persisting in this direction were shown by the US-led invasion of Iraq. Far from closing the gap between the US approach to security and the operation environment of a post-Cold War world, Bush's war on terror undermined the international reputation of the US and presented the American taxpayer with a huge and probably unsustainable burden. All this highlighted the need for a more multilateral direction in US security policy in the post-Bush era. Such an approach would not only correspond better to the realities of today's interconnected world, but also serve as a buffer against the extension of the power of government that had been witnessed in America during the Bush years.

‘Explosions and examinations’: growing up female in post-Saddam Iraq

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi civilians have witnessed their country descend into profound and often deadly chaos. HNK and Aunt Najma are two young voices from post-Saddam, post-invasion Iraq who write www-based diaries (blogs) on life in post-invasion Iraq. Through their voices, and via the voices of many other Iraqi bloggers, different fragments of the reality of post-invasion Iraq enter the globalised, unruly, digital spaces of cyberspace and create not only accounts of these realities, but what we will call digital selves. We will identify and discuss the selves that HNK and Aunt Najmapractise via the use of Michel Foucault's later work on the care of the self and governmentality; and we suggest that HNK and Aunt Najma's digital diaries (blogs) provide a real-time, unfolding, reflexive, and often interactive window into particular life-worlds in post-invasion Iraq, life-worlds that provide glimpses into what it means to grow up female in post-Saddam Iraq.

Loosing soft power in hard places

The US choice of a misdirected target of priority concern, a ‘War on Terror’, combined with the use of hard power to the absolute detriment of soft power has undermined the enlightenment values that had begun to flourish in the form of humanitarian policies, values and laws which could have informed international cooperation and development in the twenty-first century. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has had serious implications for humanitarianism worldwide, has provided a huge propaganda victory to Islamic extremists, and has diverted international attention and resources from major humanitarian emergencies elsewhere and from today's most significant threat to human survival, global climate change.

Review: The Unexpected War

THE UNEXPECTED WAR Canada in Kandahar Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang Toronto: Viking, 2007. 304pp, $35.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0670067220)As continues to generate headlines in Canada, many have come to wonder how and why Canada became engaged in such a difficult and seemingly intractable mission. This is the question that Janice Gross Stein, one of Canada's foremost thinkers on international security, and Eugene Lang, a former chief of staff for two Liberal defence ministers, set to answer in The Unexpected War.The Unexpected War argues that, as a result of incremental decisionmaking, Canada slid into a war in southern it did not expect. The polished messages that the government delivered on Canadian goals, objectives, and achievements in hid the fact that most policy-including the decision to deploy forces to Kandahar-was the outcome of tradeoffs made incrementally and in the absence of complete information. Understanding the context is therefore essential. According to Stein and Lang, the Liberal government's cautious and incrementalist approach led Canada to accept a high-risk mission in Kandahar.Stein and Lang argue that Canada-US relations strongly informed Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. Following 9/11, Canada sent the elite JTF2 special forces and the 3rd battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian light infantry, on a short-term mission to root Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It also dispatched navy vessels to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Early in, early out was the mantra for the government, which wanted both to support the US and to minimize the burden on the Canadian military that had been decimated by years of cutbacks. In 2002 and 2003, Canada came under strong pressure to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq. Although the Chretien government and most of the Canadian public opposed the Iraq War, there was nevertheless a sense that Ottawa needed to prove to Washington that it was serious about security. The Afghanistan solution, which prescribed a lead Canadian role in the international security and assistance force (ISAF) in Kabul, fit the bill. It also freed up American resources for Iraq. Although the Department of National Defence (DND) initially resisted Canada's participation in ISAF, it eventually became a leading advocate of the mission. In 2005, ballistic missile defence became another controversial issue in Canada-US relations. Many of the key players in Paul Martin's minority government supported Canadian participation in missile defence, but given the heated domestic controversy around the issue, Martin decided to stay of the American program. In order to repair the resulting damage to Canada-US relations, the government again looked to Afghanistan. Ottawa agreed to take charge of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Kandahar. However, Martin still believed that was but a distraction from his real foreign policy priorities, notably in Haiti and Sudan.Stein and Lang identify General Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff, as a key player in Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. They describe him as brilliant, energetic, visionary, and focused on delivering results. The government's 2005 international policy statement called for greater Canadian leadership in international affairs. Hillier took this objective seriously, but, unlike Martin's cabinet, understood that true leadership required Canada to commit resources, assume risks, and, at times, take casualties. Stein and Lang highlight the perennial contradiction in trying to establish a prominent international role for Canada while trying to avoid the attendant costs.The Unexpected War is critical of Ottawa's handling of the mission in Afghanistan. According to Stein and Lang, DND repeatedly misjudged the country's political and military environment. Its officials strongly favoured Canadian participation in the Iraq War, believing that Canadian involvement would only last six weeks. …

Turkey and the Threat of Kurdish Nationalism

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has resulted in a resurgence in Kurdish nationalism. There has also been a revival of the terrorist threat directed against Turkey coming from the Kurdistan Workers' Party based in northern Iraq. The inability of the United States to curb the terrorism problem and the increasing instability of the region as a whole have put pressure on the Turkish government to act decisively. Much of this pressure comes from secularists and the army itself, both of which criticize the ruling AK Party because of its failure to provide security. The decision whether to invade northern Iraq will depend on exactly how Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chooses to respond to that pressure.

O Pragmatismo do Petróleo: as relações entre o Brasil e o Iraque

No artigo se propõe analisar as relações entre o Brasil e o Iraque, com ênfase no período de 1973 a 2007. Para tanto, são examinados os aspectos econômicos, políticos e estratégicos do relacionamento bilateral, passando pelos dois choques do petróleo, a Guerra do Golfo e, finalmente, a ocupação do Iraque em 2003.

Securitizing Iraq: The Bush Administration's Social Construction of Security

In September 2002 Iraq became a grave danger. As such, there was an urgent need to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, according to the Bush administration. On closer examination, however, there was little underpinning this sudden shift in the Bush administration's security claims. How then could an eventual war come about from a lack of objective threats? The Copenhagen School's notion of ‘securitization’ seems ideally suited to help explain this situation, since it posits that security is about the perception of threat which flows from claims that something poses a grave danger, rather than the discovery of so-called objective threats. The purpose of this article therefore is to test the explanatory value of this conceptual framework. The approach taken is to view the lead up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq through securitization's lens by juxtaposing the Bush administration's public pronouncements and private statements with broader evidence related to its security claims at the time. An additional, and necessary, part of the analysis is to explore the political uses of claiming that something is a ‘security’ issue. While suggesting how a heightened appreciation of audience socialization can help explain why identical security claims resonate with some groups but not others, the investigation reveals that securitization is indeed a useful tool to understand what occurred.

Iraq – Quo Vadis?

Shi'a revolutionary activism, on the other hand, is essentially a spent force.1 Nearly four years after the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein, extreme violence continues to define the immediate political landscape of what was once referred to as Mesopotamia. The military and political battles being fought out in Iraq today, battles which often in their complexity defy an easy nomenclature such as ‘insurgency’ remain, nonetheless grounded in decades of conflict and domestic strife.2 While it is true that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces in Iraq remain relatively quiescent, the same cannot be said of the violence that afflicts the four remaining and indeed most populous provinces where the levels of bloodshed have gone from bad to worse. This includes not only attacks against coalition forces, but a growing spiral of sectarian violence among and between religiously-based militias, almost nihilistic in its savagery. With central government either unable or indeed unwilling to intervene to counter such bloodshed, many regard Civil War as now defining the political reality as, in the absence of security structure loyal to the state, militias – Sunni, Shi'a and Kurdish – struggle over land, people and resources. This may appear a somewhat alarmist observation. After all, on the political front, Iraq has managed to hold several elections and to create a federal government despite the extreme partisan nature of political and religious affiliation throughout the county. This is no small achievement, but it is clearly not enough to make the transition to a system of political institutionalisation whereby adversarial politics are played out in a peaceful way. The essays in this special issue therefore represent a modest attempt not only to explain the multiple dynamics that have come to inform the violence in Iraq, but equally, to shed light on how the role of both external and internal actors, both state and non-state have come to impact on the very idea of Iraq as a sustainable, viable entity at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Nationalism in Turkey: Political Violence and Identity

This article explores the relationship between Kurdish nationalist and official Turkish nationalist identities and considers the effects of political violence. In this context, the study argues that the relationship between Kurdish nationalism and its official Turkish counterpart is problematic in nature and that these ideologies have tried to exist by referring to their opposite number as “the other” and engaging in political violence. In the 21st century, this clash has spread to the grassroots level of both circles, leading to tension between Kurds and Turks. The study is restricted to official Turkish nationalism and does not evaluate (Turkish) ultra-right nationalism. The paper begins by evaluating the psychological, sociological and political dynamics of the situation. It then examines the concept of political violence in relation to ethnic and national social identities. The second section sheds light on the relationship between official Turkish nationalism and Kurdish nationalism by tracing origins to the Ottoman Empire in order better to understand the role of violence in the formation of both Kurdish and Turkish nationalist identities. These aspects provide insight into why, in the 1980s, Kurdish nationalism evolved into ethnic terrorism. The final section seeks to discover why the Kurdish issue has been transformed into an ethnic backlash for both Kurds and Turks, and considers the relevance to the case of the European Union integration process and the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Energy and Security in the Caucasus by Emmanuel Karagiannis (review)

REVIEWS 789 two leaderships neo-authoritarianand neo-mercantilist- seems a consistent and significantfeature. There is a lot of empirical and analytical merit in this text, therefore, and students and scholars will gain from studying its arguments,but it does not yet provide the holy grail a theory of RussianChinese relations. Centre for Contenmporay ChinaStudies DAVID KERR University ofDurham Karagiannis,Emmanuel. Energy andSecuraiin theCaucasus. RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2002. Xiv + 233 pp. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography . Index. ?70.??. Two-FIFTHSof the EU's natural gas imports originate from Russia. Former German ChancellorSchroederis now a paid advisorto Gazprom, a spectacular example of 'capture'by the Russian oil industryin the recruitmentof key politicalallies.In Ukraine, a painfullesson in the rulesof the marketeconomy has had to be learned. The previously subsidizedprice charged for Russian gas was suddenly hiked to levels determined by market-led criteria. The huffing and puffing of European leaders about this attempted 'energy blackmail ' by Russia in order to influence electoral outcomes in Ukraine cannot hide the fact that the price increaseswere much in line with the strictureson free-market principles that the Russians had previously endured from the international financial community. For European leaders, the disastrous political outcome of the election is less important than the knock-on 'energy supply shock'. This has provoked the firstfumbling steps towardsa common European energy policy. The words 'energy security' and 'reliability'have suddenly entered the lexicon of European policy imperatives.Few today can doubt that the geo-politics of hydrocarbon supply dominates national, regional and global agendas. Today, the price of the international'marker'for oil, Brent Crude, exceeds $70 a barrel. When George W. Bush proclaimed that, henceforth, the US would intensifyinvestment in developing non-hydrocarbonenergy sourcesin order to break the dependency of the US economy on unstable supplies of Middle Easternoil, his wordswere greetedwith a belly-roarof approvalfrom the Republican faithful,but hardlyas new convertsto a greenervision of the future. With Iraq sliding into sectarian chaos, the 'folly' of Middle East oildependency and the attempt to achieve 'energy security'by 'regime change' has now returned to haunt the US administration.But such concerns and attendant imprudent military adventures are not unique to the US. Where there is oil, there is blood, a truismthat few today would contest. This book, written before the US-led invasion of Iraq, adds an important piece to this bloody jigsaw puzzle. It addressesthe 'pipeline politics' of the strategicallykey Caucasusregion, an area contiguouswith both Iraqand Iran, in which 'the great game' of oil politics has been played with peculiar and at times brutal intensity. Here, strugglesfor greater ethnic and political selfdetermination have been fuelled by conflicts over transit revenues and 790 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 competing pipeline routingswhich bring Caspian oil from Azerbaijanto the West. Karagiannis's book charts the impact of oil politics on struggles in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and Turkish Kurdistan. These rather nasty internecine disputes and the often authoritarianlocal dynastic regimeswhich provide their context, however, alwaysneed to be seen against the biggerpicture. Pipelinepoliticsimpliesthat the routesthat bring oil to the West are also the determinantsof wider regional political influence in which pro-Westernor anti-Russianforces strugglefor dominance where previously there was the secure hegemony of the Soviet Union. Now increasinglyvital in the shiftingand uncertain reconfigurationof the post-Soviet empire, the politics of oil representthe concluding but unfinished chapter in the saga of the Cold War. Turkey, Russia and the United States are thus all enthusiasticplayers in the great game and the client states are Azerbaijan,Armenia and Georgia. To give but one example, Turkishrestrictions on tanker trafficthrough the Bosphorus had less to do with ecological concerns than with a desire to limit any increases in Russian transportation of Azerbaijan oil delivered via the 'northern' pipeline from its sea port of Novorossiysk.At the same time, this was usefulfor Turkeyin securinga third pipeline route to the West through its own territory,directlylinkingBakuvia Tbilisi to the TurkishMediterraneanoil port of Ceyhan. The sponsorsof this recently inauguratedbut much criticizedventure are an alliance of Western multi-national oil companies with a somewhat disreputable group of local players seeking a piece of the action. Crucially, it is control over the flow and routing of this Azerbaijan oil which decreasesWesternreliance on...

Women in Iraq: Beyond the Rhetoric

At a press conference two weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq, flanked by four “Women for a Free Iraq,”1 Paula Dobriansky, then undersecretary of state for global affairs, declared: “We are at a critical point in dealing with Saddam Hussein. However this turns out, it is clear that the women of Iraq have a critical role to play in the future revival of their society.” For the Bush administration, Iraqi women would not only be “helping give birth to freedom” in the post-Saddam order.2 US officials spoke publicly about rape, torture and executions of women under Ba‘th Party rule, implicitly linking these atrocities to the necessity for US military action.3

The Media as an Instrument of War

The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war. This is because winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield. And it remains true regardless of the aspirations of many journalists to give an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict. The experience of the US military in the post-Cold War world demonstrates that victory on the battlefield is seldom as simple as defeating the enemy by force of arms. From Somalia and Haiti through Kosovo and Afghanistan, success has been defined in political, rather than military, terms. Today's military commanders stand to gain more than ever before from controlling the media and shaping their output. The laws and conventions of war, however, do not adequately reflect the critical role that the media play in shaping the political outcome of conflicts. International humanitarian law requires that media members are afforded the rights of civilians; the question is whether this is sustainable when the exigencies of warfighting suggest that controlling the media is essential. The Media and the Laws of War It is difficult to generalize about the international media, a heterogeneous entity that includes representatives of numerous organizations with varying political and cultural foundations. But it is nonetheless an incontrovertible fact that the international media as a whole are not a neutral force on the battlefield. Consider the US-led invasion of Iraq. Of course, the US military was aware of the possibility of bad press when it introduced widespread embedding. Reporters bring their own perceptions, and the level of access and freedom of reporting entailed in the embedding scheme meant that damaging reports were a real possibility. Indeed, damaging reports eventually occurred, as when The Washington Post quoted Lieutenant General William Wallace as saying that the enemy being fought was different from the one we war-gamed against. (1) Members of the media remain entitled to express their opinions, whether or not they are billeted with US forces. In an era in which the media are less deferential to authority than World War II, and in wars that are less integral to their home societies, journalists have proved capable of fierce criticism, both of individual participants' behavior and of the wider strategic purpose of a conflict. Consider a later example from the occupation of Iraq, the battle for Fallujah in April-May 2004. Writing after the withdrawal of most coalition forces from downtown Fallujah in favor of indigenous Iraqi units, Ralph Peters offered this assessment of the power of the media in determining military outcomes: The [US] Marines in Fallujah weren't beaten by the terrorists and insurgents, who were being eliminated effectively and accurately. They were beaten by al-Jazeera.... The media [are] often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don't fully appreciate [their] fatal power.... In Fallujah, we allowed a bonanza of hundreds of terrorists and insurgents to escape us--despite promising that we would bring them to justice. We stopped because we were worried about what already hostile populations might think of us. The global media disrupted the US and Coalition chains of command.... We could have won militarily. Instead, we surrendered politically and called it a success. Our enemies won the information war. We literally didn't know what hit us. (2) The Fallujah stalemate demonstrates that the neutral status that the press enjoys in conflicts is far removed from neutrality in any normative sense. The question then becomes whether this is an appropriate circumstance, whether it is sustainable, and what are the likely implications. The Geneva Protocols The overarching framework of international humanitarian law governing the conduct of belligerents dates to an era before the expansion of international news networks that operate across a range of media and are capable of live battlefield reporting. …

Consumer Citizenship, Nationalism, and Neoliberal Globalization in Turkey: The Advertising Launch of Cola Turka

A new cola-flavored soft drink, Cola Turka, made its debut in Turkey in the middle of 2003 just after the US-led invasion of Iraq. Its marketing strategy, described as positive nationalism, started a public debate over questions of Turkish national identity and the politics of consumption. In this article, we describe and analyze this debate and the advertising launch of Cola Turka as a way to demonstrate how the construction of citizens as consumers has undergone a major transformation in contemporary Turkey. We argue that this transformation reflects a shift in the dominant nationalist ideology in Turkey away from an ideal of state developmentalism and toward an ideal of market-driven economic growth. This shift involves new strategies for defining the Turkish nation vis-a-vis other nations or, put differently, for making and managing national culture in this era of globalization. We argue that positive is hardly positive, but is instead an idealized representation of how nations ought to imagine and conduct themselves in a world order predicated on the ideology of neoliberalism. We show how although the Cola Turka advertising launch, like neoliberal nationalism in general, sought to overcome a sense of relative inferiority, the terms in which they imagined Turkish national culture struggled against this very outcome. Protests against “coca-colonization” have often taken the form of consumer boycotts—not only against Coca-Cola, but against all goods perceived as American, of which Coca-Cola is perhaps the epitome. However, a new form of protest has proliferated in the last few years: anti-Coca-Colas. In November of 2002, Taufik Mathlouthi, a Tunisian-born French entrepreneur, launched MeccaCola in Paris as part of campaign against “America’s imperialism and Zionism” (BBC News Online, 8 Jan. 2003). Within a year, Mecca-Cola had expanded to 54 countries, booking about 9 million dollars in revenue in 2003. Ten percent of Mecca-Cola’s profits are set aside as donations to groups helping Palestinian children, and another 10% as funds for local charities. Hence the company’s tag lines: “Shake your conscience! No more drinking stupid. Drink with commitment.” Three months later, Zahida Parveen, a businesswoman based in Derby, United Kingdom, launched Qibla Cola, which the CEO of the company described as “a real alternative for people concerned by the practices of the major western multinationals that support unjust causes and support the American MISSION

Marxism and International Law: Perspectives for the American (Twenty-First) Century?

The watershed of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 calls for new approaches to the theory of international law. Hardt and Negri's Empire is a focal point for the broadly postmodernist New Approaches to International Law, which celebrates an infinite variety of resistances to oppressive structures. This book is itself in need of deconstruction. Post-structuralism must give way to a framework of analysis that accepts a place for agency, and with it, responsibility, alongside social structures. Contemporary Marxist critique of international relations, coming mainly from the field of geopolitical international history, can combine with social democratic critique of the international economic system to attach firm responsibility for the material economic woes of international society to the United States. The militarism of US foreign policy is, in a Marxist critique, primarily a function of US economic contradictions. Law plays a role here as a coercive instrument of the state. This state is capitalist in operating globally a system of accumulation by dispossession. Where necessary it reinforces its operations with violence. However, international law, as an expression of the equality of nations, especially in their social needs, is honoured in the breach by such dispossession and violence.

CANADA'S EMERGING ROLE IN BUILDING 'FORTRESS AMERICA': IMPLICATIONS FOR SOVEREIGNTY

In the first decade of the twenty-first century Canada's friendship with the United States will be severely tested. Canada's refusal to take an active, visible role in the US-led invasion of Iraq, and conflicts between President George Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chretien created a temporary setback in relations between the two nations, yet since 9/11 the two nations have worked diligently in jointly building a protective wall of security around North America intended to prevent a reoccurrence of the devastating events of 11 September 2001. A major theme of this article is that as a consequence of 9/ 11, profound, unprecedented questions have arisen regarding security concerns common to Canada and the US: given the profound differences in the financial resources, areas and populations of the two nations, how can they strengthen the effectiveness of their common borders and maximise security against terrorist attacks and biological warfare while maintaining separate government and legal systems and insuri...