Iraq: Fulcrum of world politics

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 4-5 SPEC. ISS., 2005, Pages 593-608

  Callinicos, Alex ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MILITARY APPLICATION; POLITICAL CONFLICT; POLITICS; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

EID: 32144447114     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500127826     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. B Brecht, Life of Galileo, in Collected Plays, Vol 5, New York: Vintage, 1972, p 85.
2. 'Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair', US Department of Defense News Transcript, 29 May 2003, at www.dod.mil.
3. 'Iraq: The secret papers', Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2004.'
4. J Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, New York: Viking, 2004, offers a detailed and, on the whole convincing, study of the leading figures in Bush's security team.
5. T Blair, 'Doctrine of the international community', speech at the Economic Club, Chicago, 24 April 1999, at www.number-10.gov.uk. See the detailed account in J Kampfner, Blair's Wars, London: Free Press, 2004.
6. GF Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900-1950, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, p 5.
7. For example, H Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994, p 813;
8. and Z Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, New York: Basic Books, 1997, passim.
9. JL Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004, p 48. This brilliant brief essay is the single best piece on the change in US grand strategy under the younger Bush.
10. See also SF Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, New York:
11. Alfred A Knopf, 1949;
12. Robert Dallek, Franklin D Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995;
13. and WR Mead, Special Providence, New York: Knopf, 2001.
14. AJ Bacevich, American Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002, p 3.
15. See, for example, GJ Ikenberry, 'America's liberal grand strategy', in Ikenberry (ed), American Foreign Policy, New York: Longman, 2002, pp 274-296;
16. and G Kolko, The Politics of War, New York: Vintage, 1970.
17. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard.
18. P Gowan, The Global Gamble, London: Verso, 1999.
19. SP Huntington, 'The lonely superpower', Foreign Affairs, 78 (2), 1999, online edition, at www.foreignpolicy2000.
20. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, pp 304-305.
21. See especially The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, at www.whitehouse.gov
22. and the analyses of the Bush Doctrine in A Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power, Cambridge: Polity, 2003;
23. and Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, ch 4. Some authors tend more than Gaddis to emphasise the continuities in US global strategy before and after 9/11.
24. See, from very different perspectives, Bacevich, American Empire;
25. Kagan, Paradise and Power, London: Atlantic Books, 2003;
26. and N Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003.
27. Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, p 100.
28. On the 19th century, see ibid, ch 2.
29. See especially RA Clarke, Against All Enemies, New York: Free Press, 2004;
30. and B Woodward, Plan of Attack, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
31. 'Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair'.
32. 'Excerpts from 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance', at www.pbs.org.
33. See Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, pp 208-215 for an account of the draft and its origins that emphasises the continuities between the policies outlined there and those pursued by the Clinton administration.
34. P Wolfowitz, 'Bridging centuries: Fin de siècle all over again', The National Interest, 47, 1997, online edition, at www.nationalinterest.com.
35. National Security Strategy, p 30.
36. See Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, ch 20, on the background to this document.
37. 'Remarks by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on terrorism and foreign policy', 29 April 2002, at www.whitehouse.gov.
38. D Acheson, Present at the Creation, New York: WW Norton, 1969.
39. Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy For America's Future: Report of the National Energy Policy Group, May 2001, at www.whitehouse.gov.
40. D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p 25.
41. Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, pp 99, 100, 101, (italics in original).
42. For example, R Kagan, 'America's crisis of legitimacy', Foreign Affairs, 83 (2), 2004, pp 65-87;
43. and WR Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War, New York: Knopf, 2004.
44. H Kissinger, A World Restored, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1957, p 2, (italics in original).
45. See Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, passim.
46. National Security Strategy, p iv.
47. 'President Bush discusses Iraq policy at Whitehall Palace in London', 19 November 2003, at www.whitehouse.gov.
48. 'President sworn-in to second term', 20 January 2005, at www.whitehouse.gov.
49. Mead, Special Providence, p 163.
50. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, p 329. It is, however, important to understand that in practice neoconservatives tend to equate democracy not with popular sovereignty but rather with what Fareed Zakaria calls 'constitutional liberalism' - ie limited government that protects individual liberty and the rights to private property and free speech. Zakaria's warnings against 'illiberal democracy' - ie the consequences of unrestrained majority rule, though couched as a criticism of the neocons' project, in fact very much resonate with their concerns.
51. and Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power, pp 23-34.
52. 'President Bush discusses Iraq policy at Whitehall Palace'.
53. Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power, pp 80-92.
54. TE Ricks, 'Dissension grows in senior ranks on war strategy', Washington Post, 9 May 2004.
55. G Dinmore, 'Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems', Financial Times, 13 January 2005.
56. For an assessment that is all the more damning because it is written by a former senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, see L Diamond, 'What went wrong in Iraq', Foreign Affairs, 83 (5), 2004, pp 34-56.
57. See, for example, M Mann, Incoherent Empire, London: Verso, 2003.
58. G Achcar, 'Self-deception and selective expertise', 5 May 2004, at www.counterpunch.org.
59. J Dobbins, 'Iraq - winning the unwinnable war', Foreign Affairs, 84 (1), 2005, online edition, at www.foreignaffairs.org.
60. The classic study of Iraq under British hegemony remains Hanna Batatu's monumental The Old Social Classes and The Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
61. For a version of this view by a former adviser to Tony Blair, see R Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, London: Atlantic Books, 2003.
62. For a case of disintegration where outside powers played a decisive role in effecting the collapse of the state, see B Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
63. SM Hersh, 'Plan B', The New Yorker, 28 June 2004, online edition.
64. Kagan, 'America's crisis of legitimacy'.
65. For example, C Krauthammer, 'A fight for Shiites', Washington Post, 26 November 2004.
66. S Negus, 'Iraq's hit-and-run insurgents outsmart under-strength troops', Financial Times, 20 November 2004.
67. B Graham, 'Army plans to keep 120 000 in Iraq', Washington Post, 24 January 2005.
68. Two sober recent assessments of the guerrilla war in Iraq are A Cordesman, 'The developing Iraqi insurgency: Status at end-2004', Center for Strategic and International Studies, working draft, 22 December 2004, at www.csis.org;
69. and T Lasseter & JS Landey, 'Iraq insurgency growing larger, more e.ective', Knight Ridder Newspapers, 23 January 2005, at www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/.
70. National Security Strategy, p 1.
71. Gowan, The Global Gamble, Part 1.
72. Z Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, New York: Basic Books, 2004.
73. D Reynié, La fracture occidentale, Paris: La Table Ronde, 2004.