Charles A. Kupchan

As the Bush administration edges ever closer to launching a war against Iraq, it is putting on the line the partnerships and principles that have served as the foundation of the international system since World War II. The tortured diplomacy of the last week made clear that Washington is prepared to break with its key allies in Europe and proceed with a war that much of the world does not support.

Toppling Saddam Hussein will do away with one of the Middle East's most aggressive regimes and will probably eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But in pursuing these worthy goals, the United States risks compromising perhaps its most precious asset -- its international legitimacy. The morning after occupying Baghdad, the United States could wake up to a world in which its power and purpose are no longer respected, but resented. In the tense days that lie ahead, Washington needs to weigh carefully whether the gains that will accompany the downfall of Hussein are worth the demise of the Atlantic alliance and America's increasing isolation in global affairs.

European objections to a war against Iraq are far from frivolous. France and Germany accept that Hussein cannot be trusted, but they maintain that beefed-up inspections can do an adequate job of containing his regime. With inspectors fanning out across the country, Hussein will have a tough time advancing his weapons programs.

Europeans also question the probable impact of war on the broader Muslim world. Whereas Washington believes toppling the Iraqi regime will advance democratizing forces in the region, Paris and Berlin foresee the radicalization of Muslim populations, including those in Europe. Washington views an attack on Iraq as a key element in the war on terrorism, while European governments fear that al-Qaida will soon enjoy a wave of angry recruits.

Reasonable people can and will disagree about these matters. The Bush team, even if it has not persuaded most of Europe, has convinced a majority of Americans that the world will be a safer place without Hussein. The problem is that the implications of impending war go well beyond Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. At stake is the very foundation of the international system -- the Atlantic alliance and the indivisibility of U.S. and European security. Since the early days of the Cold War, a coherent and cohesive West has been the anchor of international stability.

But the West is in the middle of coming apart. In the wake of the Cold War's end, some trans-Atlantic tension is unavoidable. The absence of the Soviet threat makes the need for Atlantic unity less immediate. And the European Union is coming of age and becoming more self-confident, making its members less willing to follow the U.S. lead.

The principal source of the West's erosion, however, is the United States' belligerent and unilateralist behavior.

From the outset of his presidency, George W. Bush has backed away from one international agreement after another -- the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the international criminal court and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, to name a few.

And Bush made clear in his last State of the Union address that America is anything but a team player, insisting that "the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others."

This swagger is more than a matter of style. It arises from the conviction, widely held among Bush's advisors, that the more powerful the United States is -- and the more blustery its leadership -- the more the rest of the world will get in line.

But exactly the opposite is happening. Countries around the world are distancing themselves from the United States and locking arms to resist a wayward America. France, Germany and Russia, along with most of the European Union's smaller countries, are doing their best to block Washington's rush to war, fully aware that doing so will invoke Washington's wrath.

North Korea is threatening to restart its nuclear weapons program as it seeks a deterrent against a U.S. attack. South Korea has been none too pleased with Washington's bellicose response, with Seoul taking its own approach to the crisis of nuclear proliferation on the peninsula. Saudi Arabia is developing a political roadmap intended to rid the kingdom of its U.S. bases and personnel.

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise in just about every quarter of the globe, even in countries that have for decades been close allies. And even in countries such as Spain and Britain, whose governments are backing the Bush administration's stance on Iraq, public opinion runs decidedly against war.

The Bush administration has thus done an impressive job of doing irreparable damage to America's image in the world and to the international order that was erected under America's watch.

The impending war against Iraq represents a point of no return. Should the United States go it alone and attack Iraq without broader international support, it will cease to be a model for the world and instead be seen as a dangerous Goliath that needs to be tamed.

After Friday's ambiguous report from chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to the UN Security Council, it appears increasingly probable that Washington will within a matter of weeks go to war against Iraq without the support of the UN. U.S. troops will probably be in Baghdad in short order.

But the victory will be a Pyrrhic one. Without the court of world opinion on its side, the United States will soon find that its long reign as the respected and trusted leader of the free world has come to an end. That is far too high a price to pay for toppling a regime that, however loathsome, can be adequately neutralized through vigilant containment.

Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "The End of the American Era."

By Charles A. Kupchan
Republished The Modern Tribune, previously published in several Knight Ridder newspapers.
February 4, 2003

WASHINGTON, D. C. - Now that the Bush administration has found Iraq in breach of the United Nations resolution obligating it to declare all illegal weapons, a U.S. attack looks increasingly likely. As Washington makes the necessary military preparations, it is justifiably planning for the postwar occupation and governance of Iraq. Indeed, the administration's willingness to contemplate a full-scale invasion is directly linked to its confidence that U.S. occupation can do for a defeated Iraq much of what it did for Germany and Japan after World War II.

Such confidence, however, is wholly unwarranted, with conditions in Iraq and the surrounding region anything but conducive to the success and stability of a regime installed by the United States. On the contrary, the risks and costs of an American occupation of Iraq are so high that they should force the Bush administration to rethink how it plans to deal with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It is true that U.S. occupation of Germany and Japan proved remarkably successful in transforming aggressor states into stable democracies. But both countries had the right starting materials. The two had at least some experience with democratic governance, they had thriving prewar economies and the accompanying intellectual and social capital, and both were ethnically homogeneous, easing the task of postwar nation-building. Even so, the occupying powers had to keep several hundred-thousand troops in Germany and Japan for the better part of a decade to set these countries on the right course.

Iraq brings to the table none of these advantages. It has no experience with democracy, but instead a past of dictatorship and tribal discord. Despite Iraq's oil wealth, its middle class has shrunk dramatically, and 40 percent of the labor force works in agriculture. The country is far from homogeneous, with its population divided among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and a multitude of minorities. These groups have long been rivals and tend to reside in different parts of the country -- Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south -- making it difficult to keep the country intact.

The success of America's post-World War II occupations also stemmed from the fact that the victims of German and Japanese aggression welcomed the United States to their regions, offering the United States their bases, their troops and their good will. In contrast, the United States is viewed throughout the Middle East with suspicion, if not outright hostility. Iran, a former target of Iraqi aggression, is no friend of Saddam Hussein, but it will certainly be no ally of the United States as Washington sets up shop in Baghdad. Iraq's neighbors will, for the most part, see America as an alien intruder rather than a welcome savior, offering animosity, not helping hands.

The record of past efforts to use coercion and occupation to refashion the political landscape in the Middle East provides further cause for caution. Britain attempted colonial rule in Iraq after World War I, but violent rebellions quickly convinced the British to withdraw. In places where British rule outlasted World War II, such as Palestine and Aden, terror attacks on British personnel ensued, ultimately persuading London to end its colonial presence in the Middle East.

Britain and the United States took a more subtle approach in Iran, using a covert operation to install a pro-Western regime in 1953. Although Shah Pahlavi enjoyed more than two decades of stable rule, he was eventually ousted by popular rebellion and replaced by an Islamic government that reviled the United States. The 14-month siege of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran does not provide an auspicious historical backdrop for those contemplating the occupation of Iraq and the installation of a U.S.-backed regime.

President Bush may well be justified in concluding that the threat posed by Saddam warrants U.S. military action. But in light of the costs of occupation and the low likelihood that it will succeed in establishing a
stable, democratic Iraq, it is dangerously misguided to conclude that a ground invasion is the appropriate response.

Rather, should war come, the scope of the mission should be limited to the destruction of Iraq's military infrastructure and its weapons of mass destruction, largely through the use of airpower and special-operations forces. If the regime happens to fall as a consequence, all the better. But who succeeds Saddam is a matter best left to the Iraqi people, not to the would-be American governor of Baghdad.

Charles A. Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.