Summary: Rebuilding Iraq after the War
International Security Policy from the Perspective of Asymmetric Threats
Andreas Wenger
It would be way too simple, if one were to limit the political divide over Iraq to overpowering rhetoric and poor diplomacy. Rather, the exorbitant differences in opinion over Iraq also reflected the controversial cause and effect assessment of asymmetric threats and risks. There were four security-political questions under debate that led to deep controversy. The first addressed the issue of to what extent international institutions, principles of legal protection, and regimes should be adapted to the new security-political challenges, the second of whether the new asymmetric risks should be met by civil or military security-political strategies and means. Third, there was the question of whether a war on Iraq would have a positive or a negative impact on the stability in the Middle East and fourth, whether a policy of enforcing a regime change would have positive affects on fighting terrorism and containing the proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction (WMD).
Establishing peace in post-war Iraq turned out to be more difficult than winning the war itself, and a smooth transition into the post-war phase failed miserably, considerably slimming the chances of political rebuilding. This can be blamed on severe political misjudgements on part of Pentagon’s neo-conservative civilian leaders as well as the lack of concepts for the transition period, the re-surfing differences in opinion between Pentagon and State Department, and the high political price paid for not having been able to find consensus in the UN Security Council.
The lessons learned from this Iraq War are: (a) that it does not make sense to win a war, unless successful combat operations can be transformed into lasting political solutions and that a strategy to meet asymmetric challenges can only succeed, if stabilization and rebuilding are considered as important as waging war; (b) that the Europeans realized that they will have to rethink the role of military assets with regard to a pro-active and robust prevention strategy, as it can only meet such asymmetric risks, if such a strategy also contains pre-emptive and preventive options; (c) that the Europeans as well as the Americans will have to opt for a strategy that considers prevention, crisis management, stabilization, and rebuilding as interlaced.
The Middle East will be facing a series of political implosions and social explosions. The structural problems of these regions are paramount and have their roots in the increasing tensions caused by a demographic crisis. While the long-term effects of the Iraq crisis cannot be assessed yet, the developments we have seen so far clearly indicate that the pressure on Arab regimes to introduce reforms has substantially increased.
The Iraq debate was embedded into the context of fighting international terrorism of Islamist provenance on the one hand, and containing WMD proliferation by state and non-state actors on the other. The question about the effectiveness of existing multilateral regimes and institutions in preventing WMD proliferation is justified from today’s security-political point of view.
About a year after the outbreak of the Iraq War, the United States’ central dilemma as a global power in shaping the world order became apparent. In the long run, America will not be able to unilaterally meet the challenges of terrorist networks and authoritarian regimes. Only a policy of meeting those 21st century challenges with resolve will make conflict resolution possible on a multilateral basis. There will have to be an intensive debate on the changes in international policy under the aspect of asymmetric threats, within the European, trans-Atlantic, and global framework. That will require the will to find new answers or well considered adaptations of international institutions and regimes, respectively.
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