| February
14, 2004
Now What?
By Carl J. Luna/HispanicVista.com
Following 9/11 the Bush Administration
formulated an aggressive new strategic
doctrine for the application of American
military power against real and potential
strategic threats. The first test
of this doctrine was Afghanistan, where a
regime friendly to terrorists that had
struck the US was overthrown by a highly
effective American military blitzkrieg.
War against Iraq marked the second
application of this doctrine. So far the
political debate over the Iraqi
campaign has focused on the reasoning
leading up to the war . What
has been lacking from the national
dialogue is an adequate debate of
the more important question , after
Iraq, what next?
With Iraq, the
Administration broadened its post
9/11 interventionist doctrine to include
the preemptive use of force. The
justification for war with Iraq boiled
down to three claims: Saddam Hussein was
a heinous dictator who brutalized his
people; he supported terrorists even to
the point of potentially arming them with
devastating weapons; and he endeavored to
develop his own weapons of mass
destruction which he might have used
against the United States and its allies.
Leaving aside any debate of the rightness
or wrongness of these arguments, the
question remains as to how the
Administration might employ these same
arguments in applying its doctrine of
preemption in other parts of the
world.
If the main precedent established by the
Administration in Iraq is that the Bush
Doctrine will be used for the noble moral
purpose of removing oppressive regimes,
then the list of future American
interventions is long indeed. According
to Freedom House, nine countries in the
world receive the same lowest possible
score for measures of social and
political freedoms as do Iraq. This list
includes the US's erstwhile ally, Saudi
Arabia. Thirty nine other states,
including USallies Bahrain, Oman and the United
Arab
Emirates ranked
"non-free."
Eliminating national havens for terrorism
was the basis for the US's interventions
in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There
are numerous countries that could be said
to provide safe harbor and support
(either because of, or in spite of,
government policies) to terrorists groups
that pose a threat to the US and its
allies. This includes obvious
contenders such as Sudan, Syria and,
until recently, Libya, but could
also include Saudi Arabia, which
contributes millions of dollars to
suspected terrorist "front"
organizations, and countries like Pakistan,
Indonesiaand the Philippines which either
tolerate or are unable to deal with
radical Islamic fundamentalist
organizations that operate within their
territory.
Under the Iraqi precedent, the
deploying, developing or even being
capable of developing weapons of
mass destruction by regimes actively or
potentially hostile to the US, creates a
potential for American military
preemption. Leaving aside the
fact that this means even Ecuador
or Leichenstein might well be six
months from a US hit list, there is the
immediate issue of Iran and Iraq.
Both, like Iraq, are hostile to US
interests and have even engaged the US
militarily in the past. Then
there is China, a nuclear power declared
by the Administration to be a
"strategic competitor " and a
threat to our East Asia allies,
especially Taiwan, whom the
Administration has pledged to defend with
"whatever it takes." Pakistan,
meanwhile, is only a coup
d'etat away from falling out of the
American orbit.
The Administration has not clearly
explained how the criteria used to
justify war against Iraq might be used as
precedent for future application of the
Bush Doctrine. If Iraq, the
question now becomes, why not North Korea
or Iran, Turkmenistan or China, Syria or Saudi
Arabia? What actions by other states will
cross a still poorly delineated line and
trigger American preemption? The
failure of the Administration to fully
articulate the implications of the US
strategy towards Iraq on future
applications of American power introduces
a profound element of strategic
uncertainty into already turbulent
international affairs. Historically, such
uncertainty provokes fear and
miscalculation by other states, as may
arguably already be the case with
tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Such uncertainty, for instance, may
undermine the Administration's new push
to "democratize" the Middle
East as Arab regimes look on the
initiative as trying to foster
democracy at the barrel of an
American gun. If the goal of the Bush
Doctrine is to increase US security and
global stability, the Administration must
be much clearer on what the lessons of Iraq
are and how it intends to apply them in
the future.
___________________________________________________________
Carl J. Luna, Ph.D.,
a HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com)
contributing columnist, is Professor of
Political Science at San DiegoMesa College.
Contact at cluna@sdccd.net
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