Ir Theory Paper #1: Hegemonic Power Versus Iraqi Insurgency

IR Theory Paper #1, MSFS 510, Professor Victor Cha Hegemonic Power Versus Iraqi Insurgency (2,696 words) Victor Benjamin Turner The US is only now just beginning to emerge from a fog of disbelief and paralysis in how to proceed in quelling Iraq's violent insurgency so that Iraq can begin to have security, and therefore a functional government. From citizens to the top leaders of the American government, confusion and bafflement have reigned over counter-insurgency policy in Iraq: how has the US been failing, despite having the most dominant military in the world which had only recently dealt with Vietnamese insurgency? Why have insurgents been so successful in Iraq, despite the US having the best minds in political, military, and economic policy? How much more blood and treasure, over the estimated $500 billion already spent, must be expended to stop insurgents who carry only an AK47, RPG, and pro-jihad reading material and who are dismissed as "a bunch of kids with improvised explosive devices"1? One way to analyze this problem is through Kenneth Waltz's theory of the three images: the first image as the explanation through individuals (“the id of war”, as Thomas P.M. Barnett jokes 2), the second through states' international affairs, and the third through the international system. By far, the most visible scapegoat for failure to suppress Iraqi insurgency has been President Bush. Would the results in Iraq have turned out differently were he not in power? How much does his character and personality affect the situation in a first-image Waltz analysis? Despite his lack of leadership in many other areas, the President has been at most a facilitator for overwhelming desire for policy change after 9/11. In other words, if another person had been elected in 2000 instead of Bush, it is likely that the US would still have invaded and would be occupying Iraq today, because of the general consensus among the more experienced and powerful figures within the dominant Republican party. Preemption as American policy has been on the table since the Cold War, and the 9/11 attack made it politically feasible to get the public behind it. Bush selected for his closest advisers seasoned politicians who have worked in Washington, 1

Peter Hamby, “Thompson: Iraqi insurgents 'a bunch of kids' with IEDs”, CNN.com, October 25, 2007. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/10/25/thomspon-iraqi-insurgents-a-bunch-of-kids-with-ieds/ 2 Thomas PM Barnett, “Deleted Scene: Introducing Kenneth Waltz' Three Perspectives“, ThomasPMBarnett.com. http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/delscenes/scene03.htm

DC since Richard Nixon's administration, in Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld. These men dominated Bush's policy agenda, pushing out or neutralizing competing interests in Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, General Eric Shinseki, and more broadly, the UN, the IAEA, and other multi-lateral organizations, many of whom questioned the rationale behind the war, troop levels, and other factors which ultimately led to a brutal insurgency. Few potential presidents would likely have taken a stand against such seasoned political figures as Bush's advisers, who also managed to bring the CIA (via Tenet), Congress, the State Department, and the Department of Defense into its Iraq invasion fold, and later kept them quiet while an insurgency grew. So President Bush does not constitute a good example of a first-image personality defining history, although it could be argued that the personalities he employed under him might do so. The Bush Administration originally sent Jay Garner, a former military general, to Iraq to spearhead the temporary government. He was quickly yanked and replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a man with no experience either militarily or within the region.3 Clearly, fears of an insurgency were not even conceived of within the Administration, as Bremer easily approved the Coalition Provisional Authority's decision to disband the entire Iraqi government, including its broad military population4, leaving the Iraqi government in the hands of those with no state experience, and taking away the salaries and careers of many Sunni servicemembers who would eventually become the bulk of the Iraqi insurgency. Bremer has recently denied that it was his decision to disband the government 5, but he is generally regarded as being the main American in Iraq to sow seeds for insurgency. The more seasoned Garner had planned to keep the government in place in order to maintain stability. Al-Qaeda did not operate within Iraq until after the US had ignored the emergence of the insurgency. Early into the occupation, however, the insurgency was only a reaction to the American presence, and had not taken on the shades of ethnic conflict, sectarian 3

Heidi Kingstone, “Toppled in Baghdad, Clueless in Whitehall “, TimesOnline.co.uk, October 21, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2701350.ece 4 According to Petraeus, these were “two of the most significant mistakes the U.S. has made to date in Iraq.” Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Back on Capitol Hill, Bremer Is Facing a Cooler Reception”, Washington Post, February 5, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020501325.html 5 L. Paul Bremer III, “How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army”, NYTimes.com, September 6, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/opinion/06bremer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

violence, and wanton destruction that it has now. How was the insurgency transformed, and could the US have prevented this? The key figure behind the transformation of Iraqi insurgency was Abu Musab AlZarqawi. A Jordanian who was radicalized in Middle Eastern prison systems, he made his way to Iraq in search of the next jihad, as he only participated in the tail-end of the now legendary mujaheddin struggle in Afghanistan. It was Zarqawi who turned insurgency and terrorism within Iraq into the nightmare that Americans envision now, by beheading Nick Berg, a civilian trucker contractor, and posting a video of it. Kaffir (infidel) beheadings became a symbol invoking anger and fear among Americans, and intimidation and pride among insurgents and Muslim extremists. Later, Zarqawi would swear fealty to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, although their relationship was always testy as his brutality was at odds with bin Laden's desire to unite Muslims against foreign occupiers. Zarqawi consolidated his power from Anbar east into Baghdad, proudly posting the black Al-Qaeda flag along Baghdad's streets. Americans, in reciprocity, adopted measures to ensure their own safety (for fear of being captured and beheaded). Within a counter-insurgency mission, which the US had not yet acknowledged formally, the goal is to get the support of the people6, but now soldiers and the private contractors such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy were more concerned with speeding through busy streets, shooting warning shots into windshields, and making sure they wouldn't die. Zarqawi was the man who escalated day-to-day activities within Iraq between both sides. His defiance and brutality shown towards the Americans helped recruit foreign fighters and even many Iraqis to stand up and fight the American occupiers. His videos would be watched by sympathizers and extremists worldwide over the Internet. American counterinsurgency experts' views had no currency at this time -- force protection became the top priority. The list of bungling generals in Iraq has grown long -- Myers, Pace, Odierno, Franks, Sanchez -- but now General David Petraeus is in charge and has restored 6

David Kilcullen, one of Petraeus’s advisers, refers to T.E. Lawrence’s brilliant Seven Pillars of Wisdom: “…Building local allies and forging partnerships and trusted networks with at-risk communities seems to be one of the keys to success – perhaps this is what T.E. Lawrence had in mind when he wrote that the art of guerrilla warfare with Arab tribes rests on ‘building a ladder of tribes to the objective’.” David Kilcullen, “Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt”, SmallWarsJournal.com, August 29, 2007. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/

experience, cultural knowledge, and leadership to the military in Iraq. Petraeus, an Arabic speaker, author of the updated counter-insurgency field manual, and a man who "leads from the front" (as servicemembers universally desire), has sparked Sunni initiative to fight Al-Qaeda by cutting deals with Sunni sheiks in Al-Anbar. He has also reframed military doctrine towards counter-insurgency principles such as winning the support of the people and leaving a light footprint, pushing these ideas out through the field manual and promoting a "learning organization"7 which the military must struggle to become. Correlated to his presence in Iraq, the journalist Thomas Ricks noted that under his command of the 101st Airborne during the initial occupation of Iraq, Petraeus rarely clogged the prison system with detainees, and had less violence in his region than in any other. Since Petraeus's assumption of command, troop deaths in Iraq have lowered from about three to four a day to under 1.5, although whether this is directly correlated, and whether there is a corresponding drop in Iraqi casualties is arguable. Just perhaps, under the first-image analysis, Petraeus's legacy in Iraq will be to have suppressed the Iraqi insurgency and to have developed a successful counter-insurgency doctrine for the future, which would be the holy grail for militaries worldwide. A second-image look, what Waltz would characterize as the relationship between states in the narrative of a situation, at the American struggle with insurgency in Iraq is complicated because in essence the conflict is not between states in the traditional sense but is an American pre-emption doctrine experiment8 that has involved a multi-faceted insurgency. It is mysterious that despite the ingraining of the horrific failure of counterinsurgency policy in and subsequent studies of Vietnam that Iraqi insurgency was not only improperly treated but in fact completely ignored and unacknowledged until well into its development. Perhaps this occurred after Vietnam "as commanders promised “no more Vietnams” and concentrated instead on how to defeat the massed Soviet armies." 9 7

John Nagl, an adviser to Petraeus: “The most important contribution of the manual is likely to be its role as a catalyst in the process of making the Army and Marine Corps more effective learning organizations that are better able to adapt to the rapidly changing nature of modern counterinsurgency campaigns.” John Nagl, “The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency”, University of Chicago Press. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841519foreword.html 8 Or more popularly now, “adventure”, as made popular by Thomas Ricks’ book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. 9 “After Smart Weapons, Smart Soldiers”, The Economist, October 25, 2007. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015844

In the bigger picture, the object of America's experiment, Iraq, seems less critical to understand than the mindset of the neo-conservative preemptive agenda within the US. The US's universally unpopular "Axis of Evil" rhetoric created an official geography of the world where there were prioritized targets for democracy promotion to stop the undermining of the international system. This rhetoric became confused as it merged with non-state actors such as terrorist or insurgent groups worldwide. Was combating AlQaeda (by its nature, a Pakistani/Afghani/Somali/Kenyan/Saudi/etc.-linked organization) the same as combating the government of North Korea? Was fighting the Iraqi insurgents the same as neutralizing the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan? Counter-insurgency tactics, having only been discussed with any academic or theoretical vigor recently, were dismissed in favor of nation-state intimidation tactics such as pressuring Musharraf in Pakistan or King Abdullah in Saudi. Formal acknowledgment by the Bush administration didn’t occur until after the insurgency had bloomed, as it had referred to insurgents as only former regime elements to be mopped up.10 What is also interesting from a second-image perspective is how US "Axis of Evil" rhetoric has constrained its ability to bring security to Iraq's borders to reinforce counter-insurgent strategy. The US has been suffering from poor security along the porous Syrian and Iranian borders. Such long borders are hard to control, especially given the US's shortage of soldiers for such a purpose. Unit commanders lamented their ability to control key border towns with such few troops, as foreign fighters, arms and finance suppliers, and other elements would just circumnavigate small American/Iraqi border security forces to find another way to cross back and forth. 11 But the US could not seek much help from Iran and Syria, having classified them publicly as part of the Axis of Evil and refusing to hold amicable negotiations with them. Hence the insurgency within Iraq has long enjoyed relatively pain-free logistics operations, which, given the US's dominance in air power and UAV support, suitable geography for restricting and 10

“Bush said for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after U.S. troops went to Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime.” Evan Vucci, “Bush Acknowledges Iraq 'Miscalculation'”, USAToday.com, August 27, 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-0827-bush-miscalculation_x.htm

11

Disrupting insurgent supply lines has required repetitive missions such as Operations Steel Curtain and River Gate, both of which did not occur near the border at all. Why? FOXNews.com, “Five U.S. GIs Dead in Operation River Gate”, October 5, 2005. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171169,00.html

observing movement, and quick-response capabilities, should have given it a huge edge over 1970's-era American efforts to disrupt insurgent supply lines in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. It is almost as though the memory of Vietnam has been stricken from the US record. What little semblance there is of an Iraqi National Government (ING) must be combined with US State assets to formulate a second-image analysis. US State interests usually fall within the realm of a strong federal government for Iraq, this idea being dictated to a passively resistant Iraqi parliament whose own interests are sectarian, seeking primarily to consolidate power as the Americans withdraw. Historically speaking, all occupied countries' governments have trouble asserting authority on their own while appeasing their occupiers. American political debate often focuses on the unwillingness and ineptitude of the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country, but realistically an occupied government has no impetus or ultimate say in the course of their government unless it falls in line with the occupier's interests. So while waiting for the Americans to pull out, the Iraqis have been cleansing their neighborhoods and gaming for future power struggles.12 At the same time, the US has only recently put aside the neo-conservative desire to keep Arabists out of policy positions in Iraq (now Khalilzad, Crocker, and Petraeus have prominent status in Iraq and are all culturally-educated in the region), and the major power players within Iraq (AlSistani, Al-Hakim, Al-Sadr) who the citizens listen to are still not represented directly in the ING.13 The government is set up to fail at this point in time. Looking at the insurgency issue from Waltz's third image has probably generated the most public controversy. What about the international system and environment has made it impossible for the US to quell the insurgency?

12

General Tony McPeak, contributing to a security panel with Paul Pillar, Michael Scheuer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, and Juan Cole: “It's not a question of whether we're going to leave Iraq -- it's a question of when. And everybody in Iraq knows that. So they say, ‘Fine. We'll stock arms and wait for you guys to leave. And then we'll do what we want.’” Tim Dickenson, “Beyond Quagmire”, Rolling Stone, March 7, 2007. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13710030/leaving_iraq_the_grim_truth 13 Part of this is self-imposed: “[Sistani’s] teachings have always reflected what is often called the quietist school of thought in modern Shiism, one that says that clerics should not run governments. Iran's system, the diametric opposite, invests clerics with absolute legal and political authority.” Susan Sachs, “The Cleric Spoiling U.S. Plans”, NYTimes.com, January 18, 2004. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06EFDD1739F93BA25752C0A9629C8B63

When the Bush administration decided to discredit the UN weapons instructors who found inconclusive evidence in Iraq, circumvent the UN's procedures, and cobble together its "coalition of the willing" (perhaps largely through bandwagoning theory), it cut itself off from the possibility of a security compromise with other international countries and organizations that they hadn't already shunned through the formation of the Axis of Evil policy. Having severed its links, the US was treated by other nations from a realist's perspective: if you're going to proceed in Iraq, we have little interest outside of token gestures in helping you. Certainly Iraq's border states have little impetus to help secure Iraq's borders when it also benefits them as the US, committed to staying in Iraq, devotes much of its resources, weakening its hegemonic position. This could be a similar motivation for the larger international community. What interest is it of theirs to contribute to an occupation they were highly skeptical about? In whose interest is it to have a stable Iraq with a US presence? The global arms trade out of the US, China, and Russia, is booming as a result of increased contracting, sustained military efforts, and arming the new Iraqi army and tribes within Iraq to defend themselves. Security prerogatives in other nations have increased demand for arms as well. Other countries have used US policy to crack down on groups within their own countries that they consider insurgencies -- the tightening of government control has increased as a result of the US's failed dedication in Iraq. An Iraq without Americans would change the nature of the game for Middle Eastern neighbors and for a UN that would be compelled to intervene. Waltz discussed how the world is in continual anarchy without a superior authority to police all nations. There are two ways to apply this to the American adventure with Iraq's insurgency: one, there are no nations able to counter American desire to export its hegemonic expansion of "freedom" worldwide, and as of yet there are no serious attempts to form official blocs of power to contest American hegemony. Two, within the international community, there's none willing to form a multi-lateral counterinsurgency/counter-terrorism organization14 made up of different countries' security and intelligence networks to formulate a cohesive plan of attack -- why would any country volunteer intelligence or its own elite soldiers to such a cause? It can be argued that the 14

Except in works of fiction, e.g. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. “Rainbow Six (novel)”, Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Six_(novel)

problematic growth in private military contractors and other defense contractors has in part (besides GWOT's blank check budget) been because of an attempt to compensate for the lack of international consensus on the issue. As a result of the lack of cooperation internationally, insurgent groups in Iraq and terrorist groups worldwide have exploited such gaps and have caused massive reactions from the biggest state powers in the world. With small arms, diffuse organizations, and online media, the jihad has spread to multiple nations. It may have different goals and motivations, but it's operating between the seams of a flimsy patchwork of international states and organizations whose priorities are not fighting insurgency or terrorism in particular but only secondarily, and in a reactionary fashion (e.g. Interpol, CIA) What will the international system look like when it morphs enough to be able to address insurgency and terrorism cooperatively and multi-laterally? How long will that take? Through Waltz's three image structure, one can begin to sort the most important problems with the US's handling of Iraqi insurgency. Thematically the trend across the individual, state, and international levels is that there’s an American refusal or ignorance of the cultural identity of the Iraqi people, the insurgency thriving among them, and interested parties neighboring Iraq or having a stake in Iraq's future. But the combination of so many different complications in handling Iraqi insurgency is why few can agree on what to do about the situation, or even how to settle disagreements on the matter. Given the slow pace of progress in state institutions and in the international community, those hoping for a rapid reduction of conflict and insurgency in Iraq can only depend on a bias in Waltz's image analysis towards the first image: the individual's influence upon an seemingly intractable problem.

IR Theory Paper #1 Bibliography

MSFS 510, Professor Victor Cha Hegemonic Power Versus Iraqi Insurgency (2,696 words) Victor Benjamin Turner

1. Hamby, Peter. “Thompson: Iraqi insurgents 'a bunch of kids' with IEDs”, CNN.com, October 25, 2007. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/10/25/thomspon-iraqi-insurgents-a-bunch-ofkids-with-ieds/ 2. Barnett, Thomas P.M. “Deleted Scene: Introducing Kenneth Waltz' Three Perspectives“, ThomasPMBarnett.com. http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/delscenes/scene03.htm 3. Kingstone, Heidi. “Toppled in Baghdad, Clueless in Whitehall “, TimesOnline.co.uk, October 21, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2701350.ece 4. Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. “Back on Capitol Hill, Bremer Is Facing a Cooler Reception”, Washington Post, February 5, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020501325.html 5. Bremer III, L. Paul.“How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army”, NYTimes.com, September 6, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/opinion/06bremer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 6. Kilcullen, David. “Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt”, SmallWarsJournal.com, August 29, 2007. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/ 7. Nagl, John. “The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency”, University of Chicago Press. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841519foreword.html 8. Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Penguin Group: New York, 2006. 9. “After Smart Weapons, Smart Soldiers”, The Economist, October 25, 2007. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015844 10. Vucci, Evan. “Bush Acknowledges Iraq 'Miscalculation'”, USAToday.com, August 27, 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-08-27-bush-miscalculation_x.htm

11. “Five U.S. GIs Dead in Operation River Gate”, FoxNews.com, October 5, 2005. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171169,00.html 12. Dickenson, Tim. “Beyond Quagmire”, Rolling Stone, March 7, 2007. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13710030/leaving_iraq_the_grim_truth 13. Sachs, Susan. “The Cleric Spoiling U.S. Plans”, NYTimes.com, January 18, 2004. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06EFDD1739F93BA25752C0A9629C8B63 14. “Rainbow Six (novel)”, Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Six_(novel)