Imperialism of neighbors: a new paradigm for the use of American power.

• Author: Hirsh, Michael

IN THE MONTHS LEADING UP TO THE INVAsion of Iraq, critics of the Bush administration's policy fell into two basic camps. One group opposed war outright; the other supported confronting Saddam but disputed the administration's manner and timing. Both sides, however, agreed on one point: that it was vital to secure international backing for U.S. policy. The war itself wouldn't necessarily require lots of allied military help; most critics understood that American forces alone could probably crush the military of a country like Iraq, whose annual gross domestic product is eight times smaller than the yearly U.S. defense budget. International support was crucial not to winning the war, they argued, but to securing the peace.

On this point, the critics have been proven right. More than a month after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq remains chaotic and lawless, its citizens subject to daily criminal violence and afraid to leave their homes. This suffering could have been greatly alleviated had there been more allied troops on the ground. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proved that he could beat Iraq's army with far fewer troops than many military experts, including some in the Pentagon, believed was necessary. But the post-war anarchy in Iraq has also proven that you can't keep the peace that way. (See "Faux Pax Americana" by Phillip Carter, on page 11.) The roughly 90,000 U.S. and British ground troops deployed at the height of the Iraq war were not enough to simultaneously press toward Baghdad, keep the Kurds and Turks from each other's throats, and secure the rear--let alone police Iraq's nuclear sites, ministries, hospitals, and museums. More troops have been pouring in since the fall of Baghdad, but evidently not enough to keep the peace. The consequences of Iraq's anarchy are likely to be profound, and not just because the few weapons of mass destruction that might have been there could now be spreading. A country where the state fails to keep order, allowing robbery and rape to flourish, is, after all, the dystopian version of American society that Middle Eastern dictators sell to their own people. Our failure to maintain basic law and order in Iraq has only validated one of Islamism's basic critiques of America and the societal values we want to export.

The failure to garner international support--both for the invasion and for the post-war occupation--has itself stoked resentment toward the United States among Iraqis. The administration had presumed that average Iraqis would cheer U.S. troops as liberators. But while some did, many others expressed a deep suspicion of our motives and a clear desire that we leave quickly. Though any invading force might have provoked such feelings to some extent, the Iraqis' reaction is likely harsher because U.S. troops entered without U.N. authorization and for weeks tried to keep the peace without U.N. involvement, or making use of UN. agencies' considerable resources. The Iraqi people's reaction is natural and predictable: Having troops under cover of the international community on one's soil is understandably less galling and humiliating than being occupied by another country. The average Iraqi may suspect that George W. Bush wants to steal his country's oil, but would be less likely to harbor the same suspicion of Kofi Annan.

This heightening resentment could gravely endanger American policy in Iraq. After floating a number of rationales--from suspected al Qaeda links to weapons of mass destruction--the Bush administration finally settled, in the weeks prior to the invasion, on the idea that our prime war objective was to create a stable, democratic Iraq in order to set off a virtuous chain reaction in the Middle East. To those who questioned our competence in this, administration hawks pointed to postwar Japan and Germany. But those successes required massive, multi-year military occupations. To achieve something similar in Iraq would almost certainly call for a similarly lengthy engagement--and maybe even a longer one, considering the country's ethnic divisions and its lack of democratic institutions and traditions.

We are kidding ourselves if we think the United States can handle this on its own--or even that we would want to. The Bush administration must be given credit for its aggressive reassertion of American power since 9/11. But that tragedy should have also changed forever our notions of peacekeeping, nation-building, and humanitarian intervention. The 21st century is likely to present us with any number of failed states where terrorists lurk, or with tyrants who garner power by exploiting ethnic division, creating destabilizing refugee flows and genocides we cannot ignore. Either America will choose to act, or be dragged into action.

What's needed is a new paradigm for how America should use its unprecedented power--one which recognizes that, while we may be able to fight wars on our own, we can't build a stable peace on our own; and one which takes advantage both of our overwhelming military strength and of the legitimizing force that comes with working with allies and through the United Nations. In fact, such a paradigm already exists. It's been brewing for decades. And it's one that both the Republican and Democratic parties may be more in agreement on than you might think.

United Naysayers

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