U.S. President George W. Bush made what is likely his final trip as president to Iraq on Sunday. During the trip, he discussed what progress had been made while reiterating that the war there has not yet been won decisively. Bush was undoubtedly correct on both counts, but in a sense, these are no longer the key (or at least the only) questions that have to be asked in evaluating the Iraq war.
We have discussed the reasoning behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq innumerable times, and the issue certainly has been debated to the point that it is unlikely there is anyone left who hasn’t made up his mind on the subject. The point that significant progress has been made but that the situation remains fluid strikes us as fairly uncontroversial. Few deny that progress has been made; few would say the war is over.
There are four ways to evaluate the Iraq war. First, was the U.S. goal in the war worthy of the effort it required? Second, did the war achieve its intended goal? Third, was the war effort executed effectively? And finally, did the war have unintended consequences elsewhere? This last issue has always been discussed in terms of international hostility toward the United States or radicalization in the Muslim world. These subjects are worthy of discussion, but to our minds, the greatest unintended consequence of the Iraq war was the opportunity it provided for other states to enhance their power. The United States’ commitment to Iraq provided the world with breathing room and space for maneuver that it otherwise might not have had.
For five years, the bulk of American ground war-fighting capability was committed to Iraq. During that time, the threat posed by American power declined. Venezuela, for example, with all its talk about an American invasion, knew perfectly well that the United States was in no position to think about Caracas. This gave Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez room for maneuver that he otherwise might not have felt he had. In another example, there is much discussion of the need to intervene in Darfur. Whatever the wisdom of such an action, the Sudanese government has known the United States was in no position to play a leading role in such an operation. And whatever threats Washington might have made against Pakistan, Islamabad knew perfectly well that a multidivisional attack was not an option. With U.S. land power off the table for five years, the American ability to shape the world through threats and actions was severely diminished.
Nowhere was this better demonstrated than in the former Soviet Union. Russia is intrinsically weaker than the United States, but military power is not an abstract relationship. Judging military power is a question of which side can bring more power to bear in a certain place at a certain time. In a country like Georgia this past summer, Russian power was greater than American power — and this is now true throughout the Russian periphery. Moscow is now free to reshape the former Soviet Union without fear of meaningful American intervention. This fact is obvious to all of these countries, and it conditions their responses.
One can argue that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was justified, and one can also argue that the war was executed as effectively as possible. But Bush nailed the indisputable problem: the war is still not over. The fact that the war has taken too long from a global perspective is, to us, the key issue that is rarely discussed. It is not the situation on the ground in Iraq that frames the question of the war; it is the war’s effect on American strategic power around the world.
Because the Iraq war has lasted as long as it has, it has opened doors for other countries – doors that would have been closed had it been possible to end the war more quickly. The fact that the Iraq war is still continuing, and that it likely will last at least another 18 months, has created strategic consequences — independent of the question of the wisdom of the war in the first place. Even if the Iraq war were to end with a U.S. victory tomorrow, it nevertheless has brought with it profound strategic costs.
