ABSTRACT
The United States’ strategy for regime change in Iraq was arguably one of the most ambitious programmes of political engineering witnessed since the immediate years following the Second World War. From being identified as a founder member of the ‘axis of evil’ in President Bush’s State of the Union address of January 2002, Iraq was a primary influence behind the formulation of the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the ‘Bush doctrine’ of preventive war-of acting against emerging threats before they are fully formed.2 The NSS, however, was not purely about defeating potential enemies. It also envisaged the promotion of American values throughout the world. Not only was Iraq going to undergo democratic transformation, it also marked the ‘first phase in a grand design for the moral reconstruction of the Middle East’.3 It was considered that Saddam’s demise would herald a new era for Iraq, one in which its longsuffering peoples would live in harmony and peaceful coexistence, and the nurturing of democracy in Iraq would become an example to the rest of the region of the benefits of embracing American ideals. Indeed, it was envisaged that as a ‘beacon of democracy’ Iraq’s example would penetrate like a searchlight into the darkest despotic corners of the Middle East, vividly illustrating to the oppressed and marginalized what government should be like, albeit with US colouring. In the president’s own words, ‘a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region’.4 What was rarely said, however, was the unwritten caveat that any new regime which emerged, including Iraq’s, would need to be acceptable to US interests, if not actually designed by the US government itself. Two sets of ‘freedoms’ can therefore be identified. One is a freedom satisfying the demands of a nation newly liberated from the grotesque barbarities of a brutal dictatorship. The other is freedom as interpreted, portrayed, and accepted by the
US administration and its electorate. As we shall see in Iraq, the two do not always coincide. Whether this grand plan is considered to be a work of visionary genius or one of monumental folly remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that if this plan is to have any chance of success, the political reconstruction of Iraq cannot be seen to fail.5 Speaking in November 2003 at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC, President Bush said, ‘the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution’.6 Indeed it may be, but the failure of this policy would be an even greater watershed as an already destabilized Middle East would be plunged into deeper instability. The US position in the region would be undermined; states neighbouring Iraq would be sensitized (Syria, Turkey) and potentially destabilized (Saudi Arabia); and there would be a ready supply of proxy forces in Iraq to take up arms for initiatives planned in other regional capitals.7 Countries in the Middle East would become riddled by transnational forces, impervious to the constraints imposed by state boundaries. Shi’ism in the Gulf and Kurdish nationalism across the Zagros Mountains are but two distinct possibilities which could accompany the more widespread pernicious threat from Al-Qaeda-associated activities.
