ABSTRACT
This chapter provides expert analysis of US military activities relative to Iraq and Iran. In addition to drawing together the otherwise unruly threads of Middle Eastern politics and the US role in them, Pollack makes a compelling case for the negative effects on military coercion of an inadequate understanding of a target’s interests, values, and motivations. Indeed, it is difficult to put Pollack’s chapter down without acknowledging that US perceptions of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and so its strategies of coercion, were the product of confirmation bias rather than of sensitive analysis. Pollack’s treatment of US interactions with Iran, by contrast, offer a view of two states approaching each other with caution, with both absorbing potentially provocative activities rather than risking escalation. Pollack’s account suggests Iran’s behavior during this period reflected both a respect for sheer US military might and a recognition on the part of its leadership that there was more to gain from managing the relationship than igniting it. Conversely, US behavior was at turns defined by preoccupations elsewhere and a desire not to become embroiled in yet another theater of conflict, most especially with a regime that had evidenced itself to be both capable and determined.
Keywords: Iran, Iraq, Persian Gulf, international relations, U.S. foreign policy, military strategy, war, politics, competition, deterrence, conflict.
