ABSTRACT
The foreign policy challenges to which American presidential administrations must respond typically reflect the security threats facing the United States at a particular historical juncture. Such threats are usually a product of the structure of the international system and characteristics of the actors, whether of the state or non-state variety, interacting therein. This chapter addresses the issue of nation building in Iraq and examines in general terms the most relevant approaches to post-conflict reconstruction and nation building in the 1990s and 2000s. It discusses the Bush administration's rationale for, and offers an overview of the implementation of, nation building operations in Iraq. The chapter describes the security challenges associated with nation building operations in Iraq. It explores the economic and political aspects, respectively, of those endeavors. The chapter discusses the future implications of the success or failure of nation building in Iraq.
