Why Bush will go to war on Iraq

 By Immanuel Wallerstein

April 19 2002

George Bush is a geopolitical incompetent. He has allowed a clique of hawks to induce him to take a position on invading Iraq from which he cannot extract himself, one that will have nothing but negative consequences for the United States - and the rest of the world. He will find himself badly hurt politically, perhaps fatally. And he will rapidly diminish the already declining power of the US in the world.

A war against Iraq will destroy many lives immediately, both Iraqi and American.

Invading Iraq will lead to a degree of turmoil in the Arab-Islamic world hitherto unimagined. Other Arab leaders don't like Saddam Hussein one bit, but their populations won't stand for what they will inevitably feel is an unprovoked attack on an Arab state, leaving leaders with little choice but to be swept along in the turmoil or drown.

And an attack on Iraq might ultimately spark the use of nuclear weapons. Iraq may not have such weapons yet, but we can't be sure. Even if it doesn't, might it not attack Israel with conventional missiles that would prompt Israel to respond with the nuclear weapons we know it has? For that matter, are we really sure that, if the fighting gets tough, the US is not ready to use tactical nuclear weapons?

How has America become trapped in such a disastrous cul-de-sac?

It seems probable that US military action against Iraq is now not a question of whether but of when. Bush insists action is necessary because Iraq has been defying United Nations resolutions and represents an imminent danger to the world in general and to the US in particular. This explanation of the expected military action is so thin that it cannot be taken seriously.

Defying UN resolutions or other international decrees has been commonplace for the past 50 years. The US refused to defer to a 1986 World Court decision condemning US actions in Nicaragua. And Bush has made amply clear he will not honour any treaty should he think it dangerous to US interests. Israel has, of course, been defying UN resolutions for more than 30 years, and is doing so again as I write. And the record of other UN members is not much better. So Saddam has been defying quite explicit UN resolutions. What's new?

Is Saddam an imminent threat to anyone? In August, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. That action, at least, did pose an imminent threat. The US response was the Persian Gulf War, in which America and its allies pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait and then decided to stop there - for good military and political reasons. But that left Saddam in power.

The UN passed various resolutions requiring Iraq to abandon nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons and mandated inspection teams to verify that it had done so. The UN also put in place a variety of embargoes against Iraq. As we know, over the decade since then, this system of constraints on Iraq has weakened considerably, but not totally by any means.

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It is clear that, at this point, almost no one supports a US invasion of Iraq: not a single Arab state, not Turkey or Iran or Pakistan, not Russia or the great bulk of Europe. There are, to be sure, two notable exceptions: Israel, which is cheering Bush on, and Britain - or, rather, its Prime Minister Tony Blair, who declared a couple of weeks ago in Texas that "doing nothing is not an option" with regard to Iraq. Yet an article in The Observer last month reported that "Britain's military leaders issued a stark warning to Tony Blair last night that any war against Iraq is doomed to fail and would lead to the loss of lives for little political gain".

I cannot believe that US military leaders have drawn a different conclusion, although they may be more wary of stating that unpleasant truth to President Bush. Kenneth Pollack, formerly of the CIA and the Iraq specialist on Bill Clinton's national security council, says military action in Iraq would require sending in 200,000 to 300,000 US troops, presumably from bases in either Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, as well as additional troops to defend the Kurds in northern Iraq.

The US seems to be counting on intimidating its allies into going along. But after Israel's occupation of West Bank cities, the remote hope that Saudi (or even Kuwaiti) bases would be made available to US troops has almost surely disappeared. Turkey clearly has no interest in defending Iraqi Kurds, since such action would strengthen the Kurdish movement in Turkey, against which the Turkish Government fights with all its energy. As for Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in the process of destroying as rapidly as possible the Palestinian Authority, which certainly won't help Bush build his anti-Iraq coalition.

Still, there will be an invasion, which will be difficult if not impossible to win. The action could well become another Vietnam War. Just as in Vietnam, the war will drag on and will cost many American lives. And the political effects will be so negative for the US that eventually Bush (or his successor) will pull out. A renewed and amplified Vietnam War syndrome will be the result back in the US.

Can no one in the Bush administration see this? A few, no doubt, but they are being ignored, because Bush is in a self-imposed dilemma. If he goes ahead with the Iraq invasion, he risks bringing himself down, like Lyndon Johnson. But those negative consequences to Bush would be in the future, whereas the negatives of not invading are immediate.

Bush promised the American people a "war on terrorism" that "we will certainly win". So far, all he's produced is the downfall of the weak and impoverished Taliban. He hasn't captured Osama bin Laden. Pakistan is shaky. Saudi Arabia is pulling away. If he doesn't invade Iraq, he will look foolish where it matters to him most - in the eyes of American voters.

Bush's incredibly high approval ratings reflect his being a "war president". The minute he becomes a peace-time president, he will be in grave trouble - all the more so because of failed wartime promises.

So, Bush has no choice. He will invade Iraq. He has made clear the Middle East crisis will not deter him from this. Quite the opposite. And we shall all live with the consequences.

Immanuel Wallerstein is a senior research scholar at Yale University and the author of The End of the World as We Know It. This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times