June 28, 2003
Warbaby says:
Wars start out as political, but end up as military affairs. The Clauswitzian definition of war as the continuation of politics with the admixture other means is misleading. Military force does not confer legitimacy -- though it sometimes suffices to make the losers shut up. The problem is when the "losers" haven't really lost and refuse to concede legitimacy to "victors." History has not been kind to the agressors in these conflicts.
Wars typically have three discernable phases: 1) a political conflict between nations or sub-national groups, that leads to 2) organized violence which continues until either there is a decisive military defeat of one side or it becomes politically impossible for one side to continue, whereupon 3) a political resolution is either negotiated, imposed or occurs by the elimination of one of the combatants from the war environment. Once organized violence commences, events progress to the third and final phase.
In some instance, it is impossible to negotiate or impose a resolution. The century-long Irish rebellion, the ongoing tribal wars of Africa and the wars of national liberation that ended Western colonization of the Third World are all recent examples of violent conflicts where negotiation or imposed settlement were impossible. All of these wars also had the characteristic of being "asymmetrical." The now-discredited term from the 1960's was "low intensity conflict." Now the fashionable phrase is "asymmetrical warfare." The terms are interchangable and semantically equivalent. What is remarkable about nearly all of these indecisive asymmetrical wars is that they either ended with the "more developed" combatant abandoned the contest or they are still continuing.
The war with Iraq is beginning to look like that kind of indecisive asymmetrical war. The political conflict (regime change, weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi threats to regional peace in the Mideast being reasons presented as justifying American aggression against Iraq) was remarkably one-sided. Iraq's major grievance was (and continues to be) U.S. interference with Iraqi sovereignty. It is important to note that this grievance is independent from the American claims -- resolving American issues does nothing to resolve Iraqi ones.
As much as Iraqis may have liked (or not liked) Saddam Hussein, enough of them accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the Baathist regime. When a nation rejects the legitimacy of its government, that goverment falls. It can fall hard or fall softly. It can be a revolution, a coup or simply a change of administration.
Iraqi opposition forces failed to encompass Iraq as a nation and instead operated as marginalized sub-national groups or in some extreme cases as the puppets of foreign powers. The point here is that as despised as the Baathist regime was, it still retained internal and external legitimacy as a nation state.
The denial of Baathist legitimacy by the Bush administration (helped along by Congress in a slow process that dates from the end of the First Gulf War) laid a trap that is still not perceived by the American civilian or military establishments. Failing to recognize a legitimate opponent with whom the political business of either starting or ending a war can be transacted, the Bush administration has entered into a war with an opponent whose victory or defeat cannot be recognized.
The recent attempts to construct an opponent who could do this have been laughable. (See Sec. Rumsfeld's recent comments.) Likewise, the utter failure to make more than the gesture (almost immediately disavowed) of installing a puppet government has also been a bitter comedy.
The international recognition of the occupation forces' control of Iraqi oil, as recently ratified by the United Nations, does not impinge in the least on the question of Iraqi recognition of a legitimate national authority. The recent decision on the part of occupation military commanders to halt local elections and to indefinitely postpone moves toward self-government has underscored the absence of a legitimate national authority and increased Iraqi grievances.
Legitimacy of government is absolutely crucial. Yet the Bush administration is not just "tone deaf" in this regard, it is completely insensible. And so the "Battle of Iraq" - as Secretary Rumsfeld has termed it - is in actuality a war that the United States cannot win, cannot withdraw from and cannot be seen to lose.:
- Cannot win without Iraqi recognition of the legitimacy of the outcome. The installation of a puppet government could only succeed to the extent it would gain the consent of a sizable plurality of Iraqis. All the information to date indicates that this will not happen.
- Cannot withdraw from Iraq without conceding the invasion policy to be a failure. If Bush withdraws from Iraq before the 2004 election, he will lose the election. On the other hand, if he stays in Iraq he may win the election -- as Nixon won the 1972 election by broadening the war in Vietnam after being elected in 1968 on a promise to end it.
- Cannot be seen to lose the war in Iraq because the prestige of the United States is more valuable than its credibility abroad or its legitimacy at home (as demonstrated by the events of the last year.)
The dilemma is already causing contortions of logic. Despite the recent attack near Basra that killed six British soldiers when the Shiite villages rioted in response to what they saw as the British violation of an agreement involving patrolling and sufficient evidence from throughout Iraq that many of the attacks on occupation forces are driven by a wide spectrum of resistance, Rumsfeld briefed a group of Senators in closed session that Baathists and "criminals" were at the heart of the resistance. In fact, the situation is far more complex than the Secretary is willing or able to admit. This is delusional, but the delusion is better than the reality for someone in Rumsfeld's position.
In the meantime, we can all rejoice that we have liberated Iraq and brought freedom to Baghdad.
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