geopolitics of iraqi war: all articles

Iraq's occupiers should learn from its colonial past (archive)

The damning findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report in Washington on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction highlight larger political failures, says Charles Peña.

American leaders invaded Iraq high on national vainglory and moral absolutism, says Marcus Raskin of the Institute for Policy Studies. United States forces there will never gain legitimacy. They should leave as soon as possible and allow Iraqis to find what America itself needs: a new relationship with the world.

By launching a “war on terror” after 11 September 2001, America made a tragic mistake, says George Soros. The country must now learn a different lesson: fighting terror by creating more innocent victims perpetuates the cycle of violence, creates a permanent state of war, and corrodes the open society that wages it.

America gave “the terrorists” their victory in Iraq by invading. It must now leave, on its own terms, says the Cato Institute’s Charles Peña, as he judges the occupation against one overriding concern: the security of Americans in their own homeland.

The Iraq war is only one aspect of a “greater west Asian crisis” that carries the extreme danger of further, terrible violence. Fred Halliday joins knowledge, insight, empathy and anger to assess the current “winners” and “losers” and insist on the central importance of listening to the Iraqi people.

When citizens’ fundamental freedoms are made a casualty of sweeping political objectives, the damage is to democracy itself. The experienced British lawyer Geoffrey Bindman draws a lesson from those imprisoned without trial in Tony Blair’s backyard – Belmarsh prison.

What lies behind the revolt of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shi’a followers? Does it signal the end of American rule in Iraq? Laura Sandys sees parallels and portents in an earlier period of colonial rule.

Could the insurgency of the radical Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fuse with the Sunni rebellion to ignite Iraqi nationalism against the occupiers?

One year on from the Iraq war, an experienced researcher of military conflict and peacemaking asks: was there an alternative, what can be done now, and what are the lessons of Iraq for conflict prevention and peace-building worldwide?

What kind of justice does the world owe the former Iraqi dictator?

Japan is learning a new geopolitics. Its sense of identity, capacity, and relation to the world is shifting amidst great economic, military and regional pressures. But what kind of foreign policy model will Japan choose? One of the country’s foremost analysts explores the possible answers to a reopened question.

What political choices should the United States now make in Iraq? Christopher Hitchens, Mark Danner, Samantha Power and David Frum debated recently in front of a packed New York audience. James Westcott was there.

The arrest of the Iraqi dictator presents a huge opportunity to the country’s new political figures. Can they seize it?

Amid terrorist carnage, military blunders and CIA panic, Mary Kaldor finds hope for a democratic future in the creative social energies of ordinary Iraqis. Will its possibilities be crushed by America’s vaulting strategic ambition and Britain’s disdainful pragmatism? The US presidential election in 2004 may help decide.

Before agreeing to any military involvement in Iraqi peacekeeping, the United Nations and its member states should recall the bitter experience of the disastrous United States/UN operations in Somalia a decade ago.

Why has the Japanese government decided to send armed forces to Iraq to assist in its economic recovery? A leading scholar of Japanese politics places the decision within the context of the country’s search for a self-defined global role over the past generation.

The Iraq Reconstruction Assessment Mission, an independent team of experts commissioned by the Pentagon, recently published a report of their ten-day Iraqi tour. After presenting evidence to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the authors draw on their report to challenge the Coalition’s masters of war to a gargantuan effort of peacemaking and society-building.

The transition from war to post-war in Iraq is proving more painful and bloody than coalition leaders expected. US and British troops on the ground are forced to adapt quickly from the role of war-fighters to peace-keepers, while strategic planners confront the failures and lacunae of pre-war projections. If lives are to be saved and the reconstruction of Iraqi society is to succeed, an urgent rethinking is needed.

Finland’s anti-war prime minister, Anneli Jäätteenmäki, was forced to resign over her conduct in relation to a leaked memo on Iraq. As questions to American and British leaders intensify over their own record in the prelude to war, does Finland’s ‘Iraqgate’ reveal a political culture where consistency between words and actions still matters?