Invading Iraq

This chapter evaluates the positions taken and the arguments made by observers of Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the decade-long interval between the end of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom (the US invasion of Iraq) in 2003. It focuses on the clash of views between those who believed that Hussein's Iraq could not be contained at a reasonable cost as long as Saddam himself remained on the scene (containment pessimists), and those who believed that containment was both feasible and sustainable, because the great disparity in resources between the United States and Iraq meant that the United States could pressure Iraq for years to come, if need be, without resorting to drastic methods, such as withdrawal or a resort to open warfare (containment optimists). To buttress their case, containment pessimists argued that containment could not be counted on to last indefinitely because of the asymmetry between what was at stake for Saddam and his regime, and for the United States and its allies, in the years after Iraq's defeat in the first Persian Gulf War (1990–91). For Saddam Hussein and the rest of his repressive apparatus, the stakes were nothing less than survival. Optimists, on the other hand, conceded that containment was not perfect, but in their view perfection was not needed to bring down Saddam and his regime.

Containing Iran

This chapter details how, like Colonel Qaddafi's Libya and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran under clerical rule was widely thought to be a difficult target for a strategy based on containment. With every year that passed, Iran seemed to draw closer to becoming a nuclear power and therefore harder to deter and to contain, or so the conventional wisdom proclaimed. The chapter considers the political–military rivalry between the United States and Iran between 1991 (the first Persian Gulf War) and 2016 (when Iran accepted strict limits on its use of the nuclear fuel cycle to produce fissionable materials). If containment pessimists are correct about Iran being undeterrable and uncontainable, then many of the events recounted in the chapter probably should not have occurred. But they did occur, which suggests that a closer look at the historical record will likely reveal some additional interesting twists and turns.

Dual Containment of Iraq and Iran

This chapter investigates the dual containment of Iraq and Iran. During their heydays, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were both widely believed to be difficult targets for a containment policy, even one designed and implemented by a superpower like the United States. Dual containment of Iraq and Iran during the 1980s was a case in which multiple US administrations did not want either side to emerge victorious. While the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, and even the European Community states likely preferred this outcome too, none of them had the strength and the willpower needed to bring this outcome to fruition. Only the United States could reasonably aspire to bring about this outcome, because of the enormous resources that were at its disposal.

Preventive War and Containment

This chapter discusses the Bush Doctrine, which proved to be very controversial, not only in the United States but also among America's allies and friends worldwide. In the United States, the Bush Doctrine was criticized by Democrats in Congress as a violation of traditional American norms, which called for responding firmly to provocations but not for striking the first blow. Within the Atlantic Alliance, the Bush Doctrine was likewise attacked — most prominently by the French and German governments — as reckless and provocative. The chapter recasts the Bush Doctrine as a theory of victory, that is, a coherent strategic view that tells a state how best to transform the scarce resources available to it into useful military assets, and how to employ those assets in conflicts with other states or nonstate actors. It then compares and contrasts these prescriptions derived from the Bush Doctrine with an alternative theory of victory — namely, one based on containment and deterrence.

Containment Reappraised

This chapter reviews the relative merits of the two theories of victory — containment and the Bush Doctrine — based on evidence drawn from the five case studies and the Cold War too. The case studies covered in the earlier chapters suggest that deterrence has become very much a one-way street. When a superpower like the United States confronts a regional power like Libya, Iraq, or Iran, the superpower can make very credible threats to take military action against the regional power, but not vice versa. Containment, as practiced by the United States during the Cold War, often tried to slow the pace of events in order to reduce the risk of being swept up into an unwanted conflict spiral referred to as the Sarajevo Syndrome. The goal of the policy was to lessen the risk of repeating the errors that preceded the outbreak of the First World War.

Containing Qaddafi’s Libya

This chapter examines the case of containing Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya. Qaddafi had virtually unchallengeable access to Libya's oil wealth, which he used to finance his various plots and schemes. Qaddafi was also known to be greatly resentful of the United States, in no small part because America — with its high-tech military, its global reach, its endlessly inventive economy — stood for everything that he hoped the Arab world, or at least Libya, might someday become. There were also terrorist gangs and splinter groups ready to do the bidding of an ambitious dictator who sought to inflict harm on the United States and the American people. Qaddafi, in other words, posed a clear and present danger. He had the means, he had a motive, and he had multiple opportunities that he could exploit should he decide to strike at the United States. But while hindsight suggests that Colonel Qaddafi's Libya should have posed a demanding challenge for the containment policy of the United States, for the most part it did not, and it is instructive to explore the reasons why.

Containing Iraq

This chapter looks at Iraq's Saddam Hussein as a very useful case study of whether, when, and why containment works, and when it does not. This is particularly true for the interval between the first and second Persian Gulf wars (1991–2003). During that interval, Saddam refused repeated demands by the United States and other states that he should abandon his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and his aspirations for regional hegemony. US officials realized that the effort that the United States had expended during the run-up to the start of the first Gulf War likely would not be enough to impress a brute like Saddam, and they resolved to do better the second time around. The US effort to contain Saddam Hussein faltered in 1990–91, just before Iraq invaded Kuwait. From 1991 until the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, the United States was able to use the vast range of capabilities at its disposal to thwart Saddam's schemes.