Abstract
“War is the province of chance. In no other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. It increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events.”1 Karl von Clausewitz’s warning is still fitting. War must never be initiated before its makers examine thoroughly its possible consequences. Too often, however, international leaders have instinctively favored Clausewitz’s better-know maxim, “War is a continuation of policy by other means” over the previous aphorism. The intent of this chapter is to describe the manner in which the two Bush administrations addressed this challenge—the first one when it learned that Saddam Hussein’s forces had marched into Kuwait, the second when it decided to overthrow the Iraqi leader’s regime and replace it with a democratic one.
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Notes
Karl von Clausewitz, “On the Nature of War,” in Classics of International Relations, ed. John A. Vasquez (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 295.
Quoted in James P. Pfiffner, “Presidential Policy-Making and the Gulf War,” in The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War, ed. Marcia Lynn Whicker, James P. Pfiffner and Raymond A. Moore (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 3.
Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 480.
Robert J. Spitzer, “The Conflict Between Congress and the President Over War,” in The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War, ed. Marcia Lynn Whicker, James P. Pfiffner and Raymond A. Moore (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 28.
Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 79, no. 1 (January/February 2000): 53 and 60.
See Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 3–20;
and Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 1999), ix.
See Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Ch. 2.
For a discussion of the differences between harmony, cooperation and discord, see Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 51–7.
Abraham Lowenthal, “The United States and Latin American Democracy: Learning from History,” in Exporting Democracy—The United States and Latin America: Case Studies, ed. Abraham Lowenthal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 271.
See Laurence Whitehead, “The Imposition of Democracy,” in Exporting Democracy—The United States and Latin America: Case Studies, ed. Abraham Lowenthal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 234.
See David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1989), 450 and 503.
See William R. Keylor, The Twentieth Century World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 252.
Key sections of the report appear in Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 570–1.
See Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Carlisla, PA: U. S. Army War College, February 2003).
Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “What To Do About Iraq,” in The Gulf War Reader, ed. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (New York: Random House, 1991), 245.
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© 2006 Alex Roberto Hybel
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Hybel, A.R., Kaufman, J.M. (2006). Two Very Different Wars. In: The Bush Administrations and Saddam Hussein. Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601147_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601147_5
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