Five years after the invasion of Iraq, media attention has concentrated on its spiraling cost. Although Stiglitz and Blimes’ calculation is taken to be on the high side ($12bn per month), it is still regarded as reasonable – this new emphasis on cost may become more politically salient in the context of the coming economic recession.

There are similarly widely differing estimates of deaths as there are of costs (ranging from 50,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis killed). No consensus on the real cost in cash or lives is likely for some time, if ever, because of the politicization of the subject.

Matters, after a period of improvement, have not stabilized to the point where success can be easily claimed. For example, the number of Iraqi refugees seeking asylum in industrialized countries has almost doubled to 45,200 in 2007, reversing the trend in the previous five years [UNHCR].

Reporters visiting Iraq have been returning with reports that indicate continued anarchy and a ‘failed state’ by most definitions. The Financial Times today picked up heavily on the transition of Iraq from unitary state in 2003 to its still being on the ‘brink of a failed state’.

Its main theme (and ours today) is that US power and prestige has been seriously damaged by the adventure (especially in other regions like East Asia and Latin America). It also notes that the US cannot easily withdraw from Iraq without handing more power and prestige to Iran and to those insurgencies whose raison d’etre is anti-imperialism [Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda].

Just how bad are things for America in the Spring of 2008 because of decisions taken in 2003?

The ‘Quagmire’

The US seems to be ‘quagmired’. Its troops operate at near-full capacity in policing Iraq. It is straining. Its potential for the further exercise of its power is increasingly restricted to its potential for air force interventions. Its allies are unwilling to follow it into any new trenches.

American resources look to be drained for a long time to come if it has to retain 100,000 or more troops in Iraq simply to stop it slipping back into anarchy. Analysts also believe that any reassertion of American ‘strategic authority’ globally will be a long haul (not helped in our view by the current economic correction).

Washington over-played its superpower hand in 2003. In the event, it was not able to mobilize either its own population or its allies for the ‘total war’ mentality required to roll-back insurgency and gain permanent high ground against the three key powers challenging its authority in the twenty-first century – most obviously Iran, but also Russia and China. It gambled and it lost.

It is now an Emperor whose nakedness is too obvious to the global townsfolk and its formal authority has shrunk to encompass only those countries who are self-consciously Western (including, of course, geographically Eastern countries such as Japan and Australia).

Even within the West, the invasion has created a degree of resentment of US hegemony that may still be the view of a minority but which is nevertheless a significant minority that has the effect of blocking any attempt to use power in ways that might have been normal at any time before 9/11.

Conservative elites have tried to help in asserting a united Western stance but their room for manoeuvre in delivering hard power support, whether in Germany, France, Canada or Japan, is limited by domestic political resistance - and now in the UK as well.

Others, semi-detached Western allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and India, have found their independent voices, requiring more respect from the rest of the West for their own national interests.

Cynicism about the US and its motives are more prevalent than before 2003. It sounds obvious but the failure to mobilize domestic populations en masse in the war against terrorism owes a lot to distrust, certainly in both the US and UK.

Either these governments were stupid over their assessment of Iraq's WMD and terrorist associations or they were manipulative and dishonest, one or the other. This collapse in trust can only grow if the handling of the current economic crisis degenerates into a similar matter of competence or honesty.

Of course, there remain ‘true believers’ in the rightness of the war and that Saddam was planning WMD development and to link up with terrorism (especially to destroy Israel). This is a significant minority but the point here is not that some people believe this but that only some do.

The West is divided and not united. It cannot engage in ‘total war’ strategies without creating unacceptable levels of internal civil dissent and undermining its own soft power base and this weakening of Western unity is a direct result of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Iraq As a Better Place

The only justification for the war – the betterment of conditions for the Iraqi people – is similarly not applicable by any objective standards outside Iraqi Kurdistan and within some but not all elements of the Iraqi middle class.

New opportunities for political expression by those pockets of radical Shia resistance to Baathism that were most oppressed by the dictatorship may be added to the balance on the side of betterment. These are not trivial improvements but they do not reflect the experience of the majority.

On paper, the Iraqi economy is ‘booming’ with a growth rate expected to be 7% in 2008 [IMF]. The Kurdistan Regional Government is a particular hotspot of growth, attempting to steer itself away from violence elsewhere and any intensification of the PKK/Turkish conflict.

Iraqi revenue from oil exports is, of course, high because the price has moved from $30 to $106 over the five years. At last, capital is being accumulated even if much of it gets diverted into security and political ‘reconciliation’.

But while the Iraqi economy is getting stronger, this is not yet the same as saying that Iraq has become a strong state again. It remains riddled with corruption and sectarianism.

The centrifugelism that was briefly encouraged by some intellectuals in Washington last year is only restrained by the moderation and common sense of the current dominant elements within the three main ethnic communities.

The benefits of economic growth are only slowly getting to the people. Women in some areas are already complaining that the new state is far less liberal than the old.

Some Sunni and even some middle class Shia may silently remember aspects of Baathist rule with affection – especially the universal welfare state that existed before the fascistic territorial aggression of Saddam Hussein took hold.

In fact, it was Saddam Hussein himself (not the West) who destroyed his own welfare state and undermined his own nation, but the criminality of UN sanctions in their effect on the children of Iraq and on the degrading of its infrastructure played their part.

The war itself, with its destruction not only of life but of heritage of global importance, and the replacement of a brutal police state with often equally brutal and certainly corrupt and lawless anarcho-warlordism and sectarianism is not an impressive record for the West. History may judge the West and Iraqi Baathism equally harshly.

The Strategic Background

This may sound like an excessively negative assessment. Iraq is probably slowly moving towards a unitary quasi-democratic state but the problem for Washington (and London and Brussels and Berlin) is that it cannot get there without continuing to drain US and UK funds.

The US economy is in serious trouble. It – and its two chief allies, the UK and France who have serious fiscal problems of their own - will no longer have the resources to do more than ‘sticking plaster’ its regional alliances to try to contain the West's alleged enemies. The rise of Germany as a new regional player is a sign of Atlantic weakness rather than Western strength.

There is a debt of honour to supply support to the Iraqi people (recognized as such by military interests) but we should not underestimate the political force of two separate pools of resentment – within the West that resources are being wasted on a mistake as homes are repossessed and in Iraq that freedom and recovery has come at such cost.

The one thing that may be said – perhaps the only strategic reason for the invasion – is that Iraq is ‘no longer a threat to its neighbours’. Even this statement is politically double-edged.

Said too loudly, it can be interpreted in populist terms as sending American boys and girls to defend the oil interests of friends of the White House (and there is this undercurrent in American political life), while it has also removed a ‘bulwark’ against Iran which has replaced the Soviet Union as America’s ‘necessary enemy’ (in lieu of China).

Iraqi resentments are now likely to express themselves within the context of a struggle for influence of European Cold War proportions between Iran and US/Saudi Arabia, creating decades of subversive foreign influence and weakness.

The US and Iran will be struggling within Iraqi politics for generations to try to squeeze out the Western military presence (Iran) or ensure that Iraqi oil production flows easily and relatively cheaply westwards (US).

This weakness may be a good thing from a neighbor perspective but it is probably a waste of Iraqi resources and opportunities for self-determination - and a perpetual temptation for military opportunism by neighbours, as we have seen in the Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan ... and it may one day lead to a revival of secular Baathism.

Unintended Consequences - The Return to Realism

Air power is now a blunt instrument that merely creates the conditions for more asymmetrical warfare elsewhere. There is no pool of Western troops available to hold down any country without offering levels of state terror that would be unacceptable to populations back at home.

There are signs, certainly in Afghanistan, that Allied air power, without a formal declaration of war against an identifiable territorial enemy, is degenerating into surveillance and occasional (and damaging in PR terms) punishment operations for insurgent attacks out of territory, a model initiated by the cruise missile attacks of 1998 after the Nairobi bombings.

One unintended effect of the Iraq War is to demonstrate that American technological superiority is not quite so frightening as we all thought. NATO can scarcely cope with Afghanistan and Kosovo, let alone mount global Western operations in Africa or against an aggressive Iran.

American air power in regional contexts is no more effective than nuclear power in a global context – its use is only the beginning of an operation and America seems unable to follow through because it does not have the boots and the popular support to act unless attacked directly.

It always needs its Pearl Harbour or its 9/11 to unleash its huge monopoly of truly global violence and have any chance of national or allied support.

Iraq has also kicked back against American power in two other respects. 

First, it has played its small part in the high oil price that accumulates capital amongst some of the US’ main challengers and which has forced the US to return to pre-2001 tactics of asking Gulf allies to do its soft power dirty work (notably in the highly effective programme of suborning Sunni militia in Iraq).

This has meant compromises in policy. The ensuing battle at the street level between Al-Qaeda and Sunni conservative money has had the unfortunate effect of strengthening the conflict between the Sunnis in general and the Shia in particular.

This, in turn, enhances Iranian influence as defender of the Shia and creates even more uncertainty within those smaller Gulf states with substantial Shia minorities. The removal of a secular non-sectarian player between Iran and Saudi Arabia has not been helpful to regional stability in this respect.

Second, far from remaking the Middle East along democratic lines, a high point of democratization passed when the fear of the US passed in 2005/2006. Events in Kuwait and Pakistan have demonstrated the dangers of democracy to ruling elites rather than encouraged them to go further down this line, although some of the smaller Gulf states continue their interest in reform.

As it becomes clear that democracy aids Islamic conservatism (as in Turkey or Iran) or is liable to increase, relatively, Shia influence (in Iraq and the Gulf), then enthusiasm lessens in some Western circles too.

The traditional realist alliance of Washington with dynasts and quasi-dictators, after a brief surge of idealism, has largely been re-established because of the contingencies of war.

Reform, sincerely intended by the US, is now played as a long game that is dependent on ‘stability’ which means the ending of insurgent threats to existing allies as a pre-condition for change.

Liberals are increasingly sidelined or rather liberalism is now disassociated from democracy. There are few signs that this will change, short of internal revolution, in the coming years.

Tough American Decisions in 2009

Perhaps it is the effects of the Iraq involvement on America that are most interesting. The next President is going to have to decide just how important it is to keep paying for a mistake and compare this with the costs of not doing so.

The probable decision – certainly by McCain and Clinton and probably Obama if push comes to shove – is to hang on in there with all the dangers of perpetual regional crisis that such a decision involves.

The only candidate who may ‘scuttle’ is Obama and, if he leaves the decision too late or handles it badly, he will create a new and different crisis. If the US scuttles, whether for reasons of cost or policy, it is, in effect, saying that it cannot sustain its ‘imperium’ for the moment.

It will also be saying that its economic situation requires it to lick its wounds, that its frightened front-line allies cannot rely upon it and that the American people have given up on enforcing universal values except as rhetoric.

Radical liberal anger will turn in on itself, in Europe as much as in the US, and vulnerable allies will try to hedge their bets with other regional powers.

This creates an almost obligatory effort by rivals – Iran, Russia, China, Latin American Bolivarism – to test the limits of American withdrawal. It undermines anti-Russian resistance in Europe, tempts the testing of the Israeli strategic guarantee and enhances the value of Chinese influence in Africa.

This, then, is the real legacy of Iraq – a choice between a ‘quagmire’ draining American resources and creating resentment and splits within the West or a decade of crises as the US recovers and redefines the imperial frontiers of the West. This is no easy choice for the new American President 

Our view is that the second is dangerous but is probably less dangerous than the first but that it would require statesmanlike qualities from an untested President, one who may have the right ideas but who has no track record of delivery and seems surrounded by confused and confusing foreign policy advisers with no clear sense of direction.

The rest of the West waits nervously for a decision that could confirm its own declining geo-strategic status or which could be the first stage in its recovery.

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