Stumbling into war

Very good piece from James P.Rubin, written in Sept '03 about how the world diplomatic events unfolded prior to the Iraq war. It nicely put things back in their context and give you the big picture about how things were interconnected. A so called diplomatic postmortem.

James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.


My conclusions after reading this are:

• No country should attack another one without the UN security council approval. Unless you are under attack.
• Failing to comply to the above, you undermine world opinion's support for your cause and badly damage your reputation for the future.
• There was still a peaceful way of containing Saddam when the USA decided to attack in 2003. The UN inspections were making progress and were containing Saddam's plan to create more weapons.
• Americans changed arguments several times to justify the invasion (WMDs, link between Iraq and Al Qaida, spreading democracy, ...) which led many to believe that they wanted to invade, no matter what and reinforced the idea that the diplomacy was there to justify the military movements (not the other way around).
  

But don't take my words for it, go and read it yourself. It is a bit long, but worth it.


Posted in: _IraqWar , _Geopolitics