Bush Bets Future on Success in Iraq
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 16, 2003; Page A01
There is debate on nearly every aspect of the crisis over Iraq -- except the idea that, for better or worse, the stakes have become very, very high.
Walter Russell Mead, a distinguished historian of American foreign policy, compared this moment to the birth of the Cold War around 1948, and before that to the Spanish-American War of 1898, which established the United States as a world power. "We're definitely in a period of major change," he said.
Mead supports the administration's policy on Iraq. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, opposes it. But she agreed on the scale: "Is this 1914?" she asked, recalling another crucial moment, when overeager leaders plunged the world into a disastrous war.
By accident or design, President Bush has allowed Iraq to become the gamble of a lifetime. Today, The Washington Post summarizes what's at stake in four areas of crucial national interest -- America's stature, Middle East politics, the war on terrorism and conditions at home.
A less than gleaming outcome in Iraq could, in the view of many experts, inflame terror, weaken our alliances, diminish the United States and collapse confidence in our economy -- which is already at its lowest point in more than a decade. Even a successful result contains risks in the eyes of those who have pondered the recurring cycle in human history in which power leads to hubris, hubris leads to overreaching, and overreaching leads to collapse. Victory could tempt the United States to overreach.
Against this, Bush has set the rubble of Sept. 11, 2001. The status quo, he reminds the world, is also fraught with risk. Success in Iraq, he has said, could pay off handsomely -- by liberating a strategically placed country from a despot, sowing modernity in the heart of the Middle East, and imposing a severe price on a state that nurtures terrorist jihads and pursues banned weapons.
Whether the United States, and the world, will be better or worse off after a war in Iraq is a matter of conjecture on which very experienced, expert people strongly disagree. Where some envision suicide terrorists with radioactive bombs, rising inflation and gasoline shortages, others picture a burst of economic enthusiasm at home and a chastening of rogue nations abroad.
But if the process toward war continues as it has been moving, and the U.S.-led coalition invades Iraq without clear support from the United Nations, there is no doubt that America, and its place in the world, will have changed. And so there is a sense in these tense days that existing rules are being broken -- or rewritten, updated, smashed or subverted. The verb you choose speaks volumes about your viewpoint.
For more than 50 years after the cataclysm of World War II, a shaky peace was maintained by forming alliances, issuing threats and slowly, patiently exerting pressure. The Cold War was an exercise in waiting. A lexicon of waiting words defined American strategy, words such as "contain," and "deter," and "erode." The United States rarely attacked.
Now, the Bush administration has announced that the old way is inadequate in the face of new threats posed by global terrorism. Peace, in the administration's view, requires risking alliances if need be, escalating beyond threats sometimes, removing some enemies who might once have been contained. To the slow work of the vise, Bush is adding the sharp blow of the hammer.
Until it falls, no one can say precisely how much the hammer will smash.
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