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1. The Challenges of the Middle East

Author:
Haviland Smith
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
It is clear that there are powerful people both in the United States and in Iran who would like to force a real confrontation between our two countries. What is completely unclear is whether or not those hawks on both sides want a modified Cold War type confrontation, built perhaps on cyber warfare, or an all-out military confrontation. What this situation, with all its incredibly profound dangers and possible disastrous outcomes, has done is once again prompt the question, “what is the United States doing in the Middle East and what precisely are our goals there?”
Topic:
Cold War, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, Minorities, and Ethnicity
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and United States of America

2. Plan Colombia: A Retrospective

Author:
Michael Shifter
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
At first glance, perhaps the most notable feature of Plan Colombia has been its longevity. Given the current divisiveness in Washington, the bipartisan support it has received across three administrations now seems remarkable. After 12 years, the plan is gradually winding down, but the U.S. allocated more than $300 million under the program in 2012 alone. Although the Plan has evolved considerably since it was approved by the U.S. Congress in July 2000, it has become shorthand for wide-ranging U.S. cooperation with Colombia to assist that country in combating drugs, guerrilla violence, and related institutional and social problems. All told, the U.S. has spent nearly $8 billion on the initiative—more than anywhere outside of the Middle East, and Iraq and Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. Although the effort gave priority to counter-narcotics operations—and specifically the eradication of coca in southern Colombia—from the outset it also encompassed assistance for the judiciary and economic development.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Washington, and Middle East

3. The UN Security Council and Iraq

Author:
David M. Malone and Poorvi Chitalkar
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The UN Security Council, largely handicapped by the Cold War until the late 1980s, has become considerably more proactive over the last twenty-five years. The results are mixed. One constant for the Council since 1980 is that it has been at grips with conflicts involving Iraq — conflicts with Iraq's neighbours and also internal strife prior to and particularly since 2003. Every instrument at the Council's disposal, including all the coercive ones, have been invoked at one time or another against authorities in Iraq or to assist them. After a promising beginning in helping to end the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), and in mandating the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which Baghdad had sought to annex in 1990, the Council's silent tolerance of intrusive international humanitarian activities in Iraq's Kurdish provinces as of 1991 was ground-breaking. Nevertheless, the Council's post-war strategy for Iraq outlined in Resolution 687 of 1991 wound up over-reaching, involved serious unintended consequences arising from an overzealous sanctions regime (and a related humanitarian program the UN did not possess the administrative machinery to oversee effectively), and eventually sundered relations among the Permanent Five (P-5) members of the Council through a series of fractious episodes from 1988 to 2003. This working paper outlines a three-decade span of Security Council resolutions, actions and impasses on Iraq, investigating closely the period of diplomatic confrontation in 2002–2003 culminating in unilateral military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power by the US, the UK and a very few others without a mandate from the Council to do so. The UN was subsequently mostly side-lined in and on Iraq. The paper considers damage to perceptions of the Council legitimacy stemming from the events of 2002–2003 and assesses its evolving approach to international security in Iraq and beyond since then.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, Humanitarian Aid, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Iraq

4. An Interview with Dennis Blair

Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
What lessons have you personally drawn from the decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Blair: The decade of war is really two decades of war–from the time the Cold War ended in about 1989 through the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the involvement of the United States in a series of individual military actions. What I've learned is that we need to do a better job thinking these conflicts all the way through before we engage in them. Because it turns out that we are relearning an old lesson, which is the use of military force is only a part of improving a situation and protecting American interests in a particular country or region. Too often, we think that a military victory itself will cause the desired result. In fact many other factors come in to play; economic development, social development, government improvement. These are not accomplished by the U.S. alone, and certainly not by American military force alone, but often with allies and other partners, and with other civilian capabilities. I think we have not thought them through carefully as to the end state that we are trying to achieve. Next we need to be realistic about the resources that are required; military, civil, and other. I'm afraid these are old lessons that need to be relearned, not new lessons, but they certainly have been borne out as some of the shortcomings of the interventions we have made in recent years. I would add, by the way, that I am not one who says our military interventions since 1989 have all been disasters. I think on the whole they have made the world a better place; bad people who were around then aren't around now, from Manuel Noriega to Saddam Hussein through Slobodan Milosevic and others; so it is not that our military interventions have been wasted. On the contrary–but we need to make sure that we get the maximum possible benefit from them and intervene in a smart way.
Topic:
Cold War and Government
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

5. The Privatisation of Security in Failing States: A Quantitative Assessment

Author:
Željko Branović
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
Failing and collapsed states are a common marketplace for the private military industry, which has grown significantly in size and scope over the last decade. Today the private sector supplies a broad spectrum of military and security services to governments facing a lack of territorial control and law enforcement capacities. These services range from combat support to training for military and policing units, logistics and the protection of individuals and property. Yet a quantifiable picture of the extent to which these private security services are being used by failing or weak governments and the implications this use might have for the security environment has not been properly painted.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, and United Nations

6. Civilianising warfare: ways of war and peace in modern counterinsurgency

Author:
Colleen Bell
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article examines the emergence of counterinsurgency doctrine in Coalition interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While counterinsurgency is complimentary to the tenets forwarded by its classical military predecessors in several respects, the article shows that it is also more than a refashioning of conventional military practice. Counterinsurgency is intimately tied to institutional practices that shape global liberal governance. It can be traced to dominant trends in international humanitarian, development and peace interventionism since the end of the Cold War and it deepens the links between the social development of war-affected populations and the politics of international security. Rather than simply a shift in military practice, counterinsurgency is distinguished by its investment in civilian modes of warfare. Counterinsurgency retells the narrative of intervention as part of the evolution of political and economic liberalisation, marking a passage from interventionary force to post-interventionary governance. Modern counterinsurgency, it is concluded, exposes the widening indistinction between contemporary modes of peace and those of war in international relations.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, Economics, War, Counterinsurgency, and Governance
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Iraq

7. Whither the Arab Spring? 1989 or 1848?

Author:
Robert Springborg
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The dramatic thawing of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s accompanied by the rapid democratisation of Eastern Europe served as inspiration and model for political transitions in other settings. Now the Arab world, the securitisation of which has kept it frozen in what amounts to a regional cold war long after the global prototype ended, may be entering its springtime of political freedom. Tunisia's 'Jasmine' and Egypt's 'Midan al Tahrir' Revolutions chased established autocrats from power, thus making possible new domestic political orders and substantial reorientations of foreign policies. Imitative uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria have thus far resulted in widespread violence, regime retrenchments and even foreign interventions, although prospects do remain for more positive outcomes. Intermittent demonstrations in various other Arab countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, have typically been met with limited political reforms and promises of more to come. So the region is definitely in political ferment, but whether that presages transitions to democracy à la Eastern Europe in 1989, or revanchist reconsolidations reminiscent of those that overwhelmed the 1848 liberal nationalist movements in Western Europe, remains to be seen.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman

8. The Wisdom of Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward

Author:
Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States can no longer afford a world-spanning foreign policy. Retrenchment -- cutting military spending, redefining foreign priorities, and shifting more of the defense burden to allies -- is the only sensible course. Luckily, that does not have to spell instability abroad. History shows that pausing to recharge national batteries can renew a dominant power's international legitimacy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, and Cold War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Washington

9. Manufacturing Insecurity

Author:
William Pfaff
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States has built a worldwide system of more than 1,000 military bases, stations, and outposts -- a system designed to enhance U.S. national security. It has actually done the opposite, provoking conflict and creating insecurity.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Iraq

10. Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War

Author:
David A. Lake
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The Iraq war has been one of the most significant events in world politics since the end of the Cold War. One of the first preventive wars in history, it cost trillions of dollars, resulted in more than 4,500 U.S. and coalition casualties (to date), caused enormous suffering in Iraq, and may have spurred greater anti-Americanism in the Middle East even while reducing potential threats to the United States and its allies. Yet, despite its profound importance, the causes of the war have received little sustained analysis from scholars of international relations. Al-though there have been many descriptions of the lead-up to the war, the fighting, and the occupation, these largely journalistic accounts explain how but not why the war occurred.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and America

11. Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy

Author:
Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, scholars and foreign policy analysts have debated the type of world order that the United States should strive to create—a hegemonic system, a multilateral institutional system, or a great power concert. Initially, a major issue was whether attempts to maintain U.S. primacy would stimulate counter - balancing from other states. But since the 2003 Iraq War, a new consideration has emerged—how to persuade other states to cooperate with U.S. global governance. States that do not oppose efforts by the United States to maintain stability may nonetheless decline to follow its leadership. This is a matter for concern because although the United States can act alone, it cannot succeed on such issues as controlling terrorism, curbing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), rebuilding failed states, or maintaining economic stability without help from other states.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Iraq

12. Whither The Bush Doctrine? Out of sync: Bush's expanded national security state and the war on terror

Author:
Robert G Patman
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The US national security state was fashioned at the beginning of the Cold War to contain the global threat of the rival superpower, the Soviet Union. However, this security framework did not wither away with the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR. The events of September 11 starkly exposed the limitations of a state-centric approach to international security in a globalizing world. But the Bush administration falsely assumed that the traumatic events of 9/11 came out of a clear blue sky, and that a rejuvenated national security state would eventually overwhelm the 'new' threat of terrorism. The dangers of persisting in this direction were shown by the US-led invasion of Iraq. Far from closing the gap between the US approach to security and the operation environment of a post-Cold War world, Bush's war on terror undermined the international reputation of the US and presented the American taxpayer with a huge and probably unsustainable burden. All this highlighted the need for a more multilateral direction in US security policy in the post-Bush era. Such an approach would not only correspond better to the realities of today's interconnected world, but also serve as a buffer against the extension of the power of government that had been witnessed in America during the Bush years.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and Soviet Union

13. Close Encounters of a Sovereign Kind

Author:
Dino Kritsiotis
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article considers the prominence that threats of force have had in international political life since the end of the Cold War, and how we tend to overlook these threats in favour of the actual uses of force. Security Council Resolution 678 of November 1990 is one such example. Emblematic of the rule of law and its New World Order, it is often invoked for the 'authorisation' it gave to Member States of the United Nations 'co-operating with the Government of Kuwait ... to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area' - but this provision was made contingent upon whether 'Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements [previous] resolutions'. We examine the range of circumstances in which threats of force have arisen and find that these go beyond the archetypal 'close encounter' between states - such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the 'threats of force' directed against Iraq prior to Operation Desert Fox (1998) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). Making use of the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice from its Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion (1996), we advance the idea of a prohibition of the application of force, and consider the logistics of its operation in state practice; first, in the recent relations between the United States and Iran and, then, through a modern reprise of the facts of the Corfu Channel Case of April 1949. We allude to the importance of the legislative background and purpose behind this prohibition, constantly reflecting upon the intricacies of state relations in which this provision of the United Nations Charter seeks to make its mark.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, Government, and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Kuwait

14. Containing Iran?: Avoiding a Two-Dimensional Strategy in a Four-Dimensional Region

Author:
Dalia Dassa Kaye and Frederic M. Wehrey
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
One of the most significant effects of the Iraq war is Iran's seemingly unprecedented influence and freedom of action in regional affairs, presenting new strategic challenges for the United States and its regional allies. Although Middle Eastern governments and the United States are in general agreement about diagnosing Tehran's activism as the war's most alarming consequence, they disagree on how to respond. The conventional U.S. view suggests that a new Arab consensus has been prompted to neutralize and counter Tehran's rising influence across the region in Gaza, the Gulf, Iraq, and Lebanon. Parallels to Cold War containment are clear. Indeed, whether consciously or unwittingly, U.S. policy has been replicating features of the Cold War model by trying to build a ''moderate'' Sunni Arab front to bolster U.S. efforts to counter Iranian influence. Despite signals that the Obama administration intends to expand U.S. engagement with Iran, the foundations of containment are deeply rooted and engender bipartisan backing from Congress. Even if the Obama administration desires to shift U.S. policy toward Iran, containment policies will be difficult to overturn quickly; if engagement with Iran fails, reliance on containment will only increase.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Tehran, Arabia, Gaza, and Lebanon

15. The Divide Over European Security

Author:
C.D. Van Aller
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
The war in Iraq continues to divide the Western democracies, nations once optimistic that the post-Cold War environment might lead to a more secure world. Even if solutions proved difficult to achieve, many hoped that these societies would share common viewpoints on threats to peace. Yet there have been contrasting security perspectives that have been highlighted by the conflict in Iraq, such as that of former European Union High Commissioner for Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, who stated in 2003 that “Europe is not at war.” One of the main cleavages is between Europe and the United States generally, with the former considering that the U.S. has increasingly been too dedicated to the unilateral use of force, views held by both elites and the general public in Europe. Even before the Bush Administration, Samuel Huntington de-scribed U.S. foreign policy as one of “world unilateralism,” with a single-minded devotion to its own interests while minimizing those of other countries. Since the Iraq war, Harold Pinter has stated, the U.S. “has become a fully-fledged, award-winning, gold-plated monster. It has effectively declared war on the world....” Many people in Western Europe have some sympathy with this view, if not its hyperbolic quality, and the war in Iraq appears to have amplified long-held convictions about the world's sole remaining superpower.
Topic:
Security and Cold War
Political Geography:
Iraq and Europe

16. Strategy, National Interests, and Means to an End

Author:
Stephen D. Sklenka
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the interrelationship among national interests, stated ends, means to achieve those ends, and the strategies required to tie all of them together into a cohesive and effective vision for the commitment of U.S. forces. The introduction addresses the current U.S. debate regarding proposed actions in the Iraq War and postulates that the lack of true strategic discussion, particularly by our national leadership who instead prefer to focus on far less appropriate discussions such as tactics and techniques, inhibits the development of a comprehensive and effective overarching vision and ultimately is to blame for the setbacks that the U.S.-led coalition has experienced in Iraq. This lack of strategic foresight, however, is not surprising and has become endemic to American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The fact that so much of U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy involves interventions merely exacerbates the difficulties a lack of strategic foresight engenders. The U.S. inability—or unwillingness—to connect strategic ends and appropriate means to accomplish clearly defined goals has occurred so often over the past 15 years that one could make a credible argument that it has become a disturbing and pervasive characteristic of the modern American way of war.
Topic:
Cold War, Development, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

17. The Rapprochement Between Turkey and the EU: The Transformation Process in the Strategic Perceptions from the 1999 Helsinki Summit to the 2003 Iraq War

Author:
Ramazan Gözen
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article analyses the rapprochement process between Turkey and the EU which has been developing since the 1999 Helsinki Summit and especially in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq. As a result of differing perceptions of Turkey and the EU in the post Cold War, the Turkey-EU membership process had faced a deep "structural" crisis. However, after some important changes in the years from 1999-2003, Turkey and the EU rediscovered, and approached eachother in such a way that it is incomperable with the past. The basic character of this rapprochement is the strategic transformation in perceptions.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, and Turkey

18. The Black Sea Basin: A New Axis in Global Maritime Security

Author:
Orhan Babaoglu
Publication Date:
08-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
The Black Sea Naval Cooperation Task Group (BLACKSEAFOR), a regional maritime security initiative started by Turkey in 2001, was activated August 14-27. With world attention devoted to Iraq and the Middle East, important developments in the nearby Black Sea region involving energy politics, frozen conflicts, and new regional security initiatives have gone mostly unnoticed. The Black Sea is a stable but complex basin with vast economic resources and strategic importance as a medium for energy transportation. Is the Black Sea a bridge or a barrier between United States and Turkey? Does the issue of Black Sea security provide an opportunity to mend deteriorated relations or a new source of friction?
Topic:
International Relations, Security, NATO, and Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Iraq, Turkey, and Middle East

19. The United Nations, the Cold War, and After: A Lost Opportunity?

Author:
Christopher D. O'Sullivan
Publication Date:
05-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
The conclusion of the Cold War between 1989-1991 opened new horizons for the United Nations and created expectations that the UN would emerge from the margins of world events to the focus of world politics. But many events since then -- in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Iraq -- have undermined confidence in international institutions. A history of the UN's activities since the end of the East-West conflict conjures up names of recent infamy, such as Sarajevo, Mogadishu, Kigali, and Srebrenica, and revisits images of failure and impotence in the face of violence. These crises undermined much of the optimism that greeted the end of the Cold War at the United Nations. The founding dream in 1945 of a community of nations defending human rights and promoting collective security still seems as far from being realized as it did during the height of the Cold War.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Cold War, Politics, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia