Self-Interest on the International Stage Essay

Invading Iraq was—and remains—a highly debated and controversial decision within both world politics and the academic disciplines of politics and international relations. With a growing number of deaths, rising tensions in the Middle East, and a failure to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the voices condemning the Bush administration have been increasing ever since the decision to go to war was announced. While many scholars have traditionally argued against the war, this paper will argue that the Iraq War can be justified.

In 2003, President George Walker Bush and his administration sent the United States military to war in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s ruler and dictator, who murdered over 600,000 innocent people, and “...used chemical weapons to remove Kurds from their villages in northern Iraq…” (Rosenberg 2). According to the Department of Defense’s website, the war removed Saddam Hussein from power, ending an era when “Iraqis had fewer rights than when its representatives signed the Human Rights Declaration in 1948” (1). American blood, money, and honor was spent in what was allegedly a personal war and perhaps a fight to gain oil and natural resources, but only history may reveal the truth. Although the Iraq War removed tyrant Saddam Hussein from power, the failures of the war dwarf the successes.

When one thinks of Iraq war, the two key players are perceived to be George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. As leaders of the opposing sides, they are also perceived as the decision makers. In the individual and sub group levels of analysis, toppling of the Hussein’s regime in Iraq was a success. This success

Although severe consequences come with the decision of war with Iraq, most blinded United States of America citizens are still yet persuaded to support such a war. The Bush Administration has covered their schemes of war with lies to gain support. While weapons of mass destruction is supposedly the reason why the United States launched military action to begin with, all the clearly ignored consequences will haunt their final decision of war, and will remind them how the war is not and never was justified. Whither the war is for the protection of the United States and their alliances, or for oil production and the spread of democracy, the United States is only intensifying the aggression of the situation.

Bush, asserted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), multiple Iraqi human rights violations stemming from the WMDs, and the suspected Iraqi support for al-Qa’ida, who had been previously chased out of Afghanistan. After the initial invasion, however, U.S.-led Coalition Forces were unable to locate any significant evidence of WMDs. Back in the U.S., investigative committees subsequently concluded that Iraq possessed no WMDs and did not harbor any connections to terrorist organizations. Moreover, Hussein had been successful at evading capture despite an intensive manhunt, and U.S. forces seemingly were unable to play a domestic security role, further leading to the dissolution of Iraqi security services and ushering in widespread looting and disorder. This highlighted that the invasion of Iraq was not be an easy victory as originally surmised. Since that time, many scholars have focused on the effects of the Iraq War, speculating on the Bush Administration’s motives for the decision. While some within scholarly circles have attributed the invasion of Iraq to groupthink, a theory that has recently become a staple in understanding foreign policy disasters, there is little literature that has been applied to the rationality of the decision to invade and whether groupthink influenced the decision-making process. Therefore, this paper will seek to examine the decision to launch the invasion of Iraq and the clearly failed planning for the occupation of the

At this point in time, the main actors in the international system are nation-states seeking an agenda of their own based on personal gain and national interest. Significantly, the most important actor is the United States, a liberal international economy, appointed its power after the interwar period becoming the dominant economy and in turn attained the position of hegemonic stability in the international system. The reason why the United States is dominating is imbedded in their intrinsic desire to continuously strive for their own national interest both political and economic. Further, there are other nature of actors that are not just nation-states, including non-states or transnational,

The era of globalization has witnessed the growing influence of a number of unconventional international actors, from non-governmental organizations, to multi-national corporations, to global political movements. Traditional, state-centric definitions of foreign policy as "the policy of a sovereign state in its interaction with other sovereign states is no longer sufficient. Several alternative definitions are more helpful at highlighting aspects of foreign policy

This paper will look at and discuss the presidency’s actions involving Iraq from Reagan to Obama. Each and every president during this time has used different strategies and formats to get their agenda across, to not only convince the public, but the international community as well. We will show how Iraq has gone from an ally to overthrowing the government, to the ensuing turmoil that this created for everyone involved, from ours and their citizenship, governing bodies, and other world leaders. With over 35 years of intervention, we will determine if there has been a consensus of actions among our presidents, and see if there is a cohesive US strategy and long term goals that have been reached for all our effort and actions to all of this.

The start of the 2003 Iraq War has been debated by many historians. The arguments made by Krebs and Lobasz in their article “Fixing the Meaning of 9/11 - Hegemony, Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq” are very persuasive, as are the arguments made by David Lake in “What Caused the Iraq War?”. These arguments center around the mindset of the Bush Administration, which was fearful of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and eager to use the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as rationale for war regardless of clear evidence. Other historians have presented considerable arguments as well, such as Debs and Monteiro, who argue that Iraq’s possibility of having nuclear weapons posed concern to the Bush administration. However, the best rationale for the start of the 2003 Iraq War combines the coercion model put forth by Krebs and Lobasz with the Lake assertion that the post-war rebuilding was not adequately considered. Krebs and Lobasz have the most salient arguments on manipulations of information, with insightful points regarding the motives of the Bush administration. Their points, however, aren’t complete as David Lake contains stronger information in certain parts of the debate. Lake adds important observations about Saddam’s inability to admit to not having nuclear weapons and the U.S.’s failure to estimate the costs of the post-war were key causes for the start of the war.

Following the events of September 11th, President Bush was looked to as a leader to lead the country out of chaos. “In the weeks after the attack, Bush’s approval rating rose to 90 percent—the highest recorded job-approval rating in U.S. presidential history” ( millercenter). Nowadays however, Bush is often criticized for the actions he took during the invasions. “The Bush administration’s strategy had been to reduce the U.S. military presence as Iraq’s stability improved. Yet the goal proved unattainable, owing in part to the power vacuum left by the dismantling of the Iraqi army and the rise of sectarian violence within the two dominant strains of Islam in Iraq” (millercenter). Of course hindsight is always 20/20, but many blame the Bush Administration for the power vacuum created in the Middle East. Bush’s foreign policy typically surrounded a strong use of force and led to increase in terrorism surveillance creating a discussion that is hotly debated today Following the end of Bush’s second term, Barack Obama had won the presidency and the work in the Middle East was far from over. Obama proved to have a different ideology from Bush, wanting to remove troops from the Middle East, something he

What motivated the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003 despite strong opposition from the international community? On one side, the administration maintains that the invasion was necessary to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). In his memoir “Decision Points”, Bush argued that Saddam posed too much of a threat–he brutalized his own people, violated international demands, and sponsored terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. On the opposing side, critics of the war argue that the Bush administration used the 9/11 terrorist attack and the threat of WMDs to justify waging an illegal war against Iraq in order to extract Iraqi oil to fund the military-industrial complex, to secure Israel, and to “finish the job” of deposing Saddam. While these explanations for the invasion have some merit, they are problematic because they fail to capture the extent of the administration’s actual ambitions. An analysis of how individuals on Bush’s administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, viewed the world reveals that the invasion of Iraq was intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of and necessity for preemptive action, overthrow Saddam, and transform the Middle East. However, what was perceived to be a quick and easy operation to stabilize the Middle East and secure America’s interest backfired and turned Iraq into a safe haven for terrorists.

The 2003 U.S. led invasion removed Saddam Hussein, an authoritarian from the Sunni minority who governed over a Shia-majority country. After the American invasion, Phase IV, the occupation of Iraq was established to aid Iraq in developing a new democratic regime. Iraqi inhabitants were strongly opposed to having American forces rehabilitate their country, especially after Operation Peninsula Strike. The operation involved the U.S. troops pursuing members of the Fedayeen Saddam militia, an aggressive power devoted to Hussein alongside high-ranking members of the Baath Party and former Iraqi security agencies. Together policy and actions dictated by the U.S. civil and military agents alongside Iraq’s preexisting social conditions, communitarian

Various theories will be analyzed in this essay in order to conclude whether or not the conflict between the U.S and Iraq was justified, legal, and why it was initiated. Liberal and realist perspectives will be compared in order to establish whose opinion of the war was the most correct and reasonable. There are many theories regarding this conflict, for instance, Iraq was thought to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and as a result, it was believed that Iraq posed a military threat to the United States. Others believe that the principal motivation for the conflict was to gain further access to Iraqi oil and in fact had nothing to do with the possession of weapons. Many also believe that the invasion of Iraq is the main

The rapid collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein marked a defining moment for advocates of regime change. Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath produced a number of challenging problems for Iraqis, their neighbours, the international community and, not least, the supporters of the invasion. For the last, these problems included the unexpected difficulty of the first phase of the campaign; the failure to find weapons of mass destruction; the lack of effective planning for the aftermath; and the continuing violent opposition to the new regime. This chapter examines key features of neo-conservative thinking in retrospect and prospect after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The Iraq war is a highly polarizing topic in the United States and abroad alike. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, there were a lot of discussions on terrorism, but former U.S. President George Bush (in office 2001-2009) addressed things differently. In the new globalized world, as we know, you need consensus amongst constituent nations to gain support for a war. However, the Iraq war did not have the support that was needed to build a successful coalition amongst nations. Bush rationalized that the United States of America should invade Iraq on the grounds of "weapons of mass destruction.” According to a 2003 Bush speech, the coalition mission was "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein 's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” This paper will clarify the real reasons and agenda behind the American invasion of Iraq, along with the war’s negative results, and will offer a discussion of the change of public opinion towards it.