Middle East Strategy at Harvard

In November 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of scholars this question: “What will the world be like five years after a war with Iraq?” To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, MESH asked all of the respondents to revisit their predictions. This week, MESH is posting the responses it has received.

Robert Zelnick is Journalism Professor of National Security Studies at Boston University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2002, he wrote: “The best way to envision Iraq five years removed from a successful American military effort is to envision an Iraq five years hence if the United States undertakes no such campaign. Then the regime of Saddam Hussein or his son and handpicked successor, Uday, will maintain the family stranglehold on the Iraqi people…. A reasonably free, justly governed, prosperous Iraq may or may not be able to transform the entire Middle East. But five years down the road, it appears a far better gamble than inaction.” (Read his full counter-scenario here.)

From Robert Zelnick

Had the initial occupation of Iraq been conducted with the insight and dedication of the Petraeus period, we would today be celebrating a successful and substantially completed operation, with the failure to find WMDs recognized as being more a function of Saddam’s tactical trickery than a serious failure of western intelligence.

Alas, we failed early on a number of well-documented fronts. We sent too few troops to mobilize a successful occupation, failed to restore order early, were oblivious to the availability of massive unattended weapons caches, engineered the dissolution of indigenous military and local security forces and failed to insist on a controlled reinstatement of all but the most incorrigible Baath Party veterans. Our negligence contributed to swelling partisan militias—many with links to the government—responsible for bloody acts of murder, terror and the panicky evacuation of entire neighborhoods.

The price for this negligence has been great in terms of life and treasure, U.S. international standing and the evaporation of the post-Cold War sense of national purpose and optimism.

But washing our hands and pulling out now would in my view compound the felony. For all our mistakes we have still dealt a heavy blow to Al Qaeda, disposed of Saddam and his chaos-generating regime, and engineered a nifty switch in allegiance by a large number of Sunnis. The notion that somehow we could “transform the region” does seem a bit excessive. But we may still be able to help stabilize it.