Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - Iraq war

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2013

Sharon Wilke — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:20:44 -0500

The Summer 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s expanding work on complex cybersecurity issues and Middle East challenges, offers reflections on the role of the U.S. in Iraq, and spotlights work being done by the Center and its affiliates on environment and energy issues.

Nussaibah Younis: Foreign Policies of Weak States Matter

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:10:43 -0500

The invasion of Iraq prompted a deluge of work written on the country from a U.S. perspective, but Nussaibah Younis, a fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, wants people to start considering Iraq as an actor in its own right. While at the Center, Younis is working on a project that seeks to understand internal Iraqi foreign policymaking dynamics since 2003.

Views on Iraq: 10 Years Later

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:06:33 -0500

In March 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. In March 2013, on the 10-year anniversary of the war’s commencement, a number of Belfer Center faculty and affiliates reflected on the war and its legacy. Below is a sampling of those viewpoints.

Why Maliki Must Go

Nussaibah Younis — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:47:22 -0500

"...Mr. Maliki, who took office in 2006, had a successful first term, he has squandered the opportunity to heal the nation in his second term, which began in 2010. He has taken a hard sectarian line on security and political challenges. He has resisted integrating Sunnis into the army. He has accused senior Sunni politicians of being terrorists, hounded them from power and lost the cooperation of the Sunni community. The result: the political bargain that had sustained the fragile Iraqi state broke down."

Take Burden off Veterans Affairs

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:32:01 -0500

"Long-neglected computer upgrades are coming on line, but the VA's promises that the backlog will be overcome by 2015 seem specious given that 97 percent of all claims are still made in paper. Continued delays aren't only concerns for those who've already fought. They could discourage new recruits. The Defense Department is well aware that its ability to recruit troops to an all-volunteer force is made more difficult if veterans' services are being neglected."

Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:32:55 -0500

John Hagan, Joshua Kaiser, and Anna Hanson; Jon R. Lindsay and Austin G. Long respond to Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, and Jacob N. Shapiro's summer 2012 International Security article, "Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?"

International Security Journal Highlights

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:31:17 -0500

International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. It provides sophisticated analyses of contemporary security issues and discusses their conceptual and historical foundations. The journal is edited at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and published quarterly by the MIT Press.

The Painful Lessons of Iraq

David Ignatius — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:52:51 -0500

"Invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein a decade ago was one of the biggest strategic errors in modern American history. We’ll never know whether the story might have been different if better planning had been done for 'the day after,' or the Iraqi army hadn’t been disbanded, or several other 'ifs.' But the abiding truth is that America shouldn’t have rolled the dice this way on a war of choice," opines David Ignatius of the Washington Post.

Triste Anniversaire

Charles G. Cogan — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:46:03 -0500

"...[T]his was a useless war, conceived under the mistaken pretext that Saddam was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and resulting in untold sacrifices of dead and wounded on all sides."

'Iran is the Main Beneficiary of the Iraq War'

Max Tholl and Stephen M. Walt — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:35:30 -0500

"Iran has always been a major power in that region. Under Saddam however, Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies who fought a long war and were strongly opposed to one another. There was almost a rough balance of power between the two countries. By reducing Iraq's power and by allowing the Shia to become the dominant political force in Iraq, the US removed the main country balancing Iran, and helped bring to power a government that has at least some sympathies and links to Iran. So, Iran is by far the main strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War, which made it even more difficult for the US and its allies to deal with the country."

Still Trying to Win the Peace in Iraq

Derwin Pereira — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:19:14 -0500

"Ten years ago, this newspaper dispatched me to cover the Iraq War and its impact on the Middle East on a two-month odyssey that took me to Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar....The good news is that Iraqis are winning that peace, as they should. How well they consolidate their gains has implications for the region in the immediate future....Iraq will contribute to the process if it can show that day- to-day democracy can work in ethnically-divided societies, and that the Middle East is not fated to be a group of tribes forever in quest of a region."

A War's Misleading Anniversary

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:12:29 -0500

"The narrative of the Iraq war has a prologue and an epilogue whose lessons are as valuable to the United States as those derived from what came in between. As for the prelude, defenders of the war have somehow successfully rewritten the story to ignore the fact that many scholars, journalists, and defense specialists were urging President Bush not to succumb to this folly."

History Will Judge Bush on Iraq War

Joseph S. Nye — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:29:00 -0500

"Truman biographer David McCullough warns that about 50 years must pass before historians can really appraise a presidency. But one decade after Truman left office, the Marshall Plan and the NATO alliance were already seen as solid accomplishments. Bush lacks comparable successes to compensate for his mismanagement of Iraq."

Chuck Hagel Will Too Set Policy

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 08:36:13 -0600

"The idea that high-level officials, like Roberts or Hagel, merely administer rules set forth by others is a fiction. The secretary of defense has an incredibly powerful position. Indeed, it was the triumph of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ideology over other alternatives that led to the mess Obama inherited four years ago. Hagel, presumably, has a different approach to matching operational capacity with policy decisions. That is why Obama picked him in the first place."

The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders’ Assessments of 'Postwar' Iraq

Aaron Rapport — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:13:27 -0600

The George W. Bush administration’s assessments of challenges that might come after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq were wide of the mark, but it is unclear why this was the case. An established psychological theory that describes how peoplementally represent distant future actions—as opposed to those that are seen as impending—explains the nature of strategic assessment in the Iraq case. As individuals think about actions at the end of a sequence of events, the desirability of their goals becomes increasingly salient relative to the feasibility of achieving them. This makes decisionmakers more prone to underestimate the costs and risks of future actions.

"International Crises After the Election"

Charles Hobbs — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:07:52 -0600

November 28, 2012

David Manning, former UK Ambassador to the US, spoke widely on his thoughts on many of the pressing issues that are facing international diplomats in the coming decade in a November 26th, 2012, lecture to Harvard Kennedy School students and faculty.

The 'Obama debt' fallacy

Lawrence Summers — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:51:26 -0600

November 5, 2012

Lawrence Summers writes about Mike Boskins' response to Summers' Reuters column last week arguing that in a number of areas of economic policy, President Obama has the superior vision.

Tales of War

Robert B. Zoellick — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:50:38 -0500

November 2, 2012

On November 6 Americans will vote for their next commander-in-chief, the first of the duties assigned to the president by the constitution. The security outlook he will face is in flux. There are plans for a “rebalancing” of military attention to the Asia Pacific region, new tensions over old islands in the western Pacific, and even speculation over a novel “Air-Sea” operational concept, which would integrate air force and navy capabilities to deter – and, if need be, to counter – precision missiles and other weapons that could threaten America’s projection of power across oceans.

Obama's Failed Foreign Policy

Eliot A. Cohen, Eric S. Edelman and Meghan L. O'Sullivan — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:14:56 -0500

"Because of the last four years, we face a world in which our enemies do not fear us, our friends do not believe they can trust us, and those who maneuver between the two camps feel that they will not get in trouble by crossing us. It is time, and more than time, to choose a different course."

The Final Debate And Mitt Romney's Weight

Elaine Kamarck — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:48:32 -0500

"...[N]o one in the modern Republican Party seems to be too worried about the fact that they have alienated some of the fastest growing parts of the electorate."

Advice To The Next President: National And Homeland Security

Graham Allison and Juliette Kayyem — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:31:34 -0500

"Having a professional military means that the United States can go to war while the vast majority of citizens are not directly affected. Therefore it falls upon the president, more than any other individual, to make sure the nation goes to war only if and when absolutely necessary."

Giving the Surge Partial Credit for Iraq's 2007 Reduction in Violence

Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman and Jacob N. Shapiro — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:48:23 -0500

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many credit the "surge," or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course after a wave of sectarian cleansing. Evidence drawn from recently declassified data on violence at local levels and a series of seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. This analysis constitutes the first attempt to gather systematic evidence across space and time to help resolve this debate, and it shows that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did.

Afghan War Still Rages, Yet Soldiers Get No Play in Tampa

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:55:21 -0500

"It may very well be that the issue doesn't rank because the party that helps create veterans no longer has a monopoly on helping them. To make the point clear, Obama signed an executive order on Friday improving mental health access to veterans and their families."

Obama's Foreign Policy Doctrine

Joseph S. Nye — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:39:11 -0500

"...Obama did not back away from rhetorical expressions of transformational goals regarding such issues as climate change or nuclear weapons, in practice his pragmatism was reminiscent of more incremental presidential leaders like Dwight Eisenhower or George H. W. Bush."

Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?

Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman and Jacob N. Shapiro — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:11:49 -0500

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? A new analysis suggests that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening caused the significant drop in violence, creating a set of circumstances that neither could have achieved alone.

Suicide is the Biggest Foe for US Troops

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:45:45 -0500

"As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw to a close, the stress on America's military should be easing. But Pentagon statistics obtained by Robert Burns of the Associated Press on Friday show that there were 154 suicides in the first 155 days of 2012. The external enemy is not the primary reason for the body bags anymore; suicides are exceeding combat deaths in Afghanistan by 50 percent."

The Pentagon is Stopped from Going Green

Juliette Kayyem — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:59:33 -0500

"Fuel convoys are particularly subject to attack by hostile forces, and half of the Marines killed in Afghanistan and Iraq were supporting fuel transportation. Oil and water are the two commodities we import the most to the battlefield; the long line of a supply chain is a welcome mat for every IED and enemy. The biggest cost driver in the Pentagon's shrinking budget is oil; fuel increases in 2011 and 2012 cost the government an extra $3 billion."

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2012

Sharon Wilke — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:21:53 -0500

The Summer 2012 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights Belfer Center involvement with the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and other activities to help shape debate on national and global security. We also spotlight Henry Kissinger’s return to Harvard and his remarks about power and politics, James Baker’s acceptance of the 2012 Great Negotiator Award, and Graham Allison’s cover story in TIME magazine describing decisions behind the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And more....

Al Qaeda Loses Its Way

Juliette Kayyem — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:02:56 -0500

"Today, the Jordanians who have any favorable feelings about Al Qaeda are a paltry 13 percent. By 2006, Al Qaeda began to stray from its anti-Western foundations and focus its wrath on moderate Muslim citizens there and elsewhere. The Jordanians began to turn on bin Laden, and have been turning ever since. Eventually, the United States wound down its operations in Iraq and adopted a less confrontational posture in the Middle East."

Paul Doty's Legacy Lives on Through Influential Journal

James F. Smith — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:09:03 -0500

As soon as Paul Doty launched what is now Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1974, he began planning a scholarly journal on international security. He shrugged off colleagues’ concerns that there would be little market for such a journal.Thirty-six years after the first issue appeared in the summer of 1976, the Belfer Center’s quarterly International Security consistently ranks No. 1 or No. 2 out of over 70 international affairs journals surveyed by Thomson Reuters each year.