"War of Necessity, War of Choice" is Richard Haass' memoir/analysis of the two Iraq wars. Haass worked at the NSC during the first war, playing a key role shaping U.S. policy. He was marginalized at the State Department during the second war, yet nonetheless had a ringside seat on the decisions that led to the invasion of Iraq. He is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book is partly autobiographic, but the heart of it is a treatment of the two Iraq wars as case studies of two different approaches to foreign policy.
The main takeaway is the need for a foreign policy that aims to influence the external behavior of foreign states, not their domestic structures. The first Iraq war was blessed by the UN and fought by an international coalition for limited objectives. Within a matter of months, Kuwaiti independence was restored, at minimal cost to the coalition. The coalition did not push on to Baghdad. In contrast, the second Iraq war was driven by a U.S. administration scornful of international law and drunk on the idea of remaking the entire Middle East. Born of hubris and ideological thinking, the war turned into a quagmire, resulting in hundreds of thousand of deaths, the near-destruction of the Iraqi body politic, the empowerment of Iran, and global hatred of the U.S. Bad ideas DO have consequences!
The book is elegantly written and wise about the world. Among its key lessons: intelligence agencies are often wrong; U.S. power is enhanced, not weakened, by multilateralism; it is hard for outsiders to change the culture and institutions of a foreign society, especially one they barely understand; wars (and their aftermaths) are unpredictable; the quality of policy is enhanced by careful planning and open debate; military power has its limits; and "just" wars are usually the only ones that make pragmatic sense. These truths are almost axiomatic in diplomatic and military circles, but they were out of sync with the "tough guy" mentality that permeated the Bush II Administration. Bullies like Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't take counsel or even think very hard before they deployed armies and wrecked nations. Bush II was too green to know HOW to think about foreign policy.
That said, "War of Necessity, War of Choice" has its flaws. For one thing, it's polite to a fault: at times the reader wonders whether Haass hopes to work in a future moderate Republican Administration. The book is also unfairly derisory about opponents of the first Iraq war. At the time, it was widely assumed that thousands of U.S. troops would die evicting the Republican Guard from Kuwait. It was legitimate to ask whether cheap oil prices could justify casualties on such an epic scale, and this concern motivated calls in Congress and elsewhere to give sanctions time to work. In retrospect, our air campaign was incredibly effective and the ground war was a cakewalk. It is also clear from the experience of the 1990s that sanctions alone would not have dislodged Hussein from Kuwait. But no one knew this at at the time, and Haass could have a done a better job of recapturing the nuances and seriousness of the debate in 1990/91. (At a minimum, he could have disclosed the official casualty forecast.) Similarly, he is laughably defensive about the reasons why we went to war in 1991. At one point he even argues that Bush I's "sense of decorum" was offended by the invasion of a small country like Kuwait. Yet this was the same Bush who invaded Panama and supported the Contra war against Nicaragua. His "sense of decorum" was pretty selective.
But these lapses aside, "War of Necessity, War of Choice" is excellent. It is must reading for anyone interested in modern diplomatic history or in the real-world consequences of sloppy, ideological thinking about foreign policy.
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