Presidential Policies and the Road to the Second Iraq War

From Forty One to Forty Three

John Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754647690
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317076117
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

By virtually any means of measurement, postwar Iraq has become a more bloodied and embattled settlement than ever envisaged. But were the seeds of these problems sown long before military force had been committed? This lucid and detailed examination of US foreign policy evaluates the continuity and divergence in the strategies of the Bush, Clinton and Bush Jr administrations and their efforts to respond to the Iraqi threat, and how those strategies have bequeathed a legacy of problems to those trying to rebuild a postwar Iraq. Offering the most comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that paved the way for renewed conflict in Iraq, the book provides a descriptive account of attempts to confront a host of political pressures, from the need for international cooperation in postwar Iraq, to dealing with the influx of foreign fighters and their quest to force American withdrawal. This essential volume provides analysts, observers and policy makers with guidelines and prescriptions about the future of postwar Iraq and detailed analysis of lessons learned both during and after the military and reconstruction phases.

PART I
The View from Washington

Chapter 1

Presidential Decision-Making: Three Models and the Road to War with Iraq

Denise von Hermann

University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast

Introduction

Some American foreign policy scholars have noted that the events of 11 September, 2001, began a “transformation”1 of the Bush presidency. Viewed previously as lacking focus or clarity, the post-9/11 Bush administration took on an air of determination and certainty about its goals and how it might best achieve them. In much the same way that 9/11 brought White House foreign policy goals into perspective, the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 revealed a resolute presidential team: one that appeared publicly to have fallen into near lock-step on a critical and internationally controversial policy.

By the fall of that same year, fissures began to appear. Calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were prevalent, and questions about the quality and accuracy of information used to plan and execute not only the war with Iraq, but the rebuilding of Iraq as well were rampant.

Presidents, like any other managers of large and complex organizations, face myriad challenges in making key decisions. Of all decisions a president may face, arguably the decision to go to war is among the most vexing. Studying how a president makes such a crucial decision is highly instructive for scholars of presidential decisions, as well as for scholars of American foreign policy.

The principle focus of this chapter concerns an evaluation of the most recent case study: President George Bush and his national security team’s decision to launch a full-scale assault on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the previous literature on the processes by which presidents and their foreign policy teams make decisions. The chapter then provides an in-depth analysis of the last three presidents, with the major focus on George W. Bush, exploring the dynamics that contributed to the road to war in Iraq. Next, the available information regarding the actual decision to go to war with Iraq is examined, and finally, the record on the Bush presidency is discussed and predictions for the future of the Iraq conflict are offered.

How Presidents Make Decisions

Studies of presidential decision-making during the last quarter-century have revealed three possible models: 1) centralized management through formalistic, hierarchical structures, 2) the competitive model—in which all agencies, departments, and individuals openly compete for presidential attention, and 3) the collegial models which provide for balanced, but structured debate among a relatively small circle of competing policy advocates.

Much of this line of research into presidential decision-making rests upon earlier work by Alexander George2 concerning the links between personality and presidential decision-making. This model provides indicators on the role of the president’s cognitive style, his sense of efficacy, and his level of comfort (or lack thereof) with political conflict, work together to create a unique style of making important decisions.

Another key figure in the development of the presidential decision models was Richard Johnson,3 who examined six presidential administrations from FDR to LBJ, and discovered the three styles mentioned above. Johnson found that the formalistic approach places strong emphasis on maintaining order, and tends to be favored by presidents who wish to avoid becoming embroiled in political conflicts. Johnson points to the management style of Harry Truman, for instance, where by the president assembled a well-organized and competent staff, served as the final decision authority, and tended to stick firmly to decisions once made. A weakness of this style is its reliance upon solid and generally unified information from key advisors; when these persons disagree, the formalistic president has no sure way to process or respond to the varying opinions. The national security inner circle put together by the first President Bush, for example, has been characterized as a “closed circle” that was hindered by the president’s “inability to think through, articulate, and act on a coherent vision of the larger purpose behind his frenetic activity.”4

The competitive style, on the other hand, causes a president such as Franklin Roosevelt to assemble a team filled with persons whose views differ from his own. Typically, Roosevelt’s diverse and openly competitive team would have two solid but differing opinions, and he would charge them with “weaving” these together. The failing of his style was most evident during war, when the competing factions could not come together to adequately plan and react for the longer term.

The collegial style of such presidents as John Kennedy and Bill Clinton also relied upon a diverse team with divergent opinions. The two presidents shared common traits and outgoing personalities. Both men loved to immerse themselves in the details of foreign policy matters, and both relied heavily upon teams of advisors who were generally more loyal to their president than to the specific agencies for which they worked.5

Clinton, unlike the other collegial presidents, operated in a foreign policy vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Union and the hope that domestic agendas could supplant foreign policy concerns. President Clinton was much more likely than Kennedy to attempt to keep all of his team members happy—which some scholars trace back to his childhood attempts to placate an abusive stepfather.

A related group of studies, especially work by Fred Greenstein, arrives at similar conclusions about presidential leadership by examining presidents’ leadership qualities and personal style from a political psychology perspective.6 Greenstein examines emotional intelligence—a person’s ability to control emotions and turn them to productive use—as well as cognitive style, political skill, policy vision, organizational capacity, and effectiveness as a public communicator.

Greenstein has found that the modern presidency places a premium on the external communications expected of presidents. The best public communicators among postwar presidents—Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton—were all outgoing presidents, he notes. Yet, outgoing personalities often falter with respect to focus and attention to detail. They may easily become bored with routine tasks and detailed policy. He says the flawed presidencies of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all serve as stark reminders of the effects of emotional mismanagement on presidential performance.7

George H.W. Bush and the First War with Iraq

The first President Bush’s principal focus was foreign affairs, an area in which he was very well prepared, due to his extensive background in foreign policy. The collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War left America trying to define a new mission for itself:

Bush was initially criticized for his apparent lack of ideas, and he disarmingly confessed that he was not good at ‘the vision thing’ … But by the summer of 1989, events in Europe were moving so fast that ‘the vision thing’ became largely irrelevant. All the United States could do, in Bush’s words, was encourage, guide, and manage change.8

The President’s early policies and those of his team of foreign-policy experts led by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, reveal an internal struggle between what Scowcroft called the “traditionalists” and those who wanted a more transformational foreign policy. Where Iraq was concerned, the first Bush administration initially tried to have friendly relations: “Under National Security Directive (NSD) 26, the Bush administration’s goal was to normalize relations with Iraq.”9 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and forced the administration to rethink its policy.

Critics immediately claimed the real motive for fighting was oil. George Bush insisted he was acting to preserve national interests. Congress held extensive debates over war powers, and finally on 21 January 1991, voted to endorse the UN Security Council resolution calling for use of force. Congress refused to declare war, with votes falling primarily along partisan lines.10 An overall Iraq policy stressing moderation, practical consideration of national interests, and a limited form of multilateralism was the ultimate approach selected by the administration. The president continued to assert, however, that he did not require congressional approval to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

Secretary of State James Baker helped the president put together a grand coalition of the willing, an informal grouping that, while clearly headed by the Americans, could nonetheless boast of support that was both deep and wide. Iraq’s former ally, the Soviet Union, had voted in favor of the UN authorizing resolution, as did Cuba.

The war itself was brief, but decisive. The ground war began at 8:00 p.m. on 23 February and lasted about four days. Once the war ended, the administration worked with the United Nations to secure passage of Resolution 687, which gave the UN Special Commission broad access to sites in Iraq to search for and destroy weapons of mass destruction.

The Security Council also passed Resolution 688 to allow international relief operations for the Kurds. These actions allowed the Bush administration to proceed with a combination of military and humanitarian programs designed to severely limit Iraq’s ability to cause further harm to its citizens or neighbors. Shortly before Bush left office, no-fly zones were extended in Iraq from the 33rd parallel to the southern border, even though no specific authorization for such action had come from the United Nations.11

Pragmatic, thoughtful, and both collegial and formalistic in his decision-making,12 the first President Bush repeatedly demonstrated restraint in his dealings with Iraq. Yet some critics of his policies have charged that he left too much unsettled with Iraq. Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain, would later speak of her surprise at the war being ended with Saddam in power. President Bush and others assumed that Hussein would not survive politically in the wake of Iraq’s defeat.13

But the president always asserted that the war had accomplished its mandate. The mission, he said, the only one approved by the Security Council, was to expel Iraq from Kuwait. President Bush considered it critical to maintain coalition unity. Obviously, keeping the Arabs from viewing the United States as an occupying force remained an important variable. Many Arab leaders showed increasing displeasure over Iraq’s reduced stature and now-destroyed infrastructure. Indeed, the threat of force initially was deliberately restricted to removing the Iraqis from Kuwait, “in part because Arab coalition members would not or could not support a more ambitious threat to destroy the Iraqi regime.”14

Bill Clinton and the Decision Not to Decide

Immediately following the war, the US and its allies had established no-fly zones in both the northern and southern regions of Iraq in order to protect Iraqi minority groups. Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Bill Clinton was critical of the Bush policy on Iraq. At one point he even claimed Bush had carried out a policy of appeasement with Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein.15 Thus in January of 1993, Bill Clinton took office as a president with a contained, but very volatile, relationship between Iraq and the US already well-established.

Yet foreign policy was far from a priority for the new president. The 42nd president came to the Oval Office with a clear mandate to fix the economy—something Bush had been unable to convince the voters he could do. Unlike Bush, he brought no significant foreign policy experience to the table. His eight years as governor of Arkansas gave him the credentials to talk about education, about health care, and about feder...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• Part I: The View from Washington
• Part II: The Diplomatic Perspective
• Part III: The Military Dimensions
• Conclusion: Getting There: The Road to and the Aftermath of the Second War in Iraq
• Index