America and Iraq

Policy-making, Intervention and Regional Politics

David Ryan, Patrick Kiely

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415609364
• eBook ISBN: 9781134036714
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This edited volume provides an overview on US involvement in Iraq from the 1958 Iraqi coup to the present-day, offering a deeper context to the current conflict.

Using a range of innovative methods to interrogate US foreign policy, ideology and culture, the book provides a broad set of reflections on past, present and future implications of US-Iraqi relations, and especially the strategic implications for US policy-making. In doing so, it examines several key aspects of relationship such as: the 1958 Iraqi Revolution; the impact of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; the impact of the Nixon Doctrine on the regional balance of power; US attempts at rapprochement during the 1980s; the 1990-91 Gulf War; and, finally, sanctions and inspections. Analysis of the contemporary Iraq crisis sets US plans against the 'reality' they faced in the country, and explores both attempts to bring security to Iraq, and the implications of failure.

1 Eisenhower and regime change in Iraq

The United States and the Iraqi Revolution of 1958

Kenneth Osgood*

Shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, the Mexican-American comedian Paul Rodriguez joked that war was God’s way of teaching geography. ‘Before the war in the Middle East,’ he confessed, ‘I didn’t know what the hell Kuwait was. I thought it was a fruit from New Zealand.’¹ Rodriquez’s humorous observation captured the ethos of an American public that is often poorly informed about the wider world, but which, in moments of crisis, scrambles to make sense of its role in the global community. Rodriguez could also have pointed out that America’s wars abroad have acted as catalysts for tutorials in US diplomatic history. This is especially true with respect to the Middle East, where the pace of historical inquiry has largely followed the emergence of crises in such places as Palestine, Egypt, and Iran. This volume is itself testimony to the power of contemporary problems—in this case, the ongoing war in Iraq—to provoke scholars and the wider public to reflect more deeply on the historical background of crises in the Middle East.

Prior to 1991, you could search in vain for books or articles that focused on the history of US foreign policy toward Iraq. To the extent that Iraq figured at all in historical writing on US foreign relations, it did so only indirectly—as but a small component of broader studies of such issues as the Arab—Israeli dispute, the British Empire, Arab nationalism, and the Cold War. The situation has improved slightly during the last 15 years, but Iraq effectively remains a black hole in US diplomatic history. We know more about the 1991 Gulf War than we do about US—Iraqi relations during the five decades of Cold War that led up to it. Indeed, we know more about the conduct of the present war in Iraq than we do about the historical events that preceded it. Thus, putting the current conflict in its proper historical perspective is as difficult as it is important. So too is it necessary to examine US—Iraqi relations on their own terms. As Nathan Citino has written, ‘more research is sorely needed to prevent America’s wars with Saddam Hussein from distorting historical interpretations of previous US—Iraqi relations.’²

A broadened historical perspective reveals that America’s troubled relationship with Saddam Hussein was anything but an aberration in US—Iraqi relations. For over a half-century, US policy toward Iraq oscillated between conflict and cooperation, between working with the regime in Baghdad to conspiring against it. At recurring intervals, American policymakers carefully considered various types of interventions in Iraq—from direct military intervention, to covert operations, to more subtle efforts to shape, manipulate, or influence Iraqi politics. Iraq was hardly unique in this regard, of course: the history of US foreign policy is to a great extent the history of American intervention abroad. As Stephen Kinzer has expertly chronicled, the most drastic form of intervention, ‘regime change,’ has been a recurring feature of US foreign policy since the nineteenth century. At least 14 times since 1893 the United States played a decisive role in overthrowing foreign governments. On many other occasions Americans played a supporting role in campaigns directed against leaders and regimes at odds with the United States. American leaders often considered regime change to be a legitimate objective of US foreign policy, even if they usually hid that sentiment from the public.³

Well-intentioned critics of George W. Bush’s foreign policy were mistaken, then, in concluding that his policy of ‘preemptive war’ to spark ‘regime change’ in Iraq somehow represented a dramatic break from the normal course of American foreign relations. What was unique about George W. Bush was not that he used American power to topple a foreign government, but the way that he went about it: openly and brazenly declaring his determination to do so. President Bush also was not the first to seek regime change in Iraq. His immediate predecessors, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, had made overthrowing Saddam Hussein a top priority, though they opted to use clandestine measures, rather than direct military force to do so.⁴

American leaders seriously considered regime change at earlier moments as well. The first instance was a half-century ago, near the end of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The precipitating incident was the Iraqi Revolution of July 14, 1958. Early that morning, a group of army officers surrounded the royal palace in Baghdad and executed the king and his family. The Hashemite dynasty, which had ruled Iraq as a virtual proxy of the British Empire since the 1920s, was dead. When the coup plotters announced on the radio that the army had liberated Iraq from British imperialism, Iraqis poured into the streets to celebrate the downfall of the old regime. Shortly thereafter, army officers found and shot the former prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Sa’id. Nuri had been one of Britain’s closest allies in the Middle East, and he was widely regarded by ordinary Iraqis as a tool of the British Empire. Cheering crowds celebrated Nuri’s death by parading his mutilated remains through the streets of the capital.⁵

The events of that day triggered a wave of panic among other pro-Western regimes in the Middle East. Leaders in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Lebanon feared that they might be the next victims of nationalist revolution. Washington and London went into crisis mode. Concerned about their interests and their allies, the American and British governments promptly dispatched troops to shore-up the pro-Western governments of Lebanon and Jordan respectively.⁶ These interventions have overshadowed the more complex and confused set of politics that the United States pursued with respect to post-revolutionary Iraq. Much of the historical writing on the Iraqi Revolution has focused on the impact of the Iraq crisis on other areas of the Middle East or on Anglo-American relations. Mirroring the neglect of Iraq in the broader historiography, diplomatic historians have devoted little attention to the impact of the 1958 crisis on US—Iraqi relations.⁷

In the aftermath of the July revolution, American officials debated quite seriously the possibility of invading Baghdad and toppling the new government of Iraq. Detailed operational plans were developed, but the invasion never happened. The Eisenhower administration chose restraint. It also labored to ensure that other governments followed suit. For differing reasons, the British, Iranian, Turkish, Egyptian, and Israeli governments also explored the possibility of invading Iraq, but were persuaded not to do so, in part because of US efforts. Why the Eisenhower administration rejected military intervention as an option for itself and its allies is the subject of this chapter. It argues that the Eisenhower administration refrained from military action to provoke regime change not for idealistic reasons stemming from the morality and legality of overthrowing a foreign government, but for pragmatic reasons stemming from the consequences of doing so. Remarkably, the Eisenhower administration expressed little concern that military intervention would precipitate war with the Soviet Union, despite the blustery threats made by Nikita Khrushchev during the Iraq crisis.⁸ But it was deeply troubled by the probable impact an intervention would have on the broader battle for hearts and minds in the Cold War. The Eisenhower administration calculated that military intervention would damage the broader geopolitical position of the United States because it would have a catastrophic impact on world public opinion. It would damage the US reputation in the world and severely undermine American efforts to win friends and allies in the Middle East and the broader Third World. Moreover, American officials acknowledged, an invasion would be disastrous within Iraq itself. A hostile nationalist backlash would precipitate armed resistance against US forces, if not civil war. Any government imposed on Iraq would be overthrown in time. Civil war and chaos would probably result, and radical movements hostile to the United States would gain influence in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. In short, intangible ‘psychological’ factors—the impact on hearts and minds—restrained the Eisenhower administration from using military power in Iraq.

The chapter also examines the secret debate that took place within the Eisenhower administration about clandestine operations. Believing that direct military action would inflict irreparable harm on America’s reputation and capacity for global leadership, the Eisenhower administration explored the possibility that it could achieve its goals in Iraq by working covertly with Iraqi opposition groups and various foreign intelligence services. Because many sources remain classified, it is impossible to determine what kinds of covert operations the United States implemented in response to the Iraqi revolution. This chapter does suggest, however, that the available records provide circumstantial evidence linking the Eisenhower administration to various assassination and coup attempts perpetrated at the end of the 1950s. If the Eisenhower administration was prudent and restrained in its application of military power, it appeared less so in the matter of covert action.

Dual containment in the Middle East

US policy toward Iraq in the aftermath of the revolution was primarily shaped by the larger strategic calculations that governed US foreign policy to the region as a whole. Generally speaking, the overarching objective of US national security strategy can be stated simply: preserve Western access to the region’s oil resources. The imperative of protecting Western access to Middle Eastern oil is one of the most consistently argued themes running through US national security documents after 1946. A top State Department official articulated this theme clearly in the midst of the 1958 Iraq crisis, announcing succinctly: ‘The principal Western interest in Iraq … is oil.’⁹

Although today US prosperity virtually demands a continued flow of oil from the Middle East to the United States, in the early Cold War years the American interest in the region’s oil resources was less directly linked to the American economy. To be sure, by 1958 American oil companies had developed an important stake in the petroleum reserves of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other overseas locations. Yet because the United States imported only a small percentage of its petroleum needs until the early 1970s, the flow of oil from the Middle East did not have as direct an influence on the American economy as it does today.¹⁰ The same could not be said of Western Europe. By the early 1950s, key European economies appeared reliant on Middle Eastern petroleum for their economic and strategic health. The United Kingdom especially depended on Persian Gulf oil for both fuel and hard currency. As Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, noted: ‘If the oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait fell under hostile control, the financial impact on the United Kingdom might be catastrophic.’¹¹ The turmoil in Iraq loomed especially large for American officials because the economic health of America’s closest Cold War ally was at stake.

Because the military strength and economic prosperity of America’s NATO allies were intertwined with Persian Gulf oil, US policy toward the Middle East was, in a sense, hostage to European fuel needs. The National Security Council (NSC) established, as a matter of policy, that the United States had to do everything in its power to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil to Western Europe from the Middle East—an area known in the 1950s as the Near East. ‘The critical importance of Near Eastern oil to our NATO allies requires that we make every effort to insure its continued availability to us and to our allies,’ the NSC announced in its November 1958 statement of US policy toward the region. Accordingly, the United States should be

prepared to use force, but only as a last resort, either alone or in support of the United Kingdom, to insure that the quantity of oil available from the Near East on reasonable terms is sufficient ... to meet Western Europe’s requirements.¹²

Such a clear statement of US readiness to employ any measure to preserve Western access to Middle Eastern oil on favorable terms surfaced time and again in US policy papers during the postwar period.

Two interrelated concerns also dominated US thinking with respect to the Middle East. First there was the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Washington was determined to prevent the region from falling under communist control or Soviet influence. The United States was especially concerned to keep the Soviets from encroaching on the region’s oil reserves, which would have a disastrous impact on strategic plans for the defense of Western Europe. The second concern was Arab nationalism. Led by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Arab nationalists threatened to undermine Western hegemony in the Middle East. Nasser and his supporters opposed foreign military establishments on Arab territory, railed against the exploitive economic practices of European colonial powers, and conspired against the conservative autocratic regimes that dominated the region’s politics and appeared to do the bidding of the West. Many also called for Arab unity and the building of a single pan-Arab state. This dream appeared possible at about the same time as the Iraqi coup. Egypt and Syria had merged to create the United Arab Republic (UAR) five months earlier, in February 1958, and Nasser signaled his interest in bringing more Arab states into the fold. This seemed to jeopardize the pro-Western regimes of the area which ruled with the thinnest base of popular support. Further exasperating the United States, many nationalists urged a neutralist path between the opposing power blocs of the Cold War. For much of the 1950s, American officials ranked nationalism as a greater concern than communism, for the simple reason that nationalism had much wider popular appeal than atheistic co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Eisenhower and regime change in Iraq: the United States and the Iraqi Revolution of 1958
• 2 Through distorted lenses: Iraq and balance of power politics 1969–1979
• 3 From the ‘tilt’ to the unintended ‘transformation’: the United States and Iraq, 1975–1992
• 4 Lost in the desert: Lawrence and the theory and practice of counterinsurgency
• 5 Grand ambitions and far-reaching failures: the United States in Iraq
• 6 The geoeconomic pivot of the global war on terror: US Central Command and the war in Iraq
• 7 What would Jesus do? Evangelicals, the Iraq War, and the struggle for position
• 8 Against everyone and no-one: the failure of the unipolar in Iraq and beyond
• 9 George W. Bush, American exceptionalism and the Iraq War
• 10 The Middle East and the Persian Gulf as the gateway to imperial crisis: the Bush administration in Iraq
• 11 The Imperial Presidency Redux: presidential power and the war in Iraq
• 12 Securing the state: the US and post-war Iraqi border security dynamics
• Bibliography