For reasons unforeseen at the time of writing, “Iraq the Cost of War” was not released in 2005 as planned. That same year, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw asked author Jeremy Greenstock to delay the publication until the ministers concerned left their posts. This was followed by the Iraq Inquiry, a British Public inquiry into the nation’s role in the Iraq War. After a seven-year investigation, Sir John Chilcot delivered his findings in 2016 and Greenstock decided the time had finally come to publish his account.
The book, which has just been published in paperback form, presents an in-depth understanding, in narrative form, of what really went on behind the scenes at the UN and in Baghdad. “I believe there is still room for a story to be told that sets in live context the decisions taken and the mistakes committed, and perhaps makes more intelligible the swirl of conflicting considerations that weighed on political leaders at the time,” Greenstock writes. For that reason, he kept the original text.
Greenstock, as UK permanent representative to the United Nations ambassador in New York, shows us the intricacies of foreign policy decision making in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. And then, as special envoy for Iraq, the UK’s highest authority on the ground, he was a witness to the acute lack of post-war preparation in Iraq. First and foremost, this seasoned diplomat asserts a truth that runs like a mantra throughout the book — “the story of Iraq is the story of the application of American power.”
The United States’ involvement in Iraq comes as no surprise. Greenstock acknowledges that as a young diplomat he discovered that the US has two preserves, superpower politics and the Middle East peace process. Whereas the diplomatic world recognizes the French and the British inherited privileged relations with the Middle East that no other foreigners possessed, the American administration has never hidden its distaste for the European colonial past.
Another important point is that no political strategy can be discussed in Iraq without bringing up the Palestinian question. Iraqi people, known for their nationalistic feelings, would feel hostile to an American presence in their country if the US would not contribute to improving the Palestine situation, according to the book.
However, there were no indications that a political change in Iraq would trigger change in the Middle East and the road toward Arab-Israeli peace does not run through Baghdad. However, Greenstock had sensed from the beginning that the outcome in Iraq would exert a broader influence on the region.
If we go back in time, we discover that the harshest sanctions ever imposed against a state were adopted against Iraq under UN Resolution 687 until full reparations for the damage done to Kuwait were repaid and all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been accounted for.
General sanctions tend to affect the population at large, so a government takes measures to help its people avoid harm. Saddam Hussein did exactly the opposite, he used his people’s suffering to condemn the UN’s resolution. As a result, the Iraqi population suffered a lot from food deprivation, especially the children, and they blamed the US.
The big question at this point is why did Hussein risk a devastating invasion of his country by lying about his actual weapons capacity? Did he want to give the impression that he was a champion of Arab causes? By projecting an image of toughness and a will not to comprise, he wanted the world to know that he remained a challenge to the superpowers and he played a role on the world stage, perhaps. “There is not a shadow of doubt whatsoever that Iraq had long harbored ambitions to develop a WMD capability and had actually used chemical weapons in the 1980s. Saddam Hussein could have used chemical weapons in 1991, but chose not to,” writes Greenstock.
The problem with Hussein is that nobody knew what was going on in his mind. Nobody knew whether he was lying or telling the truth and this explains why there was not a greater opposition to pre-emptive action in the United Nations Security Council and elsewhere. The French and the Russians believed the inspectors had not been given enough time and they also hoped that more time would get the Iraqi leader to admit the truth. The French and Russians were also not the only ones to warn the US not to flout international order and not to initiate an invasion of Iraq without a prior discussion in the Security Council.
Tony Blair’s speech on March 18, 2003, one of the best speeches of his political career, sealed the decision to intervene in Iraq. The argument was based on the unfounded assumption that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of WMDs. “That does not alter the fact that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions. But it does magnify the accusation that the punishment was out of proportion to the offense,” writes Greenstock.
No one anticipated that the Iraqi forces would be defeated so easily. The coalition led by the US did not do much better. The American and British authorities displayed an inability to control — “we lost the initiative in the early weeks when we failed to secure the country. The new Iraq has not yet recovered from that mistake,” writes Greenstock. President George W. Bush also never allocated the funds and the resources needed to secure a successful future for the Iraqi people. The US failure in Iraq reminds us of how the Americans handled the Russians after the Cold War — the apparent lack of diplomacy triggered feelings of resentment and humiliation, which paved the way for Vladimir Putin to take power and reestablish Russia as a superpower on the world map.
Greenstock wrote the epilogue to this book just before it was submitted for publication. Eleven years had passed and the world had changed, presenting an opportunity to measure the impact of the war in Iraq on the countries involved in it. Iraqis have paid a high price for the promise of peace and freedom, which remains elusive, and even its future within its UN-approved borders is not yet secured.
Greenstock also believes that Blair did not respect the domestic interests of the British. “I think that Blair going with the Americans on Iraq has, in some ways, done more damage to the UK than (former British Prime Minister Harold) Wilson not going with the Americans in Vietnam,” he said in an interview with the Huffington Post.
Greenstock is very critical of American mistakes, saying: “To most people on the planet, it is unacceptable for the US on its own to interpret international legitimacy,” but he concludes that “a world without an America in top form is always going to face a poorer and more threatened future.”
Book Review: Recounting the cost of war in Iraq
Book Review: Recounting the cost of war in Iraq
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Atlas of Birds’ by Mike Unwin
“The Atlas of Birds” captures the breathtaking diversity of birds, and illuminates their conservation status around the world.
Full-color maps show where birds are found, both by country and terrain, and reveal how an astounding variety of behavioral adaptations—from flight and feeding to nest building and song—have enabled them to thrive in virtually every habitat on Earth.
Maps of individual journeys and global flyways chart the amazing phenomenon of bird migration, while bird classification is explained using maps for each order and many key families.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘When the Bombs Stopped’
- Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land
Author: ERIN LIN
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In “When the Bombs Stopped,” Erin Lin investigates the consequences of the US bombing campaign across post conflict Cambodia.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Spike’ by Mark Humphries
We see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions.
Neuroscientists call these blips “spikes.” Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In “The Spike,” Mark Humphries takes readers on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Lost Souls’ by Sheila Fitzpatrick
When World War II ended, about 1 million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria.
These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands.
Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In “Lost Souls,” Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs.
What We Are Reading Today: Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant
- Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat
Author: Audrey Borowski
Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist and courtier navigating the learned and courtly circles of early modern Europe and the Republic of Letters.
Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat and in Germany at the court of Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover. She challenges the image of Leibniz as an isolated genius, revealing instead a man of multiple identities whose thought was shaped by a deep engagement with the social and intellectual milieus of his time. Borowski shows us Leibniz as he was known to his contemporaries, enabling us to rediscover him as an enigmatic young man who was complex and all too human.
