Even then, a rudimentary logical analysis of the data, requiring only a basic knowledge of history and international politics, easily concluded that the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime would lead to the drastic strengthening of Iran. Not only because Iraq was Iran’s bulwark, but also because Saddam’s regime was Sunni-based and controlled the Shiite majority of the Iraqi population.
The destruction of Saddam’s regime freed Iran from its most feared enemy and gave it an opportunity to harness the Shiites of Iraq and turn them, in large part, into an extension of itself, as it had done with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, creating the “Axis of Resistance”, as Tehran calls it. As far as Iraq is concerned, not even the Iraqi Sunnis became pro-American. Instead they were directed towards ISIS and various other armed anti-American organizations.
So we see that the Americans, spending trillions of dollars and sacrificing the life and skill of thousands of their soldiers, in the end what they succeeded in doing was to disrupt their relations with everyone and create a big Iran! And it begs a very simple question: How could they do it so badly? Part of the answer is that, contrary to popular belief, the US has never had a rational and coherent long-range strategy.
The irrationality of the USA
Perhaps the most established and persistent myth in the foreign policy apparatus of our country, but also in the vast majority of Greek public opinion, is that the USA has a structured, rational and long-term strategic plan, which it follows consistently. This perception is not related to how “pro-American” or “anti-American” one is.
Even the most passionate critics of American foreign policy firmly believe that a priesthood of sages in Washington are plotting with cold and cynical realism US moves on the global chessboard with a decades-long horizon. In reality, as most American analysts report, the American strategy is plagued by “focusing on one point” (focalism) and by a “monochronic” reading of the events.
That is, Americans have difficulty seeing the overall systemic structure within which a point on the planet operates and consequently cannot perceive the wider consequences of their actions at that point, especially over time, much less make long-term plans. In addition, the USA is a young nation, the formation of which was completed very recently, only at the end of the 19th century. The result is that they have a “youthful drive” that does not place much emphasis on long-term strategic planning. Instead, there is an overconfidence in the nation’s abilities to deal with any unforeseen challenge by improvisation.
God, arrogance and neocons
The situation is aggravated in an extreme way by the “theological” element, which is dominant in American foreign policy (especially in the era of Bush’s son). In particular, the USA, from its birth until today, considers itself to be a nation with a clearly superior moral quality than the rest, which has received from God the mission to impose “universal” values on the rest of the world.
The enormous arrogance caused by this religious reading of the country’s role in international geopolitical events reached unimaginable heights after the “victory” of the West in the Cold War. This fact not only confirmed the “divine mission” of the USA, but created a paranoid sense of absolute omnipotence.
The icing on the cake was the dominance of the US political establishment by the so-called neocons. These people came, to a large extent, from the American Trotskyist Left and for this reason they were treated with great suspicion, even loathing, by the “normal” conservatives.
Citing a personal experience, during an academic program in Washington in 2006, an executive of the conservative think tank CATO had described to the signatory the neoconservatives, then dominating the administration of George W. Bush, as “neoradicals”.
If we wanted to describe the influence of these people on US foreign policy in as simple terms as possible, we would say that they took the theories of Trotsky’s “exporting the revolution” and Che Guevara’s creation of “revolutionary foci” (foco). , they replaced the word “revolution” with the word “democracy” (as they mean it of course) and tried to apply it to the Middle East and other parts of the world. They started with the self-destructive invasion of Iraq and continued with the fomenting of the so-called “Arab Spring”, with sad results.
Illusions and irrationality
Also partly a cause and partly a result of this cocktail of paranoid irrationality in American geostrategy, was the so-called “War on Terror” in which the US (it) became trapped after September 11, 2001. This was an undefined war, with undefined objectives, against unspecified opponents, which, in order to justify itself, would have to be constantly reproduced with “victories” against existing and non-existent enemies. Thus, the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime was “rationalized” within this context.
To make matters worse, the rapid success achieved by the mix of Special Forces, airborne “smart” precision strike weapons and friendly local forces in Afghanistan (where the US ultimately did not prevail either) had further boosted US confidence. So the micro-neocons thought that the occupation and subjugation of Iraq was a matter of weeks, and that Iran would follow.
The result was for the US to become locked in a protracted and senseless war without clear objectives, to disrupt its relations with almost everyone in the Middle East, to create ISIS and above all to strengthen Iran, making it the dominant power in the region, a development that it is valid until today and neither the sanctions nor the assassination of Suleimani prevented and neither will they apparently prevent the “retaliation” we see against the Iranian attack…
In conclusion, given that the caricature of high strategy that exists in our country is dominated by the notion that Greece should function as a component of American foreign policy (to the point of rushing to include Kosovo in the Council of Europe!) we should we bear in mind that our master may not be as intelligent as we tend to believe…
