Robert J. Lieber’s lengthy critique of an ad that appeared in The New York Times explaining why war with Iraq is not in America’s national interest is both peculiar and wrong (“Foreign-Policy ‘Realists’ Are Unrealistic on Iraq,” The Review, October 18). It is peculiar because Lieber tried to show that the signatories’ opposition to such a war is based on the theory of structural realism, which he regards as a misleading guide to this issue.
We are two of the 33 scholars who placed the ad, and while we are both known as realists, over half of the scholars signing the ad are not. Indeed, several of the signatories are openly critical of realism. Moreover, the ad made no reference to realist theory and did not invoke uniquely realist arguments. So why bring in realism at all?
Lieber then sought to discredit the ad by noting that realists have made incorrect predictions on other issues. We do not agree with his assessment of the evidence, but we admit that realists do not have a perfect record of forecasting the future. Who does? By the modest standards of social science, realists have an impressive record of accurate predictions. In any case, this issue is beside the point, because our ad was not about realism. Instead, it was about whether a war with Iraq is in America’s national interest.
This leads us to why Lieber’s critique is wrong.
Lieber relies on the red herring of realism because his own arguments for a war are weak. He claims, for example, that the United States’ proven ability to deter more powerful dictators is irrelevant because Saddam Hussein is “unlike run-of-the-mill dictators who may be products of the London School of Economics or Moscow University.” Instead, he says, Saddam is “a tyrant” who “came to power via a career as a crudely educated Ba’ath party thug.” But Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Mao Zedong were not graduates of LSE or Moscow University either; they were “party thugs” who survived brutal internal struggles to reach the pinnacle of power. Stalin and Mao had the blood of millions on their hands, and all three had access to nuclear weapons. Yet they were deterred, and none of them was able to blackmail the United States or its allies.
Lieber also declares that Saddam’s past behavior shows him to be a reckless expansionist whose desire for domination cannot be contained. In fact, the historical record demonstrates exactly the opposite. Saddam has dominated Iraqi politics for about 30 years, and Iraq has started only two wars against its neighbors during that period.
Iraq did invade Iran in 1980, but only after Iran’s revolutionary government tried to assassinate Iraqi officials, conducted repeated border raids, and sought to topple Saddam by fomenting unrest among Iraq’s Kurdish and Shi’ite populations. Nor was Saddam’s decision to attack reckless, given Iran’s diplomatic isolation and the widespread belief that the revolution against the shah had dramatically reduced Iran’s military power.
Similarly, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 arose from a prolonged dispute with Kuwait over oil prices and war debts, and occurred only after the first Bush administration unwittingly signaled that it would not oppose an attack.
Thus, history shows that Saddam has gone to war when he is vulnerable, and when he has good reason to believe that his targets are weak or isolated. These considerations do not justify Iraqi expansionism, but they do show that Saddam is hardly a wild-eyed aggressor who cannot be effectively contained by the United States.
Equally important, Iraq has never used weapons of mass destruction against an adversary who could retaliate in kind. Iraq did not use such weapons against U.S. forces during the gulf war and did not fire chemical or biological warheads at Israel. If Saddam cannot be deterred, what is stopping him from using weapons of mass destruction against U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, forces that have bombed Iraq repeatedly over the past decade?
These arguments do not mean that the United States should ignore the dangers that Iraq presents. As we said in our ad, America should pursue a policy of vigilant containment. But war with Iraq is not in the American national interest.
Although the United States would almost certainly win such a war, armed conflict with Iraq would divert resources and attention from the more important task of eliminating the terrorist threat. There is no serious evidence of cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda today, but war with Iraq would fuel anti-American sentiments in the Arab and Muslim world, making it easier for bin Laden and his ilk to recruit new martyrs to their cause. War with Iraq could also destabilize the region, and ousting Saddam would force the United States to occupy and police Iraq for many years. Moreover, Iraq does have military options that could impose serious costs. If one is really worried about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, why place Saddam in a situation where he has nothing to lose?
In short, an invasion of Iraq is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn’t take a realist to figure this out, however -- it only takes someone who is sensible, reasonably objective, and focused on the American national interest.
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs and the academic dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 12, Page B19