Essay: War in Iraq

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

それでは、前日の日記の補遺での予告どおり、イラク戦争に関してペーパーで書いたことを掲載します。

Question:

In view of Paul Kennedy's classic book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, do you think that the Bush administration's war in Iraq confirms or denies Kennedy's thesis of strategic overextension? Explain your answer. Cite sources from throughout Kennedy’s book, as well as other sources when appropriate.

Answer:

First of all, I have to mention that the meaning of “strategic overextension” is quite different between the age of the Habsburg Empire and the contemporary world. Although lack of resources and drain of state revenues by the rapid increase of military expenditures are common problems, the significance of directly occupied territory depends upon in what age people lived, because way of war has dramatically changed especially after the World War Ⅱ. Since the World War Ⅱ, the military hasn’t have to occupy enemy's land to win the war. Rather, it has been more and more thought that stationing its troops too long in hostile countries should be avoided and the troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible. Therefore, Kennedy’s thesis of strategic overextension is partly applicable to U.S. actions of the present world, while in other parts it is already out-of-date.

What Paul Kennedy cites as one of primary causes of decline of the Habsburg Empire is the relentlessly increasing costs of war.

[T]he grinding costs of war always eventually eroded these short-term gains, and within a few more years the financial position was worse than ever. (p.48)

Secondly, according to Kennedy, the Habsburg was overburdened.

[T]he Habsburgs simply had too much to do, too many enemies to fight, too many fronts to defend. The stalwartness of the Spanish troops in battle could not compensate for the fact that these forces had to be dispersed, in homeland garrisons, in North Africa, in Sicily and Italy, and in the New World, as well as in the Netherlands. … It was the Habsburg’s, and more especially Spain’s, fate to have to turn immediately from a struggle against one enemy to a new conflict against another … During some awful periods, imperial Spain was fighting on three fronts simultaneously, and with her enemies consciously aiding each other, diplomatically and commercially if not militarily. (p.48-9)

It is quite certain that too much burden of war for a hegemonic state can be a big problem for the contemporary world, too, especially for the United States who has engaged in almost every conflict on the globe. It must be true beyond the boundaries of ages that hegemonic state in each age, such as the Habsburgs and the United States, is “more powerful than any of the dogs attacking it, but never able to deal with all of its opponents and growing gradually exhausted in the process.” (p.49) This thesis is truly applicable to the cotemporary world.

One element that made overburdened Habsburgs inevitable was “domino theory” that had haunted and drained them so long. G. Parker vividly descries this situation:

The first and greatest dangers [so the reasoning went in the critical year of 1635] are those that threaten Lombardy, the Netherlands and Germany. A defeat in any of these three is fatal for this Monarchy, so much so that if the defeat in those parts is a great one, the rest of the monarchy will collapse; for Germany will be followed by Italy and the Netherlands, and the Netherlands will be followed by Naples and Sicily, without the possibility of being able to defend either. (p.51)

Let us look at a more recent example of strategic overextension: imperial Japan. Since the Manchuria Incident in 1931, imperial Japan had invaded mainland China. Japanese Imperial Army had increasingly expanded its war front and resulted in bogging down in the midland of China over time. Manchuria was established in 1932 as a puppet regime and Japanese Kwantung Army masterminded this regime. But this army suffered a devastating defeat with Soviet Red Army in 1939. Japan already showed overextension in China.

In the prolonged and bloody border clashed with the Red Army around Nomonhan between May and August 1939, for example, Imperial General Headquarters was alarmed at the clear superiority of Soviet artillery and aircraft, and at the firepower of the much larger Russian tanks. With the Kwantung (Manchuria) army possessing only half the number of divisions that the Russians had placed in Mongolia and Siberia, and with large forces increasingly bogged down in China, even the more extremist army officers recognized that war against the USSR had to be avoided—at least until the international circumstances were more favorable. (p.302-3)

Not only in the north but also in the Pacific it turned out to be strategic overextension. The majority of Japanese Imperial Army was so stuck in mainland China that they couldn’t deploy enough troops in other regions. Needless to say, this lack of troops was caused by overextension in China.

Because Japan was carrying out a “continental” strategy in which the army's influence predominated, its operations in the Pacific and Southeast Asia had been implemented with a minimum of force—only eleven divisions, compared with the thirteen in Manchuria and the twenty-two in China. Yet even when the American counteroffensive in the central Pacific was under way, Japanese troops and aerial reinforcements to that region were far too tardy and far too small—especially as compared with the resources allocated for the massive China offensive of 1943-1944. (p.350)

Judging from Kennedy's argument mentioned thus far, a good deal of lessons can be elicited from it on the Bush administration's war in Iraq. According to James Dobbins, “the United States has marched into Iraq without any underlying strategy designed to secure the support of neighboring states.”1 What is worse, the United States is hated by Iraqi domestic population. It dramatically raises the cost of war and occupation inflicted upon the U.S. troops. Like the Habsburgs in the seventeenth century, the U.S. cannot afford to have multiple enemies at multiple fronts in Iraq and in the Middle East in general. There are a lot of religious, military factions in Iraq, which are often at odds with each other. All of them are likely to aggressively oppose U.S. occupation policies because of, according to Edward N. Luttwak, “the bitter Muslim hostility to the presence of U.S. troops—labeled “Christian Crusaders” by the preachers”.2

Before the U.S. is going to be overburdened in Iraq, it will desperately need an “exit strategy.” Dobbins suggests that “To win that support, Washington will have to redefine its goals in Iraq in terms that the populations and governments of the region can identify with” and “should support the Iraqi government's efforts to co-opt elements of the resistance into the political mainstream.”3

As Luttwak's piece shows, the U.S should take disengagement seriously to avoid fatally inappropriate allocation of troops as Japanese Imperial Army did in the 1930s. He suggests that “a well-calculated retreat not only can extricate a force from a difficult situation, but in doing so can actually turn the tide of battle by luring the enemy beyond the limits of its strength until it is overstretched, unbalanced, and ripe for defeat.”4

Notes
1. James Dobbins, “Iraq: Winning the Unwinnable War,” Foreign Affairs, January/ Februay, 2005, p.21.
2. Edward N. Luttwak, “Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement,” Foreign Affairs, January/ February, 2005, p.36.
3. Dobbins, op.cit., p.25.
4. Luttwak, op.cit., p.31.