A War with No Winners

This war is a disaster for the country and the people of Iraq. Although Iraq is already in a disastrous state after the Iran-Iraq War, the invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War, the incident that truly led the country and its people into the current, catastrophic state is the Iraq War, which began 10 years ago. Ten years after the start of the war, tens of thousands of civilians have died in terrorist bombings; the nation has fallen into a de facto split that severely restricts the reconstruction and development of post-war Iraq. A Chinese diplomat who used to work in Iraq said emotionally: The average citizen in Iraq used to be so rich that we were ashamed to give him $10 in tip, but today even young people have appeared begging along the streets of Iraq.

This war led to a serious imbalance of geopolitical power in the Middle East, bringing disastrous consequences to the region. Historical record shows that a relative balance between the four geopolitical powers of Middle East — the Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and Israel — is the basic condition for stability in the Middle East. In the last decade of the last century, the Clinton administration, taking charge of Middle East order at that time, promoted “peace talks in the West” — the Arab-Israeli peace process — and “containment of Iran and Iraq in the East.” At the same time, Iran and Iraq maintained checks and balances against each other. The Middle East as a whole exhibited one of its few relatively calm and stable periods. The Palestinian-Israeli peace process made significant progress. But U.S. military action after 9/11, especially the war in Iraq, eventually ended this short-term regional power balance. Geopolitical power in the Middle East thus became seriously imbalanced, which influenced the situation in the Middle East after the Iraq war.

This war is also a disaster to the United States, who waged the war. Ten years after the war, more and more Americans recognize the war in Iraq is a “strategic failure” of the United States. In addition to huge military spending and thousands of U.S. troops’ lives lost, the war also caused U.S. strategy to deviate substantially from the original global anti-terrorism track and greatly reduced its soft power. No one will forget how ten years ago, in order to gain support for the war from the international community, then Secretary of State Colin Powell presented so-called evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at a United Nations Security Council meeting. However, it turned out the two major reasons the United States had for launching the war, Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaida, were non-existent. The act of fabricating so-called intelligence to deceive the world to achieve its own goals greatly diminished the United States’ international reputation.

The historical lessons are worth learning. Since the start of the 21st century, the U.S.-led West launched and participated in three wars that have had significant impact on both the Middle East and the whole world: the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and the Libyan war. All three wars, without exception, brought serious consequences to all parties. Afghanistan today still lacks tranquility; the Taliban bounces back just as the U.S is withdrawing at large scale; the situation in Iraq continues to be unstable; Libya exhibits a local separatist trend and the authority of the central government is proving difficult to build. These painful truths elucidate another truth: It is inevitable that any foreign interference, especially foreign military interference, must contain the strong political will of the interfering country. If it doesn’t then, without exception, it will never bring positive results to the nation in question.

Author Shaoxian Li is the vice president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations

Originally edited by Shichun Ye