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Bartels World Affairs Fellowship

Joschka Fischer, the 2007 Bartels World Affairs Fellow, speaks at Cornell University.

Read more about Joschka Fischer and the Bartels World Affairs Fellowship.

John Mearsheimer Denounces Military Action in Iraq as a Strategic and Moral Disaster

Posted on: 4/2/2007

On March 28, 2007, University of Chicago’s professor and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy, John J. Mearsheimer, outlined the reasons for American defeat in Iraq in his speech “Why the Bush Doctrine Crashed and Burned in Iraq.”

Prof. Mearsheimer called the war in Iraq an even bigger strategic disaster than the Vietnam War, arguing that decision makers went to war with eyes closed to the concerns and lessons learned from Vietnam. He posited that the neoconservative Bush doctrine that emerged after 9/11 laid the basis for the Iraq war. The Bush administration perceived terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by rogue states the most important threats of our time. And hence, came up with a doctrine that comprised of three main elements: unilateralism, “big stick diplomacy,” and regional reconstruction.

The U. S. government’s decision makers considered the unilateral approach to be more effective than multilateralism. The previous successes in the Yugoslavian Wars and in Afghanistan combined with the development of new sophisticated technology made the government believe that it was so powerful militarily that other nations and international institutions are “worse than useless,” he asserted. The military seemed powerful enough to quickly win a war - “Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” The strategy was simple and convincing: Go in, get out, and move forward to the next state. The underlying assumption was that the military pressure on rogue states would make them jump on the democracy bandwagon, which would eventually transform the whole region.

Reality, however, looked different. Professor Mearsheimer emphasized that establishing democracy was a difficult task and did not always lead to the desired result. According to him, the main reason why the Bush strategy failed was because they had downplayed the fact that nationalism and not democracy is “the most powerful political ideology on earth.” It was easy for the US to conquer Iraq, but once the army stayed in the country, the United States became an occupier, “…and occupation is not a good idea in the age of nationalism,” as historic examples have proved. The Iraqi environment was especially difficult to control due to its diverse population and lack of civil society. The so-called “butterfly-strategy” was not possible under these circumstances, and therefore, the big stick diplomacy and unilateralism did not work either. Professor Mearsheimer asserted that “the world is too big and too complex to run it by yourself” and that is why the US has to go back to the UN and other multilateral institutions. Professor Mearsheimer said that even before the war began, he predicted that the failure in Iraq was “not possible, but inevitable.”

In his introductory remarks, Professor Nic van de Walle, Director of the Einaudi Center, highlighted that the Distinguished Speaker Series is part of the Foreign Policy Initiative of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Other speakers in this Series lined up for the Spring Semester are Shibley Telhami (University of Maryland, April 12), and David Calleo (John Hopkins University, April 24). Joschka Fischer (former German Foreign Minister) has been named the 2007 Bartels World Affairs Fellow and his talk is scheduled on April 18.

Contact Information
Heike Michelsen
Einaudi Center
255-9044
hm75@cornell.edu

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