A prominent national security analyst provides a critical examination of the origins, objectives, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. war against Iraq in this major new study. Focusing on the intersection of world politics, U.S. foreign policy, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Jeffrey Record presents a full-scale policy analysis of the war and its aftermath. As he looks at the political and strategic legacies of the 1991 Gulf War, the impact of 9/11 and neo-conservative ideology on the George W. Bush White House, and the formulation of the Bush Doctrine on the use of force, he assesses rather than describes, judges rather than recites facts. He decries the Bush administration's threat conflation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and calls U.S. plans inadequate to meet postwar challenges in Iraq. With the support of convincing evidence, the author concludes that America's war against Iraq was both unnecessary and damaging to long-term U.S. security interests. He argues that there was no threatening Saddam-Osama connection and that even if Iraq had the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration believed necessitated war, it could have been readily deterred from using them, just as it had been in 1991. Record faults the administration for preventive, unilateralist policies that alienated friends and allies, weakened international institutions important to the United States, and saddled America with costly, open-ended occupation of an Arab heartland. He contends that far from being a major victory against terrorism, the war provided Islamic jihadists an expanded recruiting base and a new front of operations against Americans. Such a solid,thought-provoking study merits attention.

In his book analyzing an earlier Bush war on Iraq, Hollow Victory, defense policy analyst Record concluded that the "job remains unfinished," leaving Saddam Hussein in power to continue to threaten the Persian Gulf's stability and security. Although the war of 2003 has taken care of Saddam Hussein, Record now concludes that it may have created more problems than it solved. He examines the origins, objectives, conduct, and consequences of George W. Bush's "preemptive war" on Iraq. He first discusses the role of neoconservatives and their "primacist" view of American power in influencing policy and their reflection in the tenets of the September 2002 The rejected policies of deterrence and containment are reviewed, and the position of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda be approached as a common enemy is found wanting. Record examines the possible immediate and long-term political and security consequences and concludes that the war was unnecessary and damaging to U.S. interests.
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