bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2006) — Fall/Winter 2006 // Automne/Hiver 2006, pp. 24–25
this book is about Iraq and its complex and conflict-ridden history over the past quarter of a century.” The second level and certainly the more important in the global schema – the machinations of the Security Council as it has dealt with Iraq — is being dealt with separately. Because it cannot be avoided, a third topic runs sub-rosa throughout the book and that has to do with the foreign policy of the United States of America, its development and its implementation. The following review focuses on the first — the Iraqi — level of this complex, but worthwhile, book. But the book should not be construed as a history of Iraq. The outline is there and the main points are mentioned, but the reader may be at a disadvantage if he/she is not already somewhat familiar with both Iraq and the greater Arab world of the Middle East.
The author “assumes a reasonable level of knowledge” spread across a variety of disciplines because, in order to understand what went on in the corridors of the Security Council, one must understand what was going on in Iraq. Each chapter, therefore, includes the necessary background explicitly or as part of the narrative. But there are lacuna. It is never made entirely clear why the people of Iraq were willing to tolerate Saddam’s excesses. It is true that they saw him as “the lesser of several evils that could have overtaken the country,” but it should also be noted that Saddam and the Ba’ath brought to the country a better standard of living, widespread access to education and health care, and despite the omnipresent security agencies, a stable and secure way of life that had been unknown in Iraq since the end of World War II.
In some places misunderstandings can occur because of the need of the author to cram so much into a book of reasonable length. Especially in the purely historical sections, such as those at the beginning of the second and third chapters – the origins of the Iraq-Iran war and the background to the invasion of Kuwait respectively – the narrative occasionally seems too glib or superficial. It is not that the reasons attributed to the Iraqi actions are incorrect, but rather that they do not delve into the complexity of the situations that led Saddam to do the things he did.
The statement: “… the 1973 Israeli-Arab war added another ideological and military enemy to the long list that Baghdad had been compiling since 1958” implies that Iraq had not been engaged with Israel before that time. But Iraqi units fought in the 1948 war, only missed the 1967 war because it took too long for them to get there, and — as was said only a few lines before the quote above, Israel had been supporting the Kurdish insurrection in northern Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s.
Much is made of Saddam’s zealous pursuit of total power and the cult of personality that he cultivated as a tool to maintain himself in power and that was condoned and propagated by others to further their own prospects within the hierarchy or their own separate agendas. Among the latter must be included leaders from the West who, throughout the 1980s, paid little heed to the evils of the regime because it suited their purposes to support Baghdad in its struggle with revolutionary Tehran. (It is widely believed that it was Western powers that provided Saddam with the basic elements of his chemical weapons program.) Saddam, who had almost no knowledge or experience of the world beyond the frontiers of the Arab world (and had only marginally more of the Arab world itself, failed to understand the transient nature of this support. It was not just his “preoccupation with domestic developments” that led him to misinterpret the global changes that were underway in the 1980s and 1990s – Saddam just didn’t have the experience to understand that the end of the Cold War meant that he could no longer expect support, or at least inaction, from the great power(s).
But Iraq is very much the secondary story that the book tells, and the third story has to do with the role the US has played in Iraq and in the Security Council. It is impossible to tell the story of either the last two decades of Iraqi history or the evolution of the Security Council without dwelling on the policies and activities of the American government and this is unfortunate. Too often a description of the policies of the administration of the second Bush president must deliver the sort of critique that is not well received in today’s Republican Washington. Even with the most objective drafting possible, the role of the Americans with regard to Iraq and the Security Council is not a pretty one and by telling the story “warts and all,” this book and its author will, in all likelihood, receive a very frosty reception in many American circles. Because it is important, one can anticipate that there will be other publications that will tell the story from the viewpoint of the American administration, but it is unlikely that they will carry the same sense of authority.
Overall, the book is to be recommended. It is a very useful case study for those trying to understand where the UN – and indeed much of the world – is going. The clarity of the drafting and the structure
– with numbered and titled sub-chapters, together with valuable appendices providing a list and pocket description of relevant UNSC resolutions and a chronology of pertinent events, make the book useful both for the student who seeks to understand the passage of events or for the practitioner who needs an in-depth commentary on political events that have helped shape the global system as it is today.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2006) — Fall/Winter 2006 // Automne/Hiver 2006, pp. 24–25. Read the rest of this issue →
