“My America...Our America, is an ideal, not an administration. During World War 2, we knew we were right. And we’ve always just assumed we were right ever since.” 

- Wonder Woman, from DC’s Justice League New Frontier

 

Introduction

On September 11th, 2001 the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization launched an attack on United States soil. With thousands dead at the hands of an elusive enemy, the global hegemon was left vulnerable and with limited options of retaliation. By September 2002, the US revealed their National Security Strategy which outlined the justifications for their subsequent invasion of Iraq. The US vowed to “rid the world of evil” (Bush 2001) and exercise its unilateral military and economic power of aggression against states that are actively supporting terrorists, developing weapons of mass destruction, or simply non-democratic (National Security Council 2002, 2). It would later be revealed that the Bush administration deceived the American public into supporting a baseless and genocidal moral crusade. Weapons inspectors and Iraq specialists concluded that Saddam Hussein lacked the means and motive to produce weapons of mass destruction (Hinnebusch 2007, 209). Moreover, Robert Jervis determined that even if the regime had the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, the threat on the US would be containable, and would not prompt the self-appointed right to pre-emptive attack that the US declared (Jervis 2003, 315). As for the professed intention to establish a democratic government in Iraq, this notion is muted by the system of political and economic patronage that the US left in its stead (Chomsky 2003, 251-254). What is left of the US mission in Iraq has puzzled realist and structural theorists in the field of international relations. On one hand, some semblance of a realist explanation maintains that in the absence of opposing forces, a hegemonic state in a unipolar world order will seek to maximize their power through expansion (Hinnebusch 2007, 209). On the other hand, the primary assumption of realist theories that states behave as rational and unitary actors is challenged by the gap between US policies in Iraq and their expected outcome. Given that a realist theory remains inadequate in explaining the divergence of US foreign policy under the Bush administration and the democratic national interest, domestic theories of war might help fill in the explanatory gaps. One such theory is the diversionary theory of war. It postulates that states can use foreign wars to “divert popular attention” and state resources away from domestic socio-economic and political turmoils (Levy 1988, 666).  This paper aims to explore the following question: Can a diversionary theory of war explain the 2003 US invasion of Iraq? I will argue that the US invasion of Iraq can be explained by the state’s efforts to protect the symbiotic relationship between an obscured internal structural violence and the US international objective of imperialist expansion. Firstly, I aim to review the current literature on the application of realist theories to the war, discuss the mechanisms of a diversionary theory of war in the context of the US occupation of Iraq, then consider a counter-argument from the perspective of a democratic peace theory, and tend to these objections. 

 

Literature Review

In the realist school of international relations, the United States of America has become an exemplar for the hegemonic theory of stability; and its occupation of Iraq, a break from the model. A hegemonic power is the dominant force on the socio-economic and political global stage. It’s function is to promote the unity and cooperation of the global polity against an otherwise anarchic state. What that order looks like on the other hand, is very much dependent on the cultural and institutional values of the hegemon. In the case of the United States, this function is translated into the promotion or enforcement of the “globalization of capitalism against the fragmentation of the states system”  (Hinnebusch 2007, 213). National intentions however, aren't always communicated into state policy. The Bush administration announces its mission to protect the world from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and yet votes against a UN General Assembly convention that aims to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East months prior to deploying their military in search of some (Chomsky 2003, 244). This divergence of intention and actual policy suggests either a break from the realist assumption of rational and unitary actors, or that the US conviction to invade Iraq precluded their goal of Iraqi disarmament. Global powers like to believe that hegemonic states are held accountable to their actions through a system of international performance legitimacy. So long as the state “defends a world order that benefits more actors than itself”, states will see the hegemony as legitimate and justified (Hinnebusch 2007, 213). The difficulty in such a condition is that the US’s structural power allows it to define “benefit” however it pleases. The state has the power to “make the rules and to structure the situation”  due to the central role it assumes in the entangled economies of other nations (213). When a US hegemony leads through the example of capitalist and imperialist expanse, unless other states protest, this becomes the standard it comes to set, and judge itself by. In 2004, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov stood by a recent public exhibition of WMDs by claiming Russia was simply responding to the NSS (2002) that the US adopted, making “nuclear weapons an instrument of solving military tasks” (Chomsky 2003, 242). Thus Hinnebusch posits a strong critique of hegemonic stability theory that it assumes “the hegemon is uniformly a force for stability and largely beneficial” (Hinnebusch 2007, 213). This assumption is underlied by the same realist assumption of rationality that ought to make American imperialism “costly and futile” (210). When the world stage is populated by states with equal access to sovereignty and economic markets, cooperation allows them to realize the most out of their social and economic capital. The US is thus expected to comply with the rational foreign policy of promoting the conditions of justice that allow for this cooperation. When a hegemonic state becomes existentially attached to its project of capitalist and imperialist penetration of different economic and geographic markets, it begins challenging the grounds for a legitimate hegemonic state.  If not the promotion of global order, then what can explain this need for unnecessary conquest?

 

Diversionary Theory of War

To recount, the diversionary theory of war posits that a state can divert attention and resources from pressing internal turmoil to an external conflict (Levy 1988, 666). This external conflict can be pre-existing or manufactured, while the domestic tension in the US is uniquely structural and weaved into the institutions of the state. In democratic societies the ideal goal is that the interests of the polity are translated effectively into the policies of the state. It would thus be fair for a democratic hegemonic stability theory to assume that governments will claim and act in the service of its constituents, be it by tending to the internal structural violence, or directly advancing the conditions of international peace that preserve its status as legitimate hegemon (Hinnebusch 2007, 214). On the other hand, if the hegemony and its economy were built and are maintained through a foundation of structural violence, then the state can be configured to tend towards economic imperialism as a form of economic growth rather than grow by tending to the development stunting internal violence. Here structural violence will be defined using Johan Galtung’s account, as a form of injustice embedded into the structure of states and ensuring “unequal power and consequently unequal life chances” maintain the delicate power dynamics of a society (Galtung 1969, 171). In order to argue that the US invasion of Iraq, and in accordance, American imperialism, shares a symbiotic relationship with the neglect of its structural violence, a biconditional relationship between the two must be established. I will contextualize and argue that imperialism exacerbates structural violence, and that the state’s attempt at qualming these domestic injustices lends itself to the imperialist program in Iraq. 

 

The first part of the diversionary theory war requires that we establish the state’s primary intent to preserve the internal status quo, in the case of the US, protect its structural violence in exchange for imperialism. Marxist-Leninist theory argues that capitalist economies are invariably geared for expansion and imperialist policies. In a hierarchical society where the wealth of the political and economic elite is built on the labor of the less wealthy and marginalized communities there will be a divergence between the interests of the polity and the decisions of the elite few. Galtung argues that in societies that are founded on exploitative caste systems such as slavery, a “powerful top layer of the victorious group” will comendeer state resources from the top-down  (Galtung 1969, 178). Individuals in power seek to protect that power, and in the US this takes the shape of instrumentalizing the proletariat class, protecting pharmaceutical corporate interests against an accessible health care system, and the preservation of structural violence against minority groups. On the other hand, Mayer duly notes that we may not be prompted to assume a “homogenous upper class” with an organized and intentional political and economic elite (1967, 290). While it might not be charitable to assume that political and economic elites work together, the evidence points to their working in the same directions. When faced with an over productive economy, saturated markets and limited domestic investment opportunities, capitalist states will seek to expand opportunities abroad (Levy 1988, 662). The economic regulations set out by Paul Bremer, the Presidential envoy to Iraq, have prompted the takeover of Iraqi resources and industry by US banks, multinational corporations and state-subsidized oil extracting companies such as Halliburton (251-254). Economist Jeff Madrick argues that this shrouded effort to crystallize the dependency of the Iraqi state on US presence, “destroy[s] the role of the Iraqi industrialist” as well as inhibits the post-war funding capacities for infrastructure and social benefits (Madrick 2003, 1). The only economy that benefited from this war was the US as it expanded opportunities of foreign investment for US based firms, as well as quenched the thirst of its military industrial complex. Rather than developing the standards of living of the population, the US seeks to fulfill its economic growth through the unilateral takeover of foreign markets. Now although diversionary theory is elucidated through the discussion of the economic mechanisms that support it, whether or not it is central to the US’s foreign policy is uncertain. This account of diversionary theory has provided a theoretical framework for US motivations for war in Iraq based on the internal structural violence of the state and the need to remain both legitimate and above the eyes of the American public. What it has failed to give on the other hand, is the means to distinguish a war based on the American need to escape and project its inner turmoil elsewhere, and a war fought for a just reason. As a representative democracy, American citizens’ interests ought to be represented by the state. If structural violence is as rampant as this account has made it out to be, then why has the state had the chance to divert resources away from these ailments and towards Iraq? 

 

Counter Argument: Democratic Peace Theory 

Democratic Peace Theory proposes that democratic governments are “inherently peaceful” given that they represent a citizenry that is very much aware of the costs of war they will personally have to fight (Levy 1988, 658). Such a theory undermines the very notion of American imperialism given that it rejects the notion that a democratic state is capable of unnecessary wars. In fact the war in Iraq was poised as a mission of peaceful intent to eliminate the threat of global terror, rid the region from WMDs, and advance democracy in the name of the 'oppressed' Iraqis. To the unsuspecting American public, these justifications served to “transform conflicts of interests into moral crusades” (659) and necessitated the invasion of Iraq. After the attack on September 11th, irrespective of democratic conventions, the US was expected to retaliate. Even if “democratic regimes are less inclined to initiate wars, it would not automatically follow that they are less likely to become involved in international wars” (660). Thus democratic peace theory can still account for the possibility of war with Iraq as a form of national and ideological defense, and continue to reject a claim of American imperialism. 

 

On the other hand, America’s foreign policy of war is not exclusive to its involvement in Iraq. In fact the measures it adopted after 9/11 have worked against the interest of domestic and global peace. In September 2002, the Bush administration halted negotiations for an enforceable bioweapons treaty, blocked attempts by the global community to ban biowarfare through the UN, and supported the militarization of space (Chomsky 2003, 244). Moreover, According to Fawaz Gerges, the invasion of Iraq “revived the appeal of a global jihadi Islam…[despite its] decline after 9-11”(Chomsky 2003, 240). Winston Churchill once asserted that “democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets'', this observation however, isn’t limited to colonial empires. Following the Al-Qaeda attack, the US launched missiles into Afghanistan with no credible pretext that its target was Bin Laden rather than innocent civilians (Chomsky 2003, 241). In fact some theorists such as Morgenthau characterize democracies by the difficulty of translating popular will into foreign policy due the asymmetry in their access to foreign intelligence (Morgenthau 1982, 241). In addition, an analysis of American politics demonstrates that popular support for an administration jumps after the use of military action abroad (Mueller 1973, 179-181). Due to the sheer military might of the US, as well as the “pre-existing culture of exceptionalism that views America as morally superior” (Hinnebusch 2007, 211), this may be characteristic of the hegemonic state rather than democracies in general. Nevertheless, it seems as though an American democratic state is not only capable of, but geared towards engaging in foreign militancy efforts irrespective of the will of its people. 

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the US invasion of Iraq can be explained by the state’s efforts to protect the symbiotic relationship between an obscured internal structural violence and the US international objective of imperialist expansion. Not only are hegemonic states capable of departing from their duty to the global order, but the US democratic state is equally as willing to depart from the interests of its citizenry. Given the structural violence that is embedded in the institutional framework of the US, not only is imperialism the natural expression of its capitalist economy, but also the economic instrument that justifies the neglect of internal inequities. The US invasion of Iraq as a case study accentuates the unmitigated power that the US has granted itself on the world stage. The US has projected itself, its neo-liberal values, its capitalist globalization and democratic moral supremacy, at the center of the globe for all other nations to orbit. When a hegemonic theory of the state is contextualized in an anarchic world order, the implication is that global unity is only achievable through the homogenization of international values under a single hegemon. As this case study reflects, no one state is immune from the corruption of absolute power, nor is morally supreme. A multiplicity of nations, ideologies and values has to be respected, so long as no nation stands to dictate their own. 

 

Bibliography:

Bush, George W. "National Cathedral Speech." Address, September 14, 2001.

Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: Americas Quest for Global Domination. New York: Henry Holt and, 2003.

Hinnebusch, Raymond. "The US Invasion of Iraq: Explanations and Implications." Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 16, no. 3 (2007): 209-28. doi:10.1080/10669920701616443.

Jervis, Robert L. "The Confrontation between Iraq and the US: Implications for the Theory and Practice of Deterrence." European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 2 (2003): 315-37. doi:10.1177/1354066103009002006.

Levy, Jack S. "Domestic Politics and War." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (1988): 653-73. doi:10.2307/204819.

Mayer, Arno J. "Domestic Causes of the First World War." The Responsibility of Power, 1967, 286-300. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-00108-8_15.

Morgenthau, Hans Joachim. The Purpose of American Politics. Lanham: Univ. Pr. of America, 1982.

Mueller, John E. War, Presidents, and Public Opinion. New York: John Wiley, 1973.

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