[Roguish Lawyer]

[continued from prior post]

The recent Iraq war, then, had wider strategic overtones than just imposing order on a disruptive regime. But those overtones were an indelicate topic for discussion, especially since the Soviet disestablishment of the Union and the assertions of ex-Communists, now Russian leaders, that democracy in the Russian Federation was aborning, the Cold War was a thing of the past, and therefore Russians were no longer concerned about strategy in the Middle East.

The fact that Iraq continued to be a sore spot in a region of strategic importance to the Western Alliance and therefore to the United States was in no way modified by continued Soviet and then Russian active interest in Iraq as a strategic asset. The Interfax Military News Agency in Moscow reported a statement of Colonel-General Vladislav Achalov, former Soviet deputy minister of defense and "recent military advisor to Saddam Hussein." He spoke of how, in the first Iraq war, the Americans had been unable to capture a single large locality because the Iraqi defense was based on the combat experience of the Soviet army in World War II.

In April, while the second war for Iraq was underway, elements of the Russian Fleet from the Black Sea and the Pacific began deployment from Sebastapol and Vladivostok to join together off the Yemeni island of Socotra in the Gulf of Aden, whence they were to proceed together to join in exercises with the Indian Navy. These maneuvers were said by Russian naval officers to have no connection with U.S.-led operations underway in Iraq. "Senior Naval officers…are keen to demonstrate [the Russian Navy's] continued ability to deploy into areas where Russia sees a strategic interest." Commander Baskar of Delhi's Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis suggested that after the Cold War and 9/11 the maritime strategic focus had shifted "to the Indian Ocean region and Russia wants to register itself there."

The waters of the Gulf of Aden are an extension of the Indian Ocean, which washes the shores of Yemen and Oman and extends into the Red Sea toward the Suez Canal; the waters of the Persian Gulf enter via the Gulf of Oman into the Arabian Sea that is part of the Indian Ocean. Such maritime routes have been and remain fundamental to the movement of commercial goods among the ports of the world. But those routes are equally fundamental to the movement of naval forces in support of the strategic interests of maritime powers and their allies. The two Iraq wars demonstrated the ability of naval power to support the operation of land forces in a country where a military decision is being sought by powers not resident in the region.

The recognition by those who rule in Moscow, as well as those who think of such things in India, that strategic matters are at stake in the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters, should suggest that such matters are still at stake for the United States as well. The fact that Australia, lying in the Indian Ocean, should see its interest to be engaged enough to deploy forces to fight in Iraq implies that what happens in the Middle East has some strategic importance to Australia. But then the region of the Middle East, even before oil became important, has been a place where distant powers, capable of doing so, have felt compelled to intervene to support their endeavors elsewhere.

There is traditional reluctance, among those who would influence the course of American foreign relations, to discuss the strategic interests of the United States. The reluctance stems from the association of strategy with war. But polite educated discourse seems to balk even at the possibility that nations hostile to the United States and the Western Alliance would pursue strategy as an advantage without at once conducting military operations against the United States or its allies.

A strategic consequence of the war for Iraq is its removal as a protégé of Russia and its disarmament as a major player in the Middle East. There is now one less front-line state aligned against Israel; Saddam Hussein can no longer exercise influence over his neighbor, Jordan; and Yemen has lost a possible ally against Saudi Arabia.

The vigor and resolution of the coalition led by the United States in the prosecution of the war in Iraq makes of the United States a formidable enemy to those in the Middle East who have hostile intentions. It doesn't remove those enemies, but it makes them wary of pursuing policies that might call down upon themselves the kind of intervention that has liberated Iraq from its dictatorship. Of course, a consistent American policy in the region can be subject to the erosion inflicted by electoral politics in the United States. And no Middle Eastern country, nor its mentors, can be unaware of that fact.

That the war in Iraq accrued strategic advantage to the United States is certain. Whether the advantage is to endure depends not just on the run of politics within the United States but also on the ability of hostile countries to exploit the issue of American intervention or find other means to counter the advantage gained through the war. One ought not to suppose that Syria and Iran will accept the neutralization of Iraq by the coalition as a reason to moderate their hostility to the Western Alliance and especially to the leader of that alliance. Nor can one expect that Moscow will encourage them to do so, while itself dismissing its own interests in the region. Nations that see future benefits from the pursuit of strategic competition do not easily abandon such competition because of a setback; they seek means to turn the setback to advantage.

Syria, for example, during the war for Iraq, conveyed its hostility to the U.S. through a visiting correspondent of the New York Times. "Humiliation and Rage Stalk the Arab World," was the headline in the newspaper. "To many Arabs, even Hussein was better than defeat by the West," the Times reported. "An Arab leader ruling an Arab countrytheir tyrant." Since the correspondent was granted a visa to enter Syria as a newspaperman and then conveyed by his Syrian government "minder" to interviews with those in Syria who would echo the regime's sentiments, one may regard the theme of the Times's report as authentic Syrian policy. It is well to remember that Syria's army, navy, and air force were equipped and trained by the Soviet Union, and, after the Soviet Union was dissolved, by Russia.


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The neutralization of Iraq has been accomplished. That has not disarmed the hostility of those nations claiming the leadership of the Arab world. The terrible weakness of the Saudi regime in the face of Arab-Islamic terrorism can lead to Saudi Arabia's becoming another Iraq or Iran. It doesn't take a higher degree in social studies for those hostile to the West to understand the vulnerability of Saudi Arabia, or the value to the militant Arab cause of possession of the holy places of Islam by a new regime in Saudi Arabia—one constituted to carry on the struggle that Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iran seem dedicated to, and that Iraq has been forced to abandon, at least for a time.

Removing Iraq from the ranks of militant Arab states leaves the rest to be dealt with. De-coupling Iraq from its Moscow connections renders the radical states even more valuable as strategic assets if Moscow still conceives that, despite the "ending of the Cold War," the struggle with the Western democracies continues. If that is the case, the militant Arab states remain as strategic outriders in that struggle and ought to be dealt with in that light by a comprehensive Western strategy aimed at drawing their teeth. Otherwise they are nuisances to be handled as occasion demands with the appropriate applications of diplomacy and military power.