global security

Iraq's shadow over Afghanistan

Paul Rogers | openDemocracy | February 2010

Issue:Global militarisation

Tagss:global security, globalisation, International politics

The current surge in United States military forces in Afghanistan part of a strategy designed to bring the war to an end from a position of strength. The great strains within the US military mean that the deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan can be sustained only if forces can be withdrawn from Iraq at the scheduled rate: that is, all combat-forces out by August 2010 and the remaining (approximately 50,000) personnel by the end of 2011. The dynamics of violence in Iraq present a serious challenge to this strategy.

Washington is thus engaged in a delicate balancing-act: managing disengagement from Iraq while ensuring that the United States will retain a significant military presence in the country well beyond 2011 in order to exercise a maximum degree of influence.

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Posted on 18/02/10

Iraq: the path of war

Paul Rogers | open Democracy | December 2009

Issues:Competition over resources, Global militarisation

Tagss:global security, globalisation, Iraq

Most analysts agree that the security situation across Iraq as a whole has improved in 2008-09. The lower incidence of violence owes something to the consolidated sectarian geography of Baghdad and its environs as a result of the ferocious conflict of the mid-2000s. In any event the decline is relative rather than absolute, for Iraq continues to be a perilous place for many of its citizens.

In conjunction with the opening of the official inquiry in Britain into the circumstances of the then prime minister Tony Blair’s decision to join the United States-led military campaign against Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, the persistent violence in Iraq reopens the question of the impulse of the war and whether other decisions with better outcomes could have been taken.

 

Originally published in openDemocracy.

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Posted on 6/01/10