Two decades after the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the reasons behind this pivotal military action remain a subject of intense scrutiny and debate. Numerous explanations have been proposed for Why Did The U.s. Invade Iraq In 2003, ranging from immediate security concerns to long-term geopolitical ambitions. While political scientists and journalists initially dominated the discourse surrounding the Iraq War, historians have increasingly contributed to the scholarship, offering deeper historical context and nuanced perspectives. Recent significant publications, including works by Melvyn Leffler and Samuel Helfont, exemplify this growing historical engagement.1 Given that the invasion of Iraq stands as the most consequential foreign policy decision undertaken by a U.S. president in the 21st century, the abundance of analysis dedicated to understanding its origins is hardly surprising.
This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the scholarly debate surrounding the origins of the Iraq War, tracing its evolution over the past 20 years. It seeks to act as an impartial guide through the competing schools of thought, clearly articulating their interpretations, identifying areas of contention, and acknowledging the influence of political ideologies on academic analysis. By exploring the diverse lenses, methodologies, and objectives employed by scholars, we can gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted interpretations that have emerged regarding the reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
While a single article cannot comprehensively address every facet of Iraq War scholarship, this essay will concentrate on three pivotal questions that are crucial for understanding the war’s origins and continue to be debated by scholars. Firstly, was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq primarily motivated by security imperatives or by a broader pursuit of global primacy? Secondly, was the “coercive diplomacy” strategy adopted by the Bush administration in the fall and winter of 2002–2003 a genuine effort to avert war, or was it a tactic to legitimize a pre-determined decision for military intervention made earlier in 2002? Thirdly, to what extent did neoconservative ideology and actors play a decisive role in the lead-up to the Iraq War?
The central point of scholarly divergence regarding the invasion of Iraq in 2003 lies in the dichotomy between security-driven explanations and hegemony-focused interpretations. Security-focused perspectives, as exemplified by Leffler’s recent work, posit that the Bush administration’s paramount objective was to safeguard the United States from future terrorist attacks in the altered global landscape following 9/11. In this post-9/11 context, perceived threats like Iraq were reassessed and deemed intolerable.2 Conversely, scholars aligned with the hegemony school, such as Ahsan Butt, argue that the Bush administration leveraged the 9/11 attacks and the specter of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as justifications for a war primarily driven by the desire to assert regional and global hegemony.3 This fundamental security-hegemony divide permeates other crucial aspects of the debate, including the nature of the Bush administration’s coercive diplomacy and the influence of neoconservatives in the decision to initiate military action.
Effective historiographical analysis necessitates understanding the factors shaping the scholarly landscape and suggesting avenues for future research. The inherent challenges of historical interpretation are amplified in this instance due to the limited access scholars have to primary source documentation. Consequently, much of the debate has centered on the interpretation, critique, and contextualization of a relatively constrained set of available sources. Furthermore, political and policy debates have exerted a considerable, and at times distorting, influence on scholarly discourse.4
Methodologically, the security school largely accepts policymakers’ stated motivations—both contemporaneous and retrospective—as genuine, unless compelling contradictory evidence emerges. For this perspective, the critical context for understanding the war is the heightened security environment after 9/11, where national protection became paramount, and Iraq was widely perceived as a significant threat.
The hegemony school counters that a security-centric lens fails to adequately explain key aspects of the Iraq War decision. These scholars argue against uncritically accepting policymakers’ accounts, pointing to their vested interest in downplaying ideological or misguided aspects of their actions. Instead, they advocate for situating the Iraq War decision within broader historical contexts, highlighting factors such as the long-standing primacist views held by figures like Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, which they consider more relevant explanatory factors than immediate security concerns.
Given the recency and contentiousness of the Iraq War, scholarly analysis has inevitably become intertwined with contemporary political and policy debates, particularly concerning the lessons to be drawn from the conflict. Divergent interpretations of the war’s origins have real-world implications for shaping future U.S. foreign policy in an era of renewed great-power competition. Scholars in the security school often view the Iraq War as an understandable, albeit regrettable, misjudgment given the traumatic post-9/11 context and the widespread belief that Iraq possessed WMD capabilities.5 Consequently, they typically do not advocate for radical departures from established U.S. foreign policy approaches. In stark contrast, the hegemony school contends that the war stemmed from a detrimental bipartisan pursuit of global primacy, warning that similar catastrophes are likely to recur unless this grand strategy is fundamentally abandoned.
It is important to note that this essay does not aim to defend the security-hegemony dichotomy or advocate for either side of the debate. Rather, its purpose is to elucidate the contours, evolution, and stakes of this scholarly division. While some may criticize the depiction of two broad interpretive camps as an oversimplification of a diverse and nuanced body of scholarship, this framework serves to identify genuine and persistent disagreements among scholars regarding the primary drivers of the war. This article will also explore potential avenues for synthesizing these seemingly disparate interpretations. While acknowledging areas of overlap between the security and hegemony perspectives, this analysis recognizes that the divide reflects fundamental differences in scholarly understanding of causation. Finally, this essay concludes with a call for incorporating more global and cultural perspectives into the analysis of the Iraq War, aiming to transcend the limitations of this binary framework.
Nonetheless, there is inherent value in “lumping” in historiographical analysis, particularly for those new to the field or non-specialists seeking a broad understanding of existing scholarship. This approach helps to discern the essential questions that continue to divide and propel the field, questions that should be addressed in future research on the Iraq War.
Therefore, this essay does not exhaustively cover all Iraq War scholarship, nor does it present its own definitive historical or theoretical explanation for the war’s causes. Such endeavors would exceed the scope of this article. Consequently, certain significant topics, despite their scholarly merit, receive less attention, including the internal dynamics of the Baathist regime, the history of weapons inspections prior to 2002–2003, shortcomings in pre-war planning, and the intricacies of international diplomacy preceding the war. While these aspects are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the war’s origins, they have not been the primary focus of scholarly disagreement, which remains the central concern of this essay.6
Security vs. Hegemony: The Core Divide in Explaining the 2003 Iraq Invasion
Did the United States invade Iraq in 2003 primarily due to a miscalculated effort to eliminate a perceived security threat in the heightened post-9/11 environment? Or did U.S. leaders exploit the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to pursue a war of opportunity, fundamentally motivated by the pursuit of American hegemony?
While a nuanced answer might suggest “a combination of both,” or that this is a false dichotomy, the scholarly divide between security and hegemony remains a significant and meaningful distinction. It reflects genuine differences in interpretation, contextualization, and even underlying political perspectives. Scholars themselves frequently identify security-based or hegemony-based factors as the most salient in explaining why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Security-focused explanations prioritize the post-9/11 security imperatives, arguing that hegemonic aspirations, if present, were secondary. Hegemony-focused explanations, while often acknowledging security concerns, contend that fears about Iraqi WMD and terrorist links served as convenient pretexts for deeper, pre-existing hegemonic ambitions. Each school of thought frames the war within different contexts, with the security school emphasizing the immediate post-9/11 moment and the hegemony school highlighting the preceding decades during which key architects of the war developed their worldview and policy preferences.
The Security School’s Perspective on the Iraq War Origins
Melvyn Leffler is a leading figure in the security school, which also includes scholars such as Robert Jervis, Frederic Bozo, Alexander Debs, Ivo Daalder, James Lindsay, Peter Hahn, Hakan Tunc, and Steve Yetiv. While these scholars do not entirely disregard broader U.S. goals and ideologies, they maintain that the Bush administration’s pursuit of security in the aftermath of 9/11 was the primary catalyst for the decision to invade Iraq. Leffler asserts that President Bush “went to war not out of a fanciful idea to make Iraq democratic, but to rid it of its deadly weapons, its links to terrorists, and its ruthless, unpredictable tyrant.”8 Robert Jervis, while not dismissing democracy promotion as a secondary motive, argues that “[t]he fundamental cause of the invasion was the perception of unacceptable threat from Saddam [Hussein] triggered by the combination of pre-existing beliefs about his regime and the impact of terrorist attacks.”9 Similarly, Frederic Bozo concludes that “the choice for war clearly arose first and foremost from a logic of national security.”10
Security school arguments emphasize the transformative impact of the 9/11 attacks on U.S. national security thinking as essential for understanding why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Leffler and Jervis contend that while the Bush administration included proponents of regime change, Iraq was not a primary focus in its initial months, nor were significant steps taken toward toppling Saddam Hussein before 9/11. President Bush initially opposed nation-building and advocated for strategic restraint.11
President George W. Bush addressing the nation, a moment capturing the gravity of the decision to invade Iraq and the weight of national security concerns.
However, the 9/11 attacks fundamentally reshaped U.S. foreign policy and paved the way for the Iraq War. The Bush administration experienced profound anger, fear, and vulnerability after 9/11, prompting a reassessment of existing and potential security threats.12 Leffler argues that for the Bush administration, “the risk calculus had changed dramatically after 9/11.”13 They concluded that they could no longer tolerate states perceived as pursuing WMD, threatening neighboring countries or the U.S., and supporting terrorism.
So, why Iraq in particular? The Bush administration viewed Iraq as the “nexus” of these perceived threats.14 President Bush himself argued that Iraq met these criteria more comprehensively than any other nation: “state sponsors of terror … sworn enemies of America … hostile governments that threatened their neighbors … regimes that pursued WMD [weapons of mass destruction].”15 While top officials may have made significant errors and exaggerations regarding Iraq’s WMD and terrorist connections, the security school argues they genuinely believed in the reality and growing nature of these threats. Furthermore, it is noted that at the time, even many analysts in countries opposed to the war underestimated the extent to which Saddam Hussein had ceased meaningful WMD production. Saddam’s obstruction of weapons inspectors for nearly a decade also contributed to the reasonable impression that he intended to resume WMD production.16
The U.S., according to this perspective, felt it could not afford to wait for the Iraqi threat to fully materialize, given the potential for “the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud,” as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice famously stated.17 This sense of urgency led to the articulation of a right to launch preventive wars to eliminate emerging threats. This perceived right became central to the Bush Doctrine, which, according to the security school, was less a grand strategy for primacy and more an adaptation of long-standing concepts of preemptive force in the face of novel and imminent dangers.18
From the security school’s viewpoint, the Iraq War was not primarily driven by grand designs of expanding U.S. hegemony or imposing liberal values. While overwhelming U.S. military superiority and the unipolar structure of the international system made regime change feasible, these factors were not the primary motivations for the war. Leffler contends that “missionary fervor or idealistic impulses” played a minimal role in the Bush administration’s decision-making.19 Hakan Tunc argues that hegemony is an implausible motive for the Iraq War, as eliminating a relatively minor adversary like Iraq would not have substantially altered the global balance of power.20
Idealistic aspirations and the unipolar distribution of power had existed for over a decade prior to 9/11. The 9/11 attacks were the decisive new variable that prompted a fundamental reassessment of national security priorities, ultimately culminating in the invasion of Iraq. Leffler summarizes the core, security-centric motivations: “They were seeking to safeguard the country from another attack, save American lives, avoid the opprobrium that would come from another assault, and preserve the country’s ability to exercise its power in the future on behalf of its interests.”21
Security school scholars often adopt a more sympathetic stance toward the Bush administration’s Iraq policy. Leffler emphasizes the profound emotional impact of 9/11, including top officials’ visits to Ground Zero and interactions with first responders and grieving families. He stresses the importance of context, arguing: “Critics forget how ominous the al Qaeda threat seemed and how evil and manipulative Hussein really was.”22 He maintains that the Bush administration genuinely sought to “do the right thing” and protect the nation from what they perceived as an imminent threat.23 Crucially, scholars within the security school agree that the perceived WMD-terrorism-rogue state nexus was not a mere pretext but the genuine driving force behind the war. As Jervis argues, given the prevailing consensus regarding Iraqi WMD and the post-9/11 imperative to re-evaluate security threats, “There is little reason to doubt that Bush and his colleagues sincerely believed that Saddam had active WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs.”24
The security school’s interpretation aligns significantly with the memoirs of Bush administration officials, which also emphasize security motivations for the war.25 These memoirs depict the intense emotional atmosphere following 9/11, where the administration felt acutely responsible for failing to prevent the attacks and deeply concerned about the prospect of future attacks. “I could not have forgiven myself had there been another attack,” recalls Condoleezza Rice.26 President Bush writes that “before 9/11, Saddam was a problem America might have been able to manage.” However, “through the lens of the post-9/11 world, my view changed.”27 Protecting the nation from further terrorist attacks became the overriding priority, and perceived threats like Iraq could no longer be tolerated.28 Official memoirs emphasize that the administration did not desire war with Iraq and explored avenues to avoid it, but ultimately national security imperatives necessitated removing this perceived menace.29
This alignment is understandable given the reliance of scholars like Leffler on interviews with administration insiders. However, it also raises concerns that the security school may be uncritically accepting policymakers’ self-serving portrayals of events. Bush administration officials have a clear incentive to portray themselves as having remained open to non-violent solutions to the Iraq issue and as not being driven by idealistic crusades.30 As we will see, the hegemony school adopts a more critical and adversarial approach to these claims.
The Hegemony School’s Counter-Narrative: Primacy as the Driving Force Behind the Iraq War
Scholars associated with the hegemony school, including Ahsan Butt, Stephen Walt, Andrew Bacevich, Patrick Porter, Paul Pillar, G. John Ikenberry, David Harvey, John Mearsheimer, and Jeffrey Record, while not exclusively aligned with realist international relations theory, tend to lean in that direction. They acknowledge the role of security concerns in the lead-up to the Iraq War, but consider security-based rationales fundamentally incomplete explanations for why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Their central argument is that the primary motivation for the invasion was to maintain and expand U.S. hegemony. However, the hegemony school itself is divided on whether the U.S. sought to achieve realist or liberal forms of hegemony.
Within the realist hegemony perspective, Ahsan Butt argues that the war stemmed from a “desire to maintain the United States’ global standing and hierarchic order,” with security concerns acting more as a domestically palatable pretext than a genuine causal factor.31 The 9/11 attacks, in this view, were perceived as a challenge to U.S. hegemony, leading the U.S. to opt for a “performative war” aimed at re-establishing “generalized deterrence”—the reputation for unassailable power and willingness to use it that underpins hegemony.32 Butt quotes Rumsfeld’s remark on 9/11 that “[w]e need to bomb something else [other than Afghanistan] to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kinds of attacks.”33 He contends that available intelligence on Iraq did not suggest an imminent threat. However, Iraq was a convenient target for demonstrating U.S. power, being militarily weak, diplomatically isolated, lacking WMD, and unpopular with the U.S. public.34
Stephen Wertheim concurs, arguing that “the decision to invade Iraq stemmed from the pursuit of global primacy,” the objective of which is to “dissuade other countries from rising and challenging American dominance.”35 Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney similarly argue, “The primary objective of the war was the preservation and extension of American primacy in a region with high importance to American national interests.”36 Jeffrey Record likewise contends that “the invasion was a conscious expression of America’s unchecked global military hegemony that was designed to perpetuate that hegemony by intimidating those who would challenge it.”37
Scholars in the realist-hegemony camp view the Iraq War as a means to uphold realist priorities, such as maintaining unipolarity and U.S. freedom of action globally. They argue that the Bush administration exploited the 9/11 attacks and the alleged Iraqi WMD threat as a “pretext,” “opportunity,” or “rationale” to advance this agenda, believing it would effectively neutralize the terrorist threat and other challenges to U.S. power.38 Democratization, in this view, was a secondary motive, used to justify a war fundamentally driven by power considerations.39
Stephen Walt, Patrick Porter, and Andrew Bacevich agree that the U.S. sought to project power and preserve hegemony by invading Iraq, but they argue that the Bush administration specifically aimed to solidify liberal hegemony. This grand strategy entailed spreading liberal democracy and capitalism, seen not only as inherently good but also as instruments for maintaining global dominance.40 The Cold War had previously constrained this strategy, but the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled the U.S. to pursue it with unchecked idealism and hubris. A bipartisan foreign policy consensus emerged, assuming the universality of liberal ideals and a presumptive U.S. right to intervene globally, whether to protect human rights or suppress challenges to American power.41
In this narrative, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, it did not critically examine whether its pursuit of liberal hegemony might have contributed to resistance. Instead, the Bush administration, with bipartisan support, intensified the pursuit of liberal hegemony and asserted a unilateral right to initiate regime change in rival states through preventive war—articulated as the Bush Doctrine. Security school scholars interpret this doctrine as a response to a novel category of threat. However, the hegemony school views it as a blueprint for preserving U.S. primacy, asserting a unilateral American prerogative to eliminate potential threats like Iraq and to forestall the rise of peer competitors.42 Some scholars also emphasize the protection of Israel and the advancement of U.S. oil interests as additional hegemonic motives for the war, although these remain more contested explanations.43
For Walt, Porter, and others, the Iraq War emerged from the pursuit of liberal hegemony, a revisionist grand strategy aimed at spreading democracy and other liberal values, toppling authoritarian regimes, and thereby constructing a more peaceful and cooperative global order. 44 In this vision, the U.S. sought not only to eliminate a threat but to fundamentally transform Middle Eastern politics by establishing democracy in Iraq. They cite considerable evidence that democracy promotion was a significant motive for the war, particularly for President Bush, rather than merely a rhetorical justification for a war driven by power politics.45 The 2002 National Security Strategy, for instance, reflected this universalistic idealism, declaring, “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom — and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.”46
This war aligned with the long-held and essentially liberal conviction among many U.S. policymakers that autocratic regimes inherently threaten long-term peace, prosperity, and security, and that only a democratic international order can guarantee these benefits.47 As President Bush argued in a February 2003 speech, “The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder.”48 Liberal idealism, as Michael MacDonald argues, also fostered the Bush administration’s belief that regime change in Iraq would be straightforward, assuming that Iraqis would readily embrace democracy after the removal of the Baathist regime.49
John Mearsheimer characterizes the Iraq War as “probably the best example of this kind of liberal interventionism” that dominated post-Cold War U.S. thinking.50 Andrew Bacevich argues that the WMD threat was a “cover story,” and that the war’s primary objectives were to “force the Middle East into the U.S.-dominated liberal order of capitalist democracies and assert its prerogative of removing regimes that opposed U.S. interests.”51 As Patrick Porter contends, “The Iraq War … was an effort to reorder the world. Its makers aimed to spread capitalist democracy on their terms.”52
To some degree, this internal division within the hegemony school reflects the differing worldviews among top decision-makers in the Bush administration. Rumsfeld and Cheney leaned towards a more realist paradigm, prioritizing the reassertion of power over the spread of democracy. Others, like Wolfowitz, viewed the Iraq War as integral to the liberal project. President Bush himself embodied a blend of these perspectives.53
However, these differences within the hegemony school regarding realist versus liberal hegemony should not obscure their fundamental common ground. These scholars collectively argue that the U.S. had been pursuing some form of primacy well before 9/11, that 9/11 both threatened that primacy and provided a pretext or opportunity to reassert it, and that Iraq was less a genuine threat than a convenient target for solidifying hegemony.
In terms of contextualization, the hegemony school places greater emphasis on the pre-9/11 era than the security school, highlighting continuities in U.S. foreign policy stretching back into the Cold War.54 These scholars emphasize that key architects of the war, such as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, had openly advocated for U.S. hegemony in the decades leading up to 9/11. Many cite the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, drafted by Zalmay Khalilzad and Abram Shulsky under Wolfowitz’s supervision (then serving under Cheney).55 This document endorsed a hegemonic grand strategy aimed at maintaining indefinite global military dominance and preventing the re-emergence of any new rival power.56 Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and numerous other future Bush administration officials also signed open letters in the late 1990s calling for regime change in Iraq and a primacist grand strategy.57
Following 9/11, these proponents of hegemony swiftly connected the Baathist regime to the terrorism issue despite limited evidence, promoted questionable intelligence, exaggerated the Iraqi threat, and downplayed the risks of invasion. For the hegemony school, this pattern suggests that the administration “wanted war,” to paraphrase Record’s book title, and that subsequent claims of reluctantly resorting to war are self-serving fabrications.58
Interestingly, some Bush administration officials themselves have deviated from the official security-focused explanation and acknowledged the significance of broader ideological or hegemonic motivations. Former CIA Director George Tenet noted in his memoir that senior administration officials seemed uninterested in detailed assessments of Iraq’s WMD programs. He interpreted this as indicating that they had already decided to invade Iraq and were using WMD as a pretext. He concluded, “The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. In my view, I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face put on it.” He pointed to “larger geostrategic calculations, ideology,” and “democratic transformation” as more fundamental drivers.59 Former White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan similarly concluded that “removing the ‘grave and gathering danger’ Iraq supposedly posed was primarily a means for achieving the far more grandiose objective of reshaping the Middle East as a region of peaceful democracies.”60
Seeking Synthesis: Bridging the Security and Hegemony Divide in Iraq War Scholarship
Given the persistent divide between the security and hegemony schools, efforts have been made to synthesize these perspectives. Scholars like Michael Mazarr, Robert Draper, and Justin Vaisse have explored the post-9/11 national security urgency while also acknowledging the historical context of U.S. hegemony and idealism.61 In my own attempts at synthesis, I have argued that a bipartisan “regime change consensus” on Iraq emerged during the 1990s, predisposing the U.S. foreign policy establishment to favor Saddam’s removal and view containment as an inadequate policy. Broad agreement on U.S. hegemony contributed to this consensus, making the Iraq War seem logical to many U.S. elites. Nevertheless, 9/11 served as a critical catalyst, dramatically reducing America’s tolerance for perceived threats like Iraq and providing U.S. leaders with greater latitude to pursue high-risk strategies.62
One potential approach to synthesizing these schools is to assign a division of causal labor: the hegemony school can help explain “Why Iraq?” while the security school addresses “Why now?” Hegemony school analysts often raise the question: if WMD proliferation was the primary U.S. concern, why not prioritize countries with more advanced programs, such as North Korea? Or if terrorism was the main worry, why not focus on more active state sponsors of terrorism, like Iran?
Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the UN Security Council, a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the Iraq War, showcasing the administration’s diplomatic efforts and the presentation of intelligence that was later called into question.
These inconsistencies regarding “Why Iraq?” highlight a key weakness in security-based explanations: Iraq, which became the central theater of the War on Terror, was neither the most formidable “rogue state” nor implicated in the 9/11 attacks. In the hegemonic framework, Iraq becomes less of an imminent threat and more of an opportune target, with its purported WMD programs serving more as a pretext than a genuine motive. As former CIA intelligence analyst Paul Pillar bluntly states, concern about WMD “was not the principal or even a major reason the Bush administration went to war.” It was “at most a subsidiary motivator of the policy.”63 Pillar and others argue that the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence process, not in a good-faith effort to accurately assess Iraq’s WMD capabilities, but to gather—or even inflate—evidence to bolster the case for regime change.64
However, the hegemony school struggles to adequately answer the “Why now?” question. If the bipartisan pursuit of hegemony and liberal idealism are relatively constant features of U.S. foreign policy, then why did the U.S. invade Iraq in 2003 and not earlier, perhaps after weapons inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998? By focusing on how 9/11 fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy and threat perception, the security school highlights a crucial point that few analysts dispute: a U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq would have been virtually inconceivable without the catalyst of 9/11.
One point of convergence between the security and hegemony schools is the recognition that the end of the Cold War was a crucial precondition for the Iraq War. The notion of the U.S. invading a medium-sized country—once a Soviet satellite—to impose regime change during the Cold War era seems highly improbable. The hegemony school particularly underscores the significance of unipolarity, which they believe fostered hegemonic ambitions, both realist and liberal, within the U.S. political imagination.65 This raises the question of whether the emerging multipolar world order will deter the U.S. from future attempts at direct regime change.
The relationship between the 1990–1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War remains an under-explored area within this field of study. Scholars like Samuel Helfont, Christian Alfonsi, and myself have argued that the ambiguous outcome of the Gulf War initiated a pattern of conflict between the U.S. and Iraq that persisted throughout the 1990s, fostering a strong desire within the U.S. political establishment to “finish the job,” even before 9/11.66 Notably, there were no comparable military interventions against Iran or North Korea in the 1990s, nor were there “Iran Liberation Acts” or “North Korea Liberation Acts.” However, the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act explicitly declared regime change as official U.S. policy toward Iraq.67 Relatively few studies systematically trace U.S.-Iraqi relations throughout the 1990s, although Helfont’s recent book significantly addresses this gap by examining Iraq’s challenge to the post-Cold War, U.S.-led international order during that decade.68
Despite these attempts at synthesis, a fundamental tension persists between the security and hegemony schools, making complete reconciliation challenging. It is difficult to simultaneously portray the war as both predetermined and contingent—and equally challenging to reconcile the image of the Bush administration as both fixated on regime change and genuinely open to diverse means of disarming Iraq. Moreover, as this analysis demonstrates, primary source evidence can be interpreted to support both major interpretations.
The points of contrast between the security and hegemony schools also shape the overall interpretation of the war. Was it an understandable tragedy, or an unprovoked and inexcusable blunder?69 In terms of historical periodization, were the roots of the war primarily in the post-9/11 reaction, or did they extend back decades into the evolution of U.S. foreign policy? Finally, did the Iraq War, particularly the controversial Bush Doctrine, represent a radical departure in U.S. diplomatic history or a continuation of pre-existing trends, objectives, and ideas?70
The Ambiguity of “Coercive Diplomacy” in the Lead-Up to the 2003 Iraq War
The chosen perspective within the security-hegemony debate inevitably influences the interpretation of other key questions surrounding the war’s origins. This essay now turns to two additional issues that have divided scholars, beginning with the question of why the U.S. engaged in “coercive diplomacy” in late 2002 and early 2003.
In the fall of 2002, under pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Colin Powell, President Bush agreed to pursue a “diplomatic track” with Iraq. On September 12th, at the United Nations, he demanded that Iraq readmit weapons inspectors or face forcible regime change. He also sought Congressional authorization for the use of military force against Iraq.71 Simultaneously, the build-up of U.S. troops in the region provided a credible threat of force to underpin this final diplomatic push. Condoleezza Rice characterized this strategy as “coercive diplomacy.”72
However, the true purpose of this coercive diplomacy remains a subject of debate. Was it a genuine attempt to peacefully disarm Iraq? Or was it primarily a tactic to gain legitimacy and secure allied and domestic political support for a regime change policy that had already been decided? This debate is crucial for determining when the Bush administration definitively decided on war and whether it was inflexibly committed to regime change regardless of circumstances. While the security-hegemony debate is important, it is somewhat deterministic. The coercive diplomacy debate introduces questions of contingency and potential alternative pathways.
Melvyn Leffler argues that in early 2002, President Bush was “not yet ready to choose between containment and regime change,” and remained undecided into the fall of 2002.73 Bush was uncertain whether disarmament could be achieved without regime change. Coercive diplomacy represented a final attempt to resolve this uncertainty. In adopting this strategy, he acknowledged the possibility that war might be averted and Saddam Hussein might remain in power, at least temporarily. He also, for the moment, disregarded the advice of more hawkish advisors like Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were skeptical of the utility of working through the United Nations.74 As Leffler writes, Bush “decided to see if he could accomplish his key objectives … without war.”75 In this interpretation, Bush did not make the definitive decision to invade Iraq until January 2003, after Iraqi authorities had failed to fully cooperate with a renewed round of weapons inspections.76
Other scholars, particularly within the security school, concur with Leffler’s view of coercive diplomacy. Frank Harvey argues that coercive diplomacy aimed “to re-invigorate a failing containment policy by reinforcing multilateral, U.N. inspections that demanded full and complete compliance.”77 Alexander Debs and Nuno Monteiro also agree that in supporting new inspections, the Bush administration genuinely sought to test Iraqi cooperation and avoid war.78
These analyses emphasize the contingent nature of Bush’s approach to Iraq. While some Bush administration officials may have been ardent advocates of regime change, President Bush, according to this view, proceeded deliberately and gave peaceful disarmament methods a final opportunity. He did so because his priority was disarmament by any means necessary, not regime change for its own sake or for other ulterior motives.
Again, this account aligns with U.S. leaders’ descriptions of their own actions. President Bush states in his memoir, “My first choice was to use diplomacy” on Iraq.79 Coercive diplomacy, according to this narrative, was a sincere attempt to avert war, but Saddam’s failure to comply with inspections ultimately compelled Bush to choose war in early 2003.80 Condoleezza Rice similarly claimed, “We invaded Iraq because we believed we had run out of other options.”81
However, Michael Mazarr and others challenge Leffler’s account of coercive diplomacy, placing the decision to invade significantly earlier than early 2003. Mazarr argues that “between September 11 and December 2001 … the Bush administration — while nowhere near what would be defined as the formal ‘decision’ to go to war — had irrevocably committed itself to the downfall of Saddam Hussein.”82 War planning commenced in November 2002, and President Bush made several private and public statements before spring 2002 indicating his intention to remove Saddam.83
That fall, Bush sided with Powell in pursuing the diplomatic track, but even Powell never questioned the underlying wisdom of invading Iraq.84 There was minimal debate within the administration about whether invading Iraq was a sound policy, suggesting that the fundamental decision had already been made before the coercive diplomacy effort began.85 Mazarr adds that a “tidal wave of evidence can be found that many senior officials assumed war was inevitable long before September 2002.”86 The Bush administration quickly concluded that inspections had failed in early 2003 and solidified the decision to invade in January.87
My own research supports Mazarr’s analysis and further suggests that the idea that Bush sought to restore containment through coercive diplomacy is unconvincing. Bush had already argued earlier in 2002 that containment was inadequate to address the perceived “nexus” threat. Moreover, most of his advisors and the broader policy establishment already considered containment a failed policy. Finally, the Bush administration harbored deep skepticism about the efficacy of inspections and set such stringent criteria for their success as to virtually guarantee their failure.88
Scholars within the hegemony school generally align with Mazarr’s interpretation of coercive diplomacy. They view the Bush administration as uninterested in a peaceful resolution, seeing the diplomatic process as a façade to legitimize a pre-determined war aimed at asserting U.S. power. Ahsan Butt, for example, argues that Iraq could not have taken any action to avert war because the U.S. was determined to crush a rival to re-establish generalized deterrence.89 John Prados posits that Bush made the decision for war in early spring 2002, and Richard Haass places the decision in July 2002—both well before the initiation of coercive diplomacy.90
Similar to the core security-hegemony divide, the debate surrounding coercive diplomacy resists easy resolution. For scholars like Leffler, the situation remained fluid and contingent until shortly before the invasion. For scholars like Mazarr, the war was virtually inevitable once the Bush administration focused on Iraq in early 2002. A potential synthesis could be that the administration’s deep-seated pessimism about Saddam’s willingness to concede to U.S. demands and fully comply with inspections constituted a de facto decision for war, even if not a formally finalized determination.91 Coercive diplomacy itself may be an under-examined aspect of the Iraq War, often overshadowed by analyses focused solely on security or hegemony as primary drivers.92 This oversight can lead to overly deterministic explanations of the war, minimizing the potential for contingency and alternative outcomes.
One way to potentially overcome this impasse is through more in-depth analysis of the State Department’s role in the lead-up to the war. While both Secretary of State Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage ultimately supported the war, they were not unwavering proponents, and many within the State Department’s senior ranks harbored skepticism about the war.93 As more source materials become available, it will be valuable to examine whether Powell or others raised critical questions about the fundamental decision to wage war or actively pushed President Bush to pursue coercive diplomacy more comprehensively. Such evidence could shed light on whether there was genuine uncertainty and openness to non-violent solutions within the administration, as Leffler suggests, or whether the U.S. was already on an irreversible path to war before the fall of 2002, as Mazarr argues.94
However, scholars should be cautious about assuming that newly available documentary evidence will definitively resolve these interpretive disagreements. The British Iraq Inquiry, published in 2016, released a wealth of primary sources and interviews pertaining to British policymaking on Iraq from 2001 to 2009.95 While numerous scholars have utilized this valuable material, interpretive tensions persist because they approach the evidence with different analytical frameworks. For example, Leffler argues that correspondence between Blair and Bush after 9/11 demonstrates that neither leader was rushing into war with Iraq, but rather establishing a general timeline for pressuring the Iraqi regime to disarm.96 This interpretation supports his broader argument that the Bush administration was not fixated on war, explored alternative means of disarming Iraq, and only decided on military action after exhausting other options.
In contrast, Butt argues that these same sources reveal that “war was decided upon very soon after — probably even on-9/11.” Blair, after all, told Bush on October 11, 2001, that “I have no doubt we need to deal with Saddam” and that “we can devise a strategy for Saddam deliverable at a later date.”97 For Butt, this source indicates that Bush and Blair agreed on the objective of regime change in Iraq and the reassertion of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East almost immediately after 9/11. Blair’s subsequent caution, in this view, was primarily about not rushing into war without first building a broad international coalition.98 Patrick Porter, in his book on Britain’s role in the Iraq War, also draws extensively on the Iraq Inquiry and reaches a similar conclusion. He contends that the Blair government was as ideologically committed to strategic primacy and the spread of liberal democracy as the Bush administration. It never seriously considered genuine alternatives, but “worried predominantly about how to create conditions that would legitimize a British military campaign, that would generate enough support.”99
These discrepancies among scholars interpreting the same documentary evidence underscore the crucial role of the interpretative frameworks that analysts bring to their sources. Consequently, new sources alone are unlikely to lead to a convergence of these divergent interpretive camps.
The Contentious Role of Neoconservatives in the Iraq War Decision
The final major question this essay addresses regarding the origins of the Iraq War is the role of neoconservatives. Were they the intellectual architects of this war, or were they peripheral to the decision to invade? While the alignment is not perfect, the security school tends to downplay the influence of neoconservatives, while the hegemony school typically emphasizes their central importance.
Neoconservatism is a loosely defined intellectual movement that has evolved considerably since its emergence in the 1960s. Justin Vaisse defines third-wave neoconservatism as a nationalistic movement that reached its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s. It advocated for U.S. primacy, “national greatness,” and the global spread of democracy, often with a unilateralist inclination.100 A significant number of neoconservatives held high-ranking positions in the Bush administration, most notably Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.101
While neoconservative intellectuals such as Robert Kagan and William Kristol publicly advocated for regime change in Iraq, the extent of neoconservatives’ influence in bringing about the Iraq War has been hotly debated. Early commentary often simplistically portrayed a “cabal” of neoconservatives as having hijacked U.S. foreign policy and driven the nation into a disastrous war. For example, then-Senator Joe Biden, who voted to authorize the Iraq War but later expressed regret, stated in July 2003, “They seem to have captured the heart and mind of the President, and they’re controlling the foreign policy agenda.” Frank Harvey convincingly argues that such narratives are not only simplistic but also serve to deflect responsibility from the broader range of political actors who supported what became an unpopular war.102
Harvey, Leffler, and others argue that neoconservatives were either irrelevant or of secondary importance in causing the Iraq War. Harvey takes a particularly strong stance, arguing that they were entirely peripheral and, in fact, lost most internal policy debates regarding Iraq prior to the invasion.103 Leffler and Mazarr argue that while neoconservatives were present within the Bush administration, neither President Bush nor the top echelon of decision-makers were themselves neoconservatives.104 Leffler downplays the role of neoconservatism or any ideology in general in the administration’s decision-making, emphasizing security motives as the primary drivers.105
Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay categorize President Bush and most of his top advisors as “assertive nationalists,” or “traditional hard-line conservatives willing to use American military power to defeat threats to U.S. security but reluctant as a general rule to use American primacy to remake the world in its image.”106 Jane Cramer and Edward Duggan contend that Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney—the three most critical decision-makers in the administration—were not neoconservatives but “primacists” and consistent hard-liners who had never demonstrated concern for democratization or human rights throughout their long careers.107 In his history of Bush’s war cabinet, journalist James Mann argues that President Bush primarily relied on the “Vulcans”—figures like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Armitage, and Dov Zakheim—for foreign policy guidance, few of whom were neoconservatives. Rather, these Vulcans “were focused above all on American military power” and maintaining U.S. primacy, particularly in the wake of the Vietnam War experience.108
These authors collectively argue that while neoconservatives like Wolfowitz may have advocated for regime change, their presence within the administration was not essential for initiating the Iraq War.109 Mazarr also minimizes the role of neoconservatives—though not ideology in general. He argues that “many aspects of the neocons’ foreign policy assumptions reflected the prevailing conventional wisdom in the U.S. national security community,” including beliefs in U.S. primacy, exceptionalism, and the universality of democracy.110
Some scholars within the realist hegemony school also concur with this assessment. Ahsan Butt dismisses the role of neoconservatives, arguing that they provided an ideological veneer for a war that was fundamentally about power projection.111 Ironically, some neoconservatives themselves agree with this downplaying of their own influence. Robert Kagan, for instance, argues that security concerns were the primary drivers of decision-making and that the war “can be understood without reference to a neoconservative doctrine.”112
However, many scholars, especially within the liberal hegemony school, contend that neoconservatives played a crucial role in causing the Iraq War. For them, neoconservatism helps to answer a fundamental question: why, after 9/11, did the U.S. invade Iraq, a country that had not attacked it?
As Andrew Flibbert argues, neoconservative policy entrepreneurship bridged the conceptual gap between Iraq and terrorism. Figures like Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Scooter Libby interpreted 9/11 through a “larger ideational framework” about America’s global role and acted as policy activists both within the administration and in public discourse. They were instrumental in setting the post-9/11 agenda, focusing it on Iraq, at a time when figures like Rice and Powell seemed more skeptical of such a focus. They advanced a range of arguments for war: the nexus threat, Saddam’s brutality, protecting U.S. interests in the region, promoting democracy, transforming the Middle East, asserting U.S. power, and even improving Israeli-Palestinian relations. Without these ideas, Flibbert concludes, invading Iraq would not have made strategic sense, making the actions of neoconservatives essential to explaining the war.113
The hegemony school naturally emphasizes the role of neoconservatives in constructing a liberal hegemonic war. Paul Pillar argues that “[t]he chief purpose of forcibly removing Saddam flowed from the central objectives of neoconservatism,” the core of which is “the proposition that the United States should use its power and influence to spread its freedom-oriented values.”114 Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer concur: “The driving force behind the Iraq War was a small band of neoconservatives who had long favored the energetic use of American power to reshape critical areas of the world.”115 Gary Dorrien notes that this “band” was, in fact, quite substantial: over 20 neoconservatives held high-ranking positions in the Bush administration, forming an activist core pushing for war with Iraq.116
Vaisse notes that in 2003, Vice President Cheney ordered 30 copies of the neoconservative Weekly Standard to be delivered to the White House each week.117 He argues that while President Bush may have campaigned as a restraint-minded realist, he and Condoleezza Rice essentially adopted a neoconservative worldview after 9/11, frequently speaking about a U.S. obligation to topple tyrants and spread liberal values.118 Other analysts highlight how neoconservatives took the lead in promoting damaging, albeit dubious, information about Saddam’s WMD programs and alleged links to al-Qaeda, which helped to garner public support for the war.119
Journalistic accounts of the Iraq War also tend to emphasize the role of neoconservative networks and personalities in paving the way to war. They effectively illustrate the close personal connections between neoconservative intellectuals and Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi with high-level Bush administration officials. While these accounts may not always present systematic arguments about the war’s causes, they clearly demonstrate the pervasive influence of neoconservative thinking within the administration and the broader foreign policy establishment at the time.120
The debate surrounding the role of neoconservatives is pertinent to broader questions about the Iraq War and recent U.S. foreign policy. Was ideology a fundamental motivator for the decision to invade, or was it primarily a justification developed to sell a pre-determined war to the public? Is the path to restoring balance and restraint to U.S. foreign policy after Iraq simply to remove neoconservatives from positions of influence, or is more profound systemic change required? Are neoconservatives merely a contemporary manifestation of America’s long-standing exceptionalist identity and missionary impulses, or are they a distinct and modern ideological movement with specific policy objectives?121 These are crucial questions for situating the Iraq War within the broader history of ideas and the role of intellectuals in shaping U.S. diplomatic history.
The Enduring Lessons of the Iraq War for U.S. Foreign Policy
The protracted and costly nature of the Iraq War has profoundly shaped discussions about its implications for U.S. foreign policy, and the competing interpretations of the war’s origins are directly relevant to these ongoing debates. While the majority of scholars within both the security and hegemony schools agree that the Iraq War was a mistake, if not a more profound failure, they diverge on its broader consequences for U.S. foreign policy.
Security-centric explanations of the war tend to lead to a less critical assessment of the Bush administration and the broader foreign policy establishment. Hal Brands and Peter Feaver have articulated an “empathy defense,” arguing that “greater sensitivity to constraints, alternatives, and context can lead to a more favorable view of decisions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11.” In this perspective, President Bush faced an unprecedented security threat after 9/11 and launched a war that, while ultimately flawed and marred by errors in intelligence, planning, and execution, was understandable given the circumstances.122
These errors, however, do not necessarily imply a need for a radical rethinking of the United States’ position of global leadership.123 Many conservatives, neoconservatives, and liberal internationalists have concluded that the primary lesson of Iraq is not to abandon an active and engaged global posture, but rather to avoid ambitious nation-building and democratization projects.124 Brands argues that “the Iraq hangover” should not lead U.S. leaders to become “strategically sluggish just as the dangers posed by great power rivals were growing.”125 They contend that America’s role in defending the liberal international order has been overwhelmingly beneficial for U.S. interests, as well as for global democracy, prosperity, and peace.126 The U.S., in this view, can and should continue to play this role, while learning from and avoiding specific mistakes like the Iraq invasion.127 Nor does this war necessitate a fundamental overhaul of the existing foreign policy establishment.128
U.S. leaders across the political spectrum seem to broadly agree with this interpretation of the lessons of Iraq, including those like President Barack Obama who initially opposed the war. Obama, President Donald Trump, and President Joe Biden have all criticized the Iraq War and displayed skepticism toward large-scale nation-building interventions. President Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy, for example, states, “We are also realistic and understand that the American way of life cannot be imposed on others.”129 Nonetheless, their national security strategies all affirm the continued indispensability of engaged U.S. leadership and military primacy. For these scholars and policymakers, the lesson of Iraq might be summarized as “Don’t do stupid shit,” as Obama famously quipped. Instead, the U.S. should continue to serve as the linchpin of the liberal world order.130
Unsurprisingly, these figures tend to favor Leffler’s security-focused narrative of the Iraq War. Figures like Brands, Kagan, John Bolton, and Eric Edelman, Cheney’s deputy national security advisor, have favorably reviewed or endorsed Leffler’s book, which offers minimal critique of U.S. grand strategy.131 Bolton, a neoconservative architect of the war, praises Leffler for acknowledging that “Bush was not eager for war … his advisors did not lead him by the nose … they were not obsessed with linking Saddam to 9/11,” and “their objectives did not include spreading democracy at the tip of a bayonet.”132 Brands, while labeling the Iraq War a “debacle” and “tragedy,” nevertheless calls Leffler’s book “the most serious scholarly study of the war’s origins” for many of the same reasons as Bolton.133
Scholars within the hegemony school fundamentally disagree about the lessons of the Iraq War. They contend that the war reveals the inherent flaws of an overly ambitious and hyper-interventionist grand strategy of primacy. Primacy, as Stephen Wertheim argues, necessitates maintaining U.S. military forces globally and preventing the rise of great-power rivals, while simultaneously fostering a sense of messianic exceptionalism. He concludes that “the invasion of Iraq emerged from this logic,” and that if the U.S. fails to fundamentally reassess its global role, it will inevitably stumble into more unnecessary conflicts.134
For these critics, the Iraq War also exposed the intellectual conformity and myopia of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment and its seeming addiction to an expansive global mission. This establishment, they argue, remains committed to a hegemonic role that has resulted in unnecessary wars, staggering human and financial costs, balancing behavior from rival powers, and the erosion of U.S. credibility both domestically and internationally.135 Utilizing the Iraq War and other foreign policy missteps as leverage, they aim to challenge the narrow and constrained discourse within the policy establishment and redirect U.S. grand strategy towards “realism and restraint,” in Walt’s words, while prioritizing the allocation of resources towards preserving democracy and prosperity at home.136
In conclusion, competing interpretations of the Iraq War’s origins are inextricably linked to debates about its enduring lessons. It is appropriate for scholars to rigorously debate how this war should inform the future trajectory of U.S. foreign policy. However, participants in this debate must be vigilant against the risk of filtering history through ideological lenses and selectively using it to bolster pre-conceived arguments. Still, as this analysis suggests, even as the United States increasingly focuses on great-power competition, the meanings and lessons of the Iraq War remain fiercely contested and profoundly consequential for America’s global role. This is particularly pertinent as the generation that served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars assumes leadership positions in the military and political spheres. Their interpretations of these conflicts will significantly shape their thinking and actions, just as differing perspectives on the Vietnam War deeply influenced a previous generation.
Towards Global and Cultural Perspectives on the Iraq War
This essay has argued that scholarship on the causes of the Iraq War can be productively organized around the dichotomy of security and hegemony schools. While these categories simplify a complex and diverse body of analysis, they provide a valuable framework for understanding the field 20 years after the war’s onset. Currently, the hegemony school arguably holds greater sway among academic scholars of the war, although the war’s architects and defenders tend to gravitate towards the security school perspective.
The security-hegemony debate is not merely an “academic” exercise. It represents a genuine interpretive divide that shapes how scholars approach primary sources and leads to contrasting answers to other crucial questions surrounding the war’s origins. This division also informs ongoing debates about U.S. foreign policy, with each school suggesting distinct lessons to be drawn from the Iraq War experience. While the polarization of this debate is real, it is not necessarily ideal. Scholars should continue to seek avenues for synthesizing these perspectives. Historians, in particular, are well-suited for this task due to their emphasis on holistic, narrative, and multi-variable analysis, in contrast to the pursuit of parsimony and generalizability often prioritized by political scientists.
One promising avenue for moving beyond the security-hegemony binary is to adopt new methodological approaches to the study of the Iraq War. The security-hegemony divide largely operates within traditional frameworks for analyzing the causes of war. Peter Hahn describes these methods as focusing on “the exercise of power, the conduct of diplomacy, the practice of international politics, the interest in domestic politics and public opinion, and the application of military strength by U.S. government officials who calculated the national interests and formulated policies designed to achieve those interests.”137
New methodological approaches could inject fresh perspectives into this seemingly entrenched binary. The global turn in Cold War historiography, for example, disrupted a debate primarily focused on orthodox and revisionist accounts of the Cold War’s origins. The scholarly conversation shifted to examining how the Cold War reshaped global history and intersected with broader trends like decolonization, as well as how the agency of smaller powers influenced the superpower rivalry.138 Some scholars have already begun to advance more global accounts of the Iraq War by delving into Iraqi sources, examining the role of the United Nations, and analyzing the regional politics of the Iraq conflict.139 Until more primary sources become available on decision-making within the Bush administration, this may be a more productive path forward than further entrenchment within the security-hegemony divide.
In addition, a cultural turn in Iraq War scholarship may prove constructive. The cultural turn in diplomatic history led to increased attention to how cultural factors such as race, gender, religion, language, and collective memory shape policy and strategy.140 Discussions of interests and ideas took a secondary role to the analysis of construction, imagination, narratives, symbols, and meaning within both elite and popular culture.141 The transnational turn, moreover, highlighted the role of non-state actors as significant forces in the global arena. Scholars in this vein demonstrated how a broader range of actors challenged the primacy of the nation-state, formed transnational networks, and exchanged ideas across borders, thereby situating national politics within a global context.142
Indeed, there is already valuable work within history, anthropology, and post-colonial studies examining the role of culture in the Iraq War and the broader “War on Terror.” Andrew Preston and Lauren Turek have explored how religion shaped President Bush’s worldview and foreign policy decisions.143 Melani McAlister and Deepa Kumar have analyzed how media and popular culture portrayals of the Middle East helped to legitimize the use of military force in the region to domestic audiences.144 Edward Said, Zachary Lockman, and others have argued that the Iraq War should be understood within the context of Orientalist beliefs about supposedly backward and dangerous Arabs and Muslims in need of Western guidance and control.145
Unfortunately, this body of work has often remained disconnected from mainstream scholarship on the causes of the Iraq War. Many of these scholars have not consistently integrated cultural factors with the more traditional study of foreign policy or the causes of war.146 Conversely, more traditional scholars often overlook the significance of culture, race, gender, religion, and other cultural factors. Students of the Iraq War and of post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy more broadly should bridge this gap by exploring how culture interacts with and shapes policy, the perception of adversaries, and decision-makers’ understanding of themselves and America’s role in the world.147 There is substantial potential for this kind of synthesis as scholarship on the Iraq War continues to evolve.
Joseph Stieb is a historian and an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990-2003 (Cambridge, 2021). He is working on a second book about Americans’ interpretations of terrorism since the 1960s. He has published additional work in Diplomatic History, Modern American History, The International History Review, War on the Rocks, and other publications. He can be followed on Twitter @joestieb.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Theo Milonopoulos and Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt for suggestions about this article.
[1] Melvyn P. Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023); Samuel Helfont, Iraq Against the World: Saddam Hussein and the Claim of National Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).
[2] Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein.
[3] Ahsan I. Butt, Hegemony’s Demise: Great Power, State Death, and the International Order (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
[4] For a useful discussion of these problems, see Richard Ned Lebow, “The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Great Power Politics,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 173-183.
[5] For a summary of pre-war intelligence assessments, see Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 2002-2004 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
[6] For an overview of these questions, see Beatrice Heuser and John Ferris, eds., What Happened to Planning? (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021).
[7] On this point, see also Robert Jervis, “Why the Bush Doctrine Cannot Be Sustained,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 120, No. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 351-377.
[8] Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein, p. 7.
[9] Robert Jervis, “The Remaking of a Unipolar World,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Autumn 2006), p. 12.
[10] Frederic Bozo, “Saddam’s Fall: Anatomy of a Decision,” in T.G. Otte and Constantine Pagedas, eds., Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History (London: Frank Cass, 2005), p. 228.
[11] George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep (New York: William Morrow, 1999).
[12] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006).
[13] Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein, p. 10.
[14] Ibid., p. 11.
[15] George W. Bush, “President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,” March 6, 2003, https://www. ওয়াাইটhouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html.
[16] For a balanced assessment, see Charles Duelfer, *Hide
