Thread by @sabrdance

This is a good thread -and may even be correct in a few places. However, I don't think it is the full story. In 2002 or 2003, when we were gearing up for the second Iraq war, I wrote an op-ed -never published because I was like 18 and not that smart -arguing against it.

https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1402639468536999938

My argument, having just come off reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis -was that we could simply increase the pressure from the No Fly Zones and the Embargo, which would more than contain Iraq and prevent nuclear weapons proliferation.

Around the same time, Senator Kit Bond came to my university to talk to an agriculture class about ag policy. But, of course, during the Q&A most of the questions were about Iraq. I slipped into the class and pitched my "Quarantine" idea.

Bond pointed out that it wasn't viable. The reason we were even talking about war in Iraq was because the No Fly Zones and the Embargo were breaking down. In particular, the United States could no longer rely on the support of NATO, and Russia and China were no longer neutral.

So my Quarantine idea would require as much of a force as the invasion, would be done by the US alone, and eventually, would be hindered by diplomacy in the UN. In his view, the options were invade in 2003 and remove the threat, or lose all containment within a couple years.

Since then, we have learned that France, Germany, Russia, and China were all on the take from Iraq during the Oil for Food program, and that part of the reason for their sandbagging the embargo was because they wanted Iraqi oil and money.

Which is to say -the United States didn't destroy the Rules Based international order. The Second Iraq War may have contributed to it, but the corruption of the NATO allies, the Russians, and the Chinese precedes the 2003 invasion, and undermined the rules.

In this telling, American intervention in Iraq was necessary to enforce the rules -because American hegemony was the guarantor of the international system's rules.

But when so many Great Powers are ignoring the rules at once, there are limits to what the US can do.

Of course, Kit Bond could have been wrong about the motivations. I don't doubt there were those who wanted to "finish the Iraq war." But the war hawks had always been there, and been unable to get their way. The Hawks needed people like Kit Bond to join them.

And his reasoning was explicitly not to impose a liberal regime -though he was willing to use that tool. His reasoning was that the international system of rules was no longer able provide the needed stability.