Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
Iraq and Conflict Termination by A H Cordesman 
WASHINGTON, July 25, 2003 - It is too early to tell how long guerrilla warfare in Iraq will continue, but it is likely that the coalition rebuilding efforts will confront a steady climate of security threats, according to a recent report by Anthony Cordesman, CSIS Burke Chair in Strategy. "The most likely case still seems to be a mixed and poorly coordinated U.S. nation-building effort that does just enough to put Iraq on a better political and economic path, but does so in a climate of constant low-level security threats and serious Iraqi ethnic and sectarian tensions," Cordesman writes in the report, Iraq and Conflict Termination: The Road to Guerrilla War? "The problem is that after a great military victory, the United States and its allies have done far too little to win the peace. Unless this situation changes soon, and radically, the United States may end up fighting a third Gulf War against the Iraqi people. If it does, this war will be primarily political, economic, ethnic, and sectarian. It is far from clear that the United States can win this kind of asymmetric war. The key lesson for the future should be that the strategic and grand strategic dimensions of psychological and political warfare are at least as important as the tactical dimensions of warfare. Effective operations must focus on conflict termination and nation building long before any actual fighting begins." The report examines failed strategies for conflict termination and asymmetric war; problems associated with limited military resources; failures of leadership and organization; weaknesses in intelligence on nation-building; and lessons relating to political, diplomatic, and psychological warfare. Cordesman stresses that the United States and Britain must redouble their efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. "They must address the Arab-Israeli peace problem in ways that have considerably more visibility and success, and they must deal with a host of problems in rebuilding their relations in the Arab world and the West," he writes. Cordesman has served in senior positions in the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, and in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency prior to his work at CSIS |
EXHIBITS Iraq_ConflictTerm.pdf  |