Preventing Future Wars

Why This Article Is Important

The threat assessment methodology presented in this article will demonstrate that the Iraq war was unnecessary and it can prevent wars in the future. It is imperative that we learn how to evaluate the various threats that the United States receives everyday. We live in the information age and there are countless threats against the United States with information to back them up. It is imperative that we use a reliable methodology that will allow us to analyze all the data and be able to distinguish real threats that seriously threaten the vital interests of the United States, from potential threats that simply need to be monitored. We must learn from our mistakes or we are doomed to relive them.

The war in Iraq has been fiercely debated for almost a decade. The Bush Administration and its supporters believe invading Iraq was the right thing to do and the world is a better place because of it. Others believe that the war was unnecessary and the United States has suffered enormous human and economic costs for nothing. With such a sharp difference of opinion about the same war, it is obvious that we need a sound methodology to analyze the various threats that the United State receives everyday.

A Threat Assessment Methodology

This threat assessment methodology has a record of success and has been used by political scientists and government analysts for a generation. The assessment consists of three basic components; intentions, capabilities, and strategic circumstances. Intentions are what a nation intends to do in the world, its foreign policy objectives. When we analyze capabilities we are assessing whether a nation has the means to accomplish its foreign policy objectives. We are primarily concerned with military capabilities. Under strategic circumstances, we are analyzing how pursuing the stated foreign policy objectives affects a country's position in the world. We need to determine if pursuing a foreign policy objective is possible or if the international environment prohibits such a foreign policy.

The Iraq War

The Bush Administration invaded Iraq as it believed an attack from Iraq through al Qaeda was imminent and inevitable. The United States initiated a preemptive strike to prevent an inevitable attack. The Bush Administration believed the Iraqis made a decision to use al Qaeda to launch a terrorist attack against the United States using weapons of mass destruction. It is hard to imagine Saddam Hussein improving his position in the world by launching this attack, but conceivably Iraq would become the leader in the Arab world in the fight against the United States and its hated ally Israel.

Applying the Methodology

Before, during, and after the the invasion of Iraq the Bush Administration never produced a smoking gun, a document that clearly demonstrated that the Iraqis planned to use al Qaeda to launch a terrorist attack against the United States. Even after capturing thousands of documents in Iraq the Bush Administration could not prove that Iraqi ever intended to launch such an attack. Before the invasion, United Nations inspectors could not find any existing weapons of mass destruction. After the invasion, Iraq was searched from top to bottom and no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Iraq never had the capability to launch the feared attack. Finally, such an attack would not improve Iraq's strategic circumstances, Iraq's position in the world. Such an attack was not in Iraq's interest and would be a serious threat to the continued existence of Saddam Hussein's regime. Saddam was more of a traditional dictator who wanted wealth, power, land, oil, and glory. He invaded Iran and Kuwait for those reasons. Randomly killing Americans he never even met would not advance his foreign policy objectives. After al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base to attack the United States on 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan, removed the Taliban from power and set up a new government. Saddam Hussein had to realize that he would suffer the same fate if he attacked the United States.