The interconnected impacts of the Iraq war Expert comment LJefferson 22 March 2023

Relying on weak intelligence for invading Iraq has had a negative impact on US and UK credibility with several consequences that persist to this day.

20 years on from the fateful decision to invade Iraq, it is generally accepted that the US and UK governments overstated the evidence available for them to justify military action. The central claim to defend invading Iraq was that the country had continued its illicit nuclear weapons programme and had retained illegal stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. None of these claims supported an imminent threat justification nor could any hidden caches of WMD be found by the US Iraq Survey Group after the invasion.  

In the US, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hinted at additional evidence which could not be shared publicly to suggest that if only people knew what the government knew, they would agree that Iraq posed a significant threat to the West and needed to be disarmed.

In the UK, the Blair government acted similarly, focusing on a narrow interpretation of the evidence provided by the intelligence services and ignoring many of the dire warnings offered by academics and other experts. The Chilcot Inquiry found that the Blair government greatly exaggerated the threat Iraq posed to the UK, and that government arguments were based on the prime minister’s personal beliefs, as well as his promise to President Bush to support the US invasion. 

Relying on inadequate information and a biased analysis for invading Iraq has had a negative impact on US and UK credibility in the international security policy environment and domestically with ramifications that persist to this day.  

Impacts on soft power and trust

The invasion had an impact on US and UK soft power due to negative perceptions of the decision to go to war and the competence of the UK and US: public opinion polling by the Pew Center showed that perceptions of the US declined significantly as a result of the invasion of Iraq, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia.

This is undoubtedly a challenge for the US, but arguably an even bigger challenge for the UK, which due to its size and power relies much more on diplomacy and coalition-building in order to achieve its goals within various international treaty frameworks.   

Over nearly two decades, the US and the UK no longer seemed to enjoy the same foundation of trust, even with close allies, as they did previously. This changed in February 2022.

Towards the end of 2021, both the US and the UK were sounding the alarm about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine based on information and analysis from their intelligence services. Despite the amassing of Russian troops, tanks and artillery on the border clearly visible from the air and by satellite imagery, several allies remained unconvinced until the invasion happened.  

This was in part due to their own assessments which indicated that Russia would stop short of an invasion, and in part because allies were unwilling to take US and UK statements on faith, without being able to assess the information themselves.

US officials found this frustrating as it meant that NATO and the EU were slower off the mark with support for Ukraine than they might otherwise have been. However, the accuracy of the US/UK intelligence on Russia’s invasion, coupled with their sharing it openly, may well have restored faith in their capabilities and analysis.  

A more open approach to intelligence  

Over the last few years, there seems to have been a change in accepted practice regarding sharing and using intelligence. The UK Ministry of Defence has taken a much more open approach to intelligence in the war in Ukraine, sharing the most recent defence information publicly in order to counter Russian disinformation.  

This is a positive step to ensure that intelligence can be discussed and assessed critically. Being more open about secret intelligence may also be linked to the increasing capabilities of open-source intelligence (OSINT). Non-governmental and international organizations and the media all now have access to data from, for example, imaging satellites and can independently verify information coming from governments. 

Perceived double standards 

A reduction of trust in US and UK intelligence was not the only impact of the invasion of Iraq. Russia and China have repeatedly called out the US and UK for acting without a second UN Security Council mandate. Putin uses the decision to invade Iraq, as well as the NATO humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, to justify Russia’s actions in Crimea. He invokes parallel language to spread disinformation about a ‘responsibility to protect life’ of the (‘ethnically Russian’) Crimean population. Russia has also repeatedly used the WMD trope to create false narratives around Ukrainian biosecurity laboratories to justify Russian military actions against Ukraine.  

Deciding to invade Iraq under what turned out to be a false pretext has weakened the application of the international rule of law and has led to a perceived double standard whereby powerful states can use UN processes in their favour, or completely disregard them if they do not deliver their goals.

As the Chilcot Inquiry found, there was very little preparation for the post-invasion period either in the US or the UK. Confirmation bias led not only to trusting shaky intelligence but also to believing in a best-case scenario and a ‘relatively benign security environment’ once the invasion had prevailed. Mismanaging the country’s occupation afterwards also led to the perception that the UK and US are less competent than projected. 

Problems for the international order  

The Iraq War has left many smaller and medium-sized states outside Europe and North America with the impression that powerful states are not committed to an equitable international system and instead will bend the rules to suit them while nonetheless holding other states to account. This dynamic poses a serious problem for the international system. 

It opens the door to ‘whataboutism’ in Russia’s false justifications for invading Ukraine and undermines faith in international law, destabilizing the international order in the longer term. Beyond the immediate challenges of dealing with the war in Ukraine, reforming and strengthening the international order to make it more equitable will be one of the most significant challenges the US and UK will face over the next decade. 

A trust deficit  

Domestically, for already disappointed citizens, the deceit over intelligence it is yet another piece of evidence which suggests that their government is not trustworthy and may not have their best interests at heart. This has profound implications for US and UK democracies, making it harder for governments to counter citizens’ susceptibilities to disinformation campaigns. 

World in brief: Ukraine and nuclear proliferation to dominate G7 The World Today mhiggins.drupal 28 March 2023

Following Russia’s ongoing intimidation, Japan will use its presidency of the G7 – and its history – to prioritize the dangers of nuclear threats, writes James Orr.

Two issues are expected to dominate the agenda as Japan hosts the G7 summit in Hiroshima from May 19-21. Central to talks will be the conflict in Ukraine, with member states eager to highlight a message of unity and resolve in the face of Russia’s continuing aggression.

Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on March 21, meeting the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  This coincided with a visit to Moscow by China’s leader Xi Jinping, who described Russian president Vladimir Putin as a friend and partner.

‘Absolutely unacceptable’

Hosting the G7 summit in Hiroshima is significant, too, with Kishida expected to emphasize the ‘absolutely unacceptable’ threat of nuclear proliferation. Ongoing tensions between China and Taiwan, together with recent North Korean ballistic missile tests, have heightened fears of a breakdown in security in the region.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin’s menacing references to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine has raised the prospect of a potentially devastating conflict with NATO. ‘Kishida’s principal goal for the presidency of the G7 is to try to draw the world away from the path of destruction that is another nuclear conflict,’ said Duncan Bartlett, a research associate at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, in London.

‘Early last year, Putin warned of terrible consequences if NATO and the West interfered in the Ukraine conflict, and that was widely seen as being a nuclear threat. North Korea is also pursuing its nuclear weapons programme, and in February an intercontinental ballistic missile went into the sea just near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido,’ said Bartlett.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kishida has taken a firm position on Putin, in line with his G7 peers. President Zelenskyy has addressed the Japanese parliament via video link and Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, was invited by his Japanese counterpart to a G7 meeting held during the Munich Security Conference earlier this year.

Kishida committed $600 million in financial support to Ukraine and his government may well announce the provision of further non-lethal assistance to Zelenskyy at the summit. The country’s constitution effectively outlaws the export of deadly weapons to foreign forces. On his visit to Kyiv, Kishida promised a further $30 million to Ukraine.

‘Kishida has revised key defence documents and is pursuing a radical and controversial expansion of Japan’s defence budget and capabilities,’ said Hugo Dobson, Professor of Japan’s International Relations at the University of Sheffield.

‘He and his G7 partners have signed historic defence agreements, pledged to strengthen ties or declared the inseparability of their security in light of actual conflict in Ukraine and potential conflict in East Asia. Kishida has linked the two by emphasizing that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,’ said Dobson.

Aside from security matters, Kishida will at the summit address issues on clean energy, climate change, global health and boosting multilateral cooperation to drive post-pandemic economic recovery.

Invitation to Nagasaki

He is understood to have invited President Joe Biden to visit Nagasaki, where the second of America’s two atomic bombs is estimated to have killed 60,000 people in August 1945. No sitting US president has ever visited the city, and Kishida, who grew up in Hiroshima, may see the visit as an opportunity to boost his flagging domestic approval ratings. It may also serve as a timely reminder to Russia and others that the G7 opposes any future nuclear weapon use.

China’s renewed influence in the Gulf Interview LJefferson 14 April 2023

By disseminating narratives of its own supremacy, China deepened relations with the Gulf during the COVID-19 pandemic.

China has used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to rebrand its international role as a ‘responsible’ and ‘great’ power by voicing narratives of its own supremacy to regions like the Gulf.

In this interview, Julia Gurol-Haller draws on her International Affairs article to trace how the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran have responded to China’s narratives, with key implications for Sino-US competition and regional autonomy for the Gulf. This illustrates how words and narratives help bolster authoritarian power.

What have the China-Gulf relations looked like in context of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Bilateral relations between China and the Gulf countries have grown in importance over the past decade, particularly since 2013 with the Belt and Road Initiative. The Gulf plays a crucial role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its westward expansion, owing to its favourable geographic position and proximity to the Red Sea. 

In the beginning, transregional relations were mainly economic partnerships since China has a growing appetite for oil and gas and the Gulf monarchies fulfil these needs. China is one of the most important markets for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar to export these goods.

Over time, we’ve seen the Sino-Gulf relations expand beyond just economic ties and towards policy fields like security and cultural relations. While these processes were already in place, they were boosted during the COVID-19 pandemic, not only in material terms but also in respect of Chinese attempts to advance its soft power, leverage, and influence in the Gulf region.

When COVID-19 began to ravage the globe, China took that window of opportunity to rebrand its international role. Through efforts such as mask diplomacy, vaccine diplomacy and the strategic diffusion of narratives, China tried to project its image as a ‘global saviour’ and a responsible and great power.

The Gulf monarchies and Iran were among the main target audiences for this public diplomacy campaign. So, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalysing factor for deepening relations between China and the Gulf region.

What exactly are narratives and why are they important in China’s approach to the Gulf states during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Through diplomatic statements, news outlets and social media, China has engaged in, what I call, a ‘narrative power-play’. To understand what that is, we need to understand the political importance of narratives.

Narratives are deliberately constructed by (political) actors to influence a certain target audience. In authoritarian contexts, narratives are a useful resource for political actors to bind audiences to their rule and to appeal to people’s emotions by strategically projecting certain images. 

Ultimately, this creates linkages via attraction or persuasion that enhance the actors’ legitimacy and consolidate their power. So, in the narrative power-play, authoritarian leaders function as ‘storytellers-in-chief’, shaping reality in their favour.

What kinds of narratives has China disseminated to the Gulf region in backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic?

There are two sets of narratives that China disseminated to the Gulf: narratives of supremacy and narratives of a new world order.

China disseminates narratives of systemic supremacy which include praising the overall efficiency of its governance structures. For instance, the Chinese political system is presented as highly efficient and centralized. It has high amounts of ‘state capacity’ for mobilization and the ability to ‘quickly adapt’ to changing situations.

Narratives of performative supremacy refer to the tangible performance of the Chinese Communist Party or China as a whole, such as economic performance, performance in governance, provision of public goods or pandemic response. The performance narratives also highlight the ‘incredible logistical efficacy’, the highly professionalized medical sector and the innovative scientific sector. 

Narratives of normative supremacy are often informed by nationalist notions such as the reclaiming of China’s rightful position in the world and negative feelings towards Western imperial powers who are depicted as having inflicted great pains on China during the ‘century of humiliation’. Overall, these narratives serve to depict China as a responsible, caring and loyal world power that helps other states. The whole idea of mask diplomacy was also carved into that notion of China’s normative supremacy.

Together, China has used these narratives to construct the idea of a new world order in which China is believed to play a much bigger role. The world order narratives are closely linked to stories about the failure of the Western system and show the intertwinement of practices of othering and self-glorification that can also be observed in Chinese official media narratives in other contexts such as diplomatic stand-offs with the United States.

What do these narratives tell us about how China understands the world order?

The narratives China disseminated to the Gulf region show that in the Chinese understanding of politics, the world order is in flux and undergoing major power reconfigurations. For China, this implies a window of opportunity to position itself as a responsible and great power and move from the side-lines to the centre stage of international politics.

This is a trend that has been long in the making in Chinese foreign policy. For instance, the launch of the Chinese Global Security Initiative or the recent brokering of the Iran-Saudi rapprochement agreement show clearly that China is becoming much more than an economic powerhouse and is adopting a more proactive foreign policy.

During the recent state visit of Xi Jinping to Moscow, he said at one point that China stands ready to ‘safeguard (…) the international order underpinned by international law ’. These examples are quite telling regarding the role China ascribes itself on the international stage.

How have the Gulf countries responded to China’s power narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iran all picked up the narrative of China’s superior performance during the global crisis. That was a unified response, but they did that to different degrees and by highlighting different aspects.

The strongest reproduction of Chinese narratives can be found in the Emirati media. They buy into the story of the COVID-19 pandemic as evoking a global power shift, which includes a decline of US hegemony and a corresponding rise of China. The explicit wording of Chinese narratives such as ‘community of shared future of humankind’ has been picked up word-for-word by some Emirati media outlets.

Iranian newspapers have also reproduced Chinese narratives. However, the difference is that they also praise China’s unconditional solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is believed to be superior and more ‘responsible’ than the ostensible individualism of the West. This tells us a lot about Iran’s relationship with the West and how China is believed to be a lifeline or anchor for stability.

Saudi Arabia has been more cautious in reproducing the Chinese narratives. While it does not contest China’s role in containing the COVID-19 pandemic, Saudi Arabia has adopted a more inward-looking perspective, stressing its own role as a responsible regional player during the pandemic.

This might be explained by the kingdom’s own regional leadership claims and the attempt to use the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen this role. The most pressing questions seem to be whether the post-COVID world will be a multipolar order, and what Saudi Arabia’s own position within it might be. 

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