An Oasis

Post Mortem of Iraq War Diplomacy

, US Politics

James Rubin, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000, has written a great article for Foreign Affairs describing the diplomacy which found the U.S. Stumbling Into War in Iraq.

The piece highlights an almost total lack of pulic diplomacy which proved fatal in the effort to win round world opinion, particularly the opinions of those represented in the U.N. Security Council, and has critically damaged U.S. standing in the world. Fortunately a lot of the damage is linked primarily to Bush & Cheney and Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz but the U.S. as a country has been harmed by their action and future administrations have an uphill struggle to regain some of the moral high ground which was needlessly squandered. The article doesn't deal with the existence or not of WMD other than to highlight that somehow the burden of proof shifted from Iraq to the U.S. (and allies) - an unbelievable turnaround brought about by a botched diplomatic effort and a little too much haste.

Having seen their administration so thoroughly negate the benefits of winning a war hopefully the thinking members of Bush's team will have learned lessons for the next time...

Posted by Paul at September 30, 2003 02:15 AM |