Military Occupations in the Age of Self-Determination: The History Neocons Neglected (Praeger Security International)

Iraq, or Israel in southern Lebanon, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, or the United States in Vietnam, the great power almost always loses when a credible insurgency rises up to challenge it. Even in the dying days of colonialism, great imperial nations like Britain and France lost their colonies to local insurgencies, or if they did not lose militarily, they lost politically by boldly facing the inevitable and granting the colonies their freedom. It defies our common mindset! The most powerful armies fail to subdue undisciplined, ragtag fighters who wage a different kind of war, darting in and out of the shadows, laying ambushes, setting traps, exploding roadside bombs, and in more recent times blowing themselves up in crowded places, leaving the occupiers to fight wars in garrison mode without front lines. The occupying soldiers do not know when the next attack will come, or from where. Enough of these insurgencies have occurred in the past six decades to call into question the judgment of any leader of a great nation who chooses to waste the power of a first-rate army by entering into a war of occupation and stalemate. Thus, to conclude that conquest is a losing proposition in the modern era is not an emotional plea against war; it is a statement of fact derived from the events of history. This empirical method based on hard evidence, I believe, trumps the ethereal polemics of neoconservatives who argue for American imperial expansion and preemptive war. I leave it to the jury of readers to determine if I have made my case that the invasion of Iraq was a strategic error of historic proportions. In fact, nearly five years of insurgency in Iraq have tempered the bombast of the Bush Administration, which has put more emphasis on diplomacy to resolve problems with North Korea and Iran. The ebb and flow of the Iraq insurgency have raised hopes, dashed them, and raised them again-a declaration of sovereignty followed by suicide bombs, an exhilarating election only to revisit the horror of slaughtered innocents. In 2006, Sunni insurgents bombed a sacred Shia mosque and blew off its dome. Shia militants went on a rampage of ethnic cleansing, killing Sunnis in droves and driving the survivors out of Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods. In 2007, America reinforced its occupation army, pulled units out of their walled fortresses and billeted them in the troubled areas of the city to reassure the populace, and then, with former Sunni Iraqi insurgents at their side, attacked and neutralized some Islamist strongholds. It helped that the leading Shia militia, the Mahdi army, called a moratorium on violence. The American initiative, christened the ''surge,'' reduced the bloodbath, but did not end it. Occupation troops and innocent Iraqis died at a lower rate. How long it will last, nobody knows. If the historical pattern holds up, the final result will be American withdrawal, one way or another. This book is meant as a contribution to the national debate over the decision to attack Iraq. The oft-imputed shadowy reasons for going to war-such as the strategic importance of oil or the commitment to Israel-and the mistakes frequently cited in the prosecution of the invasion and occupation are irrelevant to the argument presented here that the occupation in and of itself critically drained the American x Preface military of its advantages in firepower and mobility. The Bush Administration is left with only bad choices in a hole it dug for itself, and seems stone-deaf to any suggestion of a failed policy. My hope is that future leaders will weigh more heavily than did Bush the consequences of squandering a powerful army in the military occupation of a small nation that should be allowed, in any case, to control its own political destiny. We no longer live in the age of colonialism. American power is limited. The rest of the world is not ours to dominate. I wish to thank my editor, Manohari Thayuman, of BeaconPMG for her careful editing of the manuscript under contract with the Greenwood Publishing Group, of which Praeger Security International is a part. Several people have read and made valuable comments about one or more chapters in the book. With apologies to anyone I may have left out, I give particular thanks to

This book offers a perspective decidedly different from that of the Bush Administration and its neoconservative supporters. Since the United Nations embraced the right of national self-determination in 1945, the historical odds have been unfavorable to great powers that impose military occupations on smaller nations. This point is bolstered by the evidence from history, and is particularly pertinent to the American occupation of Iraq, where a robust insurgency has delayed projected successes by the administration and wartime planners. Drawing on historical antecedents to the occupation of Iraq, Gannon examines events such as the British Struggles in Palestine, French enterprises in Algeria, the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, and other instances in which occupying powers to demonstrate the struggles and failures of occupying powers in the face of determined insurgencies.

Since the United Nations adopted the principle of national self-determination in 1945, great powers like the United States that occupy smaller nations like Iraq lose more often than not when confronted with credible insurgencies. The evidence is taken from recent history: the Zionist victory over Britain in Palestine, and the defeats of France in Algeria, America in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and Israel in Lebanon. On the surface these outcomes seem perverse-powerful modern armies brought down by rag-tag rebels. The explanation comes from the types of warfare fought. Great powers are equipped to fight other great powers in great battles over large territory. Rebels fight shadow wars, neutralizing the fire power and mobility of the occupying army. Insurgencies continue for years, allowing political considerations to come into play, including propaganda, international pressure, and the stream of dead and wounded returning from the war zone. The home front turns against the war, and new policymakers conclude that the nation's interests are best served by getting out. History is not an exact science, so the judgment here is expressed in probability, not certainty; witness the British defeat of insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya before giving up these colonies, and the four-decades-old Israeli occupation and partial colonization of the West Bank.

Iraq : the height of folly Zionism : violent return home Algeria : savagery unchained Malaya and Kenya : dying gasps of empire Vietnam : selective terrorism Lebanon : double defeat of the West Palestine : occupation and intifadas Afghanistan : the Soviet Vietnam Iraq : a thousand cuts.