Just Another Liberal War? Western Interventionism and the Iraq War

What do Think Tanks do? Chatham House in search of the United States

“…61 Opinion in the Group, as elsewhere, was deeply divided between those who supported the decision on the grounds that it was the morally right thing to do and might even lead to a more stable Middle East, and others -almost certainly the majority -who opposed the decision but were by no means united about the reason why it had been taken in the first place. A few insisted that it was the tragic result of false intelligence concerning Iraq's w.m.d programme, a view soon to be popularized by UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix; 62 a few more that it was driven by the unfortunate take-over of US foreign policy by the so-called neo-conservatives; 63 others that liberalism and liberals were should be held to account for promoting a war which was self-evidently not in the national interest; 64 and a not inconsiderable number -largely British -who argued that even though the US would have gone to war without the UK, Blair himself may have played a major role by making the case for the war more coherently than Bush himself, and then selling it to the Democrats in Congress and any wavering governments there may have been in the European Union. 65 The debate about the Iraq War was in turn embedded in a rather more academic discussion about the nature of American primacy.…”

Power, structural power, and American decline

“…That the United States could export its recessions as well as its wars had broader consequences for US prestige. The United States' claims to moral leadership, and the liberal (and neoconservative) notions of benign hegemony that had dominated the 1990s, lost much of their lustre, even among longstanding friends and allies (Habermas, 2003;Kitchen & Cox, 2011). The US model of capitalism, previously so dominant, had produced levels of inequality that constrained growth, corrupted politics, and undercut America's attractiveness as a society; it at last seemed open for challenge (Gray, 2009, pp.…”