War in the Age of Technology: Myriad Faces of Modern Armed Conflict

12. Iraq: A Third-World Superpower?

chapter 12 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Iraq A Third-World Superpower? Sean McKnight In the post–Cold War world, the challenges facing the armed forces of Western nations have changed dramatically. With the possibility of large-scale conventional war all but gone after the fall of the Soviet Union, military challenges in the developing world have taken center stage. The diverse nature of these current flash points has forced Western militaries to be more flexible and has placed a heavy emphasis on intelligence. In many of the con- flicts of the future, technologically superior and overwhelming force might not be the answer as it was in the Gulf War. The example of Iraq in fact demonstrates the military strengths and weaknesses of the developing world and how they factor into modern conflict. Since the establishment of the Ba‘thist regime in 1968, Western perceptions of the Iraqi armed forces have oscillated wildly. During the last two years of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), the Iraqi military appeared formidable compared to most others in the Middle East. In 1990—in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait—Saddam Hussein’s boasting of Iraqi military might was taken seriously. At other times, however, the Iraqi forces have been regarded as militarily inept; so inept that in the 1970s and 1991 they were unable to prevent what appeared to be the imminent dissolution of the Iraqi state. This inconsistency in the military assessments of Iraq is disturbing , for while representing an excessive regard for the military 333 strength of a potential adversary inhibits policy, by contrast, seeing such a state as a military “pushover” could be disastrous. The United States—and due to its preponderance, its allies are implicated —has manifested these contradictory tendencies in its perceptions of Iraq over the last quarter of a century. In the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, America’s fear of military entanglements contributed to the world’s strongest state “punching beneath its weight.” Since victory in the Gulf, however, in dealing with Saddam , Somalia, and arguably Kosovo, the problems of military intervention have been underestimated. Understanding the complex factors that generate military power is thus a matter of some importance, especially since military intervention has become more likely since the end of the cold war. Iraq is a particularly pertinent case study as unlike most third-world states, it has many of the more obvious ingredients that make for military power, and it seems unlikely that the events of 1991 have curbed the regime’s willingness to use force. It is commonly believed that little was known about the Iraqi military at the time of the Gulf War,1 and General R. H. Scales (U.S. Army) speaks for many with his view that “the historical insights available from the Iran-Iraq War were meager to say the least.”2 This is a rather odd view. Iraq has been involved in numerous conflicts since its foundation, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) gives us an accurate picture of its strengths and weaknesses. The meagerness of the insights drawn reflects on the lack of serious study of the war rather than the secrecy with which it was waged. Indeed, given the brevity of the 1991 Gulf War, any attempt to understand the Iraqi armed forces must address the eight-year conflict with Iran. The failure to study the Iraqi military helps explain the wild swings in assessments of their capabilities. This chapter attempts to avoid such oscillations, recognizing that asking why Iraq’s armed forces fail to realize their potential strength is a genuine question. Viewing the Iraqi armed forces just through the prism of their 1991 debacle produces as distorted a picture as one derived from a focus on the events of 1988 or the 1991 “blitzkrieg” invasion of Kuwait. sean mcknight 334 Indeed, to understand the weaknesses and strengths of the Iraqi armed forces, it is necessary to trace their development since the establishment of the modern Iraqi state. The modern Iraqi state—which started life as a British mandate in 1920—inherited little in the way of an organized military tradition. The armed tribes of Iraq did not produce good natural soldiers; not only were tribesmen very reluctant to serve the new state, but the record of tribal forces in modern war is poor.3 For example, the Ottoman force raised from Iraq in 1914—in theory thirty-two thousand strong upon...