Understanding the 2003United States-Iraq Invasion:

A Study of Level Analysis

By Nofia Fitri

2

I. Introduction

Within his very famous-controversial book “Hegemony or Survival” Chomsky has

quoted from one of the American columnists Patrick Tyler. Tyler wrote “they may

still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States (US) meaning state power

and world public opinion.”1 This statement published in the New York Times at 17 of

February 2003, one year after George W. Bush through his American president

speech gave a labeled for Iraq as a member of “Axis of Evil” along with North Korea

and Iran.2 Afterwards, the US vice president, Dick Ceney announced that Iraqi leader

Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to dominate the

Middle East and threaten U.S. oil supplies.3

The statement of Tyler has reflected two things which are related with Iraq-US

relations, especially when we focus on the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. They are: how

US used its position as a superpower country to judge any country, and how US

created the public opinion through their enactment “Iraq Liberation Day.” The US

invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 was started as US has reasons for the invasion,

were to disarm Iraq of WMD, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to

free the Iraqi people. As Bush warned “Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions

of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in the region with nuclear

arms and biological weapons.”4

1 Noam Chomsky (2003). Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.New York: Metropolitan Book. p. 4.

2 Before Bush, one of the very famous American President Ronald Reagan did the same thing,a very interest political action to labeled Uni Soviet as “the Evil Empire.”

3 Vice President Speaks at VFW 103d National Convention,” August 26, 2002; and “VicePresident Honors Veterans of Korean War,” August 29, 2002. Available on the White House web siteat [http://www.whitehouse.gov] under “News.”

4 Ibid.

3

Afterward the US claimed that Iraq failed to provide an adequate accounting of its

prohibited weapons programs or to convince UN inspectors that its weapons of mass

destruction had been destroyed as Baghdad claimed.5 However as the respond of US

claimed of Iraq Nuclear Weapon, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said he had been "pretty convinced"

that Iraq had not resumed its nuclear weapons program, which the IAEA dismantled

in 1997.6 It was mean that even the international world have a different perspectives

of Iraq.

Thus the US invasion didn’t accept by international community even United Nations

itself. This invasion seems more state interest rather than focused on the several

reasons that US announced. There were many speculations up to the deeper research

that had been made by scholars to understand the causes of US invasion. There were

many issues like military ambitions for global hegemony, economic reasons, regional

politics, and the American president’s war ambition to against terrorism, shaped as a

Bush Doctrine. The Bush doctrine and the National Security Strategy in 2002 were

formulated in response to the 9 September (9/11) attacks. The 9/11 terrorist attacks

on US is an important event to understand the Invasion of Iraq. Even though Iraq was

not involved to that attack, Bush had claim that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al-

Qaida and was actively developing WMD. Some scholars see that 9/11 was a new

era of global politics which is not only change the foreign policy of US but also has

changed the global concern on terrorism issues.

5 The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1441 in November 2002 to giving Iraq a “finalopportunity” to comply with its disarmament requirements under previous Security Councilresolutions.

6 Iraq War was not Justified: UN Weapons Expert Say, Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 1:34.www.cnn.com

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Most scholars emphasize the important of Bush Doctrine to understand the causes of

US Invasion. Hence to analyse the motives and causes behind of US Invasion they

are two important things that need to be understood, the Bush Doctrine and National

Securıty strategy. Snauwert noted “the Bush Doctrine of preemption at the core of

the war strategy is thereby linked to a strategy of global hegemony.”7 In the new

National Security Strategy of the United States it is stated: “The United States of

America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single

political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism

premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents.”8

The Bush Doctrine “preemptive action” according to Snauwaert can be understood in

at least two ways: “(1) it constitutes in itself a fundamental shift in American foreign

policy – a profound movement away from a fairly noninterventionist, isolationist

tradition, perhaps best captured by the dictum: “don’t tread on me;” (2) a continued

expression of the implicit linkage between American democracy and imperialism.”9

He then continued by mentioned that the linkage between terrorists and States

significantly complicates the justifiability of the Bush Doctrine. Snauwaert noted

“the Doctrine asserts the principle that terrorists and those who harbor them are

equivalent. This principle implies violations of the principle of nonintervention and

thus must be morally justified.”

7 Dale T. Snauwaert, The Bush Doctrine and Just War Theory. OJPCR: The Online Journal ofPeace and Conflict Resolution 6.1 Fall: 121-135 (2004).

8 National Security Council, The National Security Strategy of the United States (The WhiteHouse, September 2002 [cited); available from http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html., p. 4.

9 Dale T. Snauwaert, p. 129.

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Towards the Bush Doctrine, Kofi Annan said "if the doctrine of preventive war were

to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral

and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification. This logic represents

a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world

peace and stability have rested..."10 However the statement of Annan didn’t work as

equal as UN didn’t work to prevent the US Invasion of Iraq. This very expensive war

is always interesting for being research focus because it has been involved different

issues on International relations field.

II. The Important of Levels of Analysis Method

The political scientists who have concern on the discipline of international relations

have developed a tool to get understanding on what the international system is, who

are the players, and how the relations among them. They efforts came to the building

concepts on levels of analysis. The very clear and simple definition of levels of

analysis has been mentioned by Duncan as “a method of classifying the players and

how they related to one another in the international system on several different

levels.”11

One of the scholars who wrote as deeply the levels of analysis is Barry Buzan. He

has mentioned three important points as an essential idea that needs to be emphasized

within the levels analysis focused: interactive capacity, structure, and process.12 The

first point is meaning “the types and intensities of interaction of which any one unit

10 New York Times, 24 September 200311 Raymond Duncan (2002). World Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Addison Wesley

Longman Inc. p. 63.12 Barry Buzan (1995). The Levels of Analysis Problem in International Relations

Reconsidered. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 204-205.

6

is capable with respect to others in the system” and “those units are arranged with

respect to each others” is the second point. As the process he explained those units

interact in recurrent patterns.

Several different scholars in international relations field has been focused on the

levels of analysis through individual, states, and global system. The very common

and comprehensive explanation of levels of analysis started with the examination of

assumptions by Kenneth N. Waltz.13 Dougherty noted that most international theorist

probably reject the notion that individual is international actor. It is different with the

classical liberals which see the individual as the real actors whiles society is an

abstraction. But otherwise as science developed itself the focus on individual actors

moved to placing this level as the center of most scientist investigations.

According to Sterling:

“The individual level is the most micro, where causality is traced to theindividual who make foreign policy and the physiology of human decisionmaking. The nation-state level is a middle level and involves the examinationof government role bureaucratic politics, interest group, media influence. Andthe systemic level is the most macro level, involving not only the examinationof state-to-state relations but also environmental and structural factors.”14

For using the three levels of analysis to understand the international situations,

our steps can be based on: (1) the shape and content of the situations; (2) what it is

we want to find out; and (3) what paradigm is would be use to formulate the

questions.15 Through this paper I would use the three levels of analysis to understand

the causes of US Invasion of Iraq in 2003.

13 Kenneth N. Waltz (1959). Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. NewYork:Columbia University Press. 263 pp.

14 Jenifer Sterling, Making Sense of International Relations Theory. London: Lynne RiennerPublisher, 2006.

15 Raymond Duncan (2002) op.cit. p. 87

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III. The US Invasion of Iraq: Levels of Analysis

There is an interesting statement of Duncan that “the only way you can make the

information intelligible is by organizing it in someway, whatever method that we

use, it will be rooted in the assumptions you make about human behavior which a

group of those assumptions, is called a world view of paradigm.”16 There are three

basic paradigms that underlie theory building in international relations: realism,

liberalist, and Marxism. Within this analysis I would not provide the analysis by

covering all of the paradigms by make a comprehensive as deeply. But I prefer to

choose the important issues and explain those issues use that basic paradigms. This

classification of mine just a simple way to describe as I found so many reasons, so

many causes of evidences which written by many scholars or researchers. To make

them easy I would separate the explanation by focus on the levels of analysis.

IR PARADIGMS

LEVELS

OF

ANALYSİS

16 Ibid, pp. 17-18

REALIST LIBERALIST/IDEALIST MARXIST

Individual Actor

Bush Interests and Sentiment of Saddam

Bush’s Doctrine and Bush’sown ambitions

Business interest ofRumsfeld and Cheney -

State Actor

The United States’ Position in the Middle East

Military Dimension ofHegemony

Pressure on Arab,Israeli, Syria, Iran, -

Non-StateActor/Society

Economy Dimension or the Interests of the United States’ Companies

Oil Sources Oil Market Oil Exploitation

InternationalSystem

The United States Global Grand Strategy

Global Hegemony/Grand Imperial Strategy and

Power

US Liberalization Processin Middle East

And Democracy

Imperialism, Hegemony,Monopoly Capital

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From the table above there are many motives that didn’t include, like personality and

social physiology dimensions, ideological influences which US has long history with

neo-conservative wing, lobby of interest groups, up to the existence of Israel. Those

motives are important, but because we can not categorize them as easily within the

paradigms I would describe them as separate explanations within.

III.1. Individual Actor

At the individual level of analysis, the actor is the individual people who have ability

to influence world events. Dick Cheney was a key actor who dominance played in

mobilizing support within the administration and public for the war on Iraq. For him

if the Saddam Regime would change it would have domino effect on the Middle

East. Beside of Cheney, Karl Rove was a political strategic advisor of Bush who

influenced Bush for taking decisions. The most actors who had been involved is the

people who stood up behind Bush, they were members of Bush administration.

Chomsky mentioned there were two Bush administrations:17 first was aggressive,

violent and arrogant. This group led the US into disaster after disaster and sank its

reputation to the lowest it has ever been around the world and second Bush

administration which was more moderate and some of the more extreme figures were

dismissed. This second group includes Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others,

and they followed somewhat moderate policies, but more economic interest.

However the truly individual actor was Bush himself. Some authors see that the

personality of Bush and especially Bush’s need to surpass father to against Saddam

Hussein was one of the motives behind US invasion of Iraq.

17 Noam Chomsky, (2003), Hegemony or Survival: America Quest for Global Dominance.New York: Metropolitan Book.

9

III.2 States Actor

“Democracy do not fight one another”

Lieberfeld provided a very critical question within his examination paper: “would the

US have invaded if Iraq had been a democracy?”18 His answer was likely not. He

used this as a main perspective of Liberalists to understand the US Invasion. He

wrote that “the mature democracies do not fight among themselves, they are prone to

war with non-democracies” US claimed that the regime change in Iraq was US

priority because for so long time Iraq had under the Saddam dictatorship. For the

liberalist view war with Iraq was “using military force to replace dictatorship with

democracy.”

Considering Lieberfeld through his examination on US decision, he sees that the US

Invasion of Iraq has several dimensions of analytical perspectives. For the realism

point of view he mentioned a national interest, security, power and resources are the

motives related while for the liberalism perspectives, the differences between

democracies and non-democracies is to be a fundamental cause of war.19 Thus use

realist view the invasion was a rational means for the US to achieve its primary goal

of demonstrating its power to allies and competitors alike. Furthermore by military

forces US could control the Iraq’s petroleum reserves.

The state level use realist perspective would concern on the military forces for reach

global power. Bush declared that “America has, intends to keep military strengths

beyond challenge.”20 It shows that military is hold a very important rule as a state

18 Lieberfeld, p.19 Daniel Lieberfeld, Theories of Conflict and the Iraq War. International Journal of Peace

Studies, Volume 10, Number 2, Autumn/Winter 2005. p. 1.20 Daniel Lieberfeld,

10

power. However the Bush administration strategy had long advocated a strategy of

hegemony based on the use of American’s exceptional military capabilities.

Chomsky called US as “unilateral world domination through absolute military

superiority.” The US invasion of Iraq might be one of the “military forces show” by

US to maintain its military capacity.

Most scholars who describe realism have provided a list of assumption to which all

realist scholars supposedly subscribe as what Sterling noted. He mentioned that such

list typically include the centrality of the nation-state to global politics, the treatment

of the nation-state as a unitary, rational actor, and the dominance of national security

over all other IR issues.21

The decisions by government or states for have a war is the product all states’

involuntary participation in eternal quests for power and security due to an

international environment. For Liberalist, the global security and prosperity depend

on the spread of democracy and trade, and on the conflict-regulation functions of

international institutions. Thus using this liberal perspective the decision of US to

against Iraq was to ending the Saddam repressive dictatorship, protect human right

and build the democracy system for Iraq. However this cause was very ideal as we

can see from IR perspective when we try to analyze US invasion, but some authors

have already dealing with this motive, even they didn’t put it as a major cause.

21 Jenifer Sterling, p. 15.

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III.3. Systemic Level

To analyze the systemic levels my concern dividing into three focuses: the world

hegemony power, strategic position in the Middle East, and US interest for Oil

Exploitations.

- World Hegemony Power

By using Chomsky’s sentence, he said after the invasion of Iraq was declared a

success, it was publicly recognized that one motive for the war had been to establish

the “imperial grand strategy” as a new norm. He stated that the publication of Iraq

War was the signal that Iraq would be the first test for the US experimentation as

New York Times also reported “Iraq became the Petri dish in which this experiment

in pre-emptive policy grew.”22

To analysis the reason of imperial grand strategy or hegemony reason of US Invasion

of Iraq I would provide the conception that explained by Chomsky. The goal of the

imperial grand strategy according to Chomsky is to prevent any challenge to the

power, position, and prestige of the US. Within this book Chomsky explained that

“the imperial grand strategy asserts the right of the US to undertake “preventive war”

at will: Preventive, not preemptive.” According to Ikenberry “a grand strategy begins

with a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the US has

no peer competitors.”23 This grand strategy could be categorized as a realist view of

Iraq Invasion.

22 Noam Chomsky, p. 55.23 Ikenberry, G. John. (2002). Multilateralism and US Grand Strategy. Boulder: Lynne Rienner

Publisher.

12

The words of “full spectrum dominance” have been used by many scholars to explain

the hegemony ambition of US. Raymond Hinnebusch stated that full spectrum

dominance means “the strategy of dealing with the resistance to the US not simply

through traditional containment but via pre-emptive war.” He noted that “the

architecture of the Bush administration strategy had long advocated as hegemony

based on the use of America’s exceptional military capabilities.”

Cameron’s concern on America hegemony issue expressed that character of US is a

reluctant sheriff. He mentioned that by using military as well as political and

economic levers, the US’ hegemony power, it would increase the US global

influence. Thus the “reoccurs metaphor of recent US’ foreign policy conjures up as a

Sheriff and a posse which rides out of town and round up the bad guys.” As

Chomsky more radical and goes beyond by use “imperial grand strategy” he means

America has created itself for being hegemonic power which world dominates by

unilateral actor through “absolute military superiority.”

They were two important motives that is more local dimension: strategic position in

Middle East and hegemony over the oil market while the US oil vulnerability was on

the raise. US saw that Iraq as the world’s second largest oil reserves in the world was

a solution for US problem. Military control of Iraq Petroleum, to increase the

security of Israel as a US partner in Middle East, put pressure on Syria.

- Strategic Position in Middle East

For the Realists view to consider the Iraqi’s geostrategy location was one of the

points of analysis which by build a military basis in Iraq would pressure the US

beneficial position in Middle East, even central Asia. The invasion of Iraq was seen

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as an alternative to balancing and a key to a military version of hegemony in the

Middle East that would dispense with one based on accommodation of Arab

interests.24

- Exploitation for Oil

The Bush Administration ration during the two periods emphasized much on goal of

global economy. Iraq is one of the five biggest countries in the world with abundant

oil sources. Oil is a strategic commodity that every country needs, because this

natural source would be useful for military power besides economic needed. While

the US oil vulnerability was on the rise, US knew that Iraq might be the solutions for

US.

President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilizing

influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and

because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary.25

Quoted from Washington Post "although senior Bush administration officials say

they have not begun to focus on the issues involving oil and Iraq, American and

foreign oil companies have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country's

huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, the largest in the world

outside Saudi Arabia."26

Three points as my analysis have already explained above, turn to the fourth about

the interest group around Bush, I need to mention the very high role of Zionism

lobby. Hinnebusch’s research has showed that US’ foreign policy making was

24 Sherly R. Schwenninger, “Revamping American Grand Strategy” World Policy Journal, vol.20, No.3 (Fall 2003). p. 51.

25 Sunday Herald newspaper (UK), "Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis", 6 October 2002.26 Washington Post, "In Iraq war scenario, oil is key issue", front-page, 15 September 2002

14

dominated by a coalition of the extremist/militarists wings of the Zionist lobby. He

mentioned for instead the Likudist neo-cons. According to him, that lobby was

“traditionally opposed over Middle East policy, with the arms-oil lobby believing

that access to oil and arms profits depended on good relations with the Arabs, and

hence some even handedness in the Arab-Israeli conflict.”27

IV. Conclusion

US was “peering into the abyss of the future” after the 9/11 as Chomsky quoted from

New York Times’ headline on 23 September 2003. The US invasion on Iraq in 2003

however could be one of the US grand strategies as its hegemony ambition.

Chomsky argues that the current U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are not a

specific response to 9/11, but simply the continuation of a consistent half-century of

U.S. foreign policy. For Hinnebusch the invasion of Iraq is the grand strategy of the

US under Bush to undertake a coercive assertion of global hegemony.”

There are four important points as my conclusion of US invasion of Iraq in 2003:

first, the US Imperial Grand Strategy including the position in Middle East; second,

the economics interest of state actor and non-state actor as the hegemony ambition of

Iraq’s oil; third, the Bush’s ambition or what has been called as ‘the Bush Doctrine’

and the people (political advisors) behind Bush; and fourth, the groups’ political

interest around the Bush administration.

27 p. 14.

15

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