#10
Pravda
No. 47
April 2003
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
BASIC LESSONS OF THE IRAQI WAR
By General of the Army Andrei NIKOLAYEV, chairman of the State Duma defence committee

Like all other wars, the Iraqi war cannot be analysed without due regard for the general trend in the development of the global military-political situation, which has grown in the past 10-12 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

First, the disappearance of a superpower from the political and economic scene disrupted the global balance of forces. The system of international relations was set in motion, especially in the areas of active military policy. The disruption of the power backbone of international life logically reduced the effectiveness of international law and the institutes that had been created to apply it.

The UN was created as a result of a redivision of the world in favour of the anti-Hitler coalition during the Second World War. The world was redivided again after the Cold War and the old rules no longer meet the demands of those who set the tone of international behaviour. This is why the claimants to global leadership are using sword, fire and bribes in a bid to establish the rules of international life that would exclusively meet their egoistic interests.

Second, the bright hopes of the authors and advocates of "the new political thinking" have been dashed. They thought that the withdrawal of Soviet troops from foreign countries and the reduction of the Soviet military might would encourage other countries to follow suit. They were mistaken. Even after the Warsaw Treaty Organisation dissolved and the Soviet Union disintegrated, their adversaries - NATO and the USA - did not follow their disarmament example. On the contrary, they began to build up their military might and take hold of new military-strategic positions in the direct proximity to Russia and in the former Soviet state.

The USA and its old and new allies launched the rapid "privatisation" of everything that remained of the powerful military organisation, including its territory, hardware, infrastructure and everything else needed for waging a modern war. (The Baltic countries fiercely protested against the Russian radars and other facilities in their territory. These facilities have been liquidated but NATO placed its own facilities in their place. The NATO radar station in Estonia is monitoring an area of 400 km inside Russia, including St. Petersburg.)

Third, the Iraqi was has confirmed that reliance on military might cannot facilitate the solution of political problems; it only puts off their solution and compounds it with new contradictions. The use of military force by the USA and its allies created new problems without resolving old ones nearly everywhere. The trouble is that the burden of the US technology of resolving complicated problems by making them still more complicated is shifted onto the shoulders of local people and governments. (We saw it in the Balkans and Afghanistan and we will see it in Iraq, or rather in the territory that will remain after its ruination.) The USA knows how to bomb, blow up, kill and destroy but believes that restoration is the responsibility of others.

The use of US military might in the countries which it "helped" to overthrow dictators and "transform" political regimes did not resolve contradictions either. Even the favourable, for the US, outcome of the Iraqi operation has aggravated internal problems in that country and contradictions outside it. The entire chain of relations, including the lineup of forces in Iraq, the situation of Kurds in neighbouring countries, the situation in the Middle and Near East, and relations of the EU, Russia and China with the USA, is acquiring a new meaning. The military-political and military-strategic situation in the world and individual regions is changing.

Fourth, the Iraqi war is just one more example of an effective use of unique possibilities for improving the art of war, which entails the creation, production and use of novel weapons and hardware, command and reconnaissance systems, and so on.

The bitter truth is that the absence of a befitting opponent capable of keeping back the military expansion of the USA and its allies is creating favourable conditions for the military opportunism of those political forces in the USA that use their official positions to profit from the war and the "law of the fist" to establish US domination in the world.

There is no force in the world now that would be able to stop the US military machine. Meanwhile, US politicians are prepared to use any country of the world as the testing range for its military machine. It is logical that such range for live tests (there are also simulated tests) should be located in the direct proximity to oil, gas and biological resources and have natural and man-made values. In other words, it should have at least something that would entice the USA on to its missionary way to the Olympus of global domination. No wonder that it has set its eyes on the Caspian Sea zone, Syria, Iran and North Korea.

As for the effectiveness of military tests made by the USA and its allies in Iraq, their results are questionable. In fact, the USA did not hold a full-scale test because Iraq did not mount proper military resistance. In short, it was not a "proper" war where everything is tested, beginning with troop and weapons deployment and ending with their combat use, and the opponent clears up the consequences of the use of weapons. It was an operation of a STRONG state against a WEAK opponent.

Fifth, for ten years before the aggression, the USA had been weakening Iraq economically, militarily and politically. As a result, there was no proper fighting. What we saw was the all-out pressure of military power put by the anti-Iraqi coalition on a country that had been weakened by all kinds of embargoes.

This is probably the main lesson which the USA has given to Iraq and the rest of the world. It demonstrated a technology of preparing for and waging a modern war. It begins with setting public opinion against a certain state by denouncing it as a rogue and "axis of evil" country. Next comes the time to search for the culprit and punish him for his sins against the global civilisation. After that, all kinds of bans and sanctions (embargoes) are applied against the unlucky country, which is kept in these draconian conditions until it weakens, above all militarily. The possible allies of the future victim are neutralised. Only after that open preparations for and the launching of the military aggression follow.

There may be minor differences but all states, including Russia, must draw the main lesson for their security from this scenario. A military aggression is possible against it if its economic, military and moral potential has been maximally weakened, the country's prestige on the world scene has dropped and its citizens are not ready to defend their homeland.

This leads us to one more lesson of the Iraqi war: the speed of changes in the military-political situation can be much quicker than the speed of the creation of a modern military organisation.

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