Rutgers University Professor Lloyd Gardner attempted to explain the larger ideas behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq in The Long Road To Baghdad, A History Of U.S. Foreign Policy From The 1970s To The Present. He argues that the war was the result of a change in foreign policy philosophy from the realism of the Cold War to a new idealism based upon asserting American power and spreading democracy. The problem is Gardner gets lost in the details and side stories and loses track of his argument.
International relations theory is dominated by two ideas about foreign policy. On the one hand there is realism which is based upon countries following their self-interests and a balance of power. This was prevalent during the Cold War when the United States was competing with the Soviet Union. The other concept is Idealism where countries push their ideals and morals. In America’s case that is democracy and a belief in its exceptionalism in the world promoted by American power.
Gardner argues that America shifted from realism to idealism following the Vietnam War. The defeat in that conflict led the United States to want to re-assert its power and re-align its foreign policy towards idealism. He attempts to prove this by following several foreign policy officials such as National Security Advisors Walt Rostow, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft from the Johnson, Carter and Bush I administrations who were realists and then neoconservatives who emerged in the 1990s with figures like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
He then applies his thesis to Iraq. While the realists under Bush I and Clinton were fine with containing Iraq like they were with containing the Soviets during the Cold War the idealists couldn’t let a tyrannical government like Saddam Hussein’s remain in power. For the latter Iraq became the perfect case of America overthrowing dictatorships, asserting American power and spreading democracy in the world.
Gardner’s work tries to explain some of the ideological issues behind the Iraq War which are missing from other works on the conflict. There are many books that attempt to blame the 2003 invasion upon the neoconservatives but they fail on several issues. Some don’t explain what that group was about. More importantly few ever try to explain why Bush wanted Saddam gone when he was not a neoconservative. The Long Road To Baghdad attempts to fill in that gap by explaining how Bush was part of the move towards Idealism with his deep religious faith and belief that democracy was a human right.
That’s the good part of the book. However it gets overshadowed by its problems. The biggest issue is that Gardner gets completely lost in the details. He seems to go through every single foreign policy issue of the Johnson, Nixon and Carter administrations for instance. Then he goes off on tangents all the time such as discussing a coup in Pakistan or the U.S. getting military bases in the Central Asian republics during his Iraq chapters. None of this helps prove his thesis and distracts from it instead. The reader gets lots in all the stories and easily loses track of what the whole point of the book was.
Overall The Long Road To Baghdad is a disappointment. Gardner’s attempt to explain the ideological shift in American foreign policy that led to the Iraq War is a good effort. His thesis has a lot of merit and describes much about the shift in Washington that led to the 2003 invasion. However it is completely overshadowed by all the facts that Gardner can’t seem to avoid whether they have to do with his thesis or not. The author could’ve done much better with a shorter book that just stuck to the point.
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