Theory in Action: Analyzing the 2003 Iraq War 101of mass destruction only added to the urgency of regime change. With res pect to the
international level, liberals would emphasize that Iraq was not conforming to its obli-
gations under vari ous UN Security Council resolutions. Thus, the international com-
munity had an obligation to support sanctions and continue inspections and, failing
that, undertake collective action, fighting a war to punish Saddam’s regime and allow
an alternative government to take root.
Why did the international community not respond as some liberals would have
predicted? U.S. inability to win the endorsement of the UN Security Council for col-
lective action can be attributed to the fact that some members of the council, including
France and Rus sia, and some other power ful states, including Germany, believed that
containment of the Iraqi regime was sufficient, evidence of weapons of mass destruc-
tion was lacking, and that immediate action was not necessary in light of the higher
priority given to fighting Al Qaeda in Af ghan i stan. Liberals’ predictions of restraint in
the face of allies’ skepticism proved wrong in Iraq in 2003, but later received strong
support in British and U.S. deliberations, in 2013, over whether to intervene militarily
in Syria.
radical Perspectives
A radical interpretation of the Iraq War would tend to focus mainly on the international
system structure and the economic interests of states. That system structure, for radicals,
is embedded in the historical colonial system and its con temporary legacies. Radicals
hold that po liti cal colonialism spawned an imperialist system in which the economic
needs of the cap i tal ist states were paramount. In the Middle East, that meant imperialist
action by the West to secure oil resources. In the nineteenth- century colonial era, impe-
rialism was state or ga nized; today, imperialism is practiced by multinational corpora-
tions. In this view, the instability of the oil supply coming from Iraq explains the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many radicals (and many in the Arab world) believe that the
United States invaded to gain control of Iraq’s oil. They point to the fact that one of
the United States’ first military objectives was the seizure of the Rumaila oil field in
southern Iraq. U.S. troops protected oil fields all over the country, even when civil
disorder and looting of precious cultural monuments went unchecked. The U.S. forces
prioritized restarting the oil pipelines over providing for the basic needs of the Iraqi
people.
Radicals, especially de pen dency theorists, would not be at all surprised that the core
states of the cap i tal ist system— the United States and its allies— responded with force
when Iraq threatened their critical interests in oil. Nor would they expect the end of the
Cold War to make any difference in the structure of the system. The major changes in
international power relationships that radicals seek— and predict— have not yet come.