Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

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Author: search.filters.author.Steinbruner, JohnSubject: search.filters.subject.Iraq

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    The Localized Nature of Violence in Iraq
    (2007-08) Gulden, Tim; Steinbruner, John
    Understandably and perhaps inevitably, the ever more urgent effort to comprehend the causes of violence in Iraq has so far relied on familiar conceptions. The conflict occurring there is variously described as an insurgency, a civil war, and a manifestation of global terrorism. Standard religious and ethnic categories are used to identify the participants and impute their motives. It is becoming evident, however, that the pattern of violence reflects not only a collision of organized purposes but more fundamentally a profound disintegration of Iraq’s social fabric, a process that exposes innocent victims but also limits the capacity of predators. Violence resulting from the breakdown of legal order does not have the same character as that which occurs between managed opponents. Better understanding of that distinction is likely to be one of the more important lessons to be learned.
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    Potentially Constructive Implications of Disaster in Iraq
    (2007-08) Steinbruner, John
    It now appears likely that the invasion of Iraq will prove to be a seminal event in the evolution of international security generally. Legal order has evidently collapsed throughout the country, and the occupying forces have not been able to control the resulting pattern of predatory violence. The central reason is that the United States forfeited at the outset the critical asset of legitimacy necessary to establish and maintain consensual rule, and its continued presence undermines the indigenous institutions it is attempting to nurture. Similar breakdowns have occurred in other parts of the world, and the consequences have been tolerated over extended periods of time. Because of timing, location and the entanglement of the United States, however, intractable violence in Iraq can be expected to have much stronger global resonance. American forces alone are not likely to be able to master the situation but neither can they be withdrawn without intensifying internal violence and extending it into an already volatile region. The potential consequences of that dilemma are ominous, but for that reason the situation presents opportunity as well as danger. Calamity is sometimes a catalyst for greater wisdom.