Welcome to a new series that I am thinking of doing called Retrospektive, this will look at old issues and examine them from our current knowledge. For the first one I have chosen the Iraq war and the complaints about the conflict from the communitarian and Cosmopolitan view points of Foreign Policy.
The Iraq war came under a few major criticisms, that we were lied to over Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, that we actually went to war for oil, that it has been a western invasion of Muslim countries, the human cost (on both sides) has been too high and the financial cost has been too high. If we divided this into communitarian and cosmopolitan then we have a general complaint about being lied to, and to some extent that the human cost has been too high (though a communitarian side would focus on the home casualties). Then we have that the cosmopolitan complaints of going to war for oil and that it was a western invasion and the communitarian argument that the financial cost was too high.
The interesting thing is that the main arguments that I have heard are that we were lied to, we went to war for oil, and that the human cost has been too high. It is interesting that the main arguments that we hear are two general complaints and a cosmopolitan complaint dispite the fact that in general people side a lot more on the Communitarian side of the debate within F.P.
at first glances you would almost expect people on the communitarian side to actually think that going to war for oil isn't a bad thing at all! After all you are advancing your countries economic development and economic interests and managing to achieve it with precious little repercussion from the UN. So why do communitarian use this argument frequently rather than focusing on the cost of lives to our armed forces or that the financial cost was to high etc?
Well it is because of two reasons, one the idea that we were lied to and so the decision to go to war wasn't based on good information. Secondly the average communitarian can see that the Iraq war has lead to an increased military risk to our country rather than a strengthening of security and that is far more important than any financial cost.
For cosmopolitanists the vast majority also agree that there was a weakening in security in the middle east due to this conflict and that even if this doesn't affect us directly, which it may well, then it is still affecting many people in the area. However there is a strong dividing point for cosmopolitanists, was removing Sadam a good thing? even if it had been the worse case scenario and he had WMD's and was committing mass human rights violations does Iraq possibly show that Interventions can de stable areas more and actually lead to a weakening of the human security that we so desire to protect?
I personally wouldn't go as far as to say this, I think Iraq was a cases of a very bad interevention, like somalia in the past, however there have been some very important interventions that have occured. When I was at the Next Left conflict John Denman MP said that we need to be more careful in choosing our interventions, I agree and think we need to go further than just that. We need to make sure they are conducted in the correct way and that we are committed for the long term, longer than we think they will take.
This may mean that we don't get involved in some conflicts, we may well end up sitting on the sidelines and watching some horrible events occur, however if we know/strongly believe that our intervention would just make the situation worse then it is something we will have to do. The balance between Order and Justice is not one that is easily solved.
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