{"id":4565,"date":"2013-03-15T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T03:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=4565"},"modified":"2013-03-18T08:27:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T22:27:27","slug":"iraq-plus-ten-two-lessons-for-our-future-use-of-the-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/iraq-plus-ten-two-lessons-for-our-future-use-of-the-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq plus ten: two lessons for our future use of the alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
A major benefit of the alliance is held to be the access gained to American intelligence.\u00a0 Undoubtedly the US has an unmatched information collection system of enormous sophistication, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning the intelligence provided is infallible. Indeed in moments of crisis such as the lead up to war the US intelligence system can be inaccurate\u2014as the Iraq WMD case amply demonstrates.<\/p>\n During the Cuban Missile Crisis, US intelligence missed<\/a> that the Soviet forces already deployed to the island had some 100 tactical nuclear weapons. The US Joint Chiefs were recommending a large-scale invasion of Cuba<\/a> preceded by extensive airstrikes<\/a> (PDF); if the intelligence had been acted on, the result might have been disastrous. At the time, US intelligence believed that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident<\/a> happened but it’s now clear that it didn’t\u2014the incident that was crucial in leading to full-scale US involvement in the Vietnam War never occurred. (For the detailed signals intelligence analysis, see here<\/a> (PDF).)\u00a0 Later in the war, the intelligence community failed to warn of the 1968 Tet Offensive<\/a> that delivered a serious blow to America\u2019s continued commitment. And, of course, ten years ago, the Iraq war\u2019s main rationale, that of \u2018the clear and present danger\u2019 from Saddam\u2019s WMD, proved illusionary<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are many other examples, including Pearl Harbor and the Chinese entry into the Korean War in 1950. Crucially, in all these examples, the US intelligence community was closely focused on these countries, often had several years to analyse the adversary, but even so still drew incorrect conclusions. This was an alerted, not an un-alerted, intelligence system in action.<\/p>\n There are always conspiracy theorists who see the manipulations of politicians in such failures, but the key issue here is that in retrospect the intelligence assessments were just wrong. A major lesson of the Iraq war might be to be cautious in acting too precipitously in starting a war; the intelligence from the best system in the world might be mistaken. Given the Iraq war was nominally a preventive war, this was particularly important. Could this happen again over say Iran or North Korea? In selling the alliance to the Australian public by stressing the importance to us of American intelligence, are we perhaps giving too much weight to its value?\u00a0 This is an important question for a sovereign nation that places a lot of weight on the US intelligence system.<\/p>\n<\/a>Graeme Dobell makes some contentious arguments<\/a> about Australia\u2019s decision-making processes when determining our involvement in the American-led Iraq war of ten years ago. They are contentious because many of Canberra\u2019s mandarins remain in place, people still argue passionately over whether the removal of Saddam Hussein was worth the cost<\/a> in blood and treasure and Iraq remains a confusingly bloody work-in-progress<\/a>, even on a weekly<\/a> basis. At this point though, two useful lessons for future policymaking might be discerned: the utility of US provided intelligence to Australian decision-making and the need for us to be less Australia-centric when thinking about the alliance.<\/p>\n