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![]() February 11, 1998 The tension in the international community over Saddam Hussein's prolonged refusal to allow UN inspectors full access to weapon production facilities in Iraq seems finally to have reached a head. As the U.S. and British military buildup continues in the Persian Gulf region, questions left open in the wake of the Gulf War are resurfacing. Shortly after that war, The Atlantic Monthly's editors asked two prominent writers the question, "Was the Gulf War in the National Interest?" The two responses were published in the July, 1991, issue. Revisiting them lends some perspective to the current face-off between Iraq and the United Nations. In "Why the Gulf War Was Not in the National Interest," Christopher Layne argued that blunt military coercion by an external power such as the United States can never adequately resolve the subtle complexities of the Persian Gulf's political conflicts: The Administration has been an innocent abroad in a region where problems are intractable and politics are Byzantine. The United States has been manipulated by regional powers -- Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt -- pursuing their own agendas.... Americans should beware of the overweening ambition that is born of hubris. The world is not infinitely malleable. The United States has seldom done well trying to stage-manage the process of political change in other countries. It is the people in those countries who pay the price when American experiments in "nation-building" go awry. There are many problems in the world but few of them have "Made in America" solutions. ![]() Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. |
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