(Page 9 of 51) - Can the United States Be Balanced? If So, How? authored by Walt, Stephen.

revenues worth roughly 40 percent of Iraq’s own GDP, and enhance its ability to
intimidate neighboring states such as Saudi Arabia. And it could achieve all of these
things by a few hours, with little or no risk that his army would be defeated, provided that
outsiders did not come to Kuwait’s assistance. There seemed to be little danger of that
happening, however, given that the United States was preoccupied with the collapse of
the Soviet empire, and U.S. diplomats had unwittingly signaled that the United States was
not directly committed to protecting Kuwait. Although the invasion did not work out as
Saddam expected, his decision to invade was neither reckless nor surprising.

An even clearer example of this sort of behavior was North Korea’s decision to

restart its nuclear development program in 2003. Relations between Washington and
Pyongyang had deteriorated under the Bush administration, and the 1994 “Agreed
Framework” had largely collapsed by the end of 2002. The Bush administration was
certainly aware that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were a problem, but its
preoccupation with Iraq gave North Korea an ideal opportunity to accelerate its nuclear
development activities. With the United States busy in the Gulf, there was less danger of
a preventive strike on the Korean peninsula. Equally important, this window might
permit North Korea to acquire enough nuclear material to make it too dangerous to
challenge later. In other words, North Korea seized a window of opportunity in order to
achieve a small but strategically significant shift in the overall balance of power.

Much the same logic seems to be guiding Iran’s own pursuit of a nuclear

capability. During 2003, coordinated pressure from the United States and European
Union made some progress in slowing—and possibly halting—Iran’s nuclear
development program. The invasion of Iraq reinforced this effort at first, because it seem
to suggest that Iran would have to take U.S. military threats seriously. Once the United
States was bogged down, however, the threat of additional military action evaporated and
Iran returned to a more defiant position, announcing in August 2004 that it was resuming
construction of enrichment centrifuges and declaring that Iran “won’t allow others to
deprive us of our natural and legal rights.” As Gary Samore of the International Institute
of Strategic Studies explained: “Last year the Iranians felt insecure after the invasion of
Iraq and were ready to agree to restrictions. Now they feel more confident. The US is
bogged down in Iraq, the conservatives control the Iranian parliament and Iran does not
feel that sanctions are likely. So it has reneged on a key part of [its earlier] agreement.

Like the North Koreans, in short, Iran has exploited the window of opportunity created by
the Iraq debacle in order to press ahead with its WMD programs

The moral of these (and other) stories is simple. U.S. power confers many

advantages on the United States and creates many options for U.S. leaders, options that
no other state can even contemplate. Yet primacy does not mean that all (or even most)
states must invariably accommodate Washington’s wishes. Although the United States

On Saddam’s motivations, see Ephraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, “Why Saddam Hussein Invaded

Kuwait,” Survival XX, no. 3 (Spring 1991); and Lawrence Freedman and Ephraim Karsh, The Gulf
Conflict, 1990-91: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993), .

See “Iran Says It Will Not Give Up Uranium Enrichment Program,” New York Times, August 1, 2004, p.

A8; and Paul Reynolds, “Iran: The Next Crisis?,” BBC World News Service, at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3929369.stm