It’s time to face the truth. The unravelling of the international order, graphically demonstrated by Vladimir Putin’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, began with the West’s invasion of Iraq 20 years ago. By disregarding the principles of the UN Charter in 2003, the US and the UK ceded their moral authority to promote the rule of law, and emboldened authoritarians to act illegally when it suited them. The calamitous occupation of Iraq also turned Western public opinion against the whole idea of leadership in international crisis management and left an indelible mark on opinion in non-aligned countries. The consequences are still playing out to this day.
The invasion of Iraq was the pivotal crisis of the post-Cold War period. In the first decade after 1989, US presidents and their allies were careful to use their military pre-eminence with restraint. George HW Bush showed the way in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when the US-led and UN-backed coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and then resisted the temptation to go all the way to Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein. In April 1991, John Major used military units to bring humanitarian aid to Kurdish refugees freezing in the mountains of northern Iraq. When Yugoslavia collapsed in chaos in 1992, Bill Clinton waited through three years of civil war and ethnic cleansing before using US diplomatic and military muscle to put an end to the killing, first in Bosnia, then in 1999 in Kosovo. In the same year, the Australians led a five-month military operation in East Timor to end widespread violence following a referendum on independence. And in 2000, the UK dispatched a small force to Sierra Leone to forestall a coup enacted by mercenaries sent by Charles Taylor, the brutal leader of neighbouring Liberia.
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