Editor's Note: I have read many papers and articles on Iraq in the past three years, but in many respects I believe this study by Professors Hendrickson and Tucker to be the most important of the lot. The two touch on themes developed elsewhere, including "The Incompetence Dodge," by Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias, and my own (with most of the credit going to my co-author Justin Logan) "Failed States and Flawed Logic: The Case against a Standing Nation-Building Office."

But this paper deserves special attention. It explores the particular challenges in Iraq -- widespread violence, a growing insurgency, regional unrest, international repercussions -- in much greater detail than the other studies cited above, and it explicitly draws the necessary lessons from America's experience in Iraq in an attempt to frame and shape much broader considerations of the appropriate use of U.S. power, especially military power, in a chaotic and dangerous world.

I stand by all of the articles posted on the Coalition's web site, but I take special pride in calling attention to this one. I have excerpted several passages from the paper's summary below, but I strongly urge you to print out the entire report from the Strategic Studies Institute web site, or to request a copy from SSI.

-- Christopher Preble

Excerpts from the Summary:

Though the critics have made a number of telling points against the conduct of the war and the occupation, the basic problems faced by the United States flowed from the enterprise itself, and not primarily from mistakes in execution along the way. The most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers -- "endemic violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy, and a decimated society" -- were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the breakage of the Iraqi state....

Criticisms of the political course followed by the United States . . . all have merit. At the same time, the more fundamental truth is that the United States had thrust itself into the middle of a bitterly divided society, and there was no apparent way to split the difference between groups whose aims were irreconcilable....

Though the record of Iraq war planning [deserves scrutiny] critics also have neglected the larger lesson that there are certain limits to what military power can accomplish. For certain purposes, like the creation of a liberal democratic society that will be a model for others, military power is a blunt instrument, destined by its very nature to give rise to unintended and unwelcome consequences. Rather than "do it better next time," a better lesson is "don't do it at all."

To read the full report (.pdf), visit the SSI web site:

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB637.pdf