Headache upon Headache: Questions of Iraq, nukes, and occupation.

The problem with the Iraq debate is that as soon as one tough question appears to be settled, another even harder one rises to take its place. For example, suppose one concludes -- as I have -- that the narrowly defined security risks of going to war against Iraq are smaller than the risks of waiting and watching for trouble to multiply. That is an important question, and just six months ago, most war hawks and doves alike thought it the only one to hand. But it has only led to another: If the United States goes to war either alone or without U.N. Security Council sanction, would the possible damage to its reputation for generous and benign international conduct be severe enough to reverse that judgment? And even if one gets by that question and is still inclined to war -- as I am -- a third, related question compounds the calculation: What is the United States to do with Iraq once it gets it?

Clearly, the United States would do itself no good, and Iraq's neighbors palpable harm, were it to leave Iraq before stabilizing the country in its present territorial configuration, accounting for all stocks and precursors of weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring that Iraq does not become a failed-state incubus for future terrorism. That such dangers are real becomes clear if we assess objectively the aftermath of the war against the Taliban -- something the administration has not been wont to do publicly, so that few Americans realize how badly the U.S. government has erred there.

We have abetted the creation of a very narrowly based government in Afghanistan that has no chance to enact even a traditional form of decentralized rule acceptable to the majority of the country's population. Not only is that government minoritarian Tajik in a country whose center of population and political gravity is Pashtun, but only those in a single Tajik valley, the Panjshir, can hear the heartbeat of power. Thus, to strengthen the government of Hamid Karzai (a Pashtun figurehead on a Tajik physique) and to build an Afghan army amounts to inviting a new phase of civil war -- with ourselves bound to one side and other external powers in league with the other. One of those powers is Pakistan, whose own Pashtun population, along with Taliban remnants it is loath to root out, make up its prospective tools of influence in a renewed Afghan civil war. That war could easily coincide with or even lead to conflagration and extreme danger in Pakistan, where Karachi is the new Al-Qaeda Central -- only a bus ride away from Pakistan's nuclear-weapons arsenal.

It is not that we did "too little" in post-war Afghanistan; it is that what we did do was done timidly. The U.S. military chose to fight by proxy, and the National Security Council declined to stop the Northern Alliance from seizing Kabul, lest it lose future options to deploy Afghan warlords against Taliban and al-Qaeda survivors rather than U.S. soldiers. The result is not only a narrow government, incipient civil strife, and a consequent inability to get at perhaps thousands of trained terrorists, but a lack of respect for U.S. power and mental discipline throughout the region. Of course, Iraq is not like Afghanistan, either in historical, social, or military terms. But the U.S. track record in Afghanistan inspires little confidence that the civilians in and around the Oval Office have got the grip they need on the U.S. military to finesse their way through the tricky political terrain of southwest Asia.

But if doing too little in a post-war Iraq could be dangerous, trying to do too much could be much worse. There are two forms of such overreaching: imperial Machtpolitik and muscular Wilsonianism.

The former would have the United States occupy Iraq in order to control its oil, thereby gaining both power of intimidation against Iran and decisive leverage against Saudi Arabia, a country that many consider to be at the bottom of our problem with once and future 9/11s. The latter would have us transform 22 Arab countries and the Muslim world beyond into liberal democracies, thus getting at the root causes of Islamist terrorism. Either such effort, or a tossed and turned combination of the two, would in due course cause future Osamas to pour off a newly invigorated assembly line of Middle Eastern resentment, and head in our general direction. Whatever its stated Wilsonian predicates, U.S. actions would be understood in the imperial tense, for the United States would inherit with a vengeance the European colonial mantle of a previous era in the Muslim world, and the image of an aggressive Christendom for centuries before that. Even the cleverest U.S. "hearts and minds" public diplomacy would bounce off a civilization whose infosphere remains impervious to alien ministrations. Indeed, the more sophisticated our efforts, the more their intended recipients would fear our conspiracies.

The potentially counterproductive impact of a war against Iraq could rise sharply if American troops end up killing lots of Iraqi civilians, or if Saddam manages to draw Israel into a war in parallel with the United States. Should the worst happen both during and after a war, it would represent bin Laden's greatest triumph: He will have used terrorism exactly as the manual directs -- to get the target of terrorist action to harm itself in a way that the terrorist attacker cannot achieve on his own. He will have his war of civilizations, and he will have put maximum pressure on his most proximate enemies: the "impious" regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the other Arab autocracies.

There is yet another dilemma inherent to the Iraq problem, one that transcends the Middle East. Here our proof text is about weapons-of- mass-destruction proliferation, and it comes to us courtesy of North Korea.

The North Korean nuclear breakout shows what happens when a rogue state obtains deliverable weapons of mass destruction. It gets the United States to talk of diplomacy rather than of war, even in cases where standard-issue diplomacy-as-management has no chance of solving the problem. We may buy the same North Korean horse for the third time, but that bizarre Stalinist cult masquerading as a government in Pyongyang still will not give up its military ace-in-the-hole, any more than Saddam Hussein will ever agree to and obey an inspection regime that could truly disarm him. The North Korea disaster thus clearly strengthens the case for pre-emption against Iraq, for once Saddam gets the bomb, options will shrink even as dangers rise. In the face of newly magnified risks, U.S. allies will discount American willingness to send conventional forces into harm's way; they will smell the air and adjust their postures, and America's overall political position will face inevitable erosion in consequence. To prevent all this from happening, we must go to war.

But as all dilemmas have two parts, so does this one. While it is too dangerous to let Iraq acquire deliverable nuclear weapons, the very act of preventing it, with the North Korean example in plain sight, will send this untoward message worldwide: If you want to deter the United States from attacking you with irresistible conventional military force, better get a nuke -- get it quick and get it quiet. (Is it a coincidence, after all, that North Korea redoubled its efforts right after the Gulf War, which had taught that same lesson?) And here we come up against the prospective price of acting without genuinely supportive allies. No country can deal with the proliferation problem by itself. To manage the second part of this dilemma, we need our NATO allies -- Russia, Japan, and China if we can get it -- to transform a strong shared interest in staunching WMD proliferation into a great- power concert to prevent it. We cannot achieve that concert if we lack decent respect, as it has been said, for the opinions of mankind.

The multiple dangers of doing too little, too much, or too timidly transform the Iraq debate from one about "whether" to one about "how," and then right back again to one about "whether." In other words, since it is true, as Raymond Aron wrote, that there are ways of conquering that transform victory into defeat, we need to either do this war right or not do it at all. But despite all the risks vested in this project, a counterproductive consequence to a war is not inevitable. To the contrary: A decisive and relatively clean American victory, sans desultory aftermath, would be a great asset in the war against terrorism. In this war, as in any other, there is no substitute for victory. Stunning battlefield results and sound post-war management may generate some additional resentment against the United States, but it will generate caution and respect for American power in far greater reserves.

We can do this right, and we must: but again, that depends on setting realistic objectives for the post-war management of Iraq -- doing neither too little nor too much. If the United States plans a protracted post-World War II-style occupation and military government, logic suggests a very large invasion force to demonstrate maximum, overwhelming power, the better to inspire first dread and then awe. Such an approach appeals as if by second nature to U.S. Army brass these days, specifically to the bureaucratized impulse to force protection that has long since suborned its warrior ethos. But this form of overreaching would be too much: It would sink the United States deeper into an area where its hegemony is unnatural, and the blowback would be predictably venomous.

If, on the other hand, the United States seeks a minimum feasible post- war political profile in Iraq, as it should, that suggests a smaller invasion force that would avoid targeting the Iraqi army insofar as that is possible. We would inspire more awe and respect if we decapitated the regime and won over the professional military to finish off the Ba'ath. In such a scenario, Iraqis would fight Saddam's Praetorian Guard in downtown Baghdad if necessary, and far fewer Iraqis would die by American hands. The Iraqi army, together with the Iraqi opposition we are trying to nurture, would work out the post-war political structure of the country, with the United States in a low- profile supporting role. Such an approach carries a risk of doing too little, but there are no risk-free scenarios concerning Iraq. Still, if we learn them well, both the lessons of Afghanistan, and the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq, can minimize the risks on this side.

Success is also essential for two other reasons beyond removing the literal danger of Iraqi weapons and deflating the morale of would-be terrorists. First, it would strike a mortal blow against state support for terrorism worldwide. Iraq's connection to 9/11 aside, there is no question that Iraq has been a state sponsor of terrorism. It could yet become a veritable K-Mart for WMD supplies to terrorists, and it is small comfort, given the stakes, that it has (probably) not already done so. To allow Iraq to do what North Korea has already done would encourage terrorism, proliferation, and, worst of all, the nexus between the two.

Second, eliminating Saddam's regime and its weapons programs -- again, if done properly -- would strengthen the present structure of peace among the great powers. Apocalyptical terrorism is a threat to the Westphalian system itself, which is why, within days of September 11, many saw what had happened as an opportunity to advance great-power peace and cooperation. This has come about to some extent (as evidenced by progress in U.S. relations with Russia and India), though an American style more given to observing the "pretense of concert" -- to borrow Coral Bell's apt phrase in The National Interest -- would have allowed it to develop faster and further. If the administration accepts the need for such pretense with regard to Iraq, as it belatedly seems to, the sinews of international peace themselves will be thickened. Contrarily, if the administration gives up the effort too soon, and goes to war in such a way that it erodes trust and cooperation among the major powers -- and further estranges the United States from its feckless but still best friends in Europe -- it may well end up conquering in a way that turns victory into defeat.

How likely is this? In truth, accusations of the administration's unilateralism are exaggerated. Why else, after all, has it knocked its head against a wall over a U.N. Security Council resolution for two months? No, the problem is that, deep down, some key members of the administration may have another, even more daunting question in mind: Why take the trouble to garner international support if the international system as we know it has no future? In other words, if the emergence of murderous non-state actors and the sharp erosion of state sovereignty is inevitable given certain technological and normative trends, then restraining the use of American power to defeat such threats on behalf of systemic concerns would be like repairing a bad valve in an engine that has just thrown a rod. Such a judgment has generative policy implications. For example, if al-Qaeda does represent the dawn of a dour era -- rather than a detour on the way to the liberal millennium -- then why not try to democratize 1.3 billion Muslims? As any port will do in a storm, so any quixotic project can make sense in the face of an historical abyss.

This gets to the nub of present disagreements over Iraq. Some observers fault the Bush administration for mistaking exceptional circumstances for new norms. The administration, they worry, is confusing emergency requirements in dealing with terrorism for a "brave new world" in which whole new doctrines are needed for unprecedented security dilemmas. They fear that by wrecking a half century of work building the edifice of an international security and legal structure, the United States is unwittingly giving Islamic fundamentalists the key that opens the door to what they most devoutly seek: the jihadist cybercaliphate of the 21st century, doing battle against the legacy of the Enlightenment itself.

But which view is correct? Are those of our leaders who are convinced of such dire assessments truly perspicacious, or are they guilty of reactive apocalyptical thinking evoked by the skill of our adversaries? Are they visionaries, or have they been tricked out of their shoes? Does their premonition of the future reflect a mature appreciation of key trends, or is it an effluent of the conceit of the contemporary -- that self-inflicted debility whereby ignorance of history convinces people that their own age is somehow unique among all ages, whether uniquely good or uniquely bad? If any of us only knew the answer. Perhaps it will come clearer after the war against Iraq, whether fought wisely or not, is over.