The radical geopolitics of US foreign policy: the 2003 Iraq War

Transcription

1 GeoJournal (2010) 75: DOI /s The radical geopolitics of US foreign policy: the 2003 Iraq War Julien Mercille Published online: 17 January 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V Abstract This article presents an approach termed radical geopolitics that addresses two of critical geopolitics blind spots, namely, its lack of attention to the causes (the why ) of policy and its neglect of political economy. In particular, it examines the respective roles of the geopolitical and geoeconomic factors that drive policy. The argument draws on David Harvey s logics of power, modified and reformulated into a geoeconomic logic and a geopolitical logic through which postwar American foreign policy may be interpreted. The former logic arises out of capitalism s tendency to expand geographically and the latter out of politicians need to maintain credibility internationally as well as from electoral pressures at home. A discussion of the Iraq War illustrates the approach and illuminates issues overlooked by critical geopolitics analyses, in particular: Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003? And what was the role of oil, if any, in motivating the invasion? It is argued that Iraq was invaded to control its oil (but much less to use it for US consumption, and still much less to generate profits from it), and to maintain American credibility. Radical geopolitics should not be seen in opposition to critical geopolitics, but rather as seeking to supplement its analyses through J. Mercille (&) UCD School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland julien.mercille@ucd.ie discussion of issues which have received less attention. Keywords Radical geopolitics Critical geopolitics Geoeconomics Oil Iraq War Introduction Methodologies borrowing from radical political economy have been neglected in geopolitics scholarship, whether in its classical or critical formulations. This paper offers such an approach, radical geopolitics, as applied to the case of postwar US foreign policy and more specifically to the 2003 Iraq War. The first and second sections below outline the paper s theoretical framework, described in more detail elsewhere (Mercille 2008). The first section situates radical geopolitics relative to current critical geopolitics scholarship. It argues that critical geopolitics has neglected to investigate the causes of policy and to incorporate radical political economy into its analyses, although some versions of critical geopolitics do include political economy but do not put enough emphasis on geoeconomics as a driver behind American foreign policy. The second section discusses the geoeconomic and geopolitical logics which are at the center of radical geopolitics, directly concerned with identifying the roots of American foreign policy from

2 328 GeoJournal (2010) 75: a critical political economic perspective. In particular, it seeks to determine the respective roles and importance of political factors and economic forces in shaping policy. The third section illustrates the theoretical claims through a discussion of the Iraq War. A review of the contributions of critical geopolitics to our understanding of the war will show that although many interesting insights have been gained, some questions have been considered tangentially, such as: Why did the US invade Iraq? What was the role of oil, if any, in the invasion? Radical geopolitics offers answers to those queries and as such supplements, rather than contradicts, critical geopolitics. A critique of geopolitics scholarship Critical geopolitics is a diverse school of thought, difficult to characterize in bold terms. As such, the following critical statements cannot do justice to the full complexity of the field. They are intended to identify some of critical geopolitics blind spots, although they apply more or less directly to various pieces under this heading. As noted above, critical geopolitics has neglected to investigate the political economic roots and dynamics of policy, directing its attention to the analysis of discourses and representations and the ways in which policy unfolds-the how of policy, as opposed to the why (as noted early on by Dodds and Sidaway 1994). Of course, most works touch upon both the why and the how, but the latter is often treated in more depth. The distinction between the why and how is not clearly demarcated analytically. For instance, an argument seeking to identify the reasons behind American intervention inevitably needs to address how such intervention occurred to illustrate how certain policies result from specific motives. But a mere description of the ways in which some policies were enacted and certain discourses put into motion would not necessarily identify the reasons why those policies and discourses were implemented. For example, to examine media representations of Arabs and conclude that they are pictured in negative terms, which facilitates intervention, does not tell us why the media represented Arabs in such ways (why Arabs, but not other groups?). As a result (as will be seen below), there have been few attempts in critical geopolitics to answer the question: Why did the United States invade Iraq in 2003? Of course, one could always infer from a paper describing the discourses that made intervention possible that the invasion happened because enabling discourses were circulated, but that only begs the question of why were those specific discourses circulated, but not others? In short, radical geopolitics should not be seen in absolute opposition to critical geopolitics, but rather seeks to supplement the latter with discussions of the reasons why the discourses it often analyzes are put into motion. In fact, this author agrees with most of the broad conclusions reached by critical geopolitics analyses of the War on Terror, but seeks to complement them by pointing to related aspects and factors that have sometimes been overlooked in the literature. Returning to critical geopolitics in general, at the discursive end of the spectrum are studies emphasizing discourses and representations, a sample of which includes Dalby (1990, 1996), Dittmer (2005), Dodds (2005), Toal (2003), Toal and Agnew (1992) and Toal and Dalby (1998). However, critical geopolitics often includes political economy, but when it does, it either mostly discusses the institutional affiliation of elite groups but stops short of examining the workings of the political economic system which shapes policy-making or does not put enough emphasis on the geoeconomic factors behind policy, as in Campbell (1992, 2007), Dalby (2006, 2007), Sharp (1996), Toal (1992, 1993, 1996, 2005) and Toal et al. (2006). Other versions of critical geopolitics adopt an explicitly political economic angle to the study of geopolitical world orders (Agnew and Corbridge 1995) but are not radical. Feminist geopolitics has made several important contributions to our understanding of political events by documenting the often erased roles gender relations play in the conduct of international politics (Dowler and Sharp 2001; Gilmartin and Kofman 2004; Hyndman 2004). However, it has not emphasized the causes behind foreign policy, in particular political economic ones, as will be seen below in the case of the Iraq War. Also, the geopolitics of Lacoste/ Hérodote has been described as radical, or subversive. However, it neglects economic factors mostly concerned with political and military issues and when it addresses geoeconomics, the treatment tends to remain untheorized, as noted by Hepple (2000) and

3 GeoJournal (2010) 75: Claval (2000) (Lacoste 2006; for an exception see Joxe 2003). Finally, the work of Peter Taylor and Colin Flint has reformulated political geography in terms of world-systems theory (Flint and Taylor 2007; Taylor 1985). Rooted in radical political economy, it shares many of this paper s goals and methodology. However, it tends to be nomothetic and fit complex political events into rigid models, and its focus on large spatial and temporal scales makes it difficult to connect them to the specific causes of particular events. Contextual interpretations that pay more attention to the agency of political actors and actual policy analysis are preferable. Geoeconomic and geopolitical logics This paper builds on Arrighi s (1994), and especially on Harvey s (2003, 2006) twin concepts of the capitalist and territorial logics of power and reformulates them into a geoeconomic logic and a geopolitical logic. Two important issues need to be addressed: How can those logics be specified? And what is their respective role and importance in explaining US foreign policy? Theoretically, the two logics may be grounded in the different roles and positions of state and economic agents in the capitalist state, the former following the geopolitical logic and the latter the geoeconomic logic (following, among others, Ashman and Callinicos (2006), Block (1987) and Miliband (1983)). For Harvey, the capitalist logic is associated with the molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time (2003, p. 26). It may be understood through the concept of the spatial fix, which asserts that capitalism has a tendency to expand geographically, through opening up new markets, expanded trade, or investment of surplus capital to build production facilities in new places. Consequently, capitalists seek policies which will help them to expand their economic activities overseas (Harvey 1982). This paper accepts the broad outlines of this reasoning but refers to it as the geoeconomic logic. Geographers have conceived of geoeconomics in at least three ways: first, as referring to the natural resources contained within a region and the politics of controlling and exploiting such resources (O Hara and Heffernan 2006); second, as discourse closely related to the economic imperatives of the global economy (Smith 2002; Sparke 2005, 2007; Toal 1997); and third, to point to the flows of trade, finance and capital over global space and across borders, taking into consideration the political aspects behind such movements (Agnew and Corbridge 1989; Coleman 2005; Sidaway 2005; Smith 2003). The third approach is followed here, as it seeks to understand the material significance for American officials of planning and regulating the world economy. Using the term geoeconomic logic -in lieu of reference to Harvey s capitalist logic-reflects the fact that the focus is on the broad political economic aspects of capitalist expansion as opposed to the detailed analytics of capitalism s crises and tensions, although the latter has been fruitfully examined by others (e.g., Jessop 2006). The territorial logic is defined by Harvey as referring to the political, diplomatic, and military strategies invoked and used by a state (2003, p. 26). However, it has remained underdeveloped in his work, some pointing out that his scheme neglects the significance of political factors (Jessop 2006; Ward and Jones 2004). The key task is to identify political factors/processes from which foreign policy arises and that constitute a geopolitical logic. It is suggested that the latter operates at two spatial scales, the domestic and the international. Domestically, as pointed out by Harvey, state officials are subject to electoral pressures that may support intervention (e.g., the Israel lobby s pressures for strong American support for Israel) or restrain it (e.g., current opposition to a war with Iran). Because business agents are not subject to such pressures, public opinion therefore acts as a truly political logic, relatively independent of economic expansionary processes. However, Harvey s account can be supplemented by considering the role of the geopolitical logic on the international scale. Here, this refers mostly to the need for state officials to maintain credibility, a key aspect of postwar American foreign policy. Whereas business agents mostly interact internationally through price and investment incentives ( material incentives), politicians interact in the realm of diplomacy, which consist in persuasion and coercion ( intangible incentives) (McMahon 1991). Of course, the distinction is not rigid and clearly delineated the reality is blurred, but nevertheless, the difference is significant enough to be useful analytically. Maintaining credibility is a rather

4 330 GeoJournal (2010) 75: symbolic process, which consists in American officials signaling to others that challenges to US hegemony will not be tolerated. They do so by intervening, sometimes militarily, to repress countries/political groups that pursue a form of development independent of Washington as the history of postwar US foreign policy has shown repeatedly. American policymakers, throughout the Cold War, have frequently asserted this need to maintain credibility. More recently, one blunt assertion of such thinking has been expressed through the Ledeen Doctrine, attributed to neoconservative writer Michael Ledeen, which states that: Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business (Goldberg 2002). The geopolitical and geoeconomic logics may act in opposition, but have mostly operated in concert in the case of American postwar foreign policy, both supporting US hegemony. A discussion of the Iraq War will illustrate their dynamics. For lack of space and because it is more directly relevant to the aspects of the war discussed here, the focus will be on the international rather than domestic component of the geopolitical logic. A radical geopolitics of the Iraq War This section provides a radical geopolitics interpretation of the war, supplementing critical geopolitics analyses of it by addressing two main issues which have not received enough attention: Why did the US invade Iraq? And what was the role of oil, if any, in the invasion? Critical geopolitics of the Iraq War/post-9/11 have mostly examined imaginative geographies and representations associated with the war and how they were mobilized to justify intervention (Bialasiewicz et al. 2007; Crampton and Power 2005; Dalby 2008; Debrix 2005; Dittmer 2005; Gregory 2004; Jones and Clarke 2006; Toal 2005, 2006). Others have investigated Arab media (Falah et al. 2006), described 9/11 as somatic marker (Toal 2003), examined aspects of the War on Terror related to boundaries, sovereignty and territoriality (Elden 2005; Williams and Roach 2006) and discussed whether Bush foreign policy is better conceptualized in terms of empire or hegemony (Agnew 2005). There has also been some important work on geoeconomic aspects of the War on Terror, but attention has been directed mostly at its discursive aspects and their interaction with geopolitical discourses (Dalby 2007; Roberts et al. 2003; Sparke 2007, 2005). Such studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of the Iraq War, but they have focused on the how, namely, how representations, imaginative geographies and discourses have legitimated and justified the War on Terror, and what kinds of geopolitical and geoeconomic visions they have revealed. For instance, such representations have depicted the Middle East as Other in Orientalist fashion and have mobilized various binaries (e.g., good/evil ) to draw contentious lines between us and them. However, those analyses have left relatively unexamined the reasons behind the war (the why ) and the role played by oil. Some limited contributions have been made in this direction in a special forum on the 2003 Iraq War in the journal The Arab World Geographer (2003), some of which will be referred to below, but more systematic analyses would strengthen such research agendas. Likewise, feminist analyses have shown how discourses used to articulate Bush policy are gendered (Hyndman 2005; Tickner 2002; Weber 2005) but have paid less attention to the causes of the war, let alone to political economy and oil. Hannah (2005, p. 252) suggested that an American culture of masculinity played some part in motivating policy responses to 9/11 (although he states that his claims remain speculative and circumstantial ). Radical geopolitics agrees that cultures of masculinity encourage military interventions, but points out that this interpretation must be extended because it does not explain why, where and when intervention occurred. Why did masculinist assumptions lead American officials to invade Iraq, but not other countries? Why did intervention in Iraq begin in 1991 (with the first Gulf War), and not before or after? In short, critical geopolitics has not yet answered fully James Sidaway s (2003) call to address the question: How does the conflict relate, too, to the economic geography of the key commodity of oil? There are a few exceptions, for example, Jhaveri (2004), Le Billon and El Khatib (2004) and Peters (2004) and touch upon several aspects of the role of

5 GeoJournal (2010) 75: oil in the invasion. David Harvey (2003) and Neil Smith (2003, 2005) provide answers to the why of the invasion and the role of oil in it. The present account should be seen as building on those interpretations and clarifying and adding some important points to which they have paid less attention. In particular, three roles played by oil are outlined and their relative importance in motivating the invasion is assessed, adding conceptual clarity to studies which tend not to distinguish between those several roles. Secondly, the invasion s symbolic significance to maintain credibility is discussed. Oil and credibility The oil factor in US foreign policy, and in the 2003 Iraq War in particular, has received attention from a number of scholars approaching the question from various perspectives. Although space limitations make an extensive review of this literature not possible, one may note among others that Michael Klare (2001, 2003, 2008) has underlined in numerous publications the growing global competition for diminishing energy resources and the increased role of states and their military apparatuses in securing those vanishing resources; Andrew Bacevich argues that the Carter Doctrine of 1980 increased American involvement in the Persian Gulf and that the main reason to dominate the region s oil reserves is to guarantee an ever-increasing American affluence, which requires access to cheap oil and lots of it (2005, p. 182); and Bichler and Nitzan (2004) present innovative theoretical concepts linking war and conflict in the Middle East to the possibilities for (differential) accumulation of dominant economic groups such as oil companies and military contractors. Although other seminal views will be noted in what follows, for the purposes of this paper, three oilrelated motivations for US intervention in the Middle East may be identified: to make profits from oil, to consume the oil, and to establish control over oil (Bromley 2006; Stokes 2007). The first refers to claims that Iraq was invaded to generate profits for American oil companies, which are close to the Bush administration. The second refers to claims that the invasion occurred so that the US could use Iraq s oil for its own consumption, increasingly dependent on foreign oil. The last refers to claims that the invasion s objective was to regulate the amount, price and geographical allocation of Iraq s oil to the world economy, in addition to the American economy receiving a large proportion of the generated petrodollars, in the form of weapons purchases and financial investments in the United States by Middle Eastern governments. Harvey (2003), Jhaveri (2004), Billon et al. (2004), Peters (2004) and Smith (2003, 2005) each touch upon some of those three aspects, but rarely, if ever, on all three let alone their relative importance in motivating the invasion. This results in accounts which could specify the role of oil to a greater extent. 1 Critics of the invasion, under the slogan No Blood for Oil, mostly refer to profits and access (see Rutledge 2005 for this view). However, the present argument is as follows: historically and in 2003, control of oil has been by far the most important factor motivating US intervention in the Middle East; access is secondary, but its importance has increased recently; and profits are a relatively minor factor. Those claims will now be illustrated through reference to key American government planning documents. Official planning documents are important sources of evidence as they lay out in detail, in policy makers own words, American global goals. Postwar policy towards the Middle East has been remarkably consistent over time and states explicitly its main objective: to allocate the region s energy resources to allies like Japan and Germany and deny them to rivals like the Soviet bloc, and Russia and China more recently. Access to the oil for American consumption has been relatively unimportant. For instance, in the early postwar period, the United States used virtually no oil from the Middle East for its own consumption in 1948 it accounted for less than 1% of total US consumption and in 1970 for about 4% but still intervened in the Middle East to ensure that its oil would be diverted to the needs of Western Europe and Japan to fuel their recoveries along capitalist lines and to prevent the Soviet bloc from accessing the resources (for reviews of the literature see Miller 1991; Painter 2002). For example, in 1958, in the face of rising Arab nationalism a nationalist coup overthrew Iraq s monarchy that year the US National Security Council stated that It is essential that the following 1 Smith and Harvey, however, do emphasize the prominence of control, but their accounts can be clarified by discussing more explicitly the relative role of the three factors mentioned.

6 332 GeoJournal (2010) 75: primary objectives be achieved: (a) Denial of the area to Soviet domination. (b) Continued availability of sufficient Near Eastern oil to meet vital Western European requirements on reasonable terms and the US should be prepared to use force to meet those objectives. Truman s Secretary of Defense James Forrestal had noted earlier that whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe and George Kennan argued that controlling Japan s oil imports would mean a veto power over its industrial development. Similar statements appear repeatedly in postwar national security documents, but the need to protect Middle East oil for American consumption and the need to generate profits for American companies receive comparatively little attention (NSC 1958; Forrestal quoted in Shaffer 1983, p. 143; Kennan quoted in State Department 1949). Planning documents outlining the thinking of the Bush administration have not been declassified yet, but the parallels are readily apparent, as noted by Klare (2003, p. 4) who argued that a prime motivation for the US invasion was to maintain a stranglehold on the global economy. One difference in a post-cold War geopolitical environment is that Middle East oil now needs to be preserved for the Western world and denied to Russia and China. Indeed, their control over Middle East energy resources would go a long way towards consolidating the emergent Asian energy grid, an association of Eurasian countries to manage the continent s energy resources. This energy grid is significant because, among other things, it sustains Eurasian military and political cooperation through bodies such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) founded in 2001 between Russia, China and other central Asian states. In short, Eurasia would be strengthened relative to the West, and the fact that Iran is now in the process of becoming an SCO member is an ominous sign for the West (Escobar 2007; Glover 2007; Varadarajan 2005). Today, Americans rely increasingly on Middle Eastern oil and this dependence is projected to rise in the future, which adds to interest in intervening in Iraq. However, it must be kept in mind that the Middle East only accounted for about 13% of total American consumption (about 24% of imports, the bulk of which comes from Saudi Arabia) on the eve of the invasion. Sources that are geographically closer and more reliable, located in the traditional American backyard, are preferred: the US still imports most of its oil from Canada and Latin America (about 50% of imports; Africa accounts for about 14%) (National Energy Policy 2001). In short, the US could live without Iraqi oil and it must be seen as a secondary motivation behind the invasion. One implication of this is that arguments maintaining that the reduction of America s dependence on Middle East oil would reduce intervention in the region can be misleading. Indeed, since the main reason for intervention is control over world supply and not American consumption, as long as the world runs on oil, one could speculate that the United States will seek to control the region containing two-thirds of energy resources in order to exert leverage over industrial rivals and regulate the smooth functioning of the world economy, even if it only consumes modest amounts from the region. Indeed, in the early postwar period, the US consumed very little oil from the Middle East but was involved in the region to allocate its resources geographically in ways supporting American hegemony (mostly to Western Europe and Japan). Another implication is that arguments advancing that oil is not the reason for the 2003 invasion because Iraq s oil could have been bought on the open market (Agnew 2003) are also misplaced. It is true that the US could have obtained Iraq s oil on the market, but control over the world economy and industrial rivals and allies would not have followed, the primary goal of American involvement in the Middle East. What about the role of the geopolitical logic? To understand its significance, the 2003 invasion needs to be interpreted as the latest phase in a war on Iraq begun with the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein was an American ally until his August 1990 move into Kuwait. His incursion led to a quick shift in the US position: Iraq became labeled as a rogue regime and Saddam was demonized by pointing to atrocities he had committed earlier (Toal 1993). By exerting its hegemony over Kuwait, Iraq would have controlled about 20% of world oil reserves and would have been able to finance pan-arab ambitions, independent of Washington s plans for the region. The US intervened not so much to preserve its consumption of Kuwaiti oil at the time and still today, the US imports little of it but rather to keep it in friendly hands and maintain its strategy of divide and

7 GeoJournal (2010) 75: conquer by dividing the control of the Gulf s oil among several rulers to prevent the emergence of rival hegemons in the region (Frank 1991). The Gulf War quickly pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But the campaign did not stop there: extremely harsh sanctions were imposed on Iraq, which was also periodically bombed until the 2003 invasion (Ahmed 2003; Rai 2002). Why such policies? The answer has much to do with the geopolitical logics of maintaining American credibility in the world. A clear message needs to be sent to potential challengers that pursuing development independent of American hegemony or disobeying Washington s guidelines will not be tolerated. This often has little to do with direct American economic interests in the defiant country: for instance, the US did not have large economic interests in Vietnam but it was nevertheless very important to keep on fighting to maintain US prestige and credibility in the world. American officials have long been aware that failure to respond forcefully to challenges might incite others to do the same and have expressed this in terms of geographical metaphors. Dean Acheson outlined the rationale in the early postwar years when he explained why it was important to prevent Greece from falling to leftist forces: Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France (1969, p. 219). In short, a demonstration effect can lead challengers to grow in numbers if one is allowed to bloom. Of course, it is difficult to measure precisely the extent of this effect, but American elites have been for decades, and still are, acutely aware of its general consequences. Therefore, one reason why Iraq was harshly punished after the Gulf War, culminating in the 2003 invasion, was to maintain American credibility, i.e., to signal to would-be challengers of US hegemony that interfering with American global plans carries real penalties. This was recognized by American officials, as George Bush declared during the Gulf War: And when we win and we will we will have taught a dangerous dictator and any tyrant tempted to follow in his footsteps that the U.S. has a new credibility, and that what we say goes, and that there is no place for lawless aggression in the Persian Gulf and in this new world order that we seek to create (Bush 1991; emphasis added). Also, Clinton made similar remarks in 1998, the year Iraq was bombed during Operation Desert Fox: If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity But if we act as one, we can safeguard our interests and send a clear message to every would-be tyrant and terrorist that the international community does have the wisdom and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era. (Clinton 1998a). If we turn our backs on his defiance, the credibility of U.S. power as a check against Saddam will be destroyed (Clinton 1998b). Therefore, Saddam had to go and the US had to look tough and unforgiving. This is why a number of Iraqi proposals for the settlement of Iraq s invasion of Kuwait along diplomatic lines were rejected out of hand by American officials before the Gulf War started (Frank 1991). Why did US officials wait until 2003 to remove Saddam? The answer involves a combination of factors. In 1991, he was left in power and US officials allowed him to crush Kurdish and Shiite rebellions that could have led to regime change because revolutionary change would have been unpredictable and could have hurt American interests: for instance, if Shiites had come to power, this could have led to an increase in Iranian influence in Iraq (as happened in the 2003 invasion s aftermath). The new regime could have acted independently from Washington, but what the latter wanted was an obedient Saddam clone: as the New York Times Thomas Friedman explained at the time, the best of all worlds for Washington would be an iron-fisted junta without Saddam Hussein (1991). During the 1990s, the Bush and Clinton administrations adopted a two-track strategy of sanctions to cut Saddam down to size, combined with CIA-backed covert operations to remove him from power. Those efforts did not succeed in changing Iraq s leadership, but nevertheless, the harsh sanctions and periodic bombing contributed to contain Saddam and shame him, sending a clear message to the

8 334 GeoJournal (2010) 75: world about the likely consequences of challenging American hegemony (Ahmed 2003; Cockburn and Cockburn 2002; Rai 2002). In 2003, 9/11 provided the pretext to take more drastic actions, and ideologically, the George W. Bush administration was composed of many neoconservatives who had already argued strongly for regime change. For instance, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States announced that the US would now target challengers ( rogue states and terrorists ) even more brazenly through preemption. Iraq was to be the first test of such a strategy and serve as an example for the world and other Middle East countries. In the words of a senior Bush administration official involved in the drafting of the document, The publication of the strategy was the signal that Iraq would be the first test, but not the last. Iraq became the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew, the New York Times reported: Some of Mr. Bush s closest aides assert that there is already a demonstration effect in which the American and British forces in command in Baghdad will be able to exert pressure on Iraq s neighbors in ways they could only imagine a few months ago (Sanger and Weisman 2003). In short, just as the first Gulf War allowed the US to impose itself in the Middle East following the Soviet Union s collapse (and accompanying loss of influence in the region), the current Bush administration envisaged renewed influence and credibility in the region following the 2003 invasion but whether this will be accomplished is questionable, given the difficulties faced by the Bush administration to control developments in Iraq. Issues of American credibility were again important, as when Bush declared: This man [Saddam Hussein] has had 11 years to comply. For 11 long years, he s ignored world opinion, and he s put the credibility of the United Nations on line (Bush 2002). If we were to leave before the mission [in Iraq] was done, what kind of signal would that send to the extremists and radicals who want to harm either the United States or our close allies? Our credibility would be damaged. Our enemies would be emboldened (Bush 2006). In short, both the geopolitical and geoeconomic logics are central to explaining the American war on Iraq and considering only one of the two misses some important factors behind the invasion. For instance, geographical work that has addressed the causes of the invasion with reference to oil (Harvey 2003; Jhaveri 2004; Le Billon and El Khatib 2004; Peters 2004; Smith 2003, 2005) has tended not to underline the significant role played by credibility. Perhaps this is best illustrated by Smith s (2003, p. xiv; also 2005, p. 191) claim that this was a war to fill the interstices of globalization. In a general way, this is not untrue, but remains a rather vague economic explanation that diverts attention from the symbolic need to maintain credibility by punishing challengers of US hegemony. Conclusion This paper presented a radical approach to geopolitics which was situated relative to current scholarship in the field. The main contribution radical geopolitics makes is, first, to integrate political economy into its analyses, and second, it seeks to address the why of policy. The case of the Iraq War illustrated the approach. Although current critical geopolitics has highlighted many interesting and crucial aspects of the war, radical geopolitics seeks to supplement it by addressing some neglected issues, such as the significance of oil and credibility in explaining the motivations behind the invasion. The fact that critical and radical geopolitics should be seen as complements rather than in opposition can be appreciated by looking at the differences and similarities in their treatment of symbolic discourses used to justify the war. Whereas critical geopolitics has mostly described those discourses to reveal how they represent the Middle East, radical geopolitics, although it agrees with most conclusions presented in such analyses, supplements the latter by discussing the reasons why those discourses are mobilized. Of course, this cannot be done without describing the discourses themselves, and this is where radical and critical geopolitics overlap. By providing critical political economic interpretations, the radical geopolitics sketched in this paper is promising. Further, although the article has focused on American policy, the argument could certainly be extended to other cases exploring variations in the balance and tensions between geopolitical and geoeconomic logics.

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