WORLD ROUNDUPIsrael Is Losing Its Greatest Asset: Acceptance | Reviving a Critical Minerals Mega-Railway Through Africa | Russia Prepared for Nuclear Attack on China, and more
· Why Authoritarians Like Saddam Hussein Confound U.S. Presidents
Hussein’s case offers a rare, well-documented study of why authoritarians often confound American analysts and presidents
· Israel Is Losing Its Greatest Asset: Acceptance
When so many civilians die in a retaliatory invasion that was launched by an Israeli government without any political horizon for the morning after, both Israel and its supporters have a problem
· Russia Prepared for Nuclear Attack on China, Leaked Papers Reveal
Military documents reveal a strategy of ‘fear inducement’ and describe criteria for the use of tactical weapons — including plans for invasion by China
· CIA Builds 12 Secret Spy Bases in Ukraine Along Russian Border
US agency has trained and equipped Kyiv’s intelligence officers in underground bunkers, some of which are buried in thick forest
· Washington Wants to Revive a Critical Minerals Mega-Railway Through Africa
The move comes straight out of China’s Belt-and-Road playbook
Why Authoritarians Like Saddam Hussein Confound U.S. Presidents (Steve Coll, New York Times)
America committed its worst foreign policy mistake of the post-Cold War era when it invaded Iraq in 2003 to disarm Saddam Hussein of his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The war that followed exacted an appalling price in Iraqi and American lives and resources, and it also empowered Iran, energizing regional proxy conflicts that have entrapped Washington in the Middle East, as the Biden administration has rediscovered painfully.
At a time when the United States has identified managing dictatorships in China and Russia as the country’s most important national security challenge and when North Korea’s isolated and idiosyncratic leader holds nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, Mr. Hussein’s case offers a rare, well-documented study of why authoritarians often confound American analysts and presidents.
How might the U.S. invasion of Iraq have been avoided? Much of our post hoc investigation has focused on the false and manipulated intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush’s choices, the selling of the war and the media’s complicity. Another central question has rarely been examined: Why did Mr. Hussein sacrifice his long reign in power — and ultimately his life — by creating an impression that he held dangerous weapons when he did not?
The question is answerable. Mr. Hussein recorded his private leadership conversations as assiduously as Richard Nixon. He left behind about 2,000 hours of tape recordings as well as a vast archive of meeting minutes and presidential records. The materials document the Iraqi leader’s thinking at critical junctures of his long conflict with Washington, including his private reactions to Sept. 11 and to the Bush administration’s plans to oust him. And they clarify the complicated matter of why he could not persuade U.N. inspectors, multiple spy agencies and many world leaders that he did not possess weapons of mass destruction.
