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Larry Keiler's List: PBS War On Iraq Series

frontline: the war behind closed doors: interviews: john lewis gaddis | PBS

www.pbs.org/...gaddis.html - Preview

iraq us_foreign_policy war_on_terra on 2007-10-14
- The expectation is that, in fact, we won't have to do a lot of battering; the Iraqis will actually be quite happy that we have invaded their country; and that this will be a low-cost operation. Now this may be totally unrealistic. But, nonetheless, I think it is the thinking of the administration that not a lot of battering actually has to take place.
- it worked in part because the other members of NATO knew that the United States had an enormous amount of power and was willing to use it. But it also worked because the United States respected the views of smaller members of NATO and, at times -- in fact, more often than many people realize -- changed its own views and approaches in deference to them. So there was a very fruitful interaction, it seems to me, between hegemonic authority on one hand and multilateralism on the other. In NATO that's really what made it work.
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- - And I think that's what has to happen now if we are going to achieve the same kinds of things we achieved in the Cold War. We obviously cannot do it alone. We obviously need allies.
  - the doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy.
  - But the idea is coming back, and it's coming back for some of the same reasons that it was there in the 19th century: because, again, we face a situation of domestic insecurity, of being insecure in our own homes and work places, which was the condition of frontier existence in the 19th century. So, in that sense, it's not totally surprising that preemption would come back.
  - But the Bush National Security Strategy was very explicit in saying that our ultimate objective is to see that democratic governance spreads everywhere in the world.
frontline: the war behind closed doors | PBS

www.pbs.org/...iraq - Preview

iraq us_foreign_policy us_military war_on_terra on 2007-10-10 and saved by 8 people