Iraq against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order

The book "Iraq Against the World" by Samuel Helfont argues that Saddam Hussein executed a political warfare campaign to undermine the global norms after the 1991 Gulf War. He highlights the use of influence operations and manipulative statesmanship by the Iraqi Ba th Party to break the unity of the UN Security Council and weaken norms of cooperation and consensus toward rules-based solutions to international disputes, causing significant damage to liberal internationalism and the institutions that were supposed to underpin it.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 09 June 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

The shift away from the post-Cold War unipolarity and the emergence of revisionist states like Russia and China present a rapidly escalating and perplexing challenge to the liberal international order. In his book, "In Iraq Against the World," Samuel Helfont presents a fresh perspective on Iraqi foreign policy following the 1991 Gulf War, contending that Saddam Hussein orchestrated a political warfare campaign that contributed to this disruption of global norms.

Following the Gulf War, the United Nations imposed sanctions and inspections on the Iraqi state, which Saddam Hussein was unable to challenge militarily or through conventional diplomacy. Nevertheless, Hussein launched an influence campaign aimed at undermining the unity of the United Nations Security Council. The Iraqis played a role in impeding the development of emerging norms of international cooperation and encouraged potentially revisionist states to act on their latent desires to undermine the liberal post-Cold War order.

Helfont draws on internal files from the ruling Baath Party to highlight previously unknown Iraqi foreign policy strategies, including the prominent use of influence operations and manipulative statesmanship. He traces Baathist operations across the globe, from the streets of New York and Stockholm to the mosques of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to the halls of power in Paris and Moscow. Iraqi Baathists engaged in espionage, planted stories in the foreign press, established overt and covert relations with various political parties, and attempted to silence anyone who challenged their preferred political narrative. They presented themselves as Iraqis concerned about the suffering of their friends and families in their homeland, and thus were able to assemble a loose political coalition that was unknowingly being employed to achieve Iraq's strategic goals.

This, in turn, facilitated the erosion of international norms and the undermining of the liberal international order. The book "In Iraq Against the World" provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics of Iraqi foreign policy and its impact on the broader geopolitical landscape. It sheds light on the strategies employed by Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime to challenge the established order and highlights the role of the Iraqi people in perpetuating this disturbance.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197530153