The Iran-Iraq War

Jerome Donovan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136884030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

In a tradition that dates back to the time of Thucydides, and the Peloponnesian War, the systematic examination of conflict and war has long been a preoccupation of political scientists seeking to resolve the enduring question: Why do wars occur? This study directly engages this question with a specific focus on explaining the conflict between Iran and Iraq, arguably the longest and one of the more costly conventional wars of the twentieth century.

Explaining the systemic nature of conflict within the Middle East, and specifically between Iran and Iraq, the book illustrates how IR theory can be utilised in explaining conflict dynamics in the Middle East. The author's integrated approach to understanding interstate conflict escalation demonstrates that when taken together issues, interaction and power capabilities lend themselves to a much richer account of the dyadic relationship between Iran and Iraq in the lead up to war in 1980.

Addressing a disparity between international relations and Middle Eastern area studies, this book fills an important gap in the existing scholarly literature on the causes of war. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of peace and conflict studies, Middle Eastern studies and International Relations.

1
An integrated approach to understanding interstate conflict escalation

Introduction

In a tradition that dates back to the time of Thucydides, and the Peloponnesian War, the systematic examination of conflict and war has long been a preoccupation of political scientists seeking to resolve the enduring question: why do wars occur? This study directly engages with this question with a specific focus on explaining why the conflict between Iran and Iraq escalated to war in 1980. This conflict led to arguably the longest and one of the more costly conventional wars of the twentieth century. This conflict is interesting for a variety of reasons, not least because it has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature on the causes of war. Most importantly, however, it represents a puzzle for some of the leading methods in analyzing the causes of conflict, in that concentrating exclusively on material capabilities, or alternatively emphasizing issues and foreign policy interaction, does not adequately explain the primary triggers for this war. Taken together, however, these methods allow for a more thorough understanding of why this war happened when it did.

Today, the occurrence of interstate war remains a rare event yet the extraordinary destructiveness, and enormity of stakes at play positions it as a central theme in international relations studies presenting students and scholars alike with an ongoing puzzle with the utmost importance to solve. The evolution of a distinct discipline studying international relations in 1919 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, saw a renewed focus on the systematic analysis of what causes interstate conflict. More recently, the contemporary student of war has faced a series of trends that appear to increase the complexities involved in explaining why wars happen. These include such factors as globalization, a surge in ethnic nationalism, and the spread of transnational terrorism. All of these seem to be driving states, groups, and even individuals towards the use of political violence to articulate their struggles or demands.

While we are undeniably faced with an increasingly complex international environment, there is nonetheless a wealth of choice when selecting an appropriate instrument for the analysis of political violence. We have witnessed, for instance, the ongoing development of intensive research programs, such as the Correlates of War Project, Conflict and Peace Data Bank and World Event/Interaction Survey which provide increasingly rigorous ways for both measuring and understanding war. Yet in the post-Cold War world, where we have seen a proliferation of new methods purporting to explain the dynamics of conflict, the answer to the question of why war happens remains elusive. Michael Colaresi and William Thompson (2005: 346) recently discussed this abundance of choice, lamenting that “we lack many integrative theories linking [the] multiple causes of war escalation.” This research represents an attempt to bridge some of these conceptual gaps. It is necessary to do so because it is unreasonable to progress to the analysis of ‘new’ or fourth generation wars,¹ if we are still unable to resolve existing problems in explaining interstate war, as the most familiar form of conflict experienced in the modern international system.

Traditional approaches have often concentrated on material capabilities or national power as the key determinants in understanding the actions of states. If one were to look at the most recent war between the “coalition of the willing” and Iraq in 2003, the association between access to energy resources and key US national interests has been widely identified as a major driver behind US policy.² In the post-invasion period, many analysts have continued to concentrate on the notion of national power and its distribution within geographic arenas. In particular, some have expressed the concern that the US invasion may have dramatically shifted the regional balance of power towards Iran, potentially destabilizing the Middle East.³

It is clear, however, that power alone is an inadequate basis from which to comprehensively understand the foreign policy behavior of states. A host of other complementary factors might also be useful in understanding conflictual or cooperative foreign policy behavior of states, and augmenting this traditional focus on the role of power.⁴ Two additional methods are of particular interest in this study—interstate interaction and issues under contention. We narrow the focus to include these two additional methods in explaining conflict escalation due to their ability to identify patterns in the evolution of interactions between states (interstate interaction) and distinguish what states are fighting over (issues under contention). This will offer a historical context to the explanation of Iranian and Iraqi foreign policy interaction throughout the 1970s, illustrating how these states conflictual (and cooperative) foreign policy interaction led to war. At the same time, it will also allow the identification of the underlying reasons behind why these states were fighting.

Looking more closely, Axelrod and Keohane (1985) argue that the nature of interaction between states has a decisive impact on how relations evolve to the point of war. This may be explained mostly simplistically by the idea that war is considered to evolve from a “form of interaction between two or more states” (Geller and Singer, 1998: 22). Theorists take this further, however, arguing that relations between states are characterized by a high degree of reciprocity, particularly in self-help systems (Leng, 1993; Ward, 1982), with policy makers being driven by the type of behavior they receive from others. Behavior can become locked into a “tit for tat” scenario, whereby states continue to escalate the conflictual interaction (in the form of conflict cycles) by reciprocating and increasing the degenerative cycle between themselves. Issues are also thought to play an important role in the understanding of conflict and war, with the issues under contention between states forming the basis from which the disagreement and conflict evolves (Hensel et al., 2008). Issues are, in essence, what states are choosing to fight over and therefore provide important context in both what is stimulating war, and also directing policy makers towards the underlying problem to be addressed in preventing further conflict (Diehl, 1992).

Recent studies by leading researchers investigating both interstate interaction and issues-based explanations of conflict escalation are not in short supply. Examples include Rasler and Thompson (2006), and Hensel et al. (2008), who both study the relationship between issues and conflict escalation. On the interaction front, Crescenzi et al. (2008) and Leng (2004) have both further examined the role of international interactivity in foreign policy behavior. It is clear that these methods for understanding conflict escalation and war offer viable options for the examination of the Iran–Iraq War.

Having said this, however, material factors still remain important in understanding the causes of war. A variety of methods are used in assessing the role of power in war causation, ranging from static assessments common to both balance of power⁵ and power preponderance⁶ arguments, to the dynamic approach offered by power transition⁷ and power cycle theory.⁸ Power can also be assessed at the systemic level through such approaches as polarity⁹ or hegemonic stability,¹⁰ each of which posit that the distribution of power within dyads, or regional and international systems, represent key elements in determining the behavior of states and thereby predicting the likelihood of conflict.

It is clear that issues, interstate interaction, and power offer researchers a variety of methods for explaining the causes of war. In fact, these three areas have formed cardinal themes permeating scholarly debate on the causes of the Iran–Iraq War. Here, one need only look to the most recent example of a study into this particular war’s cause by Andrew Parasiliti in 2003. Parasiliti viewed the rising power of Iraq (and concomitant decline of Iran) as the key premise behind Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade. Gholam Hossein Razi (1988), on the other hand, has argued that decision making elites in each country were more significant in deciding their future actions, with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Pan-Shi′ism policy threatening Saddam Hussein’s political legitimacy based upon secular and Arab nationalism—suggesting the importance of ideological issues in the evolution of their conflict to war. Efraim Karsh (1987/88) meanwhile has made an initial attempt to integrate the analysis of issues, interaction and power, looking at the interrelationship between foreign policy goals, their interaction, and military power in Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Iran.

Still others, like Will Swearingen (1988), Martha Wenger, and Dick Anderson (1987) have found that geography and resources were among the most salient issues stimulating this conflict. In fact, Swearingen argued for the reinterpretation of core ideological and demographic issues, such as the threat posed by the Shi’a majority in the south of Iraq and the Kurdish minority in the north, as being primarily within the realm of geopolitics, drawing analysis of the border dispute back some five centuries when Iran and Iraq were elements of the Persian and Ottoman empires. He claimed the reason for the war could be found in intrinsic disputes over territory.

Yet notwithstanding these studies’ initial attempts to explain the causes of the Iran–Iraq War, it has not been as comprehensively analyzed as other more prominent conflicts within the region. Scholarly attention has been much more focused on inter-Arab politics and the Arab–Israeli conflict. This is understandable given that in the post– World War II period the Middle East has witnessed four major wars and numerous smaller conflicts as a result of tension between the Arabs and Israelis (Goldstein et al., 2001). In fact, the existence of the Israeli state, along with the maintenance of its territorial sovereignty, continues to dominate academic interest within the region.¹¹

It is a shame, however, that the Iran–Iraq War remains underexplored, because the scant existing explanations of this war’s causes continue to be plagued by a number of problems. These include the lack of a systematic basis to explain the war and an overly narrow focus that overlooks the importance of relative power, foreign policy interactions and issues. For example, in Parasitili’s (2003) analysis, the role of inter-Arab politics as a salient issue in stimulating conflict conflates the significance of external forces within a clear escalatory conflict cycle that had characterized Iran and Iraq’s dyadic relations in the post-revolution period. Moreover, this analysis fails to account for important power conversion factors in the broad data used to assess the comparative power of Middle Eastern states. Similarly, while Razi’s (1988) work in scrutinizing the foreign policy behavior of Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini facilitates a deeper understanding of the dynamics of their behavior, it nonetheless fails to account for why the war happened when it did, with no systematic calculation of the role of capabilities in allowing Iran and Iraq to fulfill their foreign policy goals and issue resolution.

Whilst Karsh (1987/88) offers perhaps the most comprehensive and integrative approach to the study of the Iran–Iraq War, it too is not without fault. His exploratory study reviews the interaction between Iran and Iraq, as well as focusing on issues under contention and military power capabilities. In doing so, Karsh articulates the importance of interaction between Iran and Iraq throughout the period leading to the war, the host of issues that were evident in their relationship, and illuminates the evolution of their comparative military power capabilities. He does not, however, identify which of these issues are most salient, nor does he address their interaction in a comprehensive manner. Moreover, he only examines the effect of military expansion in the comparative power capabilities of Iran and Iraq during the period, without capturing other important bases of national capabilities which impacted upon their relationship.

Finally, Swearingen’s (1988) focus on the importance of geo-political issues, and in particular the predominance of territory in stimulating this conflict, does not account for the importance of hard power capabilities in constraining the escalation of hostilities between Iran and Iraq. This was particularly the case in 1975, where relations between the two had neared the point of war, with similar underlying territorial issues that were present when the war began in earnest in 1980. Yet paradoxically, 1975 heralded the Algiers Agreement between the two nations, which ushered in a period of détente.

Consequently, we not only face a range of approaches that may be applied in the explanation of wars’ causes, but also a case that warrants further examination. The key question I turn to now is whether an explanation based on the three leading approaches identified here— issues, interaction or power analysis—can best explain the causes of this conflict. This question informs the rest of this study, and I develop an answer over the course of subsequent chapters.

In Chapter 2, I investigate the utility of issues, interstate interaction and power-based approaches to the analysis of wars’ causes, arguing for an integrative approach in studying interstate conflict escalation. I begin by examining issues-based explanations for conflict escalation and war causation, illuminating the importance of highly salient issues in explaining what states are fighting about. In doing so, I identify a method for categorizing the issues under contention, and determining the level of salience of these issues for the states involved. Next, I move on to critically surveying the interstate interaction literature, and identify reciprocity as an effective method within this area for explaining how dyadic relations between states evolve to the point of war. Moreover, foreign policy output is identified as the key measurement focus, allowing for the delineation of patterns in interactions between states through a focus on actualized policy. As a result, it helps us understand how inter-state hostilities escalate to war.

I subsequently undertake an assessment of the static and dynamic basis for the explanation of power and war in dyadic relationships. I demonstrate that static approaches—balance of power and power preponderance—can be utilized in the explanation of war causation, although they both fail to account for an important characteristic of power: change over time. I find that a dynamic basis of power analysis, through Organski and Kugler’s power transition theory, provides a potential way forward in explaining changes that occur in dyadic power distribution, which can be used to identify conditions in which conflict and war are more likely. In concluding this chapter, I identify three distinct phases in the relations between Iran and Iraq preceding the onset of the war in 1980.

In the following three chapters I assess the utility of this integrated approach to understanding interstate conflict escalation on explaining the Iran–Iraq War, beginning with Pre-Algiers period. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate how the relations between Iran and Iraq evolved from the British announcement of its impending withdrawal from the region. This set the course for Iranian regional aspirations, with the Shah determined to project Iranian dominance over the Persian Gulf, and subsequently led to the abrogation of the London treaty of 1937 which had been regulating the border between Iran and Iraq. A reciprocal and escalatory conflict cycle evolved as these states contended over the underlying issues stimulating their interaction. Relations escalated to the precipice of war in 1975, where the analysis of power capabilities demonstrates the constraining force of Iranian power preponderance on the further escalation of the conflictual interaction.

In Chapter 4, Iranian and Iraqi relations are shown to evolve from the Algiers Agreement, which had seen the resolution of the underlying issues stimulating conflict in the Pre-Algiers period. Intermittent and cooperative moves where illustrated in their interstate interaction, occurring with the backdrop of evolving domestic instability in Iran with the revolution, and the rapid convergence in comparative power capabilities between the two countries. The p...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics
• Contents
• Figures
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An integrated approach to understanding interstate conflict escalation
• 2 An integrated approach to understanding interstate conflict escalation
• 3 The Pre-Algiers period
• 4 The détente period
• 5 The post-revolution period
• 6 Conclusions
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index