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Nearly 40 years after the Americans escaped from the rooftops of Saigon, this
great country may be on the verge of a second retreat, this time from Iraq. To be
sure, this exodus has not begun yet, and President George Bush's recent speech on
the "lessons from Vietnam" suggests that he is in denial. How superficial the
parallel was that he drew has been noted by many. The consensus is that the
speech was little more than spin, preparing official reaction to the publication of
Y
General David Petraeus's report on the effects of the "surge" of US forces in Iraq.
et no amount of spin or simplification should conceal the magnitude of
the Iraq disaster and the damage to America's reputation. On all counts,
US planners misread how their "liberation" would play in Iraq and in the
region as a whole. Today, the image of American predictive power has
sunk as low as that of its intelligence services.
Among the numerous lessons that the US must learn from its Iraq misadventure is
that the help of Russia is crucial. If Washington hopes to retreat from Iraq without
igniting a Middle East powder-keg, it cannot persist with its approach of the last
decade, in which no opportunity to humiliate its old foe has been missed. Dick
Cheney's speech in the Baltic states concerning human rights in President
Vladimir Putin's Russia is just one example. It is difficult not to feel some
sympathy for Mikhail Gorbachev's charge of hypocrisy: this from a country that
runs Guantánamo, practises extraordinary rendition and has come close to
resorting to torture in its own territory.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/aug/30/russia.usa 1/3
24/5/2019 Basil Markesinis: The need for an old foe | Opinion | The Guardian
up for blunders stemming from a philosophy which he knows full well has not
changed.
Giving a more active role to Russia in "managing a phased new settlement", along
with a genuine attempt to solve the Palestinian issue, could be the first real steps
towards neutralising the American fear of chaos and local strife. For in the region
Russia has better links with countries such as Iran than the US does, and acting in
concert with the US, it could forestall rash decisions by other neighbouring
countries to intervene during the transition. Of course that would mean that
American oil giants would henceforth have to share and not monopolise the
"action". But then, are we not told that American involvement in the Middle East
was never motivated by financial gain but mounted in the interests of a wider and
more lasting stability? Satisfying Russia's crumpled pride might also help reduce
tension even in Europe.
The Anglo-American axis must also swallow its pride and enlist the active support
of Europeans, especially France, which was not the only major country to try,
rightly, to pull the US back from its folly in Iraq but is also the only continental
European state with a network of useful relations in the Middle East.
· Sir Basil Markesinis professor of common and civil law at University College
London
b.markesinis@ucl.ac.uk
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24/5/2019 Basil Markesinis: The need for an old foe | Opinion | The Guardian
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Topics
Russia
Opinion
Iraq
Middle East and North Africa
Europe
comment
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/aug/30/russia.usa 3/3