Ramesh Thakur - Australia, Canada, and Iraq - Perspectives on an Invasion

Jack Cunningham and Ramesh Thakur

The two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now come to an end, at least insofar as the involvement of Western troops is concerned. Most Americans regarded Afghanistan as a war of necessity, forced upon the United States by an armed attack in the form of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. By contrast, many Americans and most international observers viewed Iraq as a war of choice, whose justification, conduct, and consequences remain matters of intense controversy. Between them, the two wars shaped many of the contours of twenty-first- century international relations to date. They helped to define the nature of contemporary warfare and armed conflict; accelerated the shift of power, wealth, and influence away from the U.S.-led Western bloc; brought an end to the postCold War era of unchallengeable U.S. dominance of world affairs; and shook the foundations of the post-1945 multilateral order centred on the United Nations (U.N.). In addition, Iraq much more than Afghanistan inflicted considerable reputational damage on the United States with respect to its commitment to prevailing human rights standards and its competence at administering and rebuilding a defeated, occupied, and war-torn country. Not the least because of these lasting consequences, the two conflicts also compelled many long-standing U.S. allies to re-examine the bases of their relationships with the United States.

This volume originated in a conversation at the bar in Torontos InterContinental Hotel, at the close of a 2012 conference assessing the Canadian and Australian experiences in the recent conflict in Afghanistan. The conference was a joint endeavour of the Centre for Contemporary International History (since renamed the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History) at the University of Torontos Trinity College and Munk School of Global Affairs, the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, and the Canadian Forces College. Looking back at the days events, Jack Cunningham, John English, Bill Graham, Ramesh Thakur, and William Maley agreed to arrange a follow-up conference on the Australian and Canadian decisions to respectively take part in and stand aside from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They also agreed to proceed with two volumes of conference papers as part of the current series, with Maley and Cunningham to edit the volume on Afghanistan, and Thakur and Cunningham the one on Iraq. A year later, in Canberra for the conference on Iraq, they nailed down the details for this compilation.

These volumes are rooted in a shared interest in the similarities and differences between Australia and Canada in their policies toward recent international conflicts and their foreign and security policies more broadly. Both countries are parliamentary democracies along the Westminster model, with obvious cultural ties to and affinities with Great Britain as well as each other. Both are middle powers. And both have complicated relationships with their American ally. In the Australian case this is defined above all by distance, in the Canadian one by intimate proximity and profound economic interdependence. The two volumes of conference papers in this series can be seen as complementary, one dealing with a case where the two governments made essentially the same decision, and the other with an instance where they clearly did not.