Iraq without the Iraq War

[Ricardolindo]

What would have happened to Iraq without the Iraq War? Would Saddam Hussein's regime have lasted until the present day or would it have fallen at some point? I am inclined to believe it would have fallen at some point.

 

[Charles EP M.]

At some point, Saddam's going to drop dead or get sick & old, and his (as I understand them) moronic and thuggish failsons are going to rise up. That's not a recipe for stability, no. Add in the Arab Spring: it wouldn't necessarily happen the same way or at the same time, but a growing population of young, educated, internet-connected people are still going to exist and get fed up with their lot.

Now, a regime may win in the end but it won't necessarily be a Hussein one.

 

[Ricardolindo]

At some point, Saddam's going to drop dead or get sick & old, and his (as I understand them) moronic and thuggish failsons are going to rise up. That's not a recipe for stability, no. Add in the Arab Spring: it wouldn't necessarily happen the same way or at the same time, but a growing population of young, educated, internet-connected people are still going to exist and get fed up with their lot.

Now, a regime may win in the end but it won't necessarily be a Hussein one.

Saddam wanted his son Qusay to succeed him. By the time of the Iraq War, Saddam was already giving more powers to Qusay. It's possible that Saddam would retire as an elder statesman snd transfer power to Qusay.

 

[Gorrister]

Saddam wanted his son Qusay to succeed him. By the time of the Iraq War, Saddam was already giving more powers to Qusay. It's possible that Saddam would retire as an elder statesman snd transfer power to Qusay.

Would've been very interesting to see the dynamic between him and Uday, who was Saddam's first option and pretty much out of his mind (why he fell out of favour as his father's successor). Bruderkrieg?

 

[raharris1973]

richer -----

correction: hard to say -

I made my original comment under the misapprehension that it was Iraq without the *Iran* war.

Seeing as we're talking about the 2003 war instead, I don't think "richer" is necessarily the best contrast word from OTL, because of sanctions, but possibly more 'unified' or 'centralized' would be how Iraq would be different from what it's become.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Iraq's internal-security regime was more intense than other countries, so the regime could potentially stay in place even after Saddam steps back and lets others run it. Saddam was more brutal than Hafez al-Assad, let alone Bashar. Maybe his son doesn't have the same ice cold heart for that kind of terror, but if he's like his dad the regime probably sticks around.

Iraq would continue to rot rather than be a civil war laden state. Maybe China's development in the 2000s would be to Iraq's benefit. The Europeans probably would get tired of going along with the US-led sanctions regime over time too.

How much was Iran mucking around in Iraq prior to 2003? IIRC, Saddam refused to admit his poor situation militarily and with respect to nuclear weapons in part because he didn't want the Iranians finding out how weak his circumstances were.

The US would still be bombing Iraq sporadically too. Bill Clinton was walloping them for eight years, and in the absence of invasion the campaign of bombings would likely continue. It will probably escalate over time too, since the Iraqis were starting to shoot back at the US around the start of the 2003 war.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I don't think the Arab Spring would happen when it did OTL, if it does at all, because absent the chaos of the Iraq War, the Mideast's fortunes would be different. But if something like it did happen, one wonders if the Baathist government would go the way of Libya, or Syria.

Okay, upon reading the post above, I'm going to say more like Syria, even without Russian intervention as aid.

 

[lerk]

Iran not gaining a foothold in the Arab World, which in turn would prevent the increase in anti-Shia sentiment around the area (which would probably lead to there not being no Syrian Civil War, though sectarian friction would still remain a problem albeit lesser). Saddam and his government interests me as it seems that his was the last true Pan-Arabist left.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I'm idly wondering if Iranian adventurism since Iraq has been to their own detriment as much as American adventurism in Iraq and since has as well. Military operations, even covertly, ain't cheap, and in Syrian it hasn't been much covert. Have to wonder if absent those interventions, the protests we see today wouldn't be happening. Because while the populace wouldn't be happy with the morality police, they would perhaps have fewer complaints about economic and other issues as well.

Would be deeply ironic if in the long run, the War of Iraq not only destabilized and weakened America, but also did the same to Iran as well, despite being the ostensible beneficiary of that conflict. And it seems like al-Sadr's camp is moving away from Iran more and more, so much for having a sphere of influence over Iraqi Shia.

 

[raharris1973]

I'm idly wondering if Iranian adventurism since Iraq has been to their own detriment as much as American adventurism in Iraq and since has as well. Military operations, even covertly, ain't cheap, and in Syrian it hasn't been much covert. Have to wonder if absent those interventions, the protests we see today wouldn't be happening. Because while the populace wouldn't be happy with the morality police, they would perhaps have fewer complaints about economic and other issues as well.

Would be deeply ironic if in the long run, the War of Iraq not only destabilized and weakened America, but also did the same to Iran as well, despite being the ostensible beneficiary of that conflict. And it seems like al-Sadr's camp is moving away from Iran more and more, so much for having a sphere of influence over Iraqi Shia.

Maybe so, but one could also argue that the quick collapse of the Maliki government's forces in the face of the ISIS forces in 2014 was as much Iran's failure to anticipate as America's. So since then they've been overcompensating for failing to be proactive.

 

[raharris1973]

I'm idly wondering if Iranian adventurism since Iraq has been to their own detriment as much as American adventurism in Iraq and since has as well. Military operations, even covertly, ain't cheap, and in Syrian it hasn't been much covert. Have to wonder if absent those interventions, the protests we see today wouldn't be happening. Because while the populace wouldn't be happy with the morality police, they would perhaps have fewer complaints about economic and other issues as well.

Would be deeply ironic if in the long run, the War of Iraq not only destabilized and weakened America, but also did the same to Iran as well, despite being the ostensible beneficiary of that conflict. And it seems like al-Sadr's camp is moving away from Iran more and more, so much for having a sphere of influence over Iraqi Shia.

You are correct. Iran's been making as many enemies as friends.

 

[History Learner]

I'm idly wondering if Iranian adventurism since Iraq has been to their own detriment as much as American adventurism in Iraq and since has as well. Military operations, even covertly, ain't cheap, and in Syrian it hasn't been much covert. Have to wonder if absent those interventions, the protests we see today wouldn't be happening. Because while the populace wouldn't be happy with the morality police, they would perhaps have fewer complaints about economic and other issues as well.

Iranian interventions mostly involve lost cost things like supplying proxies and the like, which aren't that expensive and probably pay for themselves in terms of helping to bring Syria, Iraq, etc into the Iranian sphere. These periodic times of unrest long pre-date Iranian assertiveness; see 2009's Green Protests, for example.

Would be deeply ironic if in the long run, the War of Iraq not only destabilized and weakened America, but also did the same to Iran as well, despite being the ostensible beneficiary of that conflict. And it seems like al-Sadr's camp is moving away from Iran more and more, so much for having a sphere of influence over Iraqi Shia.

For what it's worth, the U.S. Army's 2019 retrospective was unambiguous about Iran being the clear winner of the Iraq War. Sadr needs to be viewed in the same way Iraq's Sunni factions are, as evidenced by his faction's lackluster power leveraging this year.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

First, we’d need a reason for the war not to happen. Let’s say OBL is actually caught and killed in 2002, as was quite possible, and a considerable amount of urgency vanishes from the War on Terror. There was a very real sense that America needed to send a clear message to totalitarian regimes in that period, as well as a certain awareness the US could not guarantee the capture/death of OBL. If the US had what looked like a stunningly successful experience in Afghanistan, some of the impetus for Iraq would be gone. I assume, in that case, the bombing might continue, but not an outright invasion.

Iraq was steadily decaying anyway – it was a pariah state for a reason. The odds are good there’d be more humanitarian crisises anyway, as well as covert Iranian attempts to arm the Shia and build up influence in Southern Iraq. On the other hand, the more oil sources the better – it’s possible Iraq could start selling more oil on the open market, just to provide a counterbalance to Saudi Arabia. If Saddam himself dies, the US might even see value in building up Iraq again as a counter to Iran too.

Chris

 

[Ricardolindo]

As today, 20 March 2023, is 20 years since the US invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003, I am reviving this thread.

Iraq's internal-security regime was more intense than other countries, so the regime could potentially stay in place even after Saddam steps back and lets others run it. Saddam was more brutal than Hafez al-Assad, let alone Bashar. Maybe his son doesn't have the same ice cold heart for that kind of terror, but if he's like his dad the regime probably sticks around.

Wasn't Gaddafi's internal security regime as intense as Saddam's? Also, note how people said in 1989 that Ceausescu would survive in Romania because he was harsher and we know how that turned out.

 

[monroe]

Iran not gaining a foothold in the Arab World, which in turn would prevent the increase in anti-Shia sentiment around the area (which would probably lead to there not being no Syrian Civil War, though sectarian friction would still remain a problem albeit lesser). Saddam and his government interests me as it seems that his was the last true Pan-Arabist left.

Well, not really.

Saddam Hussein was a strongman dictator who believed strongly in Arab Supremacy over 'lesser' groups, waged genocides against the Kurds of Iraq and Shi'ite Muslims, launched imperialist wars of expansion against his neighbours, and violently suppressed his political opposition and crushed democratic freedoms. A nationalist socialist who believed in socialism for Arabs and no one else (and even then), when we discuss the idea of what Iraq looks like without the 2003 invasion, we must consider that among among the three significant heirs of Nassar Pan-Arabism (the others being Gaddafi, who went off the rails quickly and devolved into the Third International Position, and Assad, who came to believe in a solipsistic Ba'athists), he was the only one who attracted the sufficient attention of the western powers that it was generally agreed within global circles of power that at some point, he had to actually be dealt with.

But to go back to the OP, the question of what Iraq looks like without the Iraq War is... difficult, because it really depends on what we mean here by 'no Iraq War' - no invasion at all, or just that there is no protracted war following because NATO-UN agreed to move on Iraq as they did with Afghanistan? But assuming either way, hundreds of thousands of people would not be dead today; the children of Fallujah would not be born with birth defects. The Islamic State would have never happened; without American unilateralism, perhaps the 21st century would have been defined by a more multi-polar world, in which international consensus setting settled disputes that now seem to have spiralled hopelessly out of control. Saddam may have been toppled by his own people, with a gradual loosening of US sanctions allowing the outside world to come rushing in and some kind of Arab Spring comes early, and a west unscarred by the defeat in Iraq more willing to help those struggling against their regimes, especially as no war would have almost certainly led to the mission in Afghanistan actually succeding.