WASHINGTON, March 5 (UPI) -- The United States faces immense challenges -- some of which were avoidable -- both before it invades Iraq and after the battle is over, according to analysts at a briefing at the American Enterprise Institute.
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, director of foreign policy and defense studies at the conservative think tank, said that the Bush administration's decision to take the issue of invading Iraq to the United Nations was problematic and unnecessary.
"The most important decision the U.S. government made, in my judgment, in approaching the question of Iraq was the decision to take the issue to the (U.N.) Security Council," Kirkpatrick said Tuesday. "The decision to go to the Security Council was a decision he (Bush) need not have made. There was no particular pressure for him to do so."
AEI is arguably the think tank with the closest relationship with the Bush White House and many AEI analysts share the neo-conservative ideology that drives the foreign policy of the Bush administration. The event was one of a series of weekly Tuesday "black coffee briefings" on the war with Iraq, which began weeks ago and will continue until the war is resolved.
Kirkpatrick, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Reagan administration, said there are only a few instances of countries seeking Security Council approval for the use of military force. The U.S. intervention in Kosovo was made without the council's approval: The Clinton administration did not approach the council on the issue because Russia was sure to veto any resolution regarding military action in the region, she said.
Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at AEI, warned at the briefing that it would also be a mistake to completely separate the military and diplomatic maneuvering in the Iraq conflict. He said that because tactical advantages diminish over time, it is quite a different thing to pursue diplomacy during a military buildup than it is to do so after deployment is completed.
"Those are two curves that are about to come to pass," he said.
Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Arms Control, said it is important to keep in mind that weapons inspections are an unlikely path to disarmament, one of the Bush administration's primary reasons for invading Iraq.
"Inspections are not really designed to achieve disarmament, they are designed to verify that disarmament has happened," said Milhollin. "The present inspections (of Iraq), I would say, have the effect of delaying disarmament."
Milhollin, whose small think tank is dedicated to advocating nuclear non-proliferation, also said that the problem of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction do not stop at the Iraqi border. He said that even if the United States is able to discover all of Iraq's weapons, some might escape the country during or even before fighting begins.
In addition, he said that the technologies used in weapons of mass destruction are not developed within Iraq, Iran, or other proliferating nations. Historically, they have come from Western companies in the United States, Germany, Switzerland and other nations.
AEI resident fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht said that a secondary goal of an American invasion of Iraq -- bringing democracy to the multiethnic Arab nation -- also presents a tough problem. He said that although the Kurdish population in northern Iraq will likely be a primary focus following an invasion, the United States must also be quick to embrace Iraq's majority Shiite population. Gerecht said they represent the best chance to bring democratic institutions to the country.
"I think attention will immediately turn and remain on the Iraqi Shia," said Gerecht. "We should play to the majority."
Nevertheless, he said that it is important to understand that it will take some time for the Shiites to coalesce into a powerful force capable of providing leadership.
"We would be fooling ourselves to believe that would happen very quickly," he said. "It will take time."
