Book contents
- The Regime Change Consensus
- Military, War, and Society in Modern American History
- The Regime Change Consensus
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A Hope, Not a Policy
- 2 The Fallout from Victory: Containment and Its Critics, 1991–1992
- 3 The Long Watch: The High Years of Containment, 1993–1996
- 4 Saddam Must Go: Entrenching the Regime Change Consensus, 1997–2000
- 5 Not Whether, but How and When: The Iraq Debate from 9/11 to the Invasion
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Saddam Must Go: Entrenching the Regime Change Consensus, 1997–2000
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- The Regime Change Consensus
- Military, War, and Society in Modern American History
- The Regime Change Consensus
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A Hope, Not a Policy
- 2 The Fallout from Victory: Containment and Its Critics, 1991–1992
- 3 The Long Watch: The High Years of Containment, 1993–1996
- 4 Saddam Must Go: Entrenching the Regime Change Consensus, 1997–2000
- 5 Not Whether, but How and When: The Iraq Debate from 9/11 to the Invasion
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines containment in crisis during Clinton's second term, in which Iraq repeatedly obstructed UN inspectors, ultimately leading to their permanent exit from Iraq and US retaliatory airstrikes in Operation Desert Fox. The United States in this period became increasingly isolated on Iraq policy as France, Russia, and China refused to support military action and called for the lifting of sanctions. Containment's domestic critics exploited these crisis by building a political coalition to discredit containment and shift US policy toward regime change through the strategy of rollback. This coalition succeeded in passing the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which symbolized the entrenchment of the regime change consensus in US politics, leaving defenders of containment isolated in the political sphere. Clinton, however, made little effort to enforce this law and continued to treat containment as the de facto policy.
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- The Regime Change ConsensusIraq in American Politics, 1990-2003, pp. 140 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021