It’s the first week of the semester, so things are probably going to be a little too hectic for extended weblog entries. But here are three comparative questions I’d pursue if I had more time.

First, what cases can we look to if we want to ask should the U.S invade Iraq? In the last few days, the Bush administration, via Dick Cheney, has ratcheted up their rhetoric on this question, and claimed that containment was no longer an option. Seeing as Saddam may get nuclear weapons at some point (Cheney didn’t offer any evidence about this) he argued the best thing to do was to invade. For Cheney, the two options are do nothing or invade.

A comparison case might be post-WWII relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S. Of course, there are many points of difference—- there always are. But a case doesn’t have to be identical to be comparable. A striking similarity is the uptick in talk of pre-emptive strikes against an enemy that we’re afraid of and whose motives are uncertain. When Russia got the bomb, many made the argument that the U.S. should just bomb the Soviets to smithereens while they had the chance. War was inevitable anway, they’d likely attack as soon as they were able, but for now their capability was less than ours. So we should seize the moment. The argument wasn’t compelling then. Is it compelling now?

Incidentally, William Saletan has a good analysis of Cheney’s speech on Slate. He notes, in particular, the way Cheney tried to narrow the options:

A nuclear-armed Iraq would “seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies … and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail,” says Cheney. “This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes.”

This is an important change of rationale, which Cheney glosses over in order to make Iraq look like a logical extension of the war on terror. Implicitly, Cheney accepts Scowcroft’s premise: The purpose of ousting Saddam isn’t to prevent a likely terrorist attack but to prevent Saddam from getting weapons that could deter us from intervening the next time he invades a neighbor. In other words, Bush’s preparation for war with Iraq isn’t a continuation of the war on terror. It’s a continuation of the Persian Gulf War…

Above all, Cheney tries to smother [Brent] Scowcroft’s policy by disguising it as the absence of a policy. Cheney equates “opposing Saddam Hussein” with preemptive military action and dismisses the alternative as “a course of inaction”—a decision to “look away, hope for the best, and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve.” Inspections are meaningless; satellite surveillance, no-fly zones, radar-site bombings, and U.N. restrictions on Iraqi imports and exports don’t exist.

Second, I’m interested in how the U.S. Government is responding to terrorism. There’s been a lot of commentary about the threat to civil liberties posed by creating new legal categories like “enemy combatant”. But, at least inside the U.S., I’ve seen very little commentary that looks to how other states have dealt with terrorism in the past. The example that jumps out at me (because I’m from Ireland) is the British state’s policy of Internment in Northern Ireland between 1971 and 1975. Again, there are a lot of differences, most notably the fact that people were being rounded up from small, tight-knit communities within the province. But “enemy combatant” status is essentially internment by another name. I don’t think there’s any doubt it deeply affected the character of state-society relations in the North. How widespread would a similar policy need to be before we saw comparable effects?

Third, how distinctively American is the rhetoric of the “War on Terrorism”? WIthin the U.S., it’s overwhelming. But how many other countries that have been targets of terrorist activity—- again, Britain obviously springs to mind—- have framed it as a “war” to be fought? Why or why not? Short of de facto guerilla or civil war, where your enemies control a chunk of territory, I can’t think of cases where fighting terrorism has been framed in terms of fighting a war. Are there any cases?

As I say, I haven’t thought enough about the details. But when it comes to estimating the effects of state policy, looking for comparable cases seems like a good strategy.