Both US President Bill Clinton in 1999 and US President George Bush in 2003 bypassed the UN Security Council when deciding to take action first against Serbia and now against Iraq. Why was there a more negative international reaction in the case of Iraq?

In the first place, there truly was an immediate and direct crisis in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 that had been building for a year. If action had not been taken, ethnic cleansing would have been the immediate result. And second, we had been trying diplomacy for a year, and the use of force was clearly not the desired result, but was the reluctant last choice. I think that in the case of Iraq there were many in the international community who did not see the immediacy or the urgency of going after Saddam Hussein. He might have been a bad guy and had some of these capabilities, but why now? There was also the impression, rightly or wrongly, given by the United States, that diplomacy was intended as a masquerade. Some felt that the Bush administration was not serious about the use of diplomacy and that the administration had already made up its mind to use force.

Returning to the role of NATO, you have written that NATO should be involved in the war on terrorism. Should NATO expand its role to take on conflicts outside its traditional European sphere?

Yes, certainly. NATO needs to be relevant and move toward current security problems, and those are terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. In order to have allies, a temporary coalition is not the right structure. That is very convenient if you just want to brag to the US people that you have allies, but it is not enough if you want the allies to be really committed to you. You have to make the allies contribute to the success of the operation, which means you have to get them politically committed by having governments sign up. To accomplish this, there needs to be a mechanism like NATO that operates on the basis of consent and unanimous agreement. That is why NATO is a consensus engine. Differing national perspectives are inserted, a problem is fed in at the top, the crankshaft is turned, and out pops a consensus policy. Sometimes it is noisy and squeaky, clattering, and clanking when the crank is turned, but eventually with US leadership on the vital and important issues, it will produce a consensus if it is well oiled and maintained. When the United States is trying to work elsewhere, it still needs that kind of a consensus-building alliance because it creates international legitimacy and facilitates burden sharing. It also prevents one country from becoming the focal point for all resistance.

Considering that a lot of the European leaders had difficulty drumming up popular support for the war on Iraq, do you foresee problems for NATO expansion into different spheres?

There is nothing wrong with NATO as a structure, provided that the United States wants the alliance. If the United States wants allies—allies who are democracies—then it needs to listen to the opinions of its allies. In this case, it failed to carry the proof to the allies. Initially, I argued that the United States should have brought in the United Nations and NATO earlier for the Afghanistan mission. If the United States had done that, it would have been more likely to achieve allied consensus on Iraq.

How important is it for the United States to run a public relations campaign internationally and domestically in conjunction with a military campaign?

I do not think that international public relations campaigns are very effective. As a matter of pragmatic performance, they run afoul of the problems with other competing forces—local political forces, local media, national perspectives. The international campaign is a distant trumpet trying to play a tune that does not resonate with local ears, so the campaign is not likely to be effective. Domestically, public relations campaigns have been extraordinarily effective.

But this is also an exceptional period. On September 11, 2001, the dialogue died in the United States about national security issues. It became a chorus of one voice in the US Congress. The US citizens lined up behind their president, and at times it has been very hard for some people to look objectively at policies. There is still an enormous amount of fear in the United States as a consequence of September 11.

What should be the role of military leaders outside of the military in both international and domestic spheres?

The role of the currently serving, active duty military is to follow the orders of the commander-in-chief, and that is what they do. They support the administration’s policies and testify to those policies in public and in governmental counsel. Only when those policies are under formulation and consideration is the military in private going to speak out about them. Once the decision has been made, the military has no other voice in the policies. They can be called on as expert witnesses; they can be asked for opinions such as, “How long would it take you? How many casualties? Would you do this?” But do not ask them, “Should you?” That is a political decision.

Would the campaign have been more challenging if Iraq had pursued a different defensive strategy?

I was not predicting a more difficult war. I consistently predicted a two- to three-week war. I figured it was about a week to get to Baghdad and about a week to reduce it, based on the fact that as soon as the Iraqis stood and fought they would be destroyed by air power. Air power does not work instantaneously, but it does work.

With the ground forces moving against the Iraqi troops, it was only a matter of time until the ground forces cornered them and the air power destroyed them. That is what happened to the Iraqi Republican Guard. It only took two to three days, and their resistance was broken. Early on, the resistance was a resistance of the fedayeen—soldiers taking off their uniforms and fighting inside built up areas. It was not really a resistance to the movement because the soldiers just moved around the built up areas.