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
3 - The Long Watch: The High Years of Containment, 1993–1996
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 argues that in Bill Clinton's first term containment worked well enough to limit the Iraqi threat, compel more cooperation with inspectors, and generally maintain the international coalition as well as domestic political support. Clinton's main change to containment was stressing compliance with the UN inspections rather than Saddam's removal as the main condition for the lifting of sanctions. His Iraq policy, however, was sandwiched between an international coalition that wanted to move toward normalization with Iraq and a domestic political sphere that wanted to intensify efforts to topple Saddam. Finally, developments in Iraq, especially the extent of Iraqi cheating on disarmament and Saddam's crushing of the internal opposition in 1995–1996, added greater legitimacy to the main ideas of the regime change consensus, especially the beliefs that containment would soon collapse and that Iraq would never comply fully with inspections because of the nature of its regime.
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- The Regime Change ConsensusIraq in American Politics, 1990-2003, pp. 98 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021