Review of Article
One of my favorite articles in international relations is the text President Al Gore and the 2003 Iraq War: A Counterfactual Test of Conventional “W”isdom by Frank Harvey (CJPS, 2012). Harvey answers the question of whether the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 would still have occurred if someone other than George Bush was the president (here: Al Gore). Harvey argues that, contrary to the counterfactual argument deeply rooted in neoconism that the war was caused by the unique preferences of the Bush administration, the outcome of the war would have remained the same even if Al Gore had been elected president.
In my view, showing that a cause makes a difference is difficult to apply in a single case-study. Therefore, in causal inference with single cases, one is not expected to use counterfactual reasoning. Instead, one identifies the causal paths that link the cause and the effect using process tracing. But in this single case-study text of a historical event, Harvey made use of counterfactual theory to explain whether the popularly purported cause (Bush administration) makes a difference to the outcome (Iraq war). That is if Bush would not have been the president, would the US have invaded Iraq? To reason through the counterfactual process, he reviewed historical record of Gore’s values and policy preferences, societal pressures and domestic politics in the US, as well as the “failures and miscalculations” of American’s and Saddam’s intelligence. He employed process tracing to link the sequence of events in these “four sets of facts” to show that Gore would have taken the same path as Bush.
The vast collection of statements from Al Gore’s past and that of the senior democratic advisors that he would have consulted as members of national security showed that most of Gore’s 2000 foreign policy platform was not different from his American foreign policy as vice-president. For example, his foreign policy retained the widespread political consensus that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Secondly, after the 9/11 attacks, the findings of the 9/11 Commission revealed that Washington failed to imagine the national security threats that Iraq WMD posed to the United States. Given this information, it is plausible to argue that Gore would have considered the alleged development of WMDs in Iraq as a grave security threat to the US. Lastly, Gore delivered one of his main speeches on Iraq to the Commonwealth Club (CC) of San Francisco. The political context for interpreting the content of Gore’s 2002 CC speech is essential: it was delivered six months before the invasion in March 2003 – a time when key administrative officials and policymakers were having a polarized discussion about the approach the US should employ in dealing with Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11. This period also marks the four-year absence of inspectors from 1998-2002.
Furthermore, the speech was delivered even before Bush, key administrative officials (e.g., Colin Powel) and key allies (e.g., Tony Blair) opted for the UN-based strategy to respond to Iraq. The speech shows that, although Gore was against a policy of unilateral prevention, he had no reservation about going to war with Iraq to address the “threat” Saddam posed, especially after 9/11 occurred. Gore certainly entertained similar values, beliefs and policy preferences as Bush because he expressed approval of Bush’s decision to finally adopt the multilateral approach, which he had repeatedly advocated in his speeches. Therefore, there is hardly any evidence from Gore’s speeches or statements to support the claim he would have avoided war.
Harvey used evidence of Gore’s speeches before the 2000 presidential election and after 9/11 to support his arguments about what would have happened under Al Gore’s presidency. Using evidence about the actual world to reason through a counterfactual process is slightly fuzzy because there is the possibility that the person in question might not act according to their speeches, i.e., they might not be straightforward. Nevertheless, I found Harvey’s counterfactual claim that Gore would have entertained same values, beliefs, and preferences as Bush if he had been president convincing and plausible because the broad political consensus in 2002 was that Saddam was on the quest for stepping up his nuclear weapon programmes. For instance, the debate in Congress was not about whether Saddam was trying to build nuclear bombs. Neither was it about whether America should go to war. Instead, policymakers differed about whether the US should take unilateral or multilateral military action against Iraq. Besides, I do not think that a president Gore would have underestimated the report of the 9/11 Commission, which considers Saddam a threat to the United States. The fact that Gore’s speeches, shortly before the war, did not oppose a military strike against Iraq, and the fact that he endorsed President Bush’s assertive multilateral path indicate that he would have made the same decision as Bush, given the available information about Iraq’s nuclear weapon at the time.
To further demonstrate that the author’s argument is convincing, one could ask another counterfactual question: What would have happened if a Gore administration wouldn’t have gone to war with Iraq? Former vice-president Al Gore was the chairman of the White House Commission on Aviation Security and Safety. Having held the position of chairman, he would have been an easy target for criticism. His administration would have been held accountable for the 9/11 debacle and for underestimating the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Thus, deciding not to go to war with Iraq would have made the public and political opponents think that Gore was again downplaying the Iraqi threat. Republicans would have used this to their advantage by exploiting the failure of Gore’s foreign policy amid campaigns ahead of the 2002 midterm election. The critical point is that Gore is unlikely to have gone this path (Gore-peace). He wouldn’t have abandoned a popular foreign policy strategy that was entirely consistent with the one he and his team had consistently proposed.
One of the main criteria of a good counterfactual, as I learnt in a case-study design course by Ingo Rohlfing, is difference-making. That is, a change in the cause must bring about a difference in the outcome. However, Harvey used a counterfactual argument here to refute the dominant neoconism interpretation of the historical event that “President George W. Bush and prominent ‘neoconservatives’ on his national security team” were the cause of the Iraq invasion (p. 1). He showed that the Bush presidency had no causal relevance for the Iraq war by making a change in the presidency. It is important to highlight the point that Harvey established only one difference (a different person as a president) before constructing a counterfactual world of what would have happened. From my point of view, he also made clear and transparent in the article what characterizes the difference in these persons. For example, Al Gore was a Democrat while Bush was a Republican. It is also plausible to imagine a counterfactual world with Al Gore as the president in 2002, because “a few more hanging chads…in Florida in the 2000 election” was all that was needed for him to have been elected president of the United States (p. 5).
Lastly, Harvey used evidence from the actual world to reason through the counterfactual process. In other words, he developed a line of reasoning by examining speeches and statements of Al Gore before the 9/11 event and under Bush presidency to explain what would have happened under a Gore administration. But as I pointed out earlier, one might question the plausibility of the reasoning because we do not know if Al Gore would have done what he said he would, if he had been elected president. But, in my opinion, the reasoning was convincing because Gore delivered many of his speeches even before Bush decided on the military strategy to take against Iraq. The fact that Gore explicitly expressed support for Bush’s multilateral approach makes it even more plausible that he would have followed the same path as Bush. In addition to that, most Americans rallied around President Bush when he decided to adopt the multilateral approach at the height of events leading to the war. Al Gore, who had initially proposed a similar military plan, would undoubtedly have enjoyed the same high level of popularity and ratings as Bush because the “American public [were] overwhelmingly supportive of the assertive multilateral strategy” (p. 13). In conclusion, Harvey’s counterfactual argument is reasonable because Gore would not have rejected a politically popular strategy, especially one that is in line with his view on foreign policy.
References
Harvey, F.P., 2012. President Al Gore and the 2003 Iraq War: A Counterfactual Test of Conventional “W” isdom. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 45(1), pp.1-32.
Taiwo A. Ahmed 