Notes on Mearsheimer and Walt's "An Unnecessary War"

BONUS LINK:  My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here. 

Mearsheimer and Walt, An Unnecessary War, 2003

- Here the authors take apart the notion of intervention/war in Iraq as a preventive measure against an undeterrable lunatic Saddam Hussein. 

-  Written from a realist perspective where they show Saddam as a leader trying to survive; he initiated the wars for realist reason

- Iran-Iraq war we were on his side and fed him intel that allowed him to use his biological weapons against Iran.

- in the Gulf War, State Dept earlier told Saddam we had no part in any border disputes with Kuwait—was this true, or was the truth more nuanced?

-  Finally, it didn’t matter whether Saddam had WMDs or nukes, because we could use deterrence against him—we had bigger weapons and nuclear arsenal.  Saddam was a survivor and would have caved. 

LINKS:

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0032.pdf