Getting In Touch With Your Inner Coalition

Hi,

I just got back from a political science conference in Chicago. I got together with some friends currently at various prominent universities and private research consulting groups. About a half a dozen of us got together for dinner and after putting away the better part of two Chicago-style deep dish pizzas and several pints of beer, the conversation turned to Bush and Iraq and other sillyness.
I stated my view that the Bush administration is dominated by "Realists" (see the discussion of state centric policies below). However a couple of my friends suggested an alternative approach: They argued that the Bush administration was trying to dis-engage with the whole Middle East. Remember before 9/11, the US had effectively ceased all involvement in the Palestine-Israel peace negotiations. Anyway, part of this strategy of disengagement was to remove our troops from Saudi Arabia to reduce anti-American feelings in the region. However, the Bush adminsitration did not want to leave the oil rich region completely so the plan required relocating the US military within the Middle East. Kuwait is too small to contain the forces needed. That leaves Iraq. So in a sense, the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam was incidental to the primary goal of finding alternative sites for US military bases near the oil.
At the end of the evening we agreed that some of the Bush people were clearly motivated by state-centrism while others appeared to be more in line with the motives just described. Since they wanted the same goal, conquest of Iraq, - albeit for different reasons - they formed a kind of coalition within the Bush administration to push the policy.