The Strategos

“Did the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 do any good for the Middle East or the world?” This is the question that still haunts the USA and breeds serious doubts on the credibility of the US as a responsible superpower. The series of events that have followed the US invasion have been far from those expected. The unstable nature of the region in the recent decades can well be seen as after-effects of what US did in Iraq. The reasons given by the US for invading a sovereign nation far from its borders have been far from convincing. Nonetheless, the significant effects the invasion has had on Iraq in particular and the region at large have not diminished in the last decade.   The world has changed a lot since USA first got involved in Iraq with an aim to rescue Kuwait. What has remained same is one of the primary causes of the problems the region struggles with at present that can be backtracked to what US did in 2003. Following the defeat of Iraq and the restoration of Kuwaiti gove...

The term ‘Balance of Power’ is attributed to Otto Van Bismarck who while uniting Germany paid special attention to not disturbing the balance of power in erstwhile Europe. The term has since become part of commonly used vocabulary in media and academics alike. Balance of Power (BoP) says that states act to preserve a balance or equilibrium of power in the system. Kenneth Waltz talks about BoP in his book “Theory of International Politics”. BoP itself appears as a part of structural realism in Kenneth Waltz’s book. Waltz argues that the Anarchical world order breeds mistrust in the international structure where increase in the power/resources of one state is seen with caution. According to Kenneth Waltz, the self regarding states act to maximize their power by all possible means. Some states do succeed in aggregating greater power to the envy of other nation-states in the system. As soon as a state acquires power more than other states, a wave of discomfort runs through the system alarm...