---

Wars of Choice
By Richard N. Haass
The writer is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to June of this year.

Empire is about control -- the center over the periphery. Successful empire demands both an ability and a willingness to exert and maintain control. On occasion this requires an ability and a willingness to go to war, not just on behalf of vital national interests but on behalf of imperial concerns, which is another way of saying on behalf of lesser interests and preferences.

Iraq was such a war. The debate can and will go on as to whether attacking Iraq was a wise decision, but at its core it was a war of choice. We did not have to go to war against Iraq, certainly not when we did. There were other options: to rely on other policy tools, to delay attacking, or both.

Iraq was thus fundamentally different from World War II or Korea or even the Persian Gulf War, all of which qualify as wars of necessity. So, too, does the open-ended war against al Qaeda. What distinguishes wars of necessity is the requirement to respond to the use of military force by an aggressor and the fact that no option other than military force exists to reverse what has been done. In such circumstances, a consensus often materializes throughout the country that there is no alternative to fighting, a consensus that translates into a willingness to devote whatever it takes to prevail, regardless of the financial or human costs to ourselves.

Wars of choice, however, are fundamentally different. They are normally undertaken for reasons that do not involve obvious self-defense of the United States or an ally. Policy options other than military action exist; there is no domestic political consensus as to the correctness of the decision to use force. Vietnam was such a war, as was the war waged by the Clinton administration against Serbia over Kosovo. ...