WORLD VIEW: 'One more victory and I am lost.' So said Pyrrhus, king of Hellenistic Epirus after he defeated the Romans in 280BC, having suffered huge losses. Ever since the term Pyrrhic has been used to describe any victory so costly as to be ruinous, writes Paul Gillespie
It has surfaced increasingly in commentary on the Iraq war. Will a long-drawn-out victory in which the US and Britain encounter stiff resistance in Baghdad, with many military and civilian casualties and devastation of Iraq's infrastructure, be so costly as to be Pyrrhic?
This is foreshadowed in a comment by the former US ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, made to R. W. Apple of the New York Times: "t may result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends. Achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it's no victory at all. Our ultimate goal, which is promoting stability in the Middle East, may well prove elusive."
Or has the very launching of the war without UN sanction already unleashed such consequences - as will be seen when it is over? So argue those who say Iraq's territorial integrity will be undermined by such an intervention. US threats this week to Iran and Syria herald further regional turmoil.
So does its determination to control the subsequent administration of Iraq. Mubarak's warning that the war could create 100 bin Ladens underlines the danger that terrorism will be encouraged, not controlled. That would also encourage a clash of civilisations, especially if the Israel-Palestinian conflict is approached through a perspective as fundamentally sympathetic as the Bush administration is to Sharon's Israel.
It is hazardous, not to say ridiculous, to write the history before it even happens. So much depends on the outcome of the war. Initial expectations that it would be over in days have proved unfounded; but we are still in the scenario of a possible quick victory, given the speed with which Baghdad airport has been taken and the crucial air superiority this will give the US to use helicopters in urban or suburban fighting for the capital.
Where are the Republican Guards we have heard so much about, and what is the Iraqi strategy? We will know in coming days whether they are prepared to fight to the end.
In which case a long US victory would shade over into the dreadful scenario of a long war. Few expect that, given the asymmetries of military power and Bush's political imperative to have it over by early summer, so that he can prepare his re-election campaign in the autumn on the basis of victory achieved - and not a Pyrrhic one.
But this leaves out of account the effect of Iraqi national sentiment mobilised against the Anglo-American invasion, the great unexpected factor in the war so far. As a friend summarised it: "Saddam may be a dictator, but he's our dictator." That needs to be set against the naïve expectations of immediate regime collapse so current among the US neo-conservatives.
In the Middle East a possible defeat of the US-led invasion is still canvassed; but it is hard to disagree with Holbrooke's judgment: "Saddam won't win. Unlike LBJ in Vietnam, Bush won't quit. He's a different kind of Texan. He'll escalate and keep escalating. In the end his military strategy will probably succeed in destroying Saddam."
Political judgments about the war tend to hinge around its duration. That supreme pragmatist, Bertie Ahern, argued in these pages two weeks ago: "Whether military action is justified will be determined only in the light of the results achieved and the costs incurred, including in terms of the loss of human lives. However, any such assessment will only be subjective."
This certainly leaves a wide margin for political and ethical manoeuvre about the outcome of the war, as Bush comes to Belfast next week. So does his refusal in the Dáil this week to describe the attack on Iraq as pre-emptive, based on the legal submissions of the US, the UK and Australia to the UN, in which they say they have taken this action because of Iraq's failure to disarm.
Politics runs right through the war concerning how Iraq should be governed after it. Colin Powell spelled out his view that having fought the war it is to be expected that the US will have a "dominating determining control" in Iraq afterwards.
Although that does not rule out the UN, as he explained to NATO and EU leaders in Brussels, his position leaves a gulf between US and EU attitudes over the UN role (including British ones) as wide as that between the State Department and the Pentagon in Washington on the issue. The Taoiseach signalled his agreement that the UN must be central, along the lines of its role in East Timor.
This emphasis on the UN has more to do with the way it works as a nexus to balance international power relations, together with legal and legitimising constraints on them, rather than on an idealisation of its structures and processes, which have many shortcomings.
Those who say this will be a Pyrrhic victory for US unilateralism argue it will not be able to contain the forces unleashed by the intervention or to convince US voters to be involved in the long-term business of Middle Eastern reconstruction and transformation called for by the neo-conservative radicals.
Whatever their current divisions on the war EU states are united on the UN role. This is much more than an intellectual conviction. It has to do with the political reality that turmoil in the neighbouring Middle Eastern region will spill over into Europe for a generation to come.
It will stimulate foreign policy and defence co-ordination to deal with such instability. This is a long-term process; but its precise pace will be determined by the outcome of the war and of the arguments currently under way about how Iraq should be governed when it is over.