On Iraq against the World:
Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order
By Samuel Helfront
New York: Oxford University Press, 2023, 280 pages, $39.95, ISBN: 9780197530153
Iraq since the Invasion:
People and Politics in a State of Conflict
Edited by Keiko Sakai and Philip Marfleet
Oxon: Routledge, 2020, 238 pages, £135, ISBN: 9780367193690
Iraq after the Invasion:
From Fragmentation to Rebirth and Reintegration
By Saad N. Jawad
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 219 pages, €129, ISBN: 9783030721053
Introduction
Iraq was a significant regional power during the Saddam Hussein regime, especially in his first years of reign. However, the Gulf Wars and the end of the Cold War almost wiped-out Iraq’s military and political capabilities in the region. Beginning with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the country was smothered under harsh UN sanctions and invasive weapons inspections. Ironically, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave a huge room for Iranian influence on Iraqi politics, which harbored a U.S.-Iranian battle for influence. The U.S.-Iran competence and successive Iraqi governments’ failure to deliver services to Iraqi people met with a heavy backlash as massive anti-government protests that began in 2015 forced the Iraqi governments to introduce reform programs. In pa
