As the first anniversary of the Iraq war approaches, the military action has had great consequences and the United States foreign policy has transformed in a way that is not always as the war planner intended. 

Except for a swift downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the US forces do not have much to celebrate for their yearlong uphill battle experience in Iraq, where they now confront shootings and roadside bombs almost on a daily basis.

The burden of rebuilding a postwar Iraq has turned out to be much more difficult than it appeared to be or what the US war planners had expected, as the international community is always reluctant to offer assistance for the reconstruction in the absence of Iraqi sovereignty.

Alarmed by the chaos and increasing guerrilla attacks on US forces in the immediate month of Saddam's ouster, the US President George W. Bush was first forced to sack a retired military officer in charge of the rebuilding efforts and named Paul Bremer, a career diplomat, as the civilian administrator.

Bremer quickly hand-picked a 25-member Iraqi Provisional Council, but he also insisted that it was impossible for Iraqis to resume sovereignty until at least two years later.

At the same time, the US-led coalition forces increasingly looked like occupiers as insurgent attacks became more sophisticated amid growing Iraqi resentment over foreign forces.

The situation deteriorated to such a level last November that the Bush administration was compelled to take a drastic shift in its Iraqi policy and adopt a plan to transfer the sovereignty to Iraqis by June 30.

The Iraqi Shiites, however, vehemently opposed the plan because it envisaged a caucus-based process to select an interim Iraqi government which would take over power from the US-led occupation authority.

Facing Shiites pressure for direct elections, the United States, which invaded Iraq without the blessing of the United Nations, turned to the world body for help and eventually agreed to a deal to hold general elections by the end of January next year.

The past year has seen an improvement in the transatlantic relationship which has been ruptured by the bitter differences over the Iraq war.

But this was not the case when the United States was still intoxicated in the military success in the war.

Senior US officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, vowed that those who vehemently opposed the war should pay a price for their actions and be excluded from bidding for the lucrative reconstruction contracts in post-war Iraq.

A senior aide to President Bush once advised that the administration should engage Russia and ignore Germany and in the meantime try its best to isolate France. Both Germany and France had stood firmly against the US when the US-led coalition forces began to take military actions against Iraq.

But as the US forces were bogged down in the quicksand of Iraq, pragmatism prevailed in US foreign policy, forcing the administration to bury its grudge and take actions to repair relations with countries that have opposed the war.

So when President Bush invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to his presidential retreat in Camp David, he also took the chance to arrange a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and resumed a working relationship with French President Jacques Chirac.

The improvement, however, does not mean the damaged transatlantic relationship has been fully repaired.

Washington, for example, has long been wary of a growing inspiration among European countries for an independent defense capability.

In the Middle East, the Bush administration had hoped for a "demonstration effect" out of the war which could help settle the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians.

President Bush traveled to the region in June last year and launched the much-awaited "roadmap" peace plan at a trilateral summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

But only months later, the peace process bumped into stalemate again since the US administration wavered, as it did in the past three years, in face of difficulties to persuade the two sides, especially Israelis, to take hard decisions.

Disappointed with the peace process, the administration began to think about proposing a so-called "Greater Middle East Initiative" at the Group of Eight Summit scheduled to be held in Sea Island, Georgia, in June.

According to a draft version leaked to the media, the initiative envisages a series of political, economic and social reforms in the whole Arab world and some other countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and Israel.

The plan has triggered widespread criticism and resentment in many countries of the region, which accuse the United States of imposing changes on them. Europe, which is never quite happy with the US approach in the region, has so far kept a distance from the plan.

Analysts here believe that the burden of building a new Iraq has sapped US resources from other foreign policy priorities and compromised US ability to deal with challenges elsewhere.

In a reflection of the yearlong US experience in Iraq, Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading think tank in the United States, recently said: "Iraq is about our limits rather than our reach."

Because of the way the war was waged and the failure to find Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the global image or credibility of the United States, a crucial element of the so-called "soft power," has been dented so much that it may take years more to repair.

As a result, the administration, which launched the Iraq war without the authorization of the United Nations, has begun to appreciate cooperation and diplomacy in dealing with issues related to Syria, Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Haiti.

The preemptive strike doctrine, invoked by the administration to justify the war with Iraq, is increasingly questioned, if not fully dumped, as a foreign policy option.

(Xinhua News Agency March 18, 2004)