US operations in Iraq, from the overturning of the Saddam Hussein regime to the tenuous attempts to achieve ‘democratic reconstruction’, have had a significant impact on opinion in many countries, primarily of course in capitals whose political relations with Washington are precarious. The 2003 Operation Shock and Awe in fact only served to reinforce in certain quarters the feeling of insecurity resulting from the betrayal of the principles of state sovereignty that had been seen in Kosovo in 1999.

The effect of these actions persists, even though Western nations are unaware of its broader impact, considering it limited to the Iranian question. For many players at the margins of the international community, what still matters today is the need to dissuade the United States from repeating such operations to its own disadvantage, regardless of any new configurations in international relations. Naturally, the political changeover at the White House might give cause for optimism that the democratic ‘domino theory’ could be laid to rest; the latter has in fact led more to a presumption of chaos and to confusion amongst its neoconservative proponents. Despite this, the countries concerned recall that in the United States the democratic political tradition is historically interventionist (Brzezinski and Albright in Kosovo in 1999), and that, rightly or wrongly, for the time being there is nothing to give these countries any absolute guarantee that the Obama era will see any sudden break with the Messianic foundations of US foreign policy.

In their multifaceted pursuit of ‘deterrents’ and their obstinate search for guarantees of sovereignty, these countries still have many options; for the most part these tend to gravitate towards the upper or lower end of the spectrum of military capabilities: