How Dick Cheney, the ‘most powerful US vice president’, shaped America’s Gulf policy

As vice president under George W. Bush, Cheney reshaped the office into one of unprecedented power, becoming the architect of the administration’s most consequential and controversial policies — none more so than the Iraq War.

9/11 and a start

Cheney was in office on 11 September 2001, during the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. While Bush was hurried to safety, Cheney worked with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to assume policy control. Within weeks, US troops were deployed to Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban and hunting al-Qaida.

The Gulf

But Cheney’s place in history will be dominated by the decision to invade Iraq. Having served as defense secretary during the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990–91, he now helped lead the Bush administration’s push for a second war. Cheney and Bush argued that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and maintained links to al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks — claims later proven false. By March 2003, when US and coalition forces invaded Iraq, no proof had been found for either charge. Although Cheney sought international cooperation, he also later wrote that the administration “had an obligation to do whatever it took to defend America.”

He insisted US forces would be greeted as “liberators” and that the war would be short-lived. Instead, Iraq descended into chaos, with thousands of American and Iraqi lives lost. Even as public opinion turned against the war, Cheney remained steadfast, convinced that toppling Hussein was essential to US security.

The human cost of the wars Cheney helped set in motion was immense. According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, since 2001 “at least 800,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.”

The conduct of those wars — especially the treatment of detainees in the US-led “war on terror” — became a lasting stain on America’s global reputation. Cheney remained unapologetic, continuing to defend the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding long after leaving office, insisting they were necessary to protect the nation.

A Yale dropout who avoided service in Vietnam, Cheney nonetheless rose to become a towering figure in Republican politics. His Washington career spanned decades and presidencies: an aide in the Nixon administration, the youngest-ever White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford, a six-term congressman during the Reagan years, defense secretary under George H.W. Bush, and finally vice president to George W. Bush.

Design of post-9/11

Known for his hawkish worldview and belief in expansive executive power, Cheney helped design the post-9/11 national security state, backing the use of enhanced interrogation, secret detentions, and widespread surveillance. His role in shaping these measures made him both feared and revered in Washington.

Cheney’s influence began to wane late in Bush’s second term as courts and public backlash curbed his efforts to broaden presidential authority. But his imprint on American foreign policy — particularly in the Middle East — remained indelible.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and raised in Casper, Wyoming, Cheney rose from a congressional fellow in the 1960s to become chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, defense secretary under George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War, and later, Bush’s son’s vice president. Between his government stints, he served as CEO of Halliburton, a global oil services firm that later won major contracts during the Iraq conflict.

A survivor of multiple heart attacks, Cheney was often seen as the consummate Washington operator — secretive, strategic, and unapologetically ruthless. Asked once about his reputation as a political manipulator, he joked, “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

In later years, Cheney became a sharp critic of Donald Trump, defending democratic institutions and backing his daughter Liz Cheney’s stand against the former president after the January 6 Capitol riot. “There has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” he declared in 2022.

In a twist few could have imagined, Cheney said last year he would vote for Kamala Harris over Trump, a sign of how far he had drifted from the party he once defined.

Dick Cheney is survived by his wife, Lynne, and two daughters, Liz and Mary Cheney.

(With Inputs from Associated Press, Reuters)