When peace takes hold in Iraq and the nation is stabilized under some form of democracy…
You make that sound much easier than it will be.
Time for a look backward, I think. Remember the paper on post-war Iraq that the CFR and the Baker Institute (not a bunch of raving liberals) produced some time back? Remember these words?
It is difficult to imagine firing the first shots without the U.S. government having put two essential matters in order: preparing the nation for the increased likelihood of a terrorist response on American soil; and pulling together realistic plans for what America and others—above all, the Iraqis themselves—will do the day after the fighting ends.
If Washington does not clearly define its goals for Iraq and build support for them domestically and with its allies and partners, future difficulties are bound to quickly overshadow any initial military success. Put simply, the United States may lose the peace, even if it wins the war. Developing an integrated, coherent post-conflict strategy for Iraq is a daunting task that will test American political acumen.
There should be no illusions that the reconstruction of Iraq will be anything but difficult, confusing, and dangerous for everyone involved.
Those words were true then, and they are true now. Have we put matters in order? Are we prepared for the increased likelihood of terrorist attack? Do we have realistic postwar plans?
I get the feeling that a lot of people are seriously underestimating the challenge of forming a functioning democratic government. This underestimation comes quite naturally: very few people have devoted much effort to the study of the democratization process in developing countries.
Forming a government with the superficial appearance of functionality is, of course, quite easy. If you assign people to fill each office, you can say you’ve formed a government. Once the basic technical tasks are completed – turning the power back on, making the phones work, getting some kind of oil production online – we can say the government is functioning. Creating a government that can actually govern, though, is a much more complicated process.
The idea of creating democracy is also easy to approach in a similarly slipshod fashion. You hold an election, then you have a democracy, right? Not quite. To hold an election you need candidates. To get candidates you need political parties, and there aren’t any. The only way to form parties quickly is from the top down. This stage – party formation – has received very little coherent study, but it has posed the single largest stumbling block to democratization throughout the developing world. Americans often assume that parties will naturally form according to ideologically distinct lines: moderate right, moderate left, fringe right, fringe left. We assume that because that is the basic paradigm for political discourse in the West. Elsewhere, though, this paradigm does not exist, and there is a tendency for parties to form either along ethnic or religious divides or to emerge as ephemeral elite coalitions focused on the attainment of position, with no real ideological distinction or policy differentiation.
The effect of this tendency has been disastrous, in more cases than I’d like to recount. Once parties form on these lines, they quickly define the terms of political discourse in similar terms, and once the paradigm is set, it is exceedingly hard to break, simply because so many influential individuals have a vested interest in retaining it.
In most cases, efforts at democratizing developing countries emerging from dictatorial or colonial rule have resulted in “grey zone” pseudodemocracies: systems with a façade of democratic rule, but maintaining the political dominance of a narrow elite. The rule of law is usually shaky, and economic policy generally sucks. We have yet to establish an effective paradigm for moving countries out of the grey zone and into functioning democracy, because so few countries have accomplished it. I’d have to rate our chances of keeping Iraq out of this status at slim to none: it would be a hard thing to do even if we acknowledged the danger and planned carefully to avoid it, and I see no indication that we’re doing either.
There’s no doubt that grey zone democracy will be better for the Iraqis than Saddam’s dictatorship was. It will not necessarily put us in an advantageous position with respect to the larger goals of modernizing the Middle East and effectively addressing the problems of Islamic radicalism and its terrorist manifestations.
you neglected to mention the benefits of lower energy prices. This could be a significant cost savings to America and the world, which would strongly negate the cost of war.
There is no certainty that significantly lower energy prices will emerge, and even if they did they’s cause as much harm as good. It’s pretty well recognized that oil at less than $25 a barrel is not a good thing for us: there are too many critical economies that stand to be destabilized. If a privatized Iraqi oil industry did break OPEC and cause a pumping free-for-all, the benefits would be transient and ultimately outweighed by the costs: the incentive would be to pump the easy oil fast, which would only cause faster depletion and create disincentives to the development of alternative sources. Oil, due to certain unique peculiarities, is one commodity where the free market is not entirely to be trusted. I will avoid lengthy discourse on this, simply because it is entirely theoretical. It’s not going to happen. The Iraqi oil industry could only be legally privatized by a democratically elected Iraqi government, and no democratically elected Iraqi government is going to do it. Iraq will almost certainly stay in OPEC and accept a production quota analagous to Iran’s, and the truth is that this is not a bad thing. It does mean that there will be no bonanza of cheap oil.
As far as money goes, do the math yourself. Cost of the war, plus the cost of rehabilitation, which the Baker report estimates at up to $100 billion, not including humanitarian aid. The Iraqi oil industry will be generating $10 billion a year at best for several years, and most of that will be going to pay for immediate needs. The bottom line is that somebody is going to have to lay out a whole hell of a lot of money that won’t be coming back for a long time, if ever. Guess who that somebody’s going to be? Think April 15.
the notion that it's an open book whether we will be safer as a nation with Hussein’s regime decapitated is ridiculous.
I think it’s possible to argue that removing Saddam’s regime is part of a process that will eventually leave the world a safer place, though whether or not that goal is achieved depends largely on steps that have yet to be taken. The notion that the world will immediately become a safer place – for America and Americans, at least – without Saddam is simplistic and dangerous. The fight against terrorism has not been won, by any means. Whatever the terrorists lost in support from Saddam – and all evidence suggests that he was not a crucial prop – they have gained more in the vastly escalated and focused anti-Americanism that our action has provoked, both inside and outside the Muslim world. I don’t think many Americans have quite grasped this, but this escalation is a very real thing, and recruiters for Al Qaeda and similar organizations have more willing bodies at hand than they’ve ever had before, both in the Middle East and, much more dangerously, outside it.
We knew this was going to happen, of course. It was an inevitable consequence of the decision to go to war. Our real enemies, the terrorists, have lost one source of State support, but they have gained enormous popularity and acceptance elsewhere. Governments that were pro-American, or at least cooperative, are facing serious risk of destabilization by Islamist elements. Pro-American factions in countries far more critical than Iraq – mainly Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – are under the gun, and could fall. The risk of terrorist attack on America and American interests abroad has not decreased; if anything, it has increased.
It’s nice to see dictators fall, but let’s not pretend we’ve won a war. We haven’t. We’ve won a battle. That win may improve our strategic position – whether it does or not will depend on how we handle the upcoming months and years – but from a tactical perspective our risk is in many ways increased. If we let euphoria blind us to that reality, our vulnerability will only increase.
A few other relevant items from the CFR/Baker report….
A successful post-Saddam strategy will take time and resources. America must stand ready to invest in the transition…
How quickly Iraq’s oil production capacity of 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) can be increased depends on several variables, such as the political environment that develops after the war and the price of oil. U.S. policy should be informed by a realistic assessment of how Iraq will attract the estimated $30 billion to $40 billion in new investment it needs to rehabilitate active wells and to develop new fields. Iraq’s oil industry is unlikely to be able to immediately deliver recovery in oil production and, depending on damage sustained during hostilities, may find its ability to export oil reduced. It is in dire straits with existing production levels declining at a rate of 100,000 bpd annually. Significant technical challenges exist to staunching the decline and eventually increasing production. Returning to Iraq’s pre-1990 levels of 3.5 million bpd will require massive repairs and reconstruction of major export facilities, costing several billions of dollars and taking months, if not years…
Leaving aside immediate humanitarian needs, experts estimate that reconstruction will cost between $25 and $100 billion. Repairing existing oil export installations will require $5 billion, and rebuilding Iraq’s electrical power infrastructure could cost $20 billion to restore its pre-1990 capacity. Given that Iraq’s annual oil revenues are currently in the neighborhood of $10 billion, significant financial support will have to be generated by neighboring states, multilateral institutions, and other Western partners…
In the Arab world especially, there is a serious risk that war in Iraq will stir up further trouble for the United States, including terrorist attacks against the United States and its partners…
With high unemployment and a quickly growing population, Iraq’s economic base is considerably worse off than it was before Saddam took office and during the first few years of his rule. The pre-Saddam Iraq that many hold in their memories is not the Iraq of today…
Many senior members of Iraq’s oil elite are nationalistic in their attitudes, and they will be sensitive to the nature of U.S. and coalition aims for nation–building in Iraq and to their treatment of its revenue streams…
As a founding member of OPEC, Iraq will experience a strong historical pull to remain within the organization. As important, if not more so, is the fact that producing outside of an OPEC quota will not necessarily bring increased resources. Every producer must balance between restraining output to create generally higher international oil prices and expanding individual production capacity to seek higher revenues through rising market share but potentially at lower overall international price levels. Operating outside of OPEC will not necessarily garner increased profits, as Iraqi oil decision–makers are also well aware of the fact that Saudi Arabia may punish Iraq by flooding the market with its own oil, if Iraq chooses to quit OPEC…
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members will likely lobby Iraq hard to accept an oil production quota equal to Iran which is 3.18 million bpd and is in line with historical precedent. Also, because Iraq’s success relies on good neighborly relations, there are reasons for Iraq to be part of OPEC that are not as compelling to countries outside the region, such as Russia…
|
