The Iraqi contracts gambit
Jay Bryant (archive)
December 18, 2003 | Print | Send
I'm a lousy chess player. I never can get the part about thinking several moves ahead, so I'm pretty much a sucker for any kind of trap you'd like to set for me.
I play chess like the Democratic candidates for president play politics.
Back on December 5, the celebrated Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary and poster boy for Everything That's Wrong With The Administration, issued a directive that said that "only companies from the United States, Iraq and 61 other countries designated as coalition partners will be allowed to bid on the contracts, which are financed by American taxpayers," according to the New York Times, which was miffed, probably because they didn't get the story until four days later.
On the 11th, President Bush backed up Wolfowitz' directive. "It's very simple," he said. "Our people risked their lives, friendly coalition folks risked their lives and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that."
In the ensuing days, liberal internationalists from hither and yon, not to mention New Hampshire, Iowa, Paris and Moscow, severely chastised the President for what they saw as yet another example of his "unilaterialism."
Then came the capture of Saddam Hussein and those among the world's liberal internationalists who happen to be candidates for the President of the United States all got a chance to make comments on the occasion. The comments pretty much followed a fill-in-the-blank form in which pleasure that the bad person had been captured was quickly followed by a declaration that this was the perfect moment for President Bush to internationalize the restoration of Iraq by changing his unilateralist policy and "bringing in" our allies. Especially, they intoned with great sincerity, he should abandon his "no contracts for non-coalition nations" policy, which was, you see, terribly, terribly insensitive to our great allies in France, Germany, Russia and elsewhere.
First, let us note that what we have here is a plea by Democratic candidates to send American jobs overseas. I mean, they might not like Halliburton, but do the Democrats really think that firm's Russian counterpart is more deserving? Have they checked that company's environmental, occupational safety and health or equal opportunity record?
There's $18.6 billion US taxpayer dollars here, folks and the Democrats are saying we shouldn't let them stay in the American economy, we should ship them to Europe. Does the AFL-CIO really believe that?
If we're going to ship any of that money overseas, we darned well better get something in return. Coalition partners like Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland and others have already proved their worthiness. It would be churlish of us not to allow them to compete for the reconstruction contracts.
But what are we going to get from the others? See, this is what the Democrats missed in the whole contacts story. They were so busy demanding the administration negotiate with our reluctant "allies," that they didn't realize the no-contracts policy was in fact the opening gambit in those very negotiations.
So when James Baker shows up at the Elysee Palace to ask that great friend of America, Jacques Chirac, about forgiving the debt owed to France by Iraq (that is by Saddam Hussein, you understand) Chirac says, "But of course – although I am so very upset about this little contracts thing…" and Baker nods knowingly and says he'll see what he can do, that mean old Wolfowitz is a really bad cop, but perhaps…"
Good cop Baker then flies on to Berlin where Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder likewise pledged "substantial debt forgiveness."
One can surely go too far in comparing diplomacy to chess, but the metaphor works at least to this extent: that one must be prepared to sacrifice something in order to gain something else, and the player who most acutely measures the relative value of the gains and sacrifices almost always wins.
By enunciating the no-contracts-for-wimpy-allies policy, Bush and Wolfowitz in effect created a virtual pawn out of thin air. Having thus been created, it was available to be used to gain something the administration – and the fledgling free Iraq – desperately wanted and needed: debt forgiveness. Darned clever, I'd say.
The administration used (in the sense of "You used me!") the Democrats' naiveté in the process. While the Dems were screaming, "Negotiate!" at the top of their lungs, Bush, Wolfowitz and Baker were already making the opening gambit in a negotiation that is to anything the Gang of Nine could mount as Kasparov's talent for chess is to mine.
Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.'
©2003 Jay Bryant
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