Marching Forward
Issue of 2003-02-17
The New Yorker
newyorker.com
In this week's issue and elsewhere online, Nicholas Lemann's "After Iraq" deals with questions in Washington about a war with Iraq and its aftermath. Here Lemann discusses his article and new developments as America moves closer to war.
THE NEW YORKER: Since you wrote the piece in this week's issue, we've heard a new tape that's apparently from Osama bin Laden and we seem to be witnessing a near-breakdown of NATO. How has the past week changed the terms of debate?
NICHOLAS LEMANN: I don't think much has changed, because the debate, in Washington, at least, ended with Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations on February 5th. Washington is for war, and new information isn't going to make it any more or less for war.
You began writing about George W. Bush's interest in Iraq during the first month of his Administration, in January, 2001. At that time, you described hawks within the Administration who, even then, wanted to use force to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. How does the post-September 11th argument for regime change compare with the case made early on by people like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle? Has it changed?
The hawks used to favor regime change in Iraq accomplished through heavy American support of the Iraqi National Congress, the exile organization headed by Ahmad Chalabi. Sometime soon after September 11th, the idea of accomplishing regime change through an American invasion came to the fore. Also, the hawks began asserting that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda, which they hadn't before. But the underlying case hasn't changed much; it's the proposed means that have changed.
In your piece, you discuss one intriguing—not to say speculative—argument being advanced for war with Iraq: that removing Saddam could help bring about a wholesale change for the better in the political, cultural, and economic climate of the Arab Middle East. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, is a proponent of the theory that a war with Iraq could help bring democracy to the Arab Middle East, by a sort of democratic domino effect. Is this realistic?
To borrow a phrase, it depends on what you mean by democracy. The Administration defines democracy less in electoral terms, especially in the short run, than in terms of "civil society" and "democratic institutions," such as court systems, free speech, opposition parties, the right of assembly, and a free press. They want these to spring up across the Arab world, and it should be said that, even if they spring up spontaneously, in many cases the government of the country would normally just repress them. Therefore the application of American power will probably be a necessary part of any spreading of democracy in the Middle East.
How about the argument that the real key to a new Middle East is a resolution not of the Iraq problem but of the Israel-Palestine question? Can removing Saddam really solve the problem of two peoples who want the same land?
We've been talking about the Administration's hawks thus far. There are lots of hawks, but it's certainly fair to say that, generally, the hawks regard a Palestinian Authority headed by Yasir Arafat as illegitimate—another nation in need of regime change, if you will—and don't see the point of conducting peace talks with Arafat. Most of them would also strongly disagree with the idea that the dispute over the West Bank is actually the crucial issue across the whole region. Instead, they see it as an excuse that Arab governments use to distract their people's attention from closer-to-home problems like poverty and unemployment. And some hawks would argue that removing Saddam will be a blow to the pan-Arab ideology under which one territorial dispute is enlarged into a region-wide issue. The hawks just don't buy the idea that Palestinian statehood is the key to anything in the Middle East.
The sudden triumph of democracy is the best-case scenario. Talk a little bit about the worst-case scenario.
The worst worst-case scenario, I suppose, would be that the United States would lose the war. Next worst would be a bloody, protracted war. If the war itself ends very quickly in an American victory, as practically everybody in Washington expects, the next-worst scenario would be either that Iraq would dissolve into internal ethnic strife, on the model of Yugoslavia, or that large portions of the country would not be under government control and would become havens for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, on the model of Pakistan.
You mention how the very problems that democracy in the Middle East is meant to solve, including rising Islamic radicalism, might, ironically, make democratic elections dangerous to our national interest, because anti-American Islamists could win. Would the prospect of real democracy in the Middle East do more to help or to hinder our campaign against radicalism, anti-Americanism, and terrorism?
Again, it depends on what you mean by democracy. The Administration seems to have in mind encouraging conservative pro-American elements in the Arab world, not—in the short run, at least—forcing countries to hold open elections that Islamists might win.
Of course, there's some feedback at work here: we support a kleptocratic monarchy, for example, because it is pro-American, and then we become more unwelcome in a nation that identifies us with unpopular rulers. We see ourselves as champions of democracy because we believe in democracy, but how can we convince the Arab world to see us this way?
The Administration truly believes that the American system of government is the one best system for all people in all parts of the world. President Bush repeated that sentiment in the State of the Union address. By the Administration's lights, the idea that the Arab world wouldn't embrace American-style democracy if it were a real option is inconceivable. I've asked several officials a version of the kleptocracy question, and they say, "We'd make sure that the governments we set up would not be kleptocracies."
Obviously, even if Saddam is overthrown quickly, polls won't open the next day. How will the interim leaders of Iraq be chosen, and by whom? And how can that be done in a way that encourages democratic transformation?
That's a fight inside the Administration. Evidently, those who wanted to install Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress as the country's new government immediately have lost out to those who want an American military occupation for a year or two. So General Tommy Franks, of the Central Command, will rule Iraq in the short run. In the longer run, the U.S. will set up a government that includes all the major groups in the country, as it did in Afghanistan. Whether the new government takes hold is another question.
It's hard to imagine a sudden flowering of democracy without some social stability in postwar Iraq. And, assuming that it will take bombing and battles to get Saddam out, rather than a quick coup d'état, it's hard to imagine that stability can be achieved without significant investment in reconstruction. The Bush Administration is willing to fight for democracy in Iraq, but will it be willing to pay for it?
That will be another fight—the one over how much to spend on Iraq's reconstruction. Everybody sees the merit in spending a lot, but, with a long recession on, after the war there will quickly be political pressure not to spend. That will be an interesting one to watch.
Here's a related question: Rumsfeld and others seem to have concluded that Europe—"Old" Europe, anyway—is irrelevant to American decision-making. But if we don't manage to bring France and Germany along with us can we still ask them to help pay for the rebuilding of Iraq?
It certainly doesn't look as if Old Europe is going to help out much. That will only make the arguments over how much the U.S. should spend more bitter. Big numbers will be involved.
In your piece, Stephen Cambone, who is in charge of evaluating weapons systems for the Pentagon, suggests that Iraq manipulates the governments of countries like Syria and Jordan through oil supply. This raises an issue that has provided fodder for the war's opponents: who will control Iraq's oil? For example, France already has contracts in place, contingent on the lifting of sanctions. Would these contracts be voided if they're not in on the fighting? How does oil fit into America's plans?
I would guess that the United States will honor the French contracts. The main oil motivation for the Administration, I would think, is to make the U.S. less dependent on the Saudis, and to make the Syrians and the Jordanians more dependent on the U.S. It's a foreign-policy play, in other words, that doesn't have much to do with a desire to enrich American oil companies.
Does having this longer view of the Middle East make coöperation with the U.N. more necessary for the United States, or less? If we've traded for the chance to eliminate Saddam, have we made a good deal?
Again, we're talking about the Administration's hawks here. They are not big believers in the United Nations and other multilateral organizations and treaties. To them, America's going it alone is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The talk of political and economic transformations seems to ignore a crucial factor: religion. Do proposals for regime change incorporate a sensitivity to the religion factor? After all, one of the deepest divides in Iraq is between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority, which has enjoyed a relatively favored position under Saddam Hussein.
Part of the hawks' scenario is that after the war, if Iraq's Shiites are empowered, that will make the Saudis nervous, because they have a large disenfranchised Shiite population, and it will weaken the regime in Iran, because Iran will lose the argument that it is the only institution of Shiite power in the region. Both of those outcomes, from the Administration's point of view, would be good.
You spoke at length with Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, about our long-term goals in Iraq and the Middle East. Feith talks about one of the goals of a war with Iraq; namely, to dissuade other states from supporting terrorists by making an example of Iraq. Will eliminating state support solve the problem of terrorism?
The question is more whether the U.S. really will be able to mount a concerted attack on all the state sponsors of terrorism in the region—Iraq is far from the worst offender—than whether eliminating state support will eliminate terrorism. If all state support ended, and if the government of every country truly controlled the whole country, it would certainly be bad for terrorist organizations. Those are difficult goals to achieve, though.
Feith also talks about fostering a new international way of thinking about terrorism. He compares it to piracy or the slave trade, to a practice that must be delegitimated—a theme that Bush picked up in his State of the Union address. As with the spread of democracy, the subtext here seems to be that military action can be used to reinforce our philosophical messages. But the world is full of bad countries that could, in effect, use a lesson. Does this principle put America on the path to being a missionary with a sword? Can we make the world safe for democracy?
That's the right question. The hawks think of themselves as neo-Wilsonian moralists. They really do want to change the whole world, through the use of, and the threat of, military force. That's the whole idea. Whether it will work, and whether the American public will support it, is another question. |
