The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 9
March 25, 2003
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org). He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Editor: John Gershman (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE #19: DREAMS OF EMPIRE, EULOGIES FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW
By John Gershman
FPIF STATEMENT ON THE WAR
By Miriam Pemberton
NEOCONSERVATIVES ENLIST DEMOCRATS FOR POST-WAR GOALS
By Jim Lobe
A COALITION OF WEAKNESS
By Erik Leaver and Sara Johnson
SCARRED AND BATTERED, UN CHARTS COURSE IN POST-WAR IRAQ
By Ian Williams
AN ANNOTATED CRITIQUE OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH'S MARCH 17 ADDRESS PREPARING THE NATION FOR WAR
By Stephen Zunes
II. Outside the U.S.
THE "DAY AFTER" IN IRAQ: LESSONS FROM AFGHANISTAN
By Mark Sedra
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column written alternately by Tom Barry and John Gershman, foreign policy analysts at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, chronicling instances of U.S. unilateralism and its assault on the multilateralism framework for managing global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are now indexed on the www.presentdanger.org site at: http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2003/index.html.)
FRONTIER JUSTICE #19: DREAMS OF EMPIRE, EULOGIES FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW
By John Gershman
With the war in Iraq just under a week old, the jockeying for what comes next has already begun, with implications that will shape the outlines of imperial governance in the post-9/11, post-invasion world. Two related but nevertheless distinct debates--one regarding the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq and the other over whether Iraq is just the first step in a broader and more sustained effort to transform the region--will define a new relationship between the U.S., international organizations like the United Nations, and both formal and informal alliances such as NATO and the "coalition of the willing" that has been cobbled together to support this particular military operation. While 9-11 is often portrayed as if it changed everything, the invasion of Iraq and the fallout could mark a significant turning point in the architecture of U.S. hegemony.
Reconstruction
The debate over reconstruction in Iraq has already begun, even as the bombs continue to fall. Both the ends and the means of reconstruction are up for grabs. In terms of means, the major issue is when and in what capacity will the United Nations be asked to play a role? The main plan at the moment appears to be one of U.S. unilateral control, with a civilian administration headed by retired General Jay Garner under the direct command of the military serving as an occupational government. The civilian administration will be staffed primarily with former U.S. diplomats, and is aimed at ruling for as long as it takes for an interim Iraqi government to be formed--at this point, at least a few months. U.S. companies are already competing for contracts worth roughly $1 billion to rebuild infrastructure and operate health and education services.
Under the plan, the role for the UN in the immediate aftermath of the conflict will be limited to humanitarian relief. Its role in reconstruction efforts remains unclear, as any major UN role would require authorization by the Security Council. Aid groups are concerned that their humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts will be branded as part of U.S. military operations.
This plan has sparked concern among members of the administration's "coalition of the willing" as well as opponents of the war. The joint statement released at the conclusion of the war council meeting in the Azores on the weekend prior to the launch of the war described a central role for the UN in reconstruction efforts. But the current U.S. plans would seem to suggest those were just words. The political battle is currently being waged in the negotiations over a UN Security Council Resolution that would provide the political sanction for post-war operations in Iraq. Last week Britain's Minister for International Development Clare Short left the U.S. empty-handed, after failing to get agreement on a resolution that would place the UN in charge of reconstruction. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is scheduled to arrive in the next day or two to discuss both the progress of the war as well as the role of the UN in reconstruction.
The debate stretches to control over the funds to be used for reconstruction. The UK has also clashed with the Bush administration over the control of Iraqi assets, which have been frozen since the first Gulf war began 12 years ago. The Bush administration has asked countries who have frozen assets to pool them into a U.S.-controlled fund. The Bush administration has already ordered 17 banks in the U.S. to hand over $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi government money. But Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has so far refused o turn £200 million Iraqi assets frozen in Britain to an American-controlled account, instead wanting them to go to the UN. White House officials have threatened to prevent foreign banks from doing business in the U.S. if they refused to turn over Iraqi government money and what they called "blood money" belonging to President Saddam Hussein or his associates.
The U.S. plan for reconstruction, with the UN in a subordinate, if not subcontracting role, is the most immediate example of a new world order where the UN has a well-defined, explicitly subordinate position in the architecture of U.S. global hegemony. It suggests an end to rhetorical, if not actual, commitments to collective security based on international law and multilateralism embodied in the UN charter.
Such a vision was outlined in a recent op-ed by Richard Perle, the head of Defense Policy Board and a key intellectual architect of the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East, and is worth quoting at length:
He [Saddam Hussein] will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.
Perle's eulogy for the vision of collective security the UN offered is an important illustration of the vision of the future it outlines, a vision that is truly staggering in its ambition, and in its casual rejection of the framework of international law. Perle's alternative is a shifting away from international institutions to one of shifting ad hoc coalitions. As he writes,
The chronic failure of the security council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognize that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.
(In an interesting twist showing the editorial differences of headline writers, the same piece was headlined "Coalitions of the Willing Are Our Best Hope" in Canada's National Post while the Guardian headlined it as "Thank God for the death of the UN.")
First Baghdad, Then …
While rejecting the UN Security Council Perle also identifies countries hosting or sponsoring terrorism and possessing weapons of mass destruction as the major threat to international security (without actually naming names). What then is the next step in the Bush administration's security agenda?
One clue is embodied in the statement from a senior British official to Newsweek last August: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, in February 2003, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
With North Korean policy in a seeming holding pattern while the war in Iraq continues to unfold, the next steps in the Middle East are already being tabled. Michael Ledeen, another key intellectual in the pantheon of neoconservatives shaping the Bush administration policy, described one such agenda. In a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on March 21st and in the New York Sun Ledeen argues for the need to look beyond Iraq and go after other regimes in the region, particularly Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia:
Iraq is not the war. … the war is a regional war, and we cannot be successful in Iraq if we only do Iraq alone.
Writing in the New York Sun on March 19, there is no mistaking the messianic vision of manifest destiny that Ledeen believes the war in Iraq will provide:
Once upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone, without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh, but that time has passed. …
The Iranian, Syrian, and Saudi tyrants know that if we win a quick victory in Iraq and then establish a free government in Baghdad, their doom is sealed. It would then be only a matter of time before their peoples would demand the same liberation we brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, they must do everything in their power to tie us down in Iraq, bleed us on the ground, frustrate our designs, and eventually break our will. …
It would be a terrible humiliation for America and Britain to fall prey to needless bloodshed because we blinded ourselves to the larger war in which we are now engaged. Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror masters, and spread freedom throughout the region.
Rarely has it been possible to see one of history's potential turning points so clearly and so dramatically as it is today. Rarely has a country been given such a glorious opportunity as we have in our hands. But history is full of missed opportunities and embarrassing defeats.
We'll know soon which destiny we will achieve.
The first Persian Gulf War marked the transition to the new post-cold war world. The Second Gulf war will mark the end of the post-cold war world. The history of what comes next remains to be written. But it is clear that the advocates for Empire, for a Pax Americana, are well prepared.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
For more see:
The Road to War . . . and Beyond, AEI Briefing (March 21)
http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.267/transcript.asp
Richard Perle, "Coalitions of the Willing Are Our Best Hope" National Post
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.16666/news_detail.asp
Michael Ledeen, "One battle in a Longer, Wider war," New York Sun
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.16618/news_detail.asp
FPIF STATEMENT ON THE WAR
By Miriam Pemberton
(Editor's Note: FPIF military editor Miriam Pemberton reflects on the war. A printer-friendly version is available at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0303stmt.html .)
In 1996 Foreign Policy in Focus set out to build a network committed to the goal of making the U.S. a more responsible world leader. By "responsible" we meant a government vigorously pursuing the unfinished business of building international norms and institutions capable of preventing war and advancing political and economic justice.
During the past two years our government has taken us resolutely on a march in the opposite direction. It has gone out of its way to tear up international agreements and undermine international institutions. Since 9-11 the pace of the march has accelerated. Security has been used as the pretext for a multi-pronged assault on civil liberties, a draining of the public treasury, and the appearance of new U.S. military bases and troops in nearly every continent of the world.
Today we find ourselves at the place where, logically, this march has been leading us all along: a pre-emptive and illegal war. The international norms for waging war that the U.S. signed on to when it helped craft the UN charter have clearly not been met. Iraq has not attacked us--the perception held by remarkable numbers of Americans that it has notwithstanding--and poses no imminent threat to do so. Our government has been cynically seeking the gloss of UN approval for an action it has made clear all along it would reserve for itself the right to take, approval or no. This doublespeak has been one of the means by which it has undermined the success of the international community's chosen course of inspections; withholding key intelligence data from the inspectors is another.
The stakes in this war extend far beyond the irreducible facts of the Iraqis as well as Americans who will be killed, electively. The Bush administration has committed this nation to a course it has never in its history taken before. Preventive wars against possible threats will now be official U.S. foreign policy. War with Iraq, in other words, is only the debut of a program whose goal is permanent U.S. global military dominance. This is not hyperbole; it is now enshrined, codified, in U.S. national security doctrine.
As we move into war, dissent from this program will be more difficult. The administration will be working even harder to manage the news, and control the national conversation on this war. Patriotism, we are already being told, requires unquestioning support for the war now being fought in our name. We reject this. FPIF's reason for being is to insert progressive voices into the public debate on foreign policy: in the various publications and electronic forums on our website, and in the promotion of the experts in our Think Tank Without Walls in print journalism, radio, TV and public forums around the country and abroad. This mission is now more important than ever.
Our hope is that citizens will find materials from FPIF useful in the discussions they will be having in the weeks to come at the bus stop, on their college campuses, at the water cooler, in the supermarket, in letters they will write to their newspaper editors, and at public forums and demonstrations.
The administration's cynical attempt to use the United Nations for its own ends has failed. The UN stood up to crushing pressure, and said no. So did the millions of citizens of the international community who have turned out in the streets around the world, and the millions of Americans who have joined them. This international force, as the New York Times put it, is now the other superpower.
Senator Robert Byrd said yesterday in a speech to the Senate that "After the war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe." The wealth of international support for the U.S. following 9-11 has been squandered, turned to dismay and disgust. The task of making the U.S. a responsible world leader must begin again. Please join us.
(Miriam Pemberton <miriam@ips-dc.org> is the military affairs editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
NEOCONSERVATIVES ENLIST DEMOCRATS FOR POST-WAR GOALS
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0303pnacletter.html.)
With the war underway, new battle lines to shape the parameters of U.S. policy toward post-war Iraq have moved out of the shadows and into public view. Neoconservatives who allied themselves with traditional right-wing Republicans to push for war in Iraq are now trying to enlist veterans of the Democratic administration of former President Bill Clinton to realize their post-war plans for transforming Iraq.
In a new letter released earlier this week, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative front group that often speaks for neoconservative hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, said that the "successful disarming, rebuilding, and democratic reform of Iraq can contribute decisively to the democratization of the wider Middle East," which, the group stressed, should be considered "an objective of overriding strategic importance to the United States."
And, in an implicit swipe at forces, including right-wing administration hawks who have argued for withdrawing U.S. forces as quickly as possible after the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the destruction of any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) found in the country, the letter emphasized that Washington should be engaged for the long haul. "Everyone--those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors--must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."
"Any early fixation on exit strategies and departure deadlines will undercut American credibility and greatly diminish the prospects for success," the letter, which was signed by 23 prominent neoconservatives and former Clinton advisers, asserts. The letter must be considered significant if only because previous PNAC letters have anticipated the trajectory of the Bush administration's policy in fighting its war on terrorism since the publication of its first missive on the war nine days after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
In addition to calling for a major, long-term commitment to rebuilding and transforming Iraq, the letter urges a possible key role for NATO "and other international institutions" in long-term security arrangements and in rebuilding Iraq. Significantly, it does not mention the United Nations by name.
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
A COALITION OF WEAKNESS
By Erik Leaver and Sara Johnson
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy report available online at http://www.fpif.org/papers/hr.html.)
As U.S. officials look for political cover after losing the drive for a second UN Security Council resolution, the recently renamed "Coalition to Disarm Iraq" is the Bush administration's only opportunity to salvage a semblance of international legitimacy for war. A closer look at the countries involved reveals that claims to multilateral action in the name of democracy are grossly exaggerated. In reality, the U.S. is isolated internationally, and a few of the countries signing on to "liberate" Iraq have human rights records that rival Saddam Hussein's.
On Tuesday, March 18th, the State Department released a list of 30 countries willing to be named as part of the coalition, while President Bush raised the count to 35 in his speech on March 19th and this list was raised to 45 by March 21st. While the list keeps growing in number it has not increased the fighting strength of the coalition--only two countries have committed forces in any number: Great Britain (40,000) and Australia (2,000). The Czech Republic and Bulgaria have sent chemical and biological defense units of about 150 personnel each. Poland and Romania also have sent a handful of troops.
Furthermore, the coalition has not added any diplomatic strength to the mission. These 45 countries make up less than 20% of the world's population and do not make up the moral equivalent of the United Nations. Despite joining the coalition, the level of support for the U.S. in many of these countries is extremely weak--in only two countries in the world, the U.S. and Israel, is popular support greater than 50%. Support is no greater in the global multilateral institutions. Only three members of the United Nations Security Council and slightly more than one-half of all NATO members support the United States' mission.
The lack of democratic credentials in the coalition is also startling. Human rights, democracy, and corruption ratings by Freedom House, Transparency International, and the U.S. State Department illustrate the disconnect between pro-democracy rhetoric and the undemocratic reality of some of the coalition partners. Seventeen of the countries were measured to have "not free" or "partially free" democracies; twenty-four were found to have significant levels of corruption, and the U.S. State Department concluded that in nine nations, "The overall human rights situation remained extremely poor."
Before the American public starts applauding the Administration's newfound commitment to assembling an international coalition to attack Iraq, it should put the partners' participation in perspective. The coalition that Bush claims has more relevance than the UN is not a large group of democratic allies providing substantial military support and backed by public opinion at home. To the contrary, the assembled coalition is evidence of the international community's opposition to war and the administration's lack of commitment to democracy and human rights.
(Erik Leaver <erik@ips-dc.org> is an Associate at Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and Sara Johnson is a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies (online at www.ips-dc.org).)
AN ANNOTATED CRITIQUE OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH'S MARCH 17 ADDRESS PREPARING THE NATION FOR WAR
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor's Note: What follows is an excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/iraqspresp.html, which provides a transcript of President George W. Bush's address to the nation on Monday, March 17, announcing his readiness to order a U.S. invasion of Iraq followed by an analysis highlighting some of the lies and misleading statements in the speech.)
"My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war."
This is patently false. In 1998, President Bill Clinton successfully pressured UNSCOM director Richard Butler to withdraw inspectors without authorization from the Secretary General or the Security Council--before their mission was complete--in order to engage in a four-day heavy bombing campaign against Iraq. As predicted at the time, this illegal use of military force--combined with revelations that the United States had abused the inspections process for espionage purposes--resulted in the Iraqi government barring the inspectors' return until a reorganized inspections commission known as UNMOVIC commenced inspections last year. UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan explicitly called upon the United States and the international community to give the inspectors more time to do their job, noting that it would take a number of months before their mission could be completed.
"This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people."
Iraq did use chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians back in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein's regime was being supported by the United States. The Reagan administration covered up for the Halabja massacre and similar attacks against Kurdish civilians by falsely claiming that it was the Iranians--then the preferred enemy--who were responsible. In addition, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency provided Iraq with U.S. satellite data to help Saddam Hussein's forces locate Iranian troop concentrations in the full knowledge that they were using chemical weapons. Many of the key components of Iraq's chemical weapons program came from the United States, ostensibly for pesticides as part of taxpayer-funded agricultural subsidies, despite evidence that these U.S.-manufactured chemicals were probably being diverted for use in illegal chemical weapons.
"And it has aided, trained, and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda."
Every independent investigation of every Bush administration claim of a connection between the secular Iraqi government and the Islamist al Qaeda network has found no evidence of any Iraqi aid, training, or harboring of al Qaeda terrorists. According to both published U.S. government reports and independent analyses, Iraq's support for international terrorism--which has always been restricted to secular nationalists like the radical Palestinian Abu Nidal faction--peaked in the 1980s.
"For the last four-and-a-half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that Council's long-standing demands. Yet, some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it."
Actually, most Security Council members do not believe that Iraq is the imminent threat that the United States claims it to be, though, if convincing evidence were presented that Iraq indeed posed a threat to international peace and security, a clear majority of the Security Council--including France--have indicated their willingness to authorize the use of force. A veto of the proposed U.S.-sponsored resolution by France, Russia, and China would probably not have been necessary since the United States was unable--despite enormous pressure, including promises of increased foreign aid, trade preferences, and other incentives--to convince a simple majority of nations on the Council that it was necessary to take the unprecedented step of authorizing the United States to invade Iraq, overthrow the government, and replace it with one more to its liking.
(Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is an associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project (online at www.fpif.org) and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage: 2002), which can be ordered from FPIF at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org).)
SCARRED AND BATTERED, UN CHARTS COURSE IN POST-WAR IRAQ
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new commentary produced for the Project on the Present Danger (online at www.presentdanger.org) and available in full at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0303post-war-iraq.html.)
There is a clear consensus across the world that neither logic nor legality permit the "Coalition" invading Iraq to enforce alleged UN Security Council decisions against the will of the majority of its members. However, in a backhanded compliment to the legitimating power of the organization--and as the U.S. and UK shred the UN Charter's keystone provisions on the illegality of war--they both, to varying degrees, feel the need to invoke it.
Those variations in degree are important. At the recent Azores summit, Tony Blair did wrest some serious concessions from Bush, for which the world may feel gratitude, somewhat qualified though it will be, when the war is over.
As so frequently in the past few months, Blair had became part of the internal debate within the Bush administration, where the spectrum of opinion ranges from outright hatred of the UN, through expedient agnosticism, to the beleaguered beachhead for multilateralism in the State Department.
The British and Americans are well aware that the French, Russians, and Chinese are far more likely to resist proposals from them than from Kofi Annan and the UN Secretariat. On the other hand, the pragmatic need for UN involvement in reconstruction provides a wedge in which the British and the U.S. State Department will probably try to get a "Kosovo"-style resolution legitimating the post-war regime, which of course concerns the hawks in the Bush administration much less.
There will be some resistance from those who objected to the war, but they have all signed on enthusiastically for reconstruction. If Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the other hawks can be muzzled, then even the French will be eager to paste over the hole in the UN Charter left by the unilateral action.
Most UN members will be desperate to get the U.S. back on board with even a token commitment to resumed international legitimacy. There will certainly be some wrestling about the actual degree of UN involvement in the postwar governance of Iraq despite Bush's commitment in the Azores. But the Americans will win most on substance, because everyone else cares about multilateralism, and most of the Bush administration doesn't, although Blair will be able to appeal to Bush directly to reinforce the State Department's points.
It will be interesting to see what role the inspectors will play. It would make practical and political sense for the American investigators currently poised on the Kuwait border to call upon UNMOVIC as soon as possible, both for its expertise and for the propaganda value of independent confirmation. That may prove an inspection too far for Washington, however. Almost certainly, UNMOVIC and the IAEA will have a role in the post-war monitoring of Iraqi weapons programs under some amendment of existing Security Council mandates.
There are other roles for the UN and its agencies that may emerge after the dust of the invasion has settled. As of yet undiscussed is any judicial role. Although Washington recently announced a list of most-wanted Iraqis, it somewhat discounted that by offering Saddam Hussein the choice of exile and implied amnesty. Blair told the British Parliament this week that Saddam and others in his ruling elite could face the International Criminal Court for their actions against the people of Iraq. However, with the theological hatred of much of the U.S. administration toward the International Criminal Court, it would be surprising if his suggestion were adopted.
In short, the United Nations will emerge battered but patched up and still floating from the events. But the scars will show.
(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
II. Outside the U.S.
THE "DAY AFTER" IN IRAQ: LESSONS FROM AFGHANISTAN
By Mark Sedra
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/iraqrebuild2003.html.)
Much of the current debate on the crisis in Iraq focuses on the "day after" the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. What will Iraq look like and how will the United States and the international community rebuild the country and fulfill its promise of "reshaping" it into a bastion of democracy for the entire region?
An examination of current efforts to rebuild Afghanistan provides some insight and a basis for speculation on how the challenge of rebuilding a post-war Iraq will be confronted. Comparisons between Afghanistan and Iraq should not be overemphasized as they simplify and conflate what are complicated and highly specific situations. Yet one cannot ignore the striking commonalties that can already be detected between the reconstruction approach implemented in Afghanistan and that which is being envisaged for Iraq. In recent weeks, U.S. officials have, on several occasions, referred to Afghanistan as a "successful" model for reconstruction and nation-building that should be emulated in Iraq. Similarly, United Nations (UN) planning for post-war Iraq has drawn heavily on the Afghan experience.
In a move with tremendous symbolism, a UN planning committee has chosen Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan, to fulfill the same post in Iraq. If he accepts the appointment, Brahimi will lead the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), a structure intended to mirror its Afghan counterpart, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
UN and U.S. veneration of the Afghan nation-building experience contrasts sharply with its track record. Rising insecurity, slow economic development, and growing public dissatisfaction with the government currently threatens the post-war order in Afghanistan. Without delving into the debate over the merits and legality of the impending war in Iraq, it is important to ask why the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is faltering and what can be done to avoid such an eventuality in post-war Iraq.
In a worst-case scenario, the imposing cost of reconstruction coupled with the potential for violent unrest may prompt the U.S. to implement a minimalist post-war reconstruction strategy. The objective of such a strategy would be to stabilize the country and secure America's vital interests, including the disarmament of the regime and the safeguarding of oil wells, at a minimum material and human cost. This could involve establishing a client government in Baghdad; maintaining a semi-permanent military presence in oil-producing areas; permitting limited Turkish intervention in the North; and allowing regional autonomy on ethnic lines across the country. A similar situation has materialized in Afghanistan where the U.S. has installed a client government in Kabul; where regional warlords hold sway in the provinces; where a blind eye is turned to the interference of regional states such as Pakistan; and where a U.S. military presence is maintained to pursue regional interests, which in the Afghan context is the continuing hunt for the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Afghanistan and Iraq, wracked by decades of conflict and deprivation, require intensive, long-term, and durable commitments of international support. Although sustainable change can only emanate from within post-conflict societies, external support is essential to provide the fertile ground needed for such change to flourish. Peace building and reconstruction have faltered in Afghanistan not because of the failures of the ATA, which has achieved a remarkable degree of stability under extremely adverse conditions, but because the international community's commitment to rebuilding the country has wavered. A steady shift of international attention away from Afghanistan over the past six months, a phenomenon that one senior European diplomat has dubbed the "CNN effect," has expedited the deterioration of the international commitment to Afghanistan. The emergence of a similar shift in Iraq, perhaps toward the next country on the Bush administration's "axis of evil," will have similar consequences for the Iraqi reconstruction process. Afghanistan has been a proving ground for the world's ability to collectively rebuild a state and fight the roots of terrorism in the post-September 11 world. The results of this first test of the world's resolve have been less than exemplary and without a paradigm shift in the international community's approach to reconstruction and peace building, the prospects for the next test appear dim.
(Mark Sedra <sedra@bicc.de> is a research associate at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) and writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
III. Letters and Comments
Re: South Korea Joins the Axis of Independence
I feel that there are several problems with the article regarding the current problems on the Korean Peninsula. First, the article downplays the role that the U.S. has played on the peninsula. If America had not entered the Korean war, and had not maintained a force of approximately 50,000 troops, there would only be one Korea today. It would most certainly be communist. Second, the article presumes that the U.S. has plans to use force to prevent North Korea from making and using nuclear weapons. The White House has denied several times that such plans are in effect. Hopefully, that is not true. Third, I hope that the U.S. never, ever adapts a policy of giving in to what amounts (in this incident) to an international case of extortion. If the past twenty years have taught us anything, it's that a foreign policy consisting of pacification does not work. We don't owe any other country anything. I think that if South Korea doesn't like the way that the U.S. decides to handle its Northern neighbor, that is great. The U.S. should pull all of its troops out, and let them deal with the problem. If we did so, one of two things would happen. Either the president of South Korea would change his views very quickly, or North Korea would invade. Either way, we should not put U.S. troops in harm's way by following the erroneous policy of pacification. Hopefully, the past two and a half years have taught the U.S. one important lesson: You can't buy your friends.
- Dan Scott <scott3d@earthlink.net>
Re: Seven Reasons Not to Attack Iraq
A succinct and invaluable article, vital to combating government lies. Your website is a valuable source of facts to combat the U.S. and UK government propaganda. I hope you will continue during the actual war with details on things such as the number of Iraqis killed and any war crimes. We need all the help we can get.
- Paul Thompson <paul@pthompson.org.uk>
Re: The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives
Dr. Michael T. Klare has succinctly analyzed that the true, hidden motive of President Bush's decision to wage a war against Iraq is oil. I believe his diagnosis makes more sense than other excuses like war on terrorism, non-proliferation of WMD, and restoring democracy. If oil is the only spoil for the coming war with Iraq, Mr. Bush's decisive commitment to go to war will greatly benefit Americans. If so, it is hard to find any reason to oppose preventive action for possible future crisis; if you don't pay now, you will have to pay later anyhow. Thanks.
- Sangkey Yoh <sangkey.yoh@duke.edu>
Re: Fateful Choice
I believe that the UN should not heed Bush's cry for war and lack of "patience" with the diplomatic process that the UN has put in motion. My vision is that the UN ignore Bush and simply continue the inspections--in short, make a statement to the world that international law and a peaceful resolution will prevail and must prevail. This would be a landmark showdown in our history as to whether the world opts for peaceful resolutions of disputes, or allows violence and terrorism to reign. This goes beyond Saddam and the Bush vendetta--this speaks to our system of international law and international due process.
- Caryn Glasser <Ccsg111@aol..com>
Re: An Annotated Critique of President George W. Bush's March 17 Address Preparing the Nation for War
What are you folks smoking? I was a SDS organizer in 1969-72 and really question what's the agenda here. We're sill fighting a revolution, but now it's against the American lifestyle. If we don't stop this virus (fundamentalist Islam and all attached to it) we'll lose our way of life! We need to proceed full speed on all fronts after Iraq to rid the world of this sickness. If aliens had invaded our planet with the same agenda, the whole world would unite against them! Wake Up!
- Andrew Kalman <drewkal@msn.com>
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