Iraq Occupation policy paper.

[Stuart Mackey]

Foreign Policy Research Institute WIRE
A Catalyst for Ideas
www.fpri.org

WHAT THE U.S. NEEDS TO PROMOTE IN IRAQ (HINT: IT'S NOT
DEMOCRATIZATION PER SE)
by Walter A. McDougall

Volume 11, Number 2
May 2003

Walter A. McDougall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and
Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the
University of Pennsylvania, is a Senior Fellow of the
Foreign Policy Research Institute.


WHAT THE U.S. NEEDS TO PROMOTE IN IRAQ (HINT: IT'S NOT
DEMOCRATIZATION PER SE)

by Walter A. McDougall


A REASON TO GET UP IN THE MORNING
After the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived us of our enemy (in
Colin Powell's words), veteran defense officials and intellectuals
confessed to a certain nostalgia for the Cold War. Back in the 1970s
and 1980s the Soviet and related Communist threats world-wide gave
them "a reason to get up in the morning." During the 1990s, by
contrast, the coterie one might dub the neo-conservative "war party"
were out of a job both literally (during Bill Clinton's two terms)
and figuratively (since globalization and the Information Revolution
allegedly made geopolitical conflict obsolete). So it was that
strategists such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith,
and journalistic cheerleaders such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan,
and Fred Barnes spent the Clinton years exhorting Americans to eschew
complacency in world affairs and instead seize the "unipolar moment"
to impose a "benevolent hegemony" on the whole world and pari
passu "remoralize" American society at home.

They invoked Ronald Reagan, insisting that the United States still
had a mission and destiny to spread democracy and human rights. They
invoked Theodore Roosevelt, insisting that the United States must
aspire to "national greatness" through moral example and "big stick"
diplomacy. They warned against cuts in the defense budget given the
certainty of new security threats on the horizon. They fretted over
the fate of Israel in a Middle East teeming with Ba'athist and
Islamist regimes that patronized terrorist organizations.

But the war party won few converts back in the 1990s. The Clinton
Administration remained wedded to "assertive multilateralism" and
belated, half-hearted humanitarian interventions on the theory that
economic and technological forces would eventually undermine rogue
states and authoritarian regimes without the United States having to
fight. Most Republicans, meanwhile, spied in the neo-
conservatives' "benevolent hegemony" a more militant, arrogant
version of Clintonism: a sort of Wilsonianism with guns aimed not
only at making the world safe for democracy, but making the world
democratic!

The election of George W. Bush gave the war party no more than a foot
in the door, if that. The new president promised restraint, even
humility, in foreign affairs, while expressing skepticism about state-
building and nation-building. Secretary of State Powell and National
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice concurred. Only in the Pentagon, to
which Wolfowitz and Feith returned in person and Perle in spirit, was
a more certain trumpet note sounded. Their master Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld had associated himself earlier with the
objective of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But Rumsfeld, like Vice
President Richard Cheney, was no neo-con, sporting as he did rock-
ribbed Republican credentials over three decades old.

Did this new/old team arrive in Washington, D.C., with a master plan
in their pockets to settle accounts with Saddam once and for all, if
necessary by unilateral force, and exploit the victory to democratize
the whole Muslim crescent? If so, they had little hope of winning
over the Bush Administration ... until Al Qaeda made their argument
for them on 9/11.

Bush declared a theoretically limitless war on terrorists everywhere,
claimed the right to attack preemptively any state harboring
terrorists, sponsoring terrorism, or striving to obtain weapons of
mass destruction that might fall into terrorists' hands. Then he
turned the war over to Rumsfeld, who evidently shared Bush's own
conclusion to the effect that regime change, not only in Afghanistan,
but in Iraq, would yield benefits throughout the whole Middle East.

Rummy, ever since, has had so much fun waging war--and confounding
journalists--he can barely conceal his glee. For all the two or three
day media panics over foreign protests, "unexpected" resistance,
delays, and failed battle plans, the war has in fact been a triumph
unprecedented in history. Never have offensive military operations
achieved so much, so quickly, so far away, and so cheaply in terms of
both casualties and money. Shock and awe? Those most shocked and in
awe are the American politicians and pundits who warned of
bloodbaths, quagmires, lost legions, and bridges too far.

How did this occupation of Baghdad and American mission to reinvent
Mideast politics come to pass? Even those of us highly critical of
crusading and state-building must grant the origins of this war lie
not with the neo-conservative brain trust, or Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney, or the oil companies, or the Israel lobby. The fault lies
with Saddam Hussein. After the Shah's regime succumbed to the
Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran emerged as an Islamic republic pledged to
make war on the Great Satan (United States), Saddam Hussein stood to
inherit the franchise as America's primary partner in Gulf security
and the global oil market. It was as if he had been offered the
newest and biggest McDonald's franchise at the prime location in the
wealthiest part of town. All he had to do to receive untold riches
for himself and his people and the assurance of U.S. protection was
behave himself. But whether through stupidity, megalomania, Hitlerian
ambition, Stalinist paranoia, or Ba'athist thuggery, Saddam Hussein
threw the franchise away. A sadist at home and aggressor abroad, he
forced his own would-be patron, the first President Bush, to make war
on him.

Operation Desert Storm should have sufficed to topple Saddam, but did
not because the President spurned the risks and responsibilities an
occupation of Baghdad would involve. His mistake was not (as some
suggest) having too little faith in the Iraqi people's capacity for
self-determination, but rather too much faith. The first Bush
Administration expected the Iraqis themselves would topple Saddam
while fearing the Kurds and Shi'ites might tear the country apart
if given the chance to express themselves. That tragic miscalculation
doomed the Kurds and Shi'ites to a bloodbath at the hands of the
Ba'athists, doomed all Iraq to another twelve years of terror, and
doomed the United States to having to do it all over again in 2003.

How and where does it end? Can the U.S. civil mission, now headed up
by veteran diplomat L. Paul Bremer, truly rebuild and remake Iraq
into a showpiece of Arab democracy? If so, will the
desired "spillover effects" peacefully transform Iran, Syria, Saudi
Arabia, Palestine? If not, will General Tommy Franks unleash his
combined-arms juggernaut on Iraq's neighbors as well? Whatever the
outcome, it is hard to imagine any exit strategy that would permit a
U.S. with a master plan in their withdrawal for the foreseeable
future. Rumsfeld has already hinted at permanent military bases in
the sands of Iraq.

Given the scale of the material and political rebuilding task in
Iraq, the oil fields in need of policing, the proximity of Iran, and
Saudi resentment of U.S. bases in their country, Rumsfeld's hints are
more likely promises. No wonder zealous advocates and critics alike
of Bush's war policies have seized on the words empire, imperial, and
crusade to describe America's posture in the Persian Gulf. And that
means our defense intellectuals will have reason to get up in the
morning for a very long time to come.

AMERICA'S IMPERIAL MOMENT--NOT!
Would that America were the Roman or British Empire. Then all the
Bush Administration need do is appoint a proconsul to crush dissent
with insouciant brutality (the Romans crucified, the British shot
rebels from cannons; both razed ancient temples and palaces), then
bestow on the locals all the glories and boons of imperial
citizenship. But the United States, though imperial in its sway, can
never be an empire of the traditional sort.

It is far, far more powerful than any mere empire that ever existed,
while at the same time far, far more constrained in its exercise of
power than are gangsters such as Saddam Hussein. The constraint is
self-imposed, a product of American concepts of justice and human
rights. The constraint is also imposed from without (although less so
of late), a product of international opinion and pressure.

Accordingly, as a consequence of the War on Terror, the Bush
Administration finds itself engaged in exactly the sorts of
enterprises it foreswore in the months prior to September 11, 2001:
state-building and nation-building. Secretary of State Colin Powell
put the point neatly on April 22 in a PBS interview. Asked what
message the Iraqi war sends, Powell replied: "The message should not
be that because we have such military power, it's going to be used
anywhere else in the world we choose to use it. The message should be
we have that military power, but we also have economic power, we have
political power, we have diplomatic power, we have the power of
example. We are using all these elements of national power not to
find nations to invade, but to find nations who need our help."

Americans' efforts to "help" other nations have often been unhappy
experiences. To be sure, from 1776 to 1896 the United States fought
wars and expanded almost at will. But Manifest Destiny was governed
by the nation's great federative principle: the Constitution followed
the flag and equal citizenship and statehood eventually followed the
Constitution. Only in 1898, as a by-product of Operation Cuban
Freedom (also known as the Spanish-American War) did Americans get
into the risky business of ruling over territories and peoples they
had no intention of joining to the Union. To be sure, the imperialist
war party of that era was composed of Progressives who believed
in "helping people," whether through government activism and reform at
home or U.S. impositions abroad.

They expected colonies such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and
Panama to be uplifted by American officials, educators, engineers,
missionaries, and businessmen. They expected failed states in the
Caribbean to receive law and order from the hands of U.S. Marines and
relearn how to function as stable democratic republics. Woodrow
Wilson boasted he would teach the Mexicans "how to elect good men."

None of that happened. Puerto Rico remains to this day a proto-colony
and ward of the federal government. Democracy did not take in the
Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, not to mention Cuba, despite lengthy
or repeated American tutelage. They also remain among the poorest
societies on earth. Americans, the optimism of the benevolent
hegemony advocates notwithstanding, are inept at imperialism, above
all by their own standards.

Of course, colonization however disguised is not what the United
States means to achieve in Iraq. Rather, we are told, the models
relevant to the present task are America's post-1945 occupations of
Japan and Germany, as well as the Marshall Plan. Surely they prove
Americans do know how to state-build, reinvent nations, and turn ruin
to plenty. But they don't, at least not to the degree mythology holds.

Historical scholarship has now amply demonstrated that every program
the Joint Chiefs of Staff established for the "democratization" of
German industry, labor relations, and education either failed or were
aborted when the Cold War broke out. And despite intense de-
Nazification public opinion polls in the late 1940s showed Germans
rued the Nazi regime not because of its nature but because Hitler
lost the war. Rather, what the Christian Democrat and Social
Democrat leaders did was to pick up the threads of democracy woven
during the Weimar Republic and restore a Germany that was already
there in potential.

General Lucius Clay himself reflected that the Cold War threat of
Communism, not wise U.S. policy, was what finally made the Germans
accept the Occupation regime.

As for the Marshall Plan, economic historians have argued
persuasively that while American aid was a boon to Europeans' morale,
it played only a modest role in their "economic miracle." Over 80
percent of the capital invested in Europe's recovery, and almost 100
percent of the labor, management, and technical skill was native.

As for Japan, the false starts, tergiversation, and reversals during
the MacArthur occupation are legendary. By 1950 the Japanese had
managed to cancel, evade, or co-opt almost all the U.S.-imposed
economic and cultural programs save the pacifist plank in the
Constitution, which the Japanese were already inclined to accept. The
great postwar Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru later said "the so-
called democratic form of government is still in its infancy in my
country," and attributed its birth not to America but to the Taisho
Democracy tradition of the 1910's and 1920's.

That is not to say America's postwar policies failed. They clearly
did little or no harm while reinforcing Germans and Japanese inclined
to promote moderate, parliamentary government. But those occupations
provide no template for reinventing a largely pre-industrial, only
partially educated, never democratic, heterogeneous Muslim state in
the Middle East. That the Bush Administration remains optimistic is
laudable; that it is has cause to be optimistic is dubious. What the
United States hopes to achieve in Iraq has never been done before.
Nor does history provide cause to believe Americans are the people to
do it.

Unless, that is, we are prepared to make Iraq our unofficial 51st
state, turn its oil fields over to Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, British
Petroleum, and (if the French repent) Schlumberger, and then unleash
Bechtel Corporation, Donald Trump, Harrah's, Club Med, Walt
Disney's "imagineers", and Arnold Palmer. Together they can transform
the Fertile Crescent in a matter of months into a 500-mile strip of
luxury spas, theme parks, museums, casinos, and golf resorts with
names like Adam's Eden, Daniel's Den, Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
Cradle of Civilization, and Hammurabi's Hangout.

Meanwhile, Israeli agronomists and hydraulic engineers turn the
desert into the richest farmland in Araby while Hindu and American
firms fill Basra and Baghdad with pharmaceutical plants and computer
labs. Syrians, Iranis, Saudis, and Palestinians must soon feel the
tug and beg for the privilege of salaaming before American CEO's.

But such fantasies aside, we shall doubtless need to figure out ways
to get Iraqis do most of the heavy lifting themselves, because only
if the Iraqis themselves are seen to provide an example can there be
any hope for a spillover effect in Teheran, Damascus, and Riyadh.
What are those enabling tasks the U.S. occupation can perform, not as
benevolent imperialist or democratic crusader, but simply as a victor
in war?

MORNING IN MESOPOTAMIA:
THE OTTOMANS' POLITY, JOHN MARSHALL'S ECONOMY
It was called Operation Iraqi Freedom, but how does one
operationalize freedom? The mantra of the Administration has been
democratization, but that has only invited voices of cynicism and
wisdom, despair and prudence to list all the reasons why
democratization is the riskiest or most utopian goal imaginable.

Suffice to say that no democracy, as Westerners understand the
concept, has ever existed in the Arab world and only one (Turkey) in
the whole Islamic world.

Suffice to say Iraqis have been in thrall for 35 years to a Ba'athist
party dictatorship, hence asking them to embrace democracy would be
like asking the Soviet people to do so at the time of Stalin's death
in 1953.

Suffice to say Iraq is no nation, but an artificial construct
including mutually hostile Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites, each divided
internally along tribal lines.

Suffice to say the groups, both native and exiled, that opposed
Saddam's regime include two Kurdish parties, four Assyrian parties,
two Turkomen parties, one Iraqi "alliance", three all-Iraqi
congresses, four Islamist revolutionary groups, two communist
parties, and three military officers' movements.

Add to those handicaps the past week's surprise, to wit the sudden
prominence of Shi'ite clerics who have seized in several locales,
organized provision of basic services, damned the U.S. occupation,
asked "where's the democracy?" and seemingly curried widespread
support.

Pessimistic observers immediately asked whether electoral democracy
will usher in a theocratic, anti-American government akin to that in
neighboring Iran, or else hopeless chaos, or else the dissolution of
Iraq as Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds refuse to share any authority
with each other?

The doubters' doubts cannot be ignored and the odds of Iraq becoming
a model of peaceful Arab democracy may be long indeed. But the
paradox of the situation (something the United States accepted per
force in Taiwan and South Korea, but forgot in South Vietnam) is that
the best way to build institutions for civil self-government in the
long run is to forget about them in the short run.

A polity suddenly accorded complete freedom of expression and popular
power in the absence of peace, law, order, and opportunity may indeed
dissolve into a war of all against all. A polity assured of peace,
law and order, opportunity, at least partial freedom of expression,
by contrast, stands a good chance of acquiring habits of give and
take, compromise, log-rolling, and cooperative human interaction.

The odds of the latter occurring in Iraq are not so long. As Eric
Davis, Director of Rutgers University's Center for Middle Eastern
Studies, instructs us, Iraq boasted a flourishing civil society under
Ottoman Turkish rule, the British mandate after World War I, and the
Hashemite monarchy after World War II. Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims,
Kurds, Christians, and Jews lived in relative peace and celebrated
their common Iraqi citizenship.

Together they protested British rule, formed political parties and
professional associations, practiced freedom of speech and press, and
led the Arab world in many of the arts and sciences. Likewise, far
from being fractured, the Tigris and Euphrates basin was united by
centuries-old commercial bonds stretching from Mosul to Baghdad to
Basra. Only the repressive Ba'athist regimes dating from 1963, 1968,
and especially 1979, when Saddam Hussein seized control, sufficed to
snuff out the Iraqi people's proud, creative civil traditions. No
doubt many years will be needed to resuscitate what Ba'athism ruined,
just as Russians are still recovering from Communism. But
resuscitation is bound to occur once Iraqis are given free air to
breathe.

To ensure that supply of free, healthy air the U.S., British, and
allied authorities must resist the temptation to draft constitutions
overnight and hastily install the whole apparatus of national
government. They must instead work locally, in each community and in
tandem with municipal leaders, to revive law enforcement, utilities,
food and fuel distribution, medical care, and schools, while firmly
suppressing premature challenges made in the name of "democracy."

Coincident with these tasks are de-Ba'athization, which eighty Iraqi
leaders have already endorsed at their initial meeting in Ur, and the
establishment of local monopolies of force through disarmament of all
persons either suspected of Ba'athist sympathies or armed resistance
against coalition forces.

Gradually, once most Iraqis understand they need no longer worry
about their next meal or the safety of family members, neighborhood,
municipal, and regional councils can begin to assume management
roles. Next, these local councils can begin to coordinate transport
and trade with neighboring councils until, in the fullness of time,
they are ready to choose representatives for national councils
empowered to fashion central institutions with delimited authority and
responsibility.

That, after all, was the way Americans did it themselves. As early
as 1759 the thirteen American colonies began to recognize their
common identity and interests. But three decades passed before they
established a constitutional central government and genuine national
unity. They began by establishing local and state governments, then
formed a loose alliance under a weak national committee (the
Continental Congress), then joined a confederation, then pursued
bilateral commercial accords, and finally summoned a Constitutional
Convention. But all that activity was only a matter of state-
building: yet another four decades passed before the triumph
of "Jacksonian democracy" persuaded Americans of their success at
nation-building.

Of course, Americans inherited the rich British traditions of Common
Law, Whig ideology, the Scottish Enlightenment, and limited
parliamentary government. Americans also enjoyed relative immunity
from outside perturbations, which afforded the United States the
leisure to develop its institutions and habits gradually.

Iraq's traditions are tribal with an Ottoman overlay, and Iraq will
enjoy no leisure due to the immediate presence of outside
perturbations by dint of a foreign occupation and its own critical
role in the global oil market. Hence, some design for living will
have to emerge in months or a few years rather than decades. What
needs to be done, therefore, is to design, not a straitjacket or
elegant tuxedo, but rather a comfortable, loose-fitting coat Iraqis
can grow into and re-tailor as needed over time. From what patterns
can a comfortable, malleable Iraqi coat be stitched?

Two likely patterns, which would mesh nicely together, are the Ottoman
Empire's decentralized polity dating from Suleiman the Magnificent in
the 1500's and the United States' centralized market designed by
Chief Justice John Marshall in the early 1800's. Persuading,
cajoling, and bribing Iraqis to mesh those two patterns would go a
long way toward creating the sort of Iraqi national state American
interests require. Such a state would display five key features.

First, an Iraqi state compatible with U.S. interests, regional
stability, and the Iraqis' own pursuit of happiness must be
coterminous with Iraq's existing boundaries. It is tempting to
exploit the current postwar situation to redraw the "artificial"
borders in the Middle East, perhaps even exploit Turkey's failure to
assist the coalition in order to conjure an independent Kurdistan
into existence. But to erase the lines in the sand drawn in the
Treaty of Sevres (1920) and League of Nations Mandates would not only
echo Saddam Hussein's own denunciations of the region's "unjust"
and artificial partition, it would invite an orgy of potentially
violent erasures and redrawing of borders throughout the whole
region. Give the first President Bush credit for this, at least: he
rightly feared the broader consequences of an Iraqi crack-up.

Second, an Iraqi central government compatible with U.S. interests,
regional stability, and the Iraqis' own pursuit of happiness should
wield only limited powers over the old Ottoman Empire's vilayets
(provinces) centered on Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Granting generous
local self-government to the Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the
middle, and Shi'ites in the south would replicate the Ottomans' wise
strategy for holding together a disparate empire by establishing de
facto millets, self-governing communities free to live under their
traditional customs, laws, and religious authorities. The Iraqi
central government, itself a federation with checks and balances,
would be responsible only for defense, foreign affairs, and commerce.

Third, an Iraqi government compatible with U.S. interests, regional
stability, and the Iraqis' own pursuit of happiness must be
acceptable, if not loved, by a substantial majority of the Iraqi
people. If so, the institutions and their personnel would be ipso
facto legitimate. Hence, "government by consent of the governed" must
be the guiding principle, but that principle need not entail "one
man, one vote" all-country elections. Indeed, elections may be the
worst way to establish a Iraqi regime's legitimacy because elections
invite all manner of monkey-business. If that is so in American city,
state, and national campaigns, how much more might Iraqi elections be
sullied by wreckers, demagogues, ideologues, and malcontents eager to
rig, defraud, boycott, or damn the outcome of a national vote, not
least given the Arab penchant for paranoid fantasies, and not least
during a time of foreign military occupation.

However a national cabinet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and constabulary
are cobbled together, the test of their legitimacy will be no more
nor less than whether the great majority of the Iraqi people grant
their authority and comply with their rulings. If so, the new state
will be stable and capable of liberalization over time. If not,
popular elections will only compound the confusion.

Fourth, an Iraq compatible with U.S. interests, regional stability,
and its own people's pursuit of happiness must demonstrate progress
toward a rule of law on the provincial and national levels. The rule
of law, not democracy, is the true cradle of liberty. We already have
reports that many Iraqi police, judges, and lawyers know what it
means to be truly professional and yearn for the chance to practice
their callings within a predictable system of justice. The laws
Iraqis make for themselves may or may not please most Americans, for
instance in issues concerning criminal justice or the role of women
in society. But whether their laws be secular, Muslim, or a mixture
of the two, predictability about civil rights, contracts, and
litigation is imperative if Iraq is to become a country
foreigners "can do business with." Here is where John Marshall comes
in.

His court's seminal decisions about the balance of powers and rights
among individuals, state legislatures, and the central government
were designed to impose clear limits on democratic passions. They
struck down state laws that violated the rights and powers of
individuals, corporations, and the federal government alike, while
recognizing limits on federal authority over states and individuals.

In so doing, Marshall established both a rule of predictable law
and a unified national marketplace in which investment and commerce
could burgeon. Marshall's decisions were by no means "democratic,"
imposed as they were from the bench. But they made democratic
evolution far more likely. That is why economist D. W. MacKenzie
argues that premature democracy in Iraq would probably result in a
brokered "transfer economy" in which growth is stifled and riches a
matter of political clout, whereas a legal regime ensuring an
unfettered national market might, in time, result in democracy.

Fifth and finally, an Iraq acceptable to the United States and
conducive to regional stability and its people's pursuit of happiness
requires a Baghdad regime not hostile, at least, to America and its
allies. It goes without saying that anything less would betray the
coalition's dead and wounded. But how to ensure Iraqi good will?
Given the natural resentment of foreign occupation, given the natural
shame of defeat, given the humiliation suffered by a proud Arab state
at the hands of Christians and Jews, given Kurdish and Shi'ite rage
over the U.S. betrayal of them following the first Gulf War, it would
seem a spontaneously "friendly" regime in Baghdad is an impossible
dream. Nor are hand-picked collaborators the solution since any such
regime would surely violate the third feature noted above:
legitimacy. Hence, the toughest assignment of all for U.S. officials
would seem to be influencing the new Iraq's foreign policy: maybe not
next year, but five or ten years down the road when military
occupation of Iraq and direct control of its oil revenues fade away.

The only long-term means to minimize risks of recidivism in Baghdad
are to maintain a strong deterrent force in the region and to ensure
large numbers of Iraq's secular and clerical leaders have a stake in
the system. It's not a matter of winning hearts and minds (something
Americans aren't good at). It's a matter of buying them off, putting
them on the payroll, or cutting them in on a piece of the action
(things Americans are very good at). The favored Iraqis, in turn,
must be counted on to go forth and do likewise, granting their own
domestic factions a piece of the action so people throughout the
social pyramid have a stake in the system. That, too, echoes an
Ottoman precedent: the mukata'a, or administrative unit in which
every office is associated with a source of revenue.

Corruption of a sort, it also placed limits on corruption and
institutionalized loyalty to the benefit of society at large. Since
the primary coins of the realm will be money and guns, the
institutions most in need of a stake in the system and patronage
along factional lines are the oil ministry and the army. A fair
division of petroleum revenue brokered by coalition diplomats should
not be hard to achieve.

Nor is it impossible to imagine a reconstituted Iraqi military at
peace with the new regime. If one parallel does exist between Iraq
and occupied Germany and Japan, it is war-weariness, suspicion of
elite party units such as Republican Guards, and hatred of
conscription designed to turn youths into corpses. So long as
coalition forces remain in-country or just over the horizon, Iraq does
not need a large army. Nor can the country afford one. Hence, a
modest constabulary of non-Ba'athist professionals who know how to
stay in their barracks should suffice.

Even in the best of circumstances we cannot expect a sovereign Iraq
to be more than a sullen associate of America, Inc. But big sticks,
sweet carrots, and liberty under law may keep them from being openly
hostile.

Morning in Mesopotamia may never dawn. I remain skeptical of state-
and nation-building projects and Operation Iraqi Freedom is the most
ambitious yet undertaken. Still, we have no choice now but to hope
that the sun will rise in the east, all Araby will bask in its glow,
and Iraqis will grasp how fortunate they are that the war Saddam lost
was the one against the United States and not the one with Iran.

SOURCES:
Frederick D. Barton and Bathsheba Crocker, "Winning the Peace in
Iraq," The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2003.
Eric Davis, "Taking Democracy Seriously in Iraq," FPRI E-Notes, March
27, 2003.
Eric Davis, "Baghdad's Buried Treasure," New York Times, April 16,
2003.
Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha, "How to Build a Democratic Iraq,"
Foreign Affairs, May/June 2003.
Peter Galbraith, "The Ghosts of 1991," Washington Post, April 12,
2003.
Adam Garfinkle, "Headache Upon Headache?" National Review, April 21,
2003.
John C. Hulsman and James Phillips, "Forging a Durable Post-War
Political Settlement. in Iraq," The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder,
March 7, 2003.
Robert Kuttner, "The Wolfowitz Doctrine," Boston Globe, April 9, 2003.
Nichoals Lemann, "After Iraq: The plan to remake the Middle East,"
The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2003.
D.W. MacKenzie, "Should Iraq Be Democratized?" Ludwig von Mises
Foundation, April 16, 2003.
Kanan Makiya, "War Diary," The New Republic Online, April 20, 2003.
Colin Powell, "Interview with Charlie Rose of PBS," U.S. Department
of State, April 22, 2003.
Trudy Rubin, "How to Rebuild Iraq the Iraqi Way," Philadelphia
Inquirer, April 13, 2003.
Chris Seiple, "Baghdad Spring," FPRI E-Notes, March 24, 2003.
David M. Shribman, "The Great Challenge Ahead: To Remake Iraq,"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 9, 2003.

Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1528 Walnut Street, Ste 610,
Phila, PA 19102-3684

[Vympel]

Good, long, post.

Written in May 2003 ... it'd be interesting to see what's written in May 2004.

One wonders if the continuous assaults on US troops, the protests etc will die down or just keep going for years on end. One thing though, they need to send the 3rd Infantry Division home and replace it with another.

[Stuart Mackey]

Good, long, post.

Written in May 2003 ... it'd be interesting to see what's written in May 2004.

One wonders if the continuous assaults on US troops, the protests etc will die down or just keep going for years on end. One thing though, they need to send the 3rd Infantry Division home and replace it with another.

Yes they do need to rotate third div out. As to how long this could go..well how long have the Palistinains been playing games for? It all depends on the mood of the populace

[Soontir C'boath]

Very nice and long to read.~Jason

[Oberleutnant]

An interesting read indeed.

[NapoleonGH]

Good, long, post.

Written in May 2003 ... it'd be interesting to see what's written in May 2004.

One wonders if the continuous assaults on US troops, the protests etc will die down or just keep going for years on end. One thing though, they need to send the 3rd Infantry Division home and replace it with another.

Yes they do need to rotate third div out. As to how long this could go..well how long have the Palistinains been playing games for? It all depends on the mood of the populace

it also depends on the spirit of the conquerers. If we act the way the israelis did to the palestinians, then yea this will go on until there are either no more iraqis or no more american troops in iraq. If we actually do as we have promised (i doubt it) and pull out soon or at least act like decent conquerers and provide for the conquered territory's safety from lawlessness, then maybe it will die down.