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Short-term gain, long-term
pain
By David Isenberg
As
United States military forces ready themselves for the
imminent invasion of Iraq, the world is focusing on the
forthcoming fighting. People are preparing to tally the
consequences in terms of people killed and injured,
buildings and infrastructure destroyed, refugees
generated, environmental damage. But there are other
costs that need to be considered, namely the regional
fallout, according to a recent report from the Royal
Institute of International Affairs in London.
The report "Iraq: the regional fallout" notes
that Iraq has been kept together by militaristic rule, a
cult of personality, manipulation of internal ethnic and
sectarian divisions, anti-imperialism and competition,
not to mention war with Iraq's neighbors. "A war for
regime change in Iraq will either break this mould and
risk chaos, or end up reinventing the same formula for
ruling Iraq which has prevailed hitherto."
All
of Iraq's neighbors stand to suffer significant
disruptions in the coming war. For example, Syria now
depends of the hard currency derived from oil exports,
using smuggled Iraqi oil to meet domestic consumption.
Under UN dispensation, Jordan has received oil supplies
from Iraq at less than half the market price. When this
is lost, Jordanians will be obliged to buy energy at
commercial rates, which it can ill-afford.
Similarly, despite the economic aid package
Turkey has been negotiating with the United States, its
economy, already in recession, will be hit hard by war.
The revenue it receives for transporting Iraqi oil to
the Mediterranean will be interrupted. And, as seems
possible, were Iraqi Kurds to seek formal independence
during the war Turkey would likely intervene in northern
Iraq to prevent that from happening. In fact, according
to recent press accounts, thousands of Turkish troops
are already in northern Iraq.
And war will
undoubtedly increase the price of oil. Turkey has a
large energy deficit and is a significant net oil
importer. It is not capable of handling either a larger
energy bill or its inflationary consequences.
And though Iran is no supporter of Saddam
Hussein, it may well see his ouster as another step in
its encirclement by US military forces and client
states, or Phase Two in the Bush administration's
campaign against the axis of evil.
Ironically,
the report finds that the consequences of a coup against
Saddam, an admitted long shot that is nevertheless
frequently portrayed as a welcome outcome, to be
anything but. It would leave the Bush administration
with the smallest amount of influence over the new Iraqi
government and Iraqi society. The report notes:
"One of the benefits of a new military
government from the perspective of George Bush would be
its ability to guarantee order and stability in Iraq. To
do this it would have to resort to exactly the same
methods as the Ba'ath regime of Saddam Hussein;
violence, patronage and oil wealth. Societal divisions
and the illegitimacy of the state would be further
exacerbated.
"In the medium to long term, the
chance of the regime stability would not be great. The
new rulers of Iraq would have to demand the loyalty of
the officer corps and heads of the security services.
They would inherit the levers of power that Saddam
Hussein has used to rule Iraq, but could not be expected
to use them with the knowledge and skill that Saddam has
developed since taking power in 1979. The incidence of
coup attempts would hence be expected to rise
dramatically as other equally ambitious generals would
deploy their own army and Republican Guard divisions to
seize power."
And, a population bitterly
disappointed by a regime change that perpetuated
dictatorial rule, as well as let down by the United
States and the international community, might cause
Iraqi public opinion to coalesce around violent radical
Islamism.
Even the ideal situation from the US
perspective, a short war, has its problems. As the
report notes, it can be persuasively argued that US
problems with Iraq would really begin the day after the
ceasefire.
To start with, the US is not known
nowadays for its ability to stick things out for the
long haul. Plus the Bush administration is increasingly
focused on the coming reelection campaign. Thus it may
adopt a "minimalist approach". As the report puts it,
"Once the war has been won the altruistic explanation
for US involvement in Iraq will have to compete with a
US economy to possible recession and a US public very
sensitive to further casualties. The long term, costly
and ambitious reform of Iraq may well be sacrificed to
the short term electoral politics of the United States."
Also, there is a geopolitical dimension that has
not been openly discussed. The overthrow of Saddam is
key to the emerging "Bush Doctrine". In the aftermath of
September 11, 2001 the goal of this doctrine is the
suppression of all terrorist activity from the
developing world and preventing the acquisition by other
states of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. By
removing Saddam, America is clearly signaling the
lengths to which it will go to achieve this key foreign
policy goal. Thus, the subsequent internal workings of
an Iraqi government are of little interest to the United
States. As a result, reform of Iraq's governing
structures will receive little US attention, leaving
Iraq as a potential source of violence, instability and
weapons of mass destruction procurement in the medium to
long term.
In terms of Iraq's neighbors, the
mere preparations for war, according to the report, have
already had severe consequences. US-Saudi relations, for
example, are strained to breaking point, as the military
buildup has demonstrated the both the liability and the
dispensability of Saudi Arabia, given its non-committal
stance.
The report sees Jordan as particularly
vulnerable. Likely consequences for it include coping
with a refugee crisis, loss of trade with and oil from
Iraq, leading to a recession; flare-up on the
Israeli-Palestinian front, public outrage leading to
violent demonstrations, and new recruits for militant
groups dedicated to attacking US interests in Jordan.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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