PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ          22^ND JANUARY 2004

By kazi anwarul masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

President Bush’s State of the Union address of 20^th January was not combative in the sense that it did not contain any warning to the UN from becoming irrelevant. But it also contained no appeal to multilateralism except his sarcasm aimed at his critics by saying that US “duties in Iraq must be internationalized” when so many countries from old and new Europe, South East and Far East Asia, South America and others had committed troops to strengthening  the coalition efforts in Iraq. Understandably because of the Iowa caucus of Democratic Presidential nominee hopefuls (won by Senator Bob Kerry) and the coming New Hampshire Primary President Bush’s speech was also directed at the domestic audience illustrated by his challenge to the Congress to complete “some unfinished business on the issue of taxes. On his resolve to fight war on terror he was unambiguous and unrelenting. “For diplomacy to be effective” he said “words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America”. Though he avoided mentioning Al-Qaida- Saddam Hussein links nor the possible imminent use of WMD as casus belli of the Iraq war, President Bush was unwavering in his belief that but for the war Saddam Hussein’s WMD program would have continued, UN weakened because of non-implementation of its resolutions on Iraq, and the “killing fields” of Iraq where thousands of men, women and children had vanished into sands would still have thrived. He was clearly putting forward the argument of American commitment “ to keeping the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes”, and of the doctrines of preemption and humanitarian intervention in Iraq. One could find a theoretical basis among Western jurists and political philosophers for the establishment of a new political and legal structure, a kind of Cosmopolis—in Kelsom’s lexicon a new civitas maxima—replacing the “Westphalian model” as an alternative not simply to international disorder but also to prevent the planet’s destruction. But it is generally accepted that even the unchallengeable supremacy of a nation, as now is the case of the US, almost inevitably gives rise to other power/ powers who tend to oppose the ascendancy of the imperium. This has now been the case with the US with almost universal criticism of its conduct of the Iraq war and the resultant fracture in trans-atlantic alliance, reincarnated by President Bush’s emphatic assertion that “ America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country”. People are hesitant to believe President Bush’s assurance  that American mission is neither to dominate the world nor to build an empire but to establish democratic peace founded upon the dignity of every man and woman. Hesitancy arises from seeing the key people of the Project of the New American Century crowding the upper echelon of Bush administration. In 1996 Richard Perle( till recently Chairman of the Defense Policy Board), Douglas Faith and David Wurmser, now administration officials, advised the newly elected Likud government in Israel to make a clean break with the policies of negotiations with the Palestinians. They further advised weakening and containing Syria and to focus Israel’s attention “ on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq”. They also called for “reestablishing the principle of preemption”. In 1998 a number of prominent conservatives including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Richard Perle( all Bush administration officials) wrote to President Clinton urging him to “aim at removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power”. The Project of New American Century issued in 2000  a report titled “ Rebuilding America’s Defenses” which suggested that the unresolved conflict with Iraq provided the immediate justification for a permanent US role in the Gulf regional security, regime change in Iraq, a permanent presence of US troops in the Gulf “should Saddam Hussein pass from the scene” as “ Iran may prove to be a larger threat”. Immediately after nine-eleven Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz urged President Bush to attack Iraq which was opposed by Colin Powell. Powell won but briefly. Wolfowitz was aided by a blitzkrieg of neo-conservatives—Michael Kelly, Joshua Muavchik, Michael Leeden--- who wrote that change towards democratic government in Iraq and Iran would help launch a democratic revolution in the Middle East. This view was opposed by Carnegie Endowment’s Tom Carothers, a democracy expert, who called the neo-cons call for a “democratic moment” as “a dangerous fantasy”. Tragic results of such fantasy has been well documented by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay( America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy—2003) who wrote that though President Bush’s unilateralist policies produced quick victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, the policies fractured the transatlantic alliance and as a result the global system has become more chaotic and unfriendly and the US is less secure. The two writers added that the deeper problem is that the fundamental premise of the Bush revolution—that America’s security rested on an America Unbound—was profoundly mistaken”. But such wisdom is yet to be comprehended by the neo-cons whose protean construct centers on a belief in the righteousness of American power, muscularity of American action abroad, and confrontation rather than co-existence with then Soviet Union during the Cold War days. This defiance of global opinion was again demonstrated by President Bush in his State of the Union address ably aided, as he is, by Vice-President Dick Cheney, a believer in hard power and aggressive leadership abroad and an opponent to constraint on US ability in the pursuit of her national interests.  It is not surprising, therefore, that Madeline Albright found an unbelievable  tectonic shift in the American foreign and defense policies as had happened in the change from Clinton to Bush administrations, a shift the like of which had never happened in the history of the United States. Similar point was made by Joshua Marshall( Foreign Affairs—Nov/Dec 2003) that rarely in American history has such a cohesive and distinct group managed to exert so decisive an influence on such a crucial issue as the neo-cons did on Iraq from the collapse of the Twin Towers through the early stages of the occupation of Baghdad almost two years later. Acknowledging the fact that it is now open season  to attack President Bush as Democratic party contenders fight it out for the nomination House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s remarks appear to have the weight of reason to the international community committed to fairness and justice. Nancy Pelosi criticized President Bush for leading America “into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of preemptive war unprecedented in our history, and he failed to build a true international coalition”.

If President Bush’s State of the Union address has the flavour of defiance and retains the old refrain of justifying an unlawful war , then why is Colin Powell trying to convince a large part of the international community still recovering from American “shock and awe” that the US had never abandoned the UN path and the multilateral course? Powell strongly asserts( Foreign Affairs—Jan/Feb 2004) that preemption applies only to the undeterred threats that come from non-state actors such as terrorist groups and was never meant to displace deterrence, only to supplement it. He accused the critics of the doctrine of preemption of distortion “using their own mottled political histories as a reference point”. He claims partnership to be the watch word of the Bush administration which is determined to develop cooperative relations with the world’s major powers and to affirm the vital role of NATO and other  alliances including the UN. In his article Powell chronicles the repeated efforts of the Bush administration to go to the UN as “indeed it would have been a departure from policy not to go to the UN”. One, however, has to take Colin Powell’s claim of love for the UN with a pinch of salt. Franco-German disenchantment, Kofi Anan’s reminder to President Bush that only the UN can provide the unique legitimacy of action that no other body can, Hans Blix’s harsh criticism of US officials and almost universal chorus of condemnation of the Anglo-US unjust war are not matters of distant history. Nor is the US refusal to give the UN the central role in post Saddam Iraq. It is, therefore, understandable if Kofi Anan is cautious about the request from the Iraqi governing council and the Coalition Provisional authority to step into the Iraqi quagmire. As the Bush administration has decided to handover power to some sort of Iraqi government by 30^th June(the coalition troops can stay indefinitely) Kofi Anana has to advise if elections are possible before the “transfer of power” to the Iraqis, and if not,  advise on the alternatives. The problem which the occupation authorities and the UN will have to face is the insistence by Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s version of Ayatollah Khomeini on one-man-one-vote direct election to the Constituent Assembly (sixty per cent Iraqis are Shiites). In his view the American plan to choose members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly is a model of concision and does not guarantee the establishment of an assembly that truly represents the Iraqi people. In the face of opposition from other Shiite Ayatollahs, ten years of autonomy enjoyed by Kurds which has meant de-facto separation, enfranchisement of the shia majority which may horrify the greater Sunni Muslims  (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) including the Iraqi Sunnis who were living an Orwellian nightmare during Saddam regime; Paul Bremmer would be better advised to act less “Promethean” if the trust of the Iraqis and the Arab world is to be regained.

Given the complexity of the Iraq problem one is tempted to believe the critics from amongst the Bush administration that the hawks had focused far more attention on how to win the war than on how to contain the problem in post-war Iraq. As it is “democracy deficit” is more readily accepted in Islamic countries because overt support for democracy in Muslim countries is not a sufficient condition for democratic institutions to emerge. Cultural factors like trust between political opponents, social tolerance of different groups, economic development, popular support of gender equality, freedom of speech and popular participation in decision making are essential for success of democracy. For Bush administration to have even a modicum of success in Iraq it will have to take the Arabs seriously and not try to propagate the Middle East Partnership Initiative with a budget of less than thirty million dollars for women’s’ rights and civil society support, education and development programs and stop/improve on the telecast of  “shared values” TV documentaries when the realities faced by the Muslim on US soil are reported to be undignified and discriminatory. Only future would tell if the Bush administration’s  Iraqi adventure was timely even if one were to concede President Bush’s claim “for all who love freedom, the world without Saddam Hussein’s regime is a better and safer place”. One would, however, wish the occupation forces well if they can return  Iraq to the Iraqis where they themselves would be empowered to chart out their own future.