The Perils of Paul

Today in New York, Paul Bremer will have Chibli Mallat with his cornflakes, and he may not like the taste. The Lebanese lawyer has penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times wondering whether Bremer's efforts to get greater UN help in Iraq are wise. He writes:

Having come under increasing pressure over its plan to form an Iraqi government without direct elections, the United States is counting on greater United Nations involvement both to help ease the resistance and secure a lasting democracy.

Beyond the involvement of additional stakeholders like France and Germany, can a more determined role on the part of the United Nations translate into government-building? Considering the organization's dismal record of silence during Saddam Hussein's 30 years of totalitarian rule, I'm not so sure.

What does Mallat propose? A domestic Iraqi solution, whereby:

The way forward, then, is simple. The 10 members of the governing council whom I met with agree on this: the council, as a national unity government, should be unconditionally recognized as in charge of Iraq's destiny, with the support of the United States-led coalition and whoever else wishes to join in a democratic course of reconstruction.

As such, the council would be deemed the official interim government of Iraq ? making the United States plan to select a national assembly by July 1 unnecessary. The council would be empowered to draft a constitution and set the parameters for what a new government would look like and when and how it would be elected. In the long term, this would consolidate the whole process of democracy ? something Iraqis both in and outside the council want.

Comments

[R. C. Dean]

Pinochet's Chile, maybe?

We didn't invade Chile, occupy it, and create a new government, so I don't think it counts as nation-building. We supported the regime change, but didn't need to help them build a liberal democratic society - they already had most of that, and just needed to get rid of the Marxist gasbag.

Cuba

Although we would dearly love to see regime change in Cuba, we haven't made it happen because of our reluctance to, you know, invade. Again, no nation-building there. Kind of hard on the Cubans, I know, but thats realpolitik for you.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is quite a bit better off than it was, although we didn't really do any nation-building there, either. We supported regime change, but didn't invade, occupy, etc. Nicaragua is no longer exporting Marxist revolution, which was our main concern. All told, I think Nicaragua counts as a success.

Panama

Awright - finally, a nation where we created regime change via invasion! Not sure what happened next, bu maybe s. m. can let us know how much worse off the Panamanians are now than under Noriega.

Dominican Republic?

What did we ever do to the DR? I mean, I buy their cigars, but did we invade, occupy, etc.? Did we even support a regime change there?

The restoration of the Shah?

Now I know s. m. is in some kind of alternate universe. Here on Earth, the Shah was never restored. To date, we have not blessed the Iranians with an invasion and regime change. No doubt they are better off under the mullahs, eh, s. m.?

Dropping off Aristide and waving goodbye at the port?

I'll give you this one, s. m. - our UN-style efforts at nation-building in Haiti blow big time.

In short, I see no record of failed US efforts to compare with what the UN has done in "Palestine," Timor, and the Balkans.

[Andrew]

Duh! In the back of my mind, I KNEW I was missing something. This thing is all about the census of eligible voters. And LIbertarians own (pratically) the most UN-PC, and at the same time, most manifestly sensible comments ever made on the topic...from John Stuart Mill.

Mill posited that citizens who were net contributors to the State, tax-payers employed (or living on savings) in the private sector, should "own" policy: be qualified to vote. Citizens who are net beneficiaries of the State-- welfare dependents (including Seniors and farmers, nowadays) and government employees should be disqualified from voting. An exception could be argued for soldiers, cops and other emergency personnel...but only if they cannot openly participate in politics (as in most Western societies) AND lose the right to collective bargaining (sadly, not the case with cops).

One thing a government does efficiently, is take a census of its own tax-payers!

The Google-artists can find some great quotes, I am sure.

[Jean Bart]

Democracy via oligarchy? 🙂

[Jean Bart]

A Muslim cleric who wrote a book that advised men how to beat up their wives without leaving incriminating marks has been sentenced by a Spanish court.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3396597.stm

[s.m. koppelman]

Mr. Dean, you may want to avail yourself of some history prior to the Nixon administration.

Pinochet's Chile was liberal and democratic?

Chile's democratic again as of the last few years, but it's notable that the first free elections there since we helped overthrow the elected Allende government in 1973 brought broad victories by the heretofore suppressed left.

The U.S. did restore the Shah to power in Iran. It was 1953, after toppling the elected government headed by Mossadegh, whose cardinal sin was moving to nationalize the oilfields which were managed at the time by American and European companies.

Castro didn't come to power in a vacuum. You may recall that Cuba was a Spanish territory until the US took it in 1898. The US Marines and Navy then spent decades hopping on and off the island installing and reinstalling governments.

I wasn't talking about Nicaragua in the 1980s--though that's a fun topic, too. I was talking about 1909, when we sent in the Marines to overthrow president Jose Santos Zelaya because he'd contracted with Germany and Japan to construct a canal to compete with the one the US was putting in Panama. Oh, and there was 1926 when we sent in some more Marines. And 1934 when the US-administered Nicaraguan National Guard had former leftist rebel and then Liberal presidential candidate Augusto Sandino assassinated, followed by the installation of Somoza as dictator.

The US invaded the Dominican Republic and ousted a few pretty bad governments in 1906, 1912, and 1965. The US occupied the country outright for eight years starting in 1916, then two decades later finally tried a a hands-off policy -- toward the Trijillo dictatorship.

[alma hadayn]

The key phrase here is "in the long term" - his proposal amounts simply to postponing Iraqi democracy until some indefinite point in the future, as there is no sense in which a government handpicked by military occupiers can be considered democratic.

[Gene Berkman]

R.C. Dean argues that we never restored the Shah to his throne in Iran, because the Mullahs are still in power.

In fact,the CIA restored the Shah to power in 1952, at the behest of the British government. The elected government of Iran under Prime Minister Mossadegh had nationalized the British share in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, so the British wanted Mossadegh out of power.

BTW, the British had already nationalized their share, so the Iranian government was taking property from the British government, not private owners. But the CIA involvement in the Iranian coup of 1952 is the reason Iranians took such an anti-American after the revolution of 1979.

[Andrew]

This probably would be the simplest approach, and the Iraqis could presumably call another constituent assembly if they were really unhappy with the US-sponsored draft...but after the first cycle of elections, I doubt they would have a real incentive to, if it was a majoritarian constitution-- the winners in the first round would have no incentive to invalidate the results, and the losers, by definition, wouldn't command majorities.

[alma hadayn]

"The regime in Teheran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people, or lose its last claim to legitimacy."

That was the American President, talking about the regime which rode to power on a wave of popular anger at the dictator the CIA installed because it didn't like the democratcally elected government.

[Ruthless]

This is only about Bush washing his hands of Iraq before the election. He's doing it by appearing to take Democrats' advice to go to the UN. He's hoisting them on their petards. Even if Iraq goes completely to hell, which it will, it will be under the radar for Bush's election purposes.

[kuros]

why we will leave Iraq

"Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt."

Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138

[s.m. koppelman]

I sort of like the idea of giving the Governing Council sovereignty. But how will it guarantee that they'll ever get around to writing a constitution of any kind, or scheduling elections? Isn't there a real possibility that they'd just divvy up the country among themselves and become permanent warlords? It's worth exploring, but it's in no way a "simple" solution.

My bigger issue is with the dismissive shrug toward the UN. It's not as though the UN sat on its hands during the decades of Baathist rule in defiance of a principled stand by the US government or NATO. During the 1980s, when Iraq was indeed using banned chemical weapons against Iran and against its own Kurdish population, the US was among the regime's supporters. Something about being a valued partner in oil production, an OPEC member in good standing and a secularist bulwark against Iran's theocratic dictatorship. Besides, take away the chemical weapons use -- condoned by the US and others at the time -- and it's hard to see how Iraq stood out from the other oppressive police states that line the Middle East.

From the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War onward, it's not as though the UN was resisting an American call for Saddam's removal. The UN backed exactly the war the US asked for, one to roll back Iraqi expanisionism, put the Kurds under international protection and contain and disarm Iraq.

UN supervision doesn't strike me as any worse than the status quo. Blue helmets carry less imperialist baggage, and a peacekeeping transitional force that includes the new beneficiaries of Iraq oil and public works contracts (the US and UK) alongside the beneficiaries of the contracts that got torn up (France and Russia) might be a little less suceptible to corruption on the ground.

[R. C. Dean]

From the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War onward, it's not as though the UN was resisting an American call for Saddam's removal.

Except for that part last year where they, you know, resisted American action to remove Saddam.

The UN backed exactly the war the US asked for, one to roll back Iraqi expanisionism, put the Kurds under international protection and contain and disarm Iraq.

I'm not sure this was the war the Americans asked for, or if this was the only war the UN would back, and so the first Bush administration settled for it. So, it could well be the case that the first Bush administration tried to remove Saddam, and the UN refused to go that far, agreeing only to a war that would leave Saddam in power. Any historians out there with some insight into how the first Gulf War came together?

UN supervision doesn't strike me as any worse than the status quo.

Except for the utterly dismal UN record in nation-building. The problem with the UN is that it has every incentive to not solve the problem - a solved problem doesn't employ UN bureaucrats, after all. The US has every incentive to solve the Iraqi problem and get the hell out of their internal affairs.

[Mark Bahner]

"As such, the council would be deemed the Wussies! official interim government of Iraq ? making the United States plan to select a national assembly by July 1 unnecessary. The council would be empowered to draft a constitution and set the parameters for what a new government would look like and when and how it would be elected."

Why does the Governing Council think someone needs to "empower" them to write a Constitution? Why don't they just draft one right now? (The answer to this question is, as S.M. Koppelman points out, that what the Governing Council REALLY wants is for someone to hand them power without any responsibility.)

It should take about 2 days to draft a Constitution, at maximum. Just go with the U.S. Constitution, but include improvements, like:

1) Twelve-consecutive-year term limits for Senators and Representatives, requiring them to sit out 6 years, before they can come back to the same position,

2) Eighteen year term limits for Supreme Court judges (with nominations staggered at 2-year intervals, so that every Presidential term gets 2 Supreme Court nominations),

3) Add a federal spending cap, equal to 10% of GDP,

4) Absolutely prohibit the President from using federal troops in foreign lands, unless a Congressional declaration of war specifically against the government of the country to which the troops are sent has been issued,

etc. etc.

It's really simple. If the Council would ALREADY have a Constitution drafted (that a majority of them agree on), that draft would become the de facto standard against which other constitutional drafts would be compared.

As the Nike commercial says, "Just do it."

P.S. I've already drafted an Iraqi constitution, which I'd be happy to send to the Council, free of charge. I'll try to post my draft Iraqi constitution on my weblog this week:

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/

P.P.S. S.M. Koppelman writes, "I sort of like the idea of giving the Governing Council sovereignty. But how will it guarantee that they'll ever get around to writing a constitution of any kind, or scheduling elections? Isn't there a real possibility that they'd just divvy up the country among themselves and become permanent warlords?"

Absolutely! It's a probability, not a possibility. They will NOT "get around" to writing a constitution of any kind, because if they really cared about writing a constitution of any kind, they ALREADY would have done it. They are interested in getting power handed to them, without any responsibility attached.

[s.m. koppelman]

I never said the UN does a good job of nation-building. I just said they'd likely be an improvement on the US-UK alliance.

Is the US any good at this? Sure, 50-odd years ago we did a pretty good job in Germany and Japan after a rocky start, but are there other successes? Pinochet's Chile, maybe? Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama or the Dominican Republic? The restoration of the Shah? Dropping off Aristide and waving goodbye at the port?

We sure did a bang-up job in those places. Yes, sir.

[Jean Bart]

R.C. Dean,

"Except for the utterly dismal UN record in nation-building."

In comparison to what? The utterly dismal record of the U.S. As I understand, the U.N. has directed and controlled exactly one nation-building project - East Timor. Don't give on a project only a few years old.

[Jean Bart]

R.C. Dean,

The CIA restored the Pahlavis to power in the 1950s.

Cuba was an American protectorate (indeed occupied) for many years.

The U.S. has occupied Haiti on several occassions and run the government there.

The U.S. occupied and ran Nicaragua for several decades prior to WWII.

The U.S. has occupied and ran the Dominican Republic on several occassions.

The Phillipines were an American colony until 1945.

Indeed, it seems that the greatest curse for a Latin American state is for it to have been occupied, etc. by the U.S. (if there is a causal connection between the two).

None of these nation-building projects were very successful (indeed, the U.S. is currently trying to supress a Muslim liberation movement in the Phillipines against a people it committed genocide against in 1898); some have led to ever darker nightmares (Haiti). The U.S. was involved in two successful projects (aside from its own development) - Germany and Japan. Nations, which though conquered, were already highly developed technologically, culturally, etc.

[Jean Bart]

BTW, the British, French, Spanish, Portugese, etc. records regarding nation-building are also dismal disasters - despite what some apologists for imperialism say.