Thursday, September 16, 2004
National Intelligence Estimate: Scenarios for Iraq
Front page news today is a report on what is purported to be the gist of a National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the White House in July. The White House appears to have ignored it, for the Estimate paints a pessimistic picture of Iraq that is described as consisting of three pessimistic scenarios. The most positive scenario is that a democratic system is established after a long and difficult process, accompanied by a great deal of violence. The most pessimistic is that the country will lapse into civil war. What readers of this blog will find interesting is that this intelligence estimate strangely echoes the report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (see blog for September 3) that also lays out three pessimistic scenarios, with the most pessimistic civil war etc. Was the CIA reading the work of the Royal Institute or do great minds simply think alike?
The news from Iraq seems now to be steadily worsening, especially for the Iraqis and their infrastructure. Neither the new Iraqi security services nor the Coalition forces seem to be able to prevent an escalation of daily tragedies. The pipeline system is in tatters, the power grid is easily taken down. Often the Americans come in with high firepower to and achieve yet another pyrrhic victory. More Iraqis are killed or wounded. Some times the civilians believe that the Americans were the real attackers; some times we or the Iraqi government are accused instead of not doing enough to protect the people. Clearly we are not doing enough. Clearly we do not have the forces to do enough. Clearly the Iraqi defense forces are not well enough trained or led to make enough difference.
Meanwhile back in Washington the administration appears to live in a magical world in which saying “democracy” creates “democracy”, and saying “we are winning” is the same as winning. I hope the administration is simply playing this word game until it gets reelected. On the other hand, I hate the thought that the Iraqi insurgents may be the only group that can actually defeat Bush. If this is their objective, they are certainly making a good run at it.
The news from Iraq seems now to be steadily worsening, especially for the Iraqis and their infrastructure. Neither the new Iraqi security services nor the Coalition forces seem to be able to prevent an escalation of daily tragedies. The pipeline system is in tatters, the power grid is easily taken down. Often the Americans come in with high firepower to and achieve yet another pyrrhic victory. More Iraqis are killed or wounded. Some times the civilians believe that the Americans were the real attackers; some times we or the Iraqi government are accused instead of not doing enough to protect the people. Clearly we are not doing enough. Clearly we do not have the forces to do enough. Clearly the Iraqi defense forces are not well enough trained or led to make enough difference.
Meanwhile back in Washington the administration appears to live in a magical world in which saying “democracy” creates “democracy”, and saying “we are winning” is the same as winning. I hope the administration is simply playing this word game until it gets reelected. On the other hand, I hate the thought that the Iraqi insurgents may be the only group that can actually defeat Bush. If this is their objective, they are certainly making a good run at it.
Criticism Useful and Ill-considered
The United States is engaged in a struggle for the extension of freedom in the world at the same time as it tries to rally the responsible states of the world against the threat of al-Qaida. This requires a delicate balancing act, one that appears to be misunderstood in Washington. The first requirement of a free world is respect for basic human rights, not the adoption or maintenance of a political system similar to our own. From this perspective, the Op-Ed by Paul Wolfowitz in today’s paper criticizing the imprisonment of a journalist in Indonesia is praiseworthy. We should stand up for freedom in this context. On the other hand, recent remarks by American leaders about the need for Russia to grant independence to Chechnya or more recently the remarks of Powell, Kerry and other American politicians criticizing Putin’s proposals to change certain aspects of the Russian governmental system are not helpful. Yes, Putin wants to create a more centralized system. But Russia has often been highly centralized. At this juncture what Putin wants to do may be necessary for the health of the state. It ill becomes highly placed Americans who appear to have little concept of how Russia is or should be governed to denounce the suggested changes.
If American leaders want to criticize aspects of Russia’s human rights record, fine. Just as we should accept the criticisms of others of our human rights record. But within very broad limits, their government structure is largely their business, just as the political structure of much more repressive China is the business of the Chinese — and the 2000 voting results in Florida was our business. If American academics want to criticize Putin’s announced changes in order to show solidarity with Russian liberals, fine. But for the foreseeable future we will need to work with the leaders of Russia. What sounds too much like Cold War sniping erodes the basis for future cooperation, whether in intelligence on al-Qaida, in support for adventures such as that in Iraq, or in reaching agreement on economic or environmental issues.
If American leaders want to criticize aspects of Russia’s human rights record, fine. Just as we should accept the criticisms of others of our human rights record. But within very broad limits, their government structure is largely their business, just as the political structure of much more repressive China is the business of the Chinese — and the 2000 voting results in Florida was our business. If American academics want to criticize Putin’s announced changes in order to show solidarity with Russian liberals, fine. But for the foreseeable future we will need to work with the leaders of Russia. What sounds too much like Cold War sniping erodes the basis for future cooperation, whether in intelligence on al-Qaida, in support for adventures such as that in Iraq, or in reaching agreement on economic or environmental issues.
Monday, September 13, 2004
They Don't Love Us
I have recently been looking back over a book that I enjoyed in the past: Theodore H. Van Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization (1987). It is a review of the history of the last few centuries from the standpoint of the effect of Western Civilization on the rest of the world. One of the author’s most interesting theses is the idea that all peoples and cultures and religions try to expand over as much of the world as possible. From this standpoint, he argues that Western imperialism was inevitable. It helped millions and hurt millions. But once it got going no one, neither the imperialists nor those they conquered, could resist it.
His second thesis is that ideological movements such as Fascism and Communism and Maoism and third-world nationalisms of all kinds were essentially reactions against this all-consuming "revolution".
What makes Van Laue’s work germane to our discussion is the evidence that he brings forth that the greatest harm that this revolution did to the rest of the world was to humiliate its peoples. The Chinese even celebrated a "day of humiliation". He points out that the United Nations and the humanitarian efforts of the West are seen by other peoples as all part of the process of devaluing their abilities and contributions. They are ashamed of their poverty and ineffectiveness and poor leadership, but still do not appreciate saviors from the West that would save them from all this. The United States has been particularly enamored of its role in the world as the leader of the West, and has gone beyond this to see its version of Western Civilization as inevitably superior, its democracy the goal of all peoples. In the long run, the Americans may be right. They may only want to help, to bring freedom to enslaved peoples, but too many of these peoples inevitably see this as condescending, devaluing their traditions. This is the essential reason that the cheering in Iraq was so short-lived — and for many never began.
Under his pen the many isms that have bedeviled the world in this century come to be seen as part of the same reactive phenomenon. In the face of the onslaught, a small number in many countries essentially became Westerners, wherever they might live. Small in numbers, these often play a large role in emigré communities (and were the majority of the people the government talked with before the invasion of Iraq). (In some countries such as India this group may become so large and powerful that it can continue to play a major role in the evolving society.) A larger group consist of persons who live their lives caught between the new world opened up by the West and the traditional world with which they still identify. Many of these develop or gravitate to doctrines that mix their own tradition with the imported or imposed tradition. They tend, for example, to accept the ideas of material progress and equality. But they also see the need for rapid change, to “catch up” so that their people can hold up their heads again. Their impatience leads them to understand "democracy" in a Rousseauian sense of the "General Will", discovered in their case by a vanguard class that will unite and lead the society in spite of itself. A "true democracy" is defined as a society in which the people are expected to unanimously acclaim a savior that will lead them out of the wilderness. In this "democracy", political rights and civil liberties as we understand them have little place. People in this group can take this position because the third group in their societies, the great "mass" (which is often a maze of people with local traditions without a concept of a national community or freedom as we understand it) are without the knowledge, experience, or organization that would make possible resistance to the “new order”, whether explained in terms of Nazism, Maoism, Stalinism, Nasserism, or Baathism.
Van Laue’s treatment helps to explain why two groups so different in apparent ideology, the Baath and the Jihadist Muslims, can cooperate together on the task of "expelling the foreigner", or perhaps in another sense, simply "taking down the Americans a notch". The more they seem to succeed, even temporarily, the more they can see themselves as defenders of the honor of the Iraqi people. One could only wish our government planners of the Iraq invasion had spent a little time with this book.
His second thesis is that ideological movements such as Fascism and Communism and Maoism and third-world nationalisms of all kinds were essentially reactions against this all-consuming "revolution".
What makes Van Laue’s work germane to our discussion is the evidence that he brings forth that the greatest harm that this revolution did to the rest of the world was to humiliate its peoples. The Chinese even celebrated a "day of humiliation". He points out that the United Nations and the humanitarian efforts of the West are seen by other peoples as all part of the process of devaluing their abilities and contributions. They are ashamed of their poverty and ineffectiveness and poor leadership, but still do not appreciate saviors from the West that would save them from all this. The United States has been particularly enamored of its role in the world as the leader of the West, and has gone beyond this to see its version of Western Civilization as inevitably superior, its democracy the goal of all peoples. In the long run, the Americans may be right. They may only want to help, to bring freedom to enslaved peoples, but too many of these peoples inevitably see this as condescending, devaluing their traditions. This is the essential reason that the cheering in Iraq was so short-lived — and for many never began.
Under his pen the many isms that have bedeviled the world in this century come to be seen as part of the same reactive phenomenon. In the face of the onslaught, a small number in many countries essentially became Westerners, wherever they might live. Small in numbers, these often play a large role in emigré communities (and were the majority of the people the government talked with before the invasion of Iraq). (In some countries such as India this group may become so large and powerful that it can continue to play a major role in the evolving society.) A larger group consist of persons who live their lives caught between the new world opened up by the West and the traditional world with which they still identify. Many of these develop or gravitate to doctrines that mix their own tradition with the imported or imposed tradition. They tend, for example, to accept the ideas of material progress and equality. But they also see the need for rapid change, to “catch up” so that their people can hold up their heads again. Their impatience leads them to understand "democracy" in a Rousseauian sense of the "General Will", discovered in their case by a vanguard class that will unite and lead the society in spite of itself. A "true democracy" is defined as a society in which the people are expected to unanimously acclaim a savior that will lead them out of the wilderness. In this "democracy", political rights and civil liberties as we understand them have little place. People in this group can take this position because the third group in their societies, the great "mass" (which is often a maze of people with local traditions without a concept of a national community or freedom as we understand it) are without the knowledge, experience, or organization that would make possible resistance to the “new order”, whether explained in terms of Nazism, Maoism, Stalinism, Nasserism, or Baathism.
Van Laue’s treatment helps to explain why two groups so different in apparent ideology, the Baath and the Jihadist Muslims, can cooperate together on the task of "expelling the foreigner", or perhaps in another sense, simply "taking down the Americans a notch". The more they seem to succeed, even temporarily, the more they can see themselves as defenders of the honor of the Iraqi people. One could only wish our government planners of the Iraq invasion had spent a little time with this book.
Iraq: Amazing Continuity
Everyday life continues to go on for a remarkable number of people in Iraq. Today’s paper tells about the government’s distribution of food packets to everyone on the country, a process that has been going on with little or no interruption since 1991. At a cost of about $3.5 billion a year, the bureaucracy manages to continue this practice even in the most war torn areas, such as Falluja. The insurgents no doubt get their packets along with everyone else. Wealthier folk may sell what they do not need, but they are would also resist any attempt to stop the practice. Western economists chafe at the continuation of a practice that promotes continuing dependency and also reduces the motivation for local suppliers, including farmers, to increase production (because following pre-invasion practice, most of the food is imported). The government knows that it is in a bind, but it also knows that its support would be eroded even further were it to tinker with the practice.
Yesterday we read a newspaper account of the continuing desire of many Iraqi merchants to operate in the Iraq market. They often have their shipments stopped or stolen. But as one said, if it is just ordinary highwaymen, they can be bought off with a small sum. If the attackers are extremists, on the other hand, that is more complicated. It means going through the tribal chiefs and requires a larger payment. There was another account of a clothes dealer who was just about to make his annual trip to Italy to purchase the latest fashions for the Iraq market. Many of these people have lost family members, some have had to ransom relatives, some have sent their families to Syria. But they carry on. Apparently property values in downtown Baghdad rose rapidly after the invasion. They have cooled off somewhat now, but are still above pre-attack levels.
Yesterday we read a newspaper account of the continuing desire of many Iraqi merchants to operate in the Iraq market. They often have their shipments stopped or stolen. But as one said, if it is just ordinary highwaymen, they can be bought off with a small sum. If the attackers are extremists, on the other hand, that is more complicated. It means going through the tribal chiefs and requires a larger payment. There was another account of a clothes dealer who was just about to make his annual trip to Italy to purchase the latest fashions for the Iraq market. Many of these people have lost family members, some have had to ransom relatives, some have sent their families to Syria. But they carry on. Apparently property values in downtown Baghdad rose rapidly after the invasion. They have cooled off somewhat now, but are still above pre-attack levels.
