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January 09, 2005

Economic Horses, Political Carts

I'm going to go out on a limb which makes sense for my as a conservative, but perhaps not so much as a patriot. This may be understandable in light of my new international context, although it sounds counter-intuitive.

As I am reading a little bit at a time in Kishore Mahbubani, I find he suggests that economics is more important that politics. Well on the surface this sounds perfectly obvious, until you consider what most of us Neocons believe, which is that Western structural reforms in politics are a necessary precondition to the success of a modern nation. I'm trying to disaggregate all of that thing called 'democracy' or 'western style democracy' into component parts, because theres a real clincher when one considers the implications in Iraq.

If indeed the Global Capitalist in me is right, then taking some cues from ubiquitous war critics, we should have paid the Iraqi Army to stay together. By completely undermining the possiblity of elections and establishing some kind of military junta in Iraq, we very well may have avoided the kind of subversion that goes on today. I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that the Iraqi Army was perfectly capable of suppressing any domestic insurrection under Saddam Hussein. So what if, having routed them and decapitated their leadership, we made offers and efforts to control them via the purse strings?

First, let me phrase this strategy as a criticism of the anti-war partisans, not that I think they have a particularly compelling case. It is the fact that we have insisted on democracy that allows the 'quagmire' to occur. It is indeed the promise of freedom and liberty as we Americans understand it, that has been primary in our approach, damn the cost. If we wanted to quickly establish control and suppress any insurgency and get American troops back home as soon as possible and save our money, then the answer would have obviously been to establish a new military regime in Iraq instead of a democratic one, which obviously needs time to develop - the very time we are taking at some expense.

Since the average Iraqi makes something on the order of $100 per year, we could have easily financed Iraqi Contras and had our paymasters run things. There's no drug trade, no other easy way for an Iraqi military to make money, so we could have been the sole provider. This has been, to my way of thinking, the way the CIA has been doing things for the past 30 years, at least. Nothing new in this idea. One question would be whether such a move could stand domestic scrutiny.

If there is anything that is perfectly clear about the current rebellion, it is that much of it is run by non-Iraqis and all of the so-called 'insurgents' are calling for a boycott of the upcoming election. They don't want democracy, they want power in the new Iraq. But there is no back-door way to power in the Iraq we want to see. What we want are transparent elections, a modern constitutional democracy and free markets. But that's why everything we are doing there is going to take so long, if we would have just bought and paid for it, the job would be a lot closer to finished.

I must add that it has long been my suspicion of the quick victory over Baghdad that we paid off many senior generals in the Iraqi Army, and that they took their men out of the fight. But I think we have lost many or some of them to the rebellion once we dismantled the Army completely. Those who were too young to figure out how to graft a living in Iraq were most likely candidates for rebellion. Who could wait to be paid again?

Our ability to carry out such a mercenary agency is not a given. But to put economics before politics would have led to this being a strongly positioned strategy. As I engage the subject henceforth I will consider that option more. Some of you may recall that I saw GWBush as an improper emperor, and that a more imperial strategy might have better served our long term interests. Hitch and I see eye to eye on that. But if GW is anything, he is sticking to his ideological guns which are the expansion of democratic rule and liberty in the American mold. He has insisted on giving the Arab world the benefit of that doubt, and taken any intransigence on that matter as ethnically chauvinist at best. Despite the obvious geopolitical advantage of ridding the Middle East of Saddam, he has wanted to go one better by doing it for the sake of politics.

Many may continue to read other ulterior motives in this war, but I think GW of all people knows he doesn't have the economic nose for a good deal on getting oil. But for the sake of liberty, he can spend. Unfortunately he doesn't have half this country's goodwill to spend, and must rely even more on his ideological inertia.

Democracy is very expensive. Then again, we could have done it the Contra way.

Posted by mbowen at January 9, 2005 08:10 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Xrlq at January 9, 2005 11:45 PM

Posted by: Scott at January 10, 2005 10:49 AM