April 9, 2003

The Political Battles to Come After the War in Iraq

By Rami G. Khouri

  The continuing advance of British and American troops throughout Iraq, especially in the cities of Baghdad and Basra, suggests that the military phase of the attack on Iraq may soon near its end. As expected, the world’s strongest power, along with the 19th Century’s and the 15th Century’s strongest powers, together have overwhelmed the Iraqi regime and its armed forces. Much attention is focused on what happens next politically, especially how the US uses its imminent military control of Iraq to shape the future of that country and of neighboring lands. We shall find out soon enough.

  More significant for the region and the entire world is not what is to come, but what has happened in the past year. It may be too early to know. But it is important to attempt to understand the significance and implications of the manner in which the United States, having massively lost a global diplomatic battle at the UN, marshaled its military might to launch a war against Iraq and sought to change its regime and reconfigure the Iraqi domestic governance system. It is fascinating to debate the technical legalities or illegalities of what the US has done in waging an unprovoked war in defiance of the international consensus and without a formal UN mandate. But the war has been waged, and the technicalities have been damned.

   According to repeated American statements, the US waged war against Iraq because of fears that one day Iraq might develop weapons of mass destruction and supply them to terrorists who would attack the US. Who knows if this is really why the US has hundreds of thousands of troops making war in Iraq. What we do know is that we have just experienced the application of a daring, rather brazen, policy by which Washington feels it can wage preemptive war based on other countries’ presumed and possible threatening future behavior. The doctrine of legitimate self-defense, in Washington’s eyes, has now been expanded to allow one country to attack another based on the strategic equivalent of a hunch.

  Washington has offered other reasons for attacking Iraq and changing its regime, including Baghdad’s record of domestic repression,  promoting democracy in the Middle East, and fully implementing UN resolutions. These are all fine and noble aims, with which no reasonable person could argue. Yet the problem with the American approach is that in trying to promote good governance and the rule of law it denigrates and seriously degrades respect for existing systems of law designed to promote peace and security around the world. Killing to promote life is a morally flawed and politically obtuse policy.

  The precedent being set in Iraq right now is deeply problematic because it replaces the collective rule of law through the United Nations with unilateral militarism dictated by one country. Now that war has been waged against Iraq, this is no longer an unusual idea, but a firm precedent that could long drive US policy around the world. My own feeling is that this sort of ‘preemptive war’ only has to be waged once in order for the point to be made and the policy to be anchored in modern history. The talk of “who’s next after Iraq” is intriguing, but not very functionally relevant; for the US is unlikely to wage war against other states in this area for the same reasons it attacked Iraq. Much as most of us oppose this American policy, a realistic reading of the policy must conclude that the sacking of Baghdad is designed to send signals to all other Middle Eastern and Asian  regimes that the US finds annoying, threatening, distasteful, worrisome, or even just a little strange.

  You don’t have to directly threaten the US to be attacked by the US, according to the new rules of the game now being explained to the world through the televised display of Mesopotamian show-and-tell. If Washington merely suspects that terrorists may one day emerge from your land, or that you might in future threaten your neighbors, you have only two options: you change course and shape up, or you are finished as a governing regime. If you behave as Baghdad behaved – defying the new rules of the game – you suffer the same fate as Baghdad is suffering. Allowing UN inspections means nothing any more, because Washington has sacked the UN and Baghdad at the same time.

  Virtually the entire world has opposed the US on this policy because it makes Washington the effective master of the world, using its immense military power to dictate policies and values to its liking. The strong resistance to US policies we witnessed in recent months is likely to increase significantly in the months to come, as the world absorbs the full implications of what has been happening in Washington and Baghdad since last spring. The anticipated American triumph of military force is very likely to be followed now by a much more complicated political battle, in which the rest of the world tries to confront the US in a different arena. The current contest about who manages and pays for reconstruction in Iraq is the first skirmish in this new political war.