by John Ferris

All along, the real question about the Iraq war of 2003 was, “what do you do when you win?”. The Bush administration never posed this question to the American public before the war; even worse, it had no answer in private. It believed this war would be won easily, military victory would produce political success without unintended consequences, while Iraqis would view Americans as liberators, rather than as enemy to their enemy. So, the Bush administration won its war but not the peace. It did not achieve the aims it pursued. It did not intend the consequences it caused.

The United States proved strong enough to destroy a regime Iraqis could not overthrow, yet too weak to impose its will on them. It did not understand the politics of Iraq, hence it could not control them. Immediately and increasingly, Iraqis had more influence than Americans on the politics which determined what victory meant. The Bush administration hoped to make of Iraq a shining minaret on a hill; it found itself dickering over the price of carpets in the Baghdad suk. It became a prisoner of Iraqi politics.

In Iraq today, war is not a continuation of politics by other means--it is politics; and politics is war. The questions are, what kind of war and what kind of politics? One must answer these questions accurately in order to understand this war, or to win it. This is not a war of national liberation--if it was, the United States would have lost by now. Left wing critics see this as a colonial issue, and believe, like Tariq Ali, that in Iraq only “neo-liberal” puppets or “janissary politicians” can cooperate with Washington. In fact, the United States is intervening in a civil war which it unleashed without planning to do, in a context of decolonization, where a retreating imperial state tries to transfer its power to a local faction willing to work with it and able to maintain stability. This explains why so many Iraqis are willing to cooperate with the United States. They see it as an evil, but just a little one, and necessary to boot. They cannot get home without it.

Meanwhile for Washington, the problem is less its’ declared enemies than the friends those foes deny it, or force it to embrace. The point is not how many Iraqis are shooting at Americans, but how few, and how divided. The resistance is split between ex-Baa’thist officers, Shi’ite politicians, jihadists and opportunists. They fight each other as much as they do the United States, and their resistance often is a form of politics. By fighting American forces at the Inam Ali shrine in Najaf last year, Muqtadr al Sadr tried not so much to drive out the Americans, as to increase his political influence within the Shi’ite community. He achieved some of that aim; and now his political allies claim they are willing to work with the Americans, whom they want to stay in Iraq for another year. So too, the shadowy figures behind the bombing campaign in Iraq have been too weak to destroy a government, or create one. All they could do is slaughter civilians, especially Shi'ites, so to punish them and drive that community to violence of its own which would destabilise Iraq and perhaps cause them to break with Washington. Instead, the Shi'ites kept their eyes on the prize and seized it.

Like the United States, the guerrillas failed to achieve their aims, but their actions had great unintended effects. These should be measured not in casualties, but in politics. The problem is not that Sunni Arabs shot Americans; it is that they refused to cooperate with Washington’s efforts to reconstruct Iraq. In order to achieve its aims, the United States had to conduct war and politics at the same time: to destroy its enemies while avoiding unnecessary harm to neutrals, to find new friends who could do it good and to ditch old ones who could not. The point of fighting Sunni Arab guerrillas was not just to defeat them, but to bring their community into its politics; a tricky task, which failed, unfortunately for both parties—it weakened both Sunni Arabs and Americans.

Meanwhile, by sapping American public willingness to stay the course, the guerrillas strengthened the leaders of the politically most powerful elements of Iraq, including the Shi’ite and Kurdish communities. They, not the guerrillas, are the real resistance to the United States, doubly effective because they are smart enough to fight where the Americans are weak, rather than strong: with politics, not bullets. By cooperating with the United States, they have co-opted it. These leaders are not American puppets—they are the puppeteers. They, and their communities, are winning the war lost by Saddam, the guerrillas, and George Bush. The real resistance to Washington is not military, but political, and comes from its allies rather than its enemies.

In effect, the United States did the fighting for the Shi’ites of Iraq and then gave them a veto over American policy. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the main leader of that community, usually is regarded as a quietist, who favours a division between religion and politics, and regards the Islamic theocracy of Iran as a heresy. Perhaps so, but he knows his politics. Last year he defeated American attempts to control the political process in Iraq and took control of the agenda. Then, by exploiting American rules, the Shi'ites took over the government. They have everything to gain from making it work, their way.

The Americans have something to gain from working with them, and only one other choice—to withdraw from Iraq, and watch it explode, perhaps splitting into three states, Shi’ite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish. Either step, alas, would spread war and instability from Iraq to the Middle East as a whole, and possibly force the United States into later and greater interventions from a weaker position. Even today, it confronts the question of whether it, or Israel, will destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. Washington cannot impose just any government in Baghdad, nor prevent the Shi’ites from dominating most or all of Iraq. It is, however, strong enough to help put a decent and stable regime in power. Its interests lie in doing so.

Not that such a regime will be easy to establish. Any attempt to do so will confront armed resistance, popular opposition from 18% of the population, the Sunni Arabs and weaknesses in the security forces. The present Iraqi Interior Minister, Falal al-Naquib, expects these forces to handle security fully within 18 months. This target seems optimistic. The Iraqi government’s security forces number 80,000, with 40,000 more in the pipeline. Of these, one expert, Anthony Cordesman of The Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes only 12,000 have “any kind of meaningful training and equipment”, and just 2—3000 could withstand a serious attack without direct American support. Still, these personnel are rising in number, while their training is adequate, if rudimentary: one question on the graduation examination for policemen, for example, asks, “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person is a) torture; b) interview techniques; c) interrogation techniques; d) informative and reliable”. 6,000 Iraqi policemen graduate each month after eight weeks of training; not dramatically below the Canadian norm of five months, much of which focuses on bureaucratic and legal procedure. The real issue is whether their willingness to do their job, and popular attitudes toward security, will change now that Iraqis own the regime--whether Shi’ites and Kurds will support the defeat of people slaughtering them. Meanwhile, armed opposition is small and split. Current American estimates define it as including 5000-7000 ex-Baa’thist fighters, some 1000 in the al-Qaida Organisation for War in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and another 500 foreign jihadists. The Baa’thist resistance represents a community and its actions will depend on relations between Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs—the outcome may be peace, or war to the death. The jihadists, conversely, are out for blood, because they regard Shi’ites and Americans as anathema, and hope to spark a real civil war. What they may do is drive Americans and Shi’ites together—nothing makes better friends than a common enemy.

The real problem in Iraq is the need to create a new system of politics, which will determine who does what to whom. This can have only three outcomes—partition, imposition of Shi'ite rule through force, or a remarkable and simultaneous willingness to share power between suspicious ethnic communities. Here are grounds for pessimism. Iraqis, inexperienced in mass politics, are in a revolution. Such conditions create chaos. The Shi’ites act as a bloc, out to escape marginalisation and mistreatment and to dominate Iraq, all at Sunni Arab expense. Sistani made voting in the election a religious obligation. Spokesmen for the Shiite clerical leadership, the marijiya, insist that Iraq must have an Islamic identity and be dominated by the-- Shiiite--majority, yet they also claim to oppose theocratic government and to favour compromise with other communities. So too, some Sunni Arab leaders recently have claimed to be willing to cooperate with the new regime. The Americans cannot affect this issue. That is the measure of their failure since the fall of Baghdad.

Obviously, matters still could go tragically wrong in Iraq--simply envisage what would happen if Sistani were assassinated--but there is a reasonable chance they will become rather good, for Iraqis. The war has ended their problems of the past 15 years, sanctions and Saddam. With luck, a stable regime will emerge, perhaps the best they have known in modern history--scarcely a hard target to reach. It will be dominated by Shi’ites, but not by Iran. Who could have thought the United States would go to war so to give Ayatollahs power in Iraq? but sometimes, old enemies make the best of friends.

Perhaps against their will, the Americans have been forced to become what they always said they would be—liberators. If so, they will get little credit for any improvements in Iraq, or gain much from sustaining the regime, but at least their actions there will no longer fuel Arab hatred. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq has taught the United States humility and its enemies fear. These are good things. It cannot be loved in the Middle East; better be hated and feared, than hated and dissed. In any case, for years to come, Iraq will cost the Americans. For the next five years, perhaps 20% of its army combat forces may be tied down in Iraq, which will compromise any attempt to take a hard line with Iran. Washington wants to make Iran end its nuclear programme, but Teheran has a powerful bargaining position—it easily can cripple American efforts to stabilise the West Bank or Iraq. The Middle East is a tar baby. The US is trapped in it, alongside ayatollohs.

Endnotes
1 Tariq Ali, “The Iraqi elections were designed not to preserve the unity of Iraq, but to re-establish the unity of the west”, The Guardian, 7.2.05
2  Iraq Election Preview, January 26, 2005, Center for Strategic and International Studies,  www.CSIS.org
3 Rory Carroll, “Meet the men who Britain and the US hope will take over the battle against Iraqi insurgents-if they live long enough”, The Guardian, 4.2.05.

4 Barbara Starr, “Official: 13,000—17,000 insurgents in Iraq”, 9.2.05, www.CNN.com

by Alexander Moens

Participating with the Americans in national missile defence is a common sense, low-cost, and low risk choice for Canadian defence policy. Alas, Ottawa’s footdragging on this decision is turning it into a growing bilateral sore point. Picture the problem from the American perspective. Suppose a missile from Iran or North Korea targeted for an American city was slightly of course. Without a doubt, the American president would order the missile to be intercepted before it would fall on Canadian territory. Now you would think that Canada would be eager to pay 10% or less for the radar facilities and other infrastructure to benefit from this layer of protection that we could never afford ourselves. Rather not. Instead, many Canadian opinion makers and political party leaders worry about the viewpoints of Moscow and Beijing, the impact on arms control and disarmament treaties, and the future of outer space. Having set the public on edge, the government now feels leary about being decisive. Is it any wonder that President Bush during his recent visit to Canada, as reported in the Washington Post, allegedly threw up his hands in unbelief when Prime Minister Martin and his advisers tried to explain that they could not make a decision because of politics? Bush, according to a senior Canadian official who leaked the story—an act which will not help Martin’s quest for a better personal relationship with Bush—was at pains understanding why Canadians would be opposed to defending themselves. I can see Bush’s point. Is he supposed to appreciate that Canada is more closely integrated with American defence functions than any other country in the world while at the same time most Canadians wish they were not? Is he to see the nuance in the fact that Canada has been in the co-chair on air and missile threats through NORAD during all the decades when we did not have defences against ballistic missiles and now that we do, Canada wants to opt out? Should he be impressed that most Canadian defence debates are not about what we actually need or do to defend ourselves but rather about faraway ‘international security’ and how Canadian words and deeds may affect that esoteric phenomenon?

Instead of discussing the practical costs and benefits to our national sovereignty and defence as well as our overall relationship with the Americans, most Canadian commentators have changed the subject of missile defence into a debate about science and international relations theory. What is most maddening about this approach is that at the end of the day, Canada’s decision to cooperate or not has no impact whatsoever on any of the grand issues from which we are trying to build our counter arguments.

Take the scientific issue. Canadians should not accept the American offer, it is argued, because missile defence may not work. So what? We are not asked to build, deploy or pay for the actual missiles or their bases. The Americans, like us, hope we will never have to use interceptor missiles. Just as deterrence during the Cold War had the desired sobering effect, a missile defence network may have a sobering effect on radical regimes that may not be stopped by deterrence alone. In the same vein, it would prevent would-be aggressors from using their few missiles for nuclear blackmail. If it does work, we are all the better for it, if it does not, it is not Ottawa’s fault. The scientific argument has no clincher in the fact that thus far many missile defence tests have failed. We need to look at the lessons learned from the program closest to the current one, namely theatre missile defence. Because some 20 Americans died in the first Gulf War as a result of Iraqi SCUD missiles, the U.S. military started a ‘crash’ program on theatre missile defence, doing research, development, deployment and testing all at the same time. In the early 1990s, the Patriot Missiles did poorly. The commentators who said that you cannot ‘hit a bullet with a bullet’ felt vindicated. But look ten years later: Every Iraqi Ababil-100 and Al-Samoud missile launched at U.S. forces in 2003 and engaged by the PAC-3 was shot down. If theatre missile defence works now, who is to say that national missile defence will not work ten years from now?

Then there is the theoretical critique that says it is extremely unlikely that regimes in Pyonyang or Tehran would be launching anything that would cause them to be annihilated in an American nuclear response. In a pure brainstorming session, Bush would agree. But what option does he have? Is it absolutely impossible that a Kim Jong Il or whoever is in charge at the moment would not push the button? Has he shown any respect for the lives and well being of his own people? If the despotic North Korean regime is willing to starve one million of its own people to develop nuclear weapons can we be sure it would be rational enough on how not to use them? The U.S. Congress tackled this question back in 1999 and passed a law with veto proof majorities in both houses instructing the executive branch to build missile defences.

Another frequent objection raised is the notion that modern terrorists are far more likely to use dirty nuclear bombs in shipping containers, suitcases or through improvised sea borne launchers rather than via intercontinental ballistic missiles, and hence that the real threat is too low to warrant building an anti-ballistic missile capacity. This is a weak argument in the real world where people need to worry about all contingencies. If the United States was completely ignoring homeland security and counter-terrorism such an argument would be reasonable to make in a bilateral session. The fact of the matter is that Washington is going full bore on all fronts. At the moment and for the foreseable future, no budget item in the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security is suffering because of missile defence.

This brings us to the final possible dealbreaker. Canada has found in the ideal of a weapons-free outer space a high moral value, a line we could never in good conscience cross, which is advanced as the prime reason to stay out of the missile defence business. Unless the American government guarantees that the Unites States would never place weapons in space, we cannot join. Space like an endangered species must be defended at all costs and it takes principled powers such as Canada to lead the way. Put in such terms, opponents have found a real winner with the Canadian public. But what if the issue is actually less black and white, even somewhat illusionary, and potentially counterproductive? Look at this moral claim in its wider context: weapons are legal under the sea, underground, on the surface of water and land, and in the air. By what magical formula should they be illegal in space? Given the fact that the newest frontier in military affairs is a fully integrated global network capacity, what real likelihood is there that the already militarized space will keep out every form of weapons? Moreover, have we really got our definition right? Is space really a weapons-free zone? If a country launches a nuclear missile, it actually places a weapon in space in a matter of minutes. So space is weapons free until the trigger is pulled. Its virgin status is a myth. If the United States placed a defensive weapon or weapon component in space that could defeat any offensive weapon, would that be unprincipled? Though Canada’s moral position is attractive, is it also innocent? Take the likely scenario that space will sooner or later join the domain of arms and arms races. Canadian national and economic interests depend more and more on our military and commercial satellites. Of course we would need a close working relationship with the United States to defend our Canadian space assets. When we go hat in hand to Washington with that need, would we not be in a stronger position if we had not dropped the ball on missile defence in the first place?

Endnotes

1 Peter Baker, “Bush Doctrine is Expected to Get Chilly Reception,” Washington Post, January 23, 2005.
2 Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier (New York: ReganBooks, 2004), p. 467.