Who Wants to Own a Somalia With Oil?

[Lemur]

Interesting essay from FT today.

Surge or no surge, it’s extremely doubtful the U.S. occupation can ultimately produce a successful Iraq—a stable, unitary, democratizing state at peace with its neighbors. The surge is merely the most preliminary precursor to this intended outcome, and even Petraeus admits that it could all come undone overnight. [...]

This is hardly the fault of Petraeus, a brilliant general tasked with a nearly impossible mission. Building a decent political order in Iraq has always been something of a fantasy. Even if Petraeus somehow succeeds in bringing violence down to a manageable level, it may be generations before Iraq becomes the “dramatic and inspiring example of freedom” in the Middle East that President Bush has repeatedly invoked. Instead, it will most likely evolve into a country plagued by instability, ethnosectarian violence, weak institutions, and unreliable oil production—if we’re lucky. Few Americans would support spending $12 billion a month in Iraq if they understood that they were buying, at best, another Nigeria, and at worst, Somalia with oil.

Here's where the analysis really gets interesting:

Supporters of the Iraq war, however, should know better. Many of them seem to have forgotten the work of scholars like NYU political scientist Adam Przeworski, who has written extensively about the relationship between wealth and democracy. Above a per capita income of $6,055, Przeworski finds, “democracies last forever.” But below that threshold, democracies are more fragile. Iraq’s GDP per capita today is a paltry $3,600, but even that low figure is misleading. When a country depends so heavily on oil revenues, its GDP per capita says little about its real level of development (Equatorial Guinea, technically speaking, is the 12th-richest country in the world). Przeworski’s research therefore excludes major oil-producers, which have their own set of problems.

In fact, oil tells us nearly everything we need to know about Iraq’s grim future. The United States is betting billions that Iraq—which has traditionally depended on oil exports for 95 percent of its foreign-exchange earnings—will escape the curse of what a Venezuelan oil minister once called “the devil’s excrement.” Academic studies have shown repeatedly that poor countries with oil tend to be poorer, more repressive, and more prone to internal conflict than those without it.

So we're paying like mad and sacrificing our sons and daughters to own a Somalia with oil. Lovely.

[Pannonian]

Stability at all costs should be the goal. Find a hardman who can hold the country together with whatever means necessary. Never mind if he's pro or anti US, that's less important than his ability to hold the country together so we don't have to. Then give him a brief of holding Iraq together in one piece, whatever means he wishes to use, whatever he wishes to do with this Iraq, and materially back him. The result will be a far more repressive version of Saddam Hussain, who has free rein to be as hostile to the US as he wants even as he receives American weapons and money. But it will be a lesser evil than having Iraq fall apart.

[discovery1]

Stability at all costs should be the goal. Find a hardman who can hold the country together with whatever means necessary. Never mind if he's pro or anti US, that's less important than his ability to hold the country together so we don't have to. Then give him a brief of holding Iraq together in one piece, whatever means he wishes to use, whatever he wishes to do with this Iraq, and materially back him. The result will be a far more repressive version of Saddam Hussain, who has free rein to be as hostile to the US as he wants even as he receives American weapons and money. But it will be a lesser evil than having Iraq fall apart.

What a mistake, oh what a mistake then.

I mean the whole getting rid of Saddam.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Stability at all costs should be the goal. Find a hardman who can hold the country together with whatever means necessary. Never mind if he's pro or anti US, that's less important than his ability to hold the country together so we don't have to. Then give him a brief of holding Iraq together in one piece, whatever means he wishes to use, whatever he wishes to do with this Iraq, and materially back him. The result will be a far more repressive version of Saddam Hussain, who has free rein to be as hostile to the US as he wants even as he receives American weapons and money. But it will be a lesser evil than having Iraq fall apart.

The easiest way to achieve this would be letting Iran have the south and Turkey the north - leaving a kind of butcher's yard buffer zone where the Sunnis are currently present.

You will not find a strongman of the type you propose in the current mess. The country is now all but partitioned, and religious divisions almost irreconcilable - at least for some generations - which grouping would your strongman emerge from? "Strong men" invariably usurp existing structures or emerge from many years of civil strife/extreme instability to create structures for their own ends. Thus, to impose stability right now, the United States would have to impose a choice by extreme force - something they are singularly unable to do.

If stability at all costs is your choice, then either you turn the country (and its oil) over to the regional powers or inflict a bloodbath several orders of magnitude greater than the current one.

The point is; Iraq has fallen apart. It's broken. I know you are fond of realpolitik - but as options, I don't think they are open to any US president.

[Pannonian]

The easiest way to achieve this would be letting Iran have the south and Turkey the north - leaving a kind of butcher's yard buffer zone where the Sunnis are currently present.

You will not find a strongman of the type you propose in the current mess. The country is now all but partitioned, and religious divisions almost irreconcilable - at least for some generations - which grouping would your strongman emerge from? "Strong men" invariably usurp existing structures or emerge from many years of civil strife/extreme instability to create structures for their own ends. Thus, to impose stability right now, the United States would have to impose a choice by extreme force - something they are singularly unable to do.

If stability at all costs is your choice, then either you turn the country (and its oil) over to the regional powers or inflict a bloodbath several orders of magnitude greater than the current one.

The point is; Iraq has fallen apart. It's broken. I know you are fond of realpolitik - but as options, I don't think they are open to any US president.

There's still al-Sadr, who's credibly anti-American and reasonably pan-Iraq in aim (if not appeal). British governments used to deal with their erstwhile opponents all the time during the colonial wind-down period, with terrorists who were a threat to civilisation and never to be dealt with suddenly becoming friendly presidents of the newly independent republics. Why can't the US do the same?

[Banquo's Ghost]

There's still al-Sadr, who's credibly anti-American and reasonably pan-Iraq in aim (if not appeal). British governments used to deal with their erstwhile opponents all the time during the colonial wind-down period, with terrorists who were a threat to civilisation and never to be dealt with suddenly becoming friendly presidents of the newly independent republics. Why can't the US do the same?

Al-Sadr is hardly a strongman. His own base is fractured, he is an Iranian puppet, and he doesn't even unify the Shia. He has also repeatedly backed down in the face of military confrontation - largely because his paymasters in Iran don't want to play their hand until the US has left.

British imperialists knew that it was always unwise to smash a country thoroughly before then trying to find someone to do business with. The British Empire was pragmatic, as you say, and merely co-opted the existing structures with payments or placemen, changing them to suit over several generations.

Iraq is different. Her whole political and physical infrastructure was destroyed in the belief that an alien model could then be imposed on the rubble. Her people were allowed, nay encouraged, into an orgy of sectarian violence that has dispossessed the country of its brightest and best through exile or death.

This is not a colonial wind-down.

[Redleg]

Iraq is different. Her whole political and physical infrastructure was destroyed in the belief that an alien model could then be imposed on the rubble. Her people were allowed, nay encouraged, into an orgy of sectarian violence that has dispossessed the country of its brightest and best through exile or death.

You give the planners of the invasion of Iraq to much credit. They honestly thought that many would flock to the banner of democracy once Saddam was removed from power, that the alien model would take hold immediately upon his removal.

Now the main failure was that there was no plan for what to do if the first scenerio did not happen. This opened the door for complete and utter chaos.

[Samurai Waki]

...well, it was gonna happen sooner or later. I don't think Uday and Kusay had the cojones to run the country like their dad did. And because saddam kept a rather repressive leash on his Ba'athist Ministers, none of them would have likely stood up to the challenge. Iraq, as a country is impossible until either Moderate Muslims have the will to stand up to the extreme elements, or until a Nationalist "One World For all Muslims" Sentiment appears, however it is unlikely either will happen, or if one does, it will take an epoch.

[Oleander Ardens]

It is good to know that this essay from the FT points to a very simple fact which I already have mentioned here in the .org. The cost of this ill-advised war has been gigantic in non-monetary and monetery terms, in human and political capital and still is, every day it is increasing. So we know that "staying the course" and trying to achieve "stability at all cost" is hugely costly. What we don't know what will happen afterwards. In our complex world the retreat of the US Army could well increase longterm stability or the sectarian bloodbath.

But to stick to the mission just because you have thrown money out of the windows doesn't mean that you must continue to throw out more money to give the impression you did a perfectly sensible thing before...

OA

[Vladimir]

I'll skip the absurdly of the OP and answer your question with one word: China.

No link for you, Google China and Africa.

Merging threads in a way.

[Lemur]

Vladimir, my friend, it's a little early in the day to be posting drunk, no?

[Vladimir]

Vladimir, my friend, it's a little early in the day to be posting drunk, no?

Now where were you when I posted my puppy comment, huh?

No puppies for oil I say.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Keep them in the babe thread. HAH!