The legitimacy of the Iraq war?

I finally got around to reading Paul Wolfowitz's "exit interviews" in the July/August 2005 Atlantic, conducted by Mark Bowden.

I'd like to analyze much of what he said, but I'm too tired tonight.

However, I've got to put this up ASAP.

On September 15, 2004, Bowden pressed Wolfowitz to explain what failure in Iraq might look like. Wolfowitz "dodged the question" and replied:

"One reason I don't think we will fail is because all the enemy has is its ability to terrorize," he said. "It doesn't promise people a better life. Does it appeal to Iraqi nationalism? It certainly doesn't appeal to Shiite or Kurdish views of the Iraq they want to see. I don't think it appeals to most Sunnis. So we have superior force, we've got resources and a lot of money, which is slowly making a difference. But that alone isn't enough. At the core what we have is legitimacy. I don't mean we as Americans, but this effort has legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people as a whole."

In Wolfowitz's world, up continues to be down. And vice versa.

I've blogged on a number of occasions about the legitimacy crisis in US foreign policy, the neocon view of legitimacy, the legitimacy of resistance against foreign occupation, and the illegitimacy of the Iraq war.

Wolfowitz's statement has me flabbergasted.

"At the core what we have is legitimacy."

They couldn't get a UN resolution, the coalition of the willing is a joke, US poll numbers around the world are terrible, the Iraqi people want the US out, President Bush has said he wouldn't want his country to to be occupied...

"At the core what we have is legitimacy."

Sleep on that.

Democracy and international institutions

I've been trying to figure out what John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz plan to do their new jobs (pending approval by the Senate). Given what Bush administration officials have said in the past, it seems fairly clear that these new appointments are designed to bully these institutions into alignment with America's latest Wilsonian prioritization of "freedom" in its foreign policy.

Kim R. Holmes, Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, gave an insightful speech on "Democracy and International Organizations" on December 5, 2003.

The United States remains firmly committed to the global expansion of democracy and, as President Bush puts it, “the hope and progress it brings as the alternative to instability and hatred and terror.” “Lasting peace is gained,” he added, “as justice and democracy advance.”

We carry this strategy into all our work in international organizations.

Indeed, these goals are pursued even in development organizations, like the World Bank:

Helping to build or reinforce democratic institutions should be a goal of every UN development program. It should be a touchstone for reform aimed at reducing corruption, protecting political and civil rights, increasing investor confidence, and generating financing for development.

Holmes outlined the administration's logic for pushing elections and institutions rather than human rights per se:

First, true democracy rests in popular sovereignty—the voice and will of the people expressed through elections, and reflected in the maintenance of democratic institutions.....

Second, liberty and human rights may be universal values, but you need democratic self-government—a social contract between people and their government—to protect them. If the power of government is expanded too much, human rights will inevitably be in danger. Democratic self-governance, then, cannot be separated from human rights. It is the main instrument by which human rights are preserved and advanced.

Third, international organizations are most effective in advancing human rights and development when they focus on advancing democratic self-governance. Advancing democracy, therefore, should be the goal of every international organization. But by this, I mean democratic self-governance—the democratization of society—the building of democratic institutions and civil society as the foundations of true democracy.

What will all this mean? Well, in addition to emphasizing electoral processes and institutions over "human rights," the administration means to continue its assault on the sovereignty of non-democratic states:

...if international bodies are based on democratic principles, those principles should infuse every deliberation and decision. Giving equal status to democratic countries and to non-democratic countries—whose decisions rarely reflect consent from those they govern—creates an inherent tension in these bodies that can make implementing decisions quite challenging.

The same logic pervades its view of Security Council reform, which will be a key issue throughout this year in the wake of the Secretary General's latest efforts on this score:

Democracy and accountability suffer when we accept as members of the Security Council countries that threaten their neighbors, oppress their people, and break international laws and treaties. I believe the Council’s decisions would have more moral authority if every member elected to it governs justly and abides by the rule of law.

Holmes makes a similar recommendation for the Commission on Human Rights:

If we want the Commission’s decisions to be more democratic—more important, if we want its decisions to mean something for the suffering people who look to it for help—then the democratic members of the UN must take the lead. Countries that uphold the purposes and principles of the CHR should see that more democratic countries get elected to serve on it.

It is noteworthy, by the way, that Holmes challenges the democratic nature of the EU in this 2003 speech.

I look for the administration to embrace neocon Max Singer's idea for a democratic caucus at the UN.

The Bush administration seems to be arguing that there's no need to work with non-democratic states -- better merely to change their governments.

Big Bad Wolf

The Bush administration is full of surprises.

First, it decided to send John Bolton to the UN. Now, it is dispatching Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank.

Paul Wolfowitz is arguably the chief neocon hawk responsible for the Iraq war, which has never been popular around the world.

Apparently, when his name was recently floated by the Europeans, they reacted quite negatively. Indeed, some editorial pages are suggesting that European states might veto Wolfowitz, just as the US (under Clinton) rejected European candidate Caio Koch Weser to head the IMF in 2000.

Some development organizations fear that this signals the Bush administration's attempt to use the World Bank to advance its democratization goals. Neoliberal economic conditionality might be supplemented by new political conditions, which are supposed to be forbidden by the Bank's Charter. From Reuters:

"If the Bush administration wanted to poke a finger into the eye of every nation on Earth, it couldn't have made a better choice," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.

"Wolfowitz does not have an interest or knowledge about poverty and development problems. With him at the helm, the bank will be seen more and more as a tool of U.S. foreign policy, not a multilateral institution," wrote Alex Wilks, a Brussels-based activist whose Web site (www.worldbankpresident.org) tracked speculation over the presidency.

And from The Guardian:

Peter Bosshard, the policy director of the International Rivers Network, an American NGO, said: "In his career, Wolfowitz has so far not shown any interest in poverty reduction, environmental protection and human rights. His election as World Bank president would most likely exacerbate the current backlash against social and environmental concerns at the World Bank, and would initiate a new era of conflict between the Bank and civil society."

The historial parallel that leaps immediately to mind is Robert McNamara, who moved from the Secretary of Defense running LBJ's Vietnam war to the Bank. He served from 1968 to 1981.

McNamara actually helped do good at the Bank, orienting it more completely toward anti-poverty goals.

We can hope.

And on the bright side, Bolton and Wolfowitz are now in much weakened positions within the US foreign policy establishment. Especially in a Republican administration, nobody cares that much about the UN, and the Bank isn't exactly a great place to plot neoimperial strategy.

I suspect that someone close to Wolfowitz advised him that his security-related career was over (he's not going to be Secretary of Defense any time soon), so he might as well take this post.

"It's the security, stupid"

Wow, my first day back from vacation (though we spent most of it driving), and there is lots of breaking news to analyze. Let me focus on the biggest story of the day and save the lesser stories (like the Supreme Court ruling on Gitmo and other stuff) for another day.

Today, two days ahead of schedule, Paul Bremer tossed the keys to Iraq to some unelected Iraqis and left town ASAP.

Early evening, I saw Norman Schwartzkopf (on "Hardball" I think) saying that this move will significantly improve the security situation in Iraq. Newsweek's Howard Fineman said later on the same program that the administration surprised everyone in part to "stay ahead" of the insurgents, implying that the violence might escalate just before the handover. After all, administration officials have been saying this all along and the press likes to parrot the official line.

Of course, Fineman says that Bush now has the UN and NATO behind his policy on Iraq, so it's hard to take him very seriously on these issues. It's almost as if the President had just made such a claim, and that Fineman was mindlessly repeating it.

Oh, wait, the President did claim something very much like this, in his interview with an Irish journalist:

Q Mr. President, I know your time is tight, can I move you on to Europe? Are you satisfied that you are getting enough help in Iraq from European countries? You have come together, you are more friendly now -- but they're not really stepping up to the plate with help, are they?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, first of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq. And, really, what you're talking about is France, isn't it?"

That should be news in Germany, Belgium, Russia and other European countries. Polls showed overwhelming opposition, even where governments (Spain, the UK and Italy) supported the war.

Note that in the same interview President Bush claimed that "You've got a democracy in Pakistan," so he's clearly an unreliable source.

Anyway, we'll see whether the security condition changes on the ground in Iraq. As a political scientist might say, "that's an empirical question." For the future.

To his credit, Bremer, unlike most Americans in Iraq, traveled all over the country during his tenure -- though he had a large group of security guards attached to him.

Nonetheless, Brenner flew out of Dodge as quickly as possible. Jon Stewart had a funny bit on that on the "Daily Show."

I don't know if this really fits into this analysis, but I did want to note that last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made an outrageous claim about the way Americans view Iraq security. He blamed the media!

On Tuesday, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Wolfowitz agreed with statements by Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., that the news media's focus on violence in Iraq has eclipsed reports of progress there.

"Because frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors. And rumors are plentiful," Wolfowitz said.

Naturally, he had to apologize pronto soon after saying that.

Does anyone really believe that Iraq has changed just because Allawi has the keys, sovereignty has been "restored" and the media has been spun? The troops remain and a new American big boss will soon be "helping" to run the show. John Negroponte is the new US Ambassador to Iraq and he'll be directing the biggest American embassy in the world. Somehow, I don't think he left the position of American Ambassador to the UN for something the administration views as less important.

Two months ago, I suggested Negroponte would be the American Viceroy. Will he be facing a continued bloody insurgency?

Until the troops leave, I'm afraid so.