The New America Foundation recently hosted a debate between
Douglas Ollivant and Joel Raybun entitled “Can we call Iraq a Success?”
However, it quickly became clear that the definition of success had only one
criterion: did the adventure serve America’s “national interest?”
At one point Peter Bergen, the moderator, asked the
participants to give their perspective on how safe the country was—likely the most
way an Iraqi might define such “success.” Ollivant declared that three rules
ought to be followed for anyone that wants to stay safe in Iraq:
- Don’t go to a Shia Mosque on Fridays or join in Shia religious processions (Bad news for a majority of the population)
- Don’t be a “moderate Sunni” (So… be an extremist?)
- Don’t stand near any member of Iraq’s security services (Ideally, the people paid to keep Iraqis safe.)
These rules would ordinarily indicate a sever failure,
however Ollivant was the debater arguing that Iraq was indeed a success. The
failure of the Iraqi state to create a decent, safe environment for its people isn't as critical to Iraq’s overall success as
defined by its return to the global market and its ability to frustrate Iran’s
schemes. His opponent, Rayburn, was more explicit about how American interests
are in danger in Iraq, rousing the specter of Iraq nationalizing its oil. One
would think that as a matter of respecting a nation’s sovereignty and right to
self-determination, this type of rhetoric would be a little more muted given
the United States fractious history with opposition and resistance to
nationalization efforts.
The issue of Iran loomed in the background of this debate,
but it deserves to be brought to the fore here. In 1953 the CIA, collaborating
with British intelligence and the Iranian Shah, annihilated
the constitutional part of Iran’s constitutional monarchy. Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadeq was ousted after he nationalized Iran’s oil. Once the Shah
was restored as an absolute monarch he began ruling as an absolute thug without
the frustrations of popular leadership to frustrate him. Meanwhile British
corporations were free to resume exploiting Iran’s natural resources, sharing
the profits with the Shah and the Americans while cutting the Iranian people
out of the deal as much as possible. After over two decades of authoritarian
rule, the Iranian people overthrew the Shah in 1979 after which a fanatical regime
came to power that was far more dangerous than the democratically elected,
populist Mossadeq.
Assuming that in the short term depriving the Iranian people
of democracy served America’s short-term national interest (dubious, at best),
I don’t know of anyone serious who would say that this is true in the
long-term.
The events that proceeded from the coup and the subsequent revolution
tell of the shortcomings of American power beyond “blowback.” Saddam Hussein immediately recognized that his
old Persian rivals were weakened and saw the opportunity to not just oppress
more Shiites, but also—of course—acquire Iran’s oil. Hussein was certainly
power hungry, but the Iranians weren't wholly innocent either. Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, fresh off of a successful revolution, began encouraging Shiites to rise
up elsewhere in the region. Obviously this would make Hussein’s regime nervous,
as a Sunni minority ruling over a Shiite majority, but it also made most of the
other odious regimes in the region nervous. As it turns out it wasn't just
Shiites in Iraq and Iran who were cursed with the rotten luck of having oil
under their feet. Shiites in the Eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula were in
the same boat; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq were countries with
oil based economies, ruled by authoritarian Sunni regimes—and all were to some
extent allied with the United States. To this day, the Gulf States typically
oppress every member of their citizenry, but special, brutal attention is paid
to their Shiite populations.
When Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, these Gulf States—while
weary of Hussein’s ambitions—were wholly supportive of quelling these Shiite
upstarts. The United States was as well.
Not only was the US still dealing with the hostage crisis,
but Iran’s open support of an international Shiite uprising was making America’s
oil-powered friends nervous. Throughout the Iran-Iraq war the United States
materially supported both Iraq and Iran. The US considered Iran an obvious enemy
and it was fully aware of Hussein’s broader, regional ambitions. Seeing the two
states go to war was a foreign policy gift as the they would both likely end up
distracted in the short term and weaker in the long run. US supported Iraq with
detailed intelligence
about Iranian troop positions, and had its allies in the region supply
Iraq with American made weapons. The support to Iran was covert at the
time, but the details are well known at this point, dramatized in the scandalous
Iran-Contra
affair where the profits from arms sales to Iran were used to fund the
notorious contras in Nicaragua
The export of American made arms is directly related to the
defense industry in America. When politicians talk about defense spending, they’re
really talking about a specific type of jobs program or stimulus package. There’s
no question that these transfers of arms serve to bolster America’s economy,
particularly manufacturing jobs that in most every sector besides defense have been
shipped overseas for the past few decades.
It’s not difficult to find out where these arms eventually end up.
Periods of conflict are lucrative boom seasons for war
profiteers. The Iran-Iraq war was one such boom; the most terrible war the
Middle East has ever seen, it lasted eight years and claimed over a million
lives. Even when it became known that Iraq was using chemical weapons on
civilian populations, the arms kept flowing. US politicians may have reeled at
this revelation, but stopping the conflict wasn't explicitly in line with
American interests.
But these boom seasons come and go. The regular recipients
of America’s military hardware don’t use them on their neighbors; they typically
use them on unruly populations under their sovereignty. This is especially true
of the aforementioned Gulf States; barring North Korea, these regimes represent
the most repressive regimes on the planet. The biggest recipient of US aid in
the Middle East for the past few decades has been Israel, which has maintained
a strict military occupation over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, not to mention recurring wars and occupations in Lebanon. Even with
the advent of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s military aid has only gone
up. Additionally the creation of the PA was essentially the creation of a new
customer, receiving aid monies in the millions per annum. Stepping into the
small spaces that Israel retreated from, the PA has picked up the same mantle
of population control.
All of these ‘interests’—be they access to natural
resources, arms sales, corporate interests, the interests of America’s allies—run
absolutely counter to America’s mythology that it serves as a ‘force for good’
in the world. The notion that American power is a moral force that stands for democracy
and peace directly contradicts the reality that the ‘national interest’
mentality has at times created.
American power is a force that deserves to be treated with respect
and responsibility. The use, misuse, or disuse of that power can determine
whether people live or whether they die, whether they live free or in bondage,
in peace or in fear, in poverty or in prosperity. Americans cannot delude themselves
by thinking that their own self-interest directly coincides with what might be good
for the millions of people whose lives are at stake when American power
manifests around the world. At best the concept of America’s national interest
represents a naiveté of the purest form, one demonstrated by the most recent adventure
into Iraq. At worst the concept represents a myopic worldview characterized by
xenophobia, selfishness and neotribalism. In either case, the “national interest”
ought to be critically reexamined, if not dismantled altogether.
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