openDemocracy -
The world is in the seventh year of a war withno end in sight. A short six years ago, in late December 2001, it all lookedvery different. A United States-led campaign had terminated the Taliban regimein Afghanistan, and the talk in Washington was already about moving on to dealwith Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After the visceral shock of the 9/11 atrocities,the George W Bush administration was on a roll - indeed the sheer force of whatwas just beginning to be called the "war on terror" was already beginning torecapture the vision of a "new American century".
Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies atBradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001In January 2002, the president's state-of-the-unionaddress celebrated victory in Afghanistan andextended the war against al-Qaida to an "axis of evil" of roguestates (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea). The message was toughened in his speechat a graduation ceremony at West Point in June 2002, when he reaffirmedAmerica's right to pre-empt future threats.
It was becoming clear that the Taliban regimewas just the first to be eliminated, and that Washington's ambitions extendedto "regime change" in a number of countries. In its internationalrelationships, moreover, the mantra became "you are with us or againstus" - even more so as preparations to confront Iraq intensified in2002-03.
The demolition of the Saddam Hussein regime in the war of March-April 2003 wasacclaimed in a further grandstanding speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May, against thebackdrop of a giant banner reading "mission accomplished". At that,perhaps the high point of American hubris - with Afghanistan and Iraq countedas successes, and before the insurgency in Iraq had reached a critical point - theway seemed clear for Washington's larger, audacious political and militaryproject: the wholesale transformation of the middle east and its own peripheries.
Afghanistan itself was planned to evolve intoa pro-American state with permanent military bases at Bagram and Kandahar; thecountry would also provide easy access for new oil pipelines to the IndianOcean. In the neighbourhood, the bases established in Uzbekistan (and perhapsother central Asian states) would both ensure greatly increased US influence inthe oil-rich regions around the Caspian basin and perform the criticalgeopolitical task of countering the influence of Russia and China.
Thedream project
This alone was an extraordinary vision, butIraq would be an even greater prize. There, Saddam Hussein's dominion had now been replaced by the comprehensivecontrol of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) under its viceroy, PaulBremer. The convenient rewriting of the CPA's history suggests that itrepresented and oversaw little more than unplanned chaos. This is incorrect:the reality was of a precise neo-conservative plan to create a client regimebased on an extraordinarily sweeping free-market economy. The intention was toundertake comprehensive privatisation of all state assets (in which foreign investors would included Israelicompanies), heavy foreign involvement in the oil industry, a flat-rate taxsystem, all underpinned by a virtual absence of financial regulation. Theimagined result would be a sort of "dream economy", one impossible tocreate in the United States itself, given the annoying presence of tradeunions, citizen movements, business regulations and other hindrances.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international securitymonthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here
Paul Rogers's most recent book is Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - ananalysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 and why a new securityparadigm is needed
The United States would support this economicfantasy by entrenching in power a client Iraqi state, protecting (andoverseeing) it via a network of major military bases across the country. Thefact that a tenth of the world's oil reserves were under Iraqi soil and waters(four times that of the whole of the US, including Alaska) meant that aUS-controlled Iraq would greatly improve oil security in the homeland. Perhaps best ofall, the success of this strategy would constrain the real enemy, Iran - to theextent that it might not even prove necessary to terminate the Tehran regime.After all, with two of Iran's neighbours (Afghanistan to the east and Iraq tothe west) firmly in American hands, and with the US navy controlling thePersian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, the ruling elite in Tehran - whatever itspolitical colour - would hesitatebefore risking its now vulnerable nationalsecurity.
Thegreat chasm
This, in May 2003, was the plan and theexpectation. How do they look in the cold light of reality?
In Afghanistan, Taliban and other militiashave made a remarkable comeback and are now tying down over 50,000 foreigntroops. Across the border in western Pakistan, large areas are out ofgovernment control and available to al-Qaida, Taliban and their affiliates assafe territory from which to prepare, launch and recover from operations (seeAntonio Giustozzi, "The rise of the neo-Taliban", 13 December 2007).
In Iraq, over 100,000 civilians have beenkilled directly by violence; as many as 4 million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes (nearly half of them forcedto seek refuge in other countries). Tens of thousands of Iraqis have succumbed to disease andmalnutrition, including diseases of poverty such as cholera. More than 100,000Iraqis have been detained without trial. The human cost includes the death of 3,895 United States troops (as of 19December 2007) and injuries to tens of thousands more.
In 2007, a determined surge in United States troop numbers has had some effect in curbing the violence in Iraq; though thestrategy is unsustainable and has been pursued with short-term tactics that mayhave stored