AFTER three weeks of war, America has won the scenes of liberation that it
wanted: Paris in August 1944 with an Arab cast. An old man beating a poster
of Saddam Hussein with a shoe in deliberate insult. The statue of the Iraqi
President with a noose around its neck and an American flag over its head
like an executioner’s hood, the crowd below gathering to tug it from its
pedestal. And, of course, the smashed glass and splintered wood of the
shopfronts of Basra as looters fill the vacuum left by the vanished police.
But this isn’t Europe in 1944. The purpose of this war was hardly that clear,
nor now, in the giddiness of success, is the direction of the peace. Aside
from the mystery of Saddam’s fate, the pressing question is: “What next?”
There are two completely opposing visions of the region’s future, one as
savage as a recurrent September 11, the other a long, bright episode in the
American dream. Either could prompt the United States to take further
aggressive steps to change the region. But in the exhilaration of this
victory, Washington should not fool itself that it has as much control over
the region’s future as it has had over Saddam’s demise.
The Pentagon was understandably cautious yesterday in giving warning that
there might be as much fighting still to come as there has been so far. We
still don’t know why the regime crumbled when it did, but the chain of
command clearly snapped, whether because of Saddam’s death, his sons’ death,
or their flight. All the same, the campaign appears to have achieved regime
change in just 21 days.
The bleak vision of the region’s future is that the American victory will
spawn tens of thousands of Osama bin Ladens, fired with the obsession of
mounting an attack on the US or Britain that would command the world’s
appalled attention.
It could easily happen; while Western intelligence can presumably be given
some credit for the lack of any successful attack to date, it is impossible
to say how much. Nor is it easy to judge what the American reaction would
be; it would depend on which country was perceived to have spawned the
terror. After all, September 11 brought American retribution down on
Afghanistan but not Saudi Arabia.
Would progress along the “road map” of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict help
to head off this bleak scenario? Yes, a bit. It might not make much
difference to the bitterest and most radical young men in those societies,
but failure by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to make good on their promises
of engagement could seriously inflame more moderate Arab opinion.
What about the more optimistic vision? If there is one person who embodies
these beliefs, it is Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Defence Secretary. More than
any other member of Bush’s team, he has become identified with the notion of
rebuilding Iraq as a prosperous democracy, to spread those qualities across
the region.
It is a notion that he developed in his time as Dean of International
Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and during his
stint in President Reagan’s State Department. It is regarded with suspicion,
if not hostility, by Donald Rumsfeld, his boss, and Dick Cheney, the
Vice-President, and, if Wolfowitz fails, his career in the Administration
will be over. Yet as of yesterday, the US sees Iraq as enough of a blank
slate to test his theory.
Is he disastrously naive, or fabulously optimistic in a quintessentially
American way? He is blithe, certainly, in brushing over the depth of
anti-American feeling in the region, and the lack of experience of
democracy; the question is whether he is also right about the desire for
change.
Although Arab analysts tend overwhelmingly to disparage his stance, they
insert important caveats. After all, there have been periods in which Arab
governments have desperately wanted to be modern, not least the socialism of
the 1950s, to which Saddam’s Baath party originally laid claim.
In testing this theory, the decisive point will be whether Iraqis can accept a
blueprint for development that is offered by American hands, or whether
their resentment towards the US outweighs their desire to reproduce its own
success.
There is, of course, a middle way between the two visions and, in the manner
of these things, it is perhaps the most plausible. The US might succeed in
establishing a more or less stable and representative government in Baghdad,
but not one that is entirely helpful to the US. This is more likely if the
country’s Shia majority manages to dominate the new government. Those on
Capitol Hill who rushed to rename their “French fries” in furious
indignation at France’s supposed ingratitude for 1944 might give this a
moment’s thought.
Will the US now stop at Iraq? The noises from the Administration suggest that
victory in Baghdad offers a tempting vision of easy regime change elsewhere.
This is the progression that Wolfowitz’s critics particularly fear, arguing
that it will destabilise, not modernise, the Arab world.
Of all the possible targets, it would be surprising if the Administration had
not put Syria at the top of its list within the region, even though Bush
cited Iran in his “axis of evil” instead.
For four decades Syria has also been run by Baathists, albeit very separately
from those in Baghdad. It helped Saddam to duck United Nations sanctions by
oil-smuggling, and fostered attacks by Hezbollah terrorists on Israel. The
reforms hoped for when Bashar Assad succeeded his father as President in
2000 have not transpired.
While troops were advancing on Baghdad, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State,
signalled the Administration’s exasperation with Damascus: “Syria can
continue to direct support for terrorist groups and the dying regime of
Saddam Hussein, or it can embark on a different and more hopeful course.
Either way, Syria has the responsibility for its choices and for the
consequences.”
From Powell, the Administration’s reluctant hawk, this counts as an
unambiguous warning of American inclination. If a new Baghdad government is
formed as planned, then Syria will be surrounded by countries sympathetic to
the US: Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Turkey. Its own people are impatient for
change. From Washington’s perspective, this makes regime change look
“doable”; in Iran, political complexity, size and fierce nationalism
probably do not.
Even though the Administration’s optimists have been proved right about the
course of the war, they would be wrong to think that they can entirely
control whether Iraq and the region become a success. That depends on
whether the American dream provokes more desire than fury; the reaction of
Iraqis in the coming weeks will give the answer.
