You are on page 1of 9

 Hello, everybody.

I wanted in this last part of the lecture to focus on an illustration that is the US led
invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a good example,
0:00
 a good instance of how some of the themes that we've been talking about,
0:11
 authority, legality, legitimacy, play out in that tension between the attempts at governing the globe,
0:15
 generating global governance whilst operating in a system of states.
0:26
 And I think the Iraqi conflict in its various forms.
0:32
 Of course, the there was a first Gulf War between Iraq and Iran as Saddam Hussein invaded Iran.
0:38
 Subsequent to the Iranian revolution, then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait again in 1990, leading to
the 1991 war and defeat of Saddam Hussein.
0:46
 Subsequent to that, for a good decade, the Iraqi regime, this the.
1:01
 Saddam's Baathist regime was subject to the most stringent.
1:09
 Some sanctions, international sanctions that any society has experienced certainly since after 1945.
1:15
 And that then eventually led to the crisis ostensibly over weapons of mass destruction,
1:21
 where all kinds of agencies were involved, transnational agencies in terms of non-governmental
organizations,
1:28
 intergovernmental organizations in the shape of the specialist agency, specialized agencies that the
UN,
1:35
 particularly the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Association and the.
1:42
 There were also, of course, regional dimensions to the war.
1:51
 But in the context of barely a decade out of the Cold War, here was an opportunity for many,
1:55
 it seemed, to restore order and to use all the V the instruments of.
2:03
 The emerging new world order, state power, to be sure, but also the international organizations,
2:10
 international institutions and the kinds of coalitions that after 1991, it led to the defeat of Saddam
Hussein in the 2003 context.
2:17
 Of course, that context was also immediately after the attacks, the 9/11 attacks on U.S. territory and
in New York City in particular.
2:29
 So as you can see, many of the key words that we have been using thus far and will continue to be
using this course networks in this instance,
2:38
 terrorist networks, although they also important transnational networks,
2:46
 the role of Iraqi exiles in persuading or advising the United States and its allies over the invasion.
2:51
 Those networks, clearly there was state authority.
3:01
 The military power that the United States mustered is the old fashioned form of of hard, hard power.
3:06
 But the United Nations was also invoked in various contexts in the run up to the war.
3:16
 And although there was no formal authorization for the invasion and occupation of Iraq subsequent
to the occupation,
3:22
 the United Nations and indeed other international alliances in this instance, NATO played a big role.
3:28
 So really, that's by way of highlighting how all these features came together in this particular crisis.
3:35
 Now, the reason why we're interested in this today is because one of the drivers of the 2003 invasion
was the claim for democracy.
3:42
 The idea here was in, again, fairly liberal internationalist, Wilsonian or indeed Kantian mindset that
Saddam Hussein's dictatorship,
3:55
 Baathist dictatorship had since the 1970s been a major obstacle in maintaining order in the region.
4:06
 It had generated wars with Iran, with Kuwait.
4:15
 It had antagonized the West or those you many of you will know. We discussed this in the seminar
for a period during the 80s.
4:19
 Saddam Hussein was a an ally of parts of the West, particularly France or the French allies of Iraq, I
should say.
4:27
 Weapons were sold to both sides, to the Iranians and Iraqis.
4:36
 But Iraqis were certainly seen in some quarters as the secular, more civilized, in inverted commas,
4:39
 alternative in the region to the raging Iranian ayatollahs and the Khomeini's kind of regime.
4:47
 So in that context, by two, by the beginning of this century, Iraq, a democratic Iraq, a stable,
democratic Iraq, where, as we know,
4:56
 significant part of the known or retrievable oil reserves resided in that in that country or within the
region,
5:08
 became an especially powerful arena to send the message that the new world order would promote
democracy.
5:17
 Many actors in Washington at the time, the so-called neoconservatives on the George Bush junior,
George the son, the younger.
5:30
 So the defeat of Saddam Hussein as a real opportunity for democratizing the greater Middle East.
5:41
 Remember, again, here we have a situation where Afghanistan in the outer reaches eastern reaches
5:48
 of this region called the Middle East had also been generating great anxieties,
5:54
 not just regionally, but globally because of the impact of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in the
promotion of insurgencies,
5:59
 jihadist insurgencies across the world and indeed, jihadist terrorism.
6:10
 It was said, of course, of Afghanistan that it was not a state sponsored terrorism, but.
6:14
 A state sponsored by terrorists. So in that context,
6:24
 there was a real opportunity to develop a Burián conception of state sovereignty
6:29
 that combined both the shrimp attarian view of democracy that is free.
6:35
 Competitive elections, when not Saddam's clique would rule and the Baathist Party, but where there
would be a variety of options for all Iraqis,
6:40
 including the Shia majority who had been oppressed by Saddam's clique and other Sunni minority
elites.
6:50
 And therefore, the war was as much about the global regional order as it was about creating the
cornerstone of that order through a state,
7:01
 a stable working state, where they would be,
7:13
 as I say, competitive democracy, but also the kind of legitimacy domestically to allow for a more
prosperous Iraq,
7:17
 an Iraq that was reliable, particularly as an as an oil exporter.
7:28
 And the historical model for this most explicitly presented by Condoleezza Rice at the time was West
Germany and Japan.
7:33
 The idea was that after the decapitation of the regime, after doing away with Saddam Hussein,
7:43
 the establishment of a fall for it was meant to be a provisional authority,
7:49
 a coalition provisional authority, again mandated by the U.N. Security Council.
7:56
 What would ensue was a reconstruction, a deep ossification,
8:01
 a democratization and modernization in the style of West Germany and Japan after World War Two.
8:07
 This was the model which was doing the rounds in the United States and in the White House.
8:15
 And the challenges here revolved around what is known as the endogenous enforcement of
8:23
 democracy or democracy from the outside in or foreign imposed democracy or imperialism,
8:28
 whatever you want to call it. And the challenges were that.
8:34
 Iraq had suffered, as I mentioned earlier. Ten years of the most stringent, the most the harshest
forms of.
8:40
 International sanctions, which had effectively eviscerated, had hollowed out the state centralized
power in Saddam Hussein, but also.
8:49
 Deepened existing sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, between different regions in the more
rural areas,
9:01
 between different tribes, a different kinship groups in the more urban areas, the site between
different militias.
9:11
 So there'd been a real process of involution. Of Iraq, which merely until the 1980s.
9:18
 Regardless of what things that path is,
9:26
 a more dictatorship had been one of the most advanced countries of that part of the world in terms
of prosperity,
9:27
 in terms of infrastructure, in terms of some degree of coherence or legitimacy.
9:34
 So here we have a problem, or at least the the international community had a problem that you can
break a state down,
9:41
 you can defeat an enemy in war, but then you have to reconstruct it in peace.
9:49
 And you can win the war. But if you don't win the peace, then in many respects it's just been one
battle.
9:55
 And this was the challenge for endogenous enforcement of democracy.
10:03
 How do we identify that? How does the Coalition Provisional Authority, the outside powers, identify
legitimate counterparts domestically?
10:09
 How do they combine or reconcile democracy, which is meant to be about division of power, civilian
rule, representation on the one hand,
10:19
 and the military or the militarization of occupation,
10:30
 the fact that it was the military that had a leading role certainly in the first four or five years of the
post invasion.
10:35
 Administration of of of Iraq.
10:47
 So already you can see there's all kinds of obvious tensions, if not contradictions, even within the
mindset of this Coalition Provisional Authority.
10:49
 One answer to the question was that there should be troops on the ground.
11:01
 And I'll refer you to the text by Dobbins, who which is on your on your reading list, where you can
see that.
11:07
 Dobbins, let me open the presentation here.
11:16
 Sorry, I'm not sure it's appearing on your screen.
11:20
 I hope it is, actually.
11:27
 Where there's been state evolution, where there's all kinds of threats, both internally and outside.
11:34
 And that is to have a high proportion of occupying forces in relation to the population.
11:40
 You can see here this is taken from the Tobins reading that I just mentioned in your which is on your
reading list.
11:47
 And it is very good accounts of various post-World War Two international occupations in a
comparative sense.
11:55
 Obviously, Iraq was a focal point for this. And as I just mentioned, people like Condoleezza Rice and
right.
12:02
 To talk to the president. There was an idea that what was happening in Iraq after 2003 should be
similar to that, what happened in Japan,
12:08
 West Germany, or indeed had a country in the 1990s in Somalia, Kosovo, I.T. in terms of foreign
presence.
12:21
 Now, you can see already here in this graph where there is a high number of soldiers per thousand
inhabitants in the case of.
12:31
 Kosovo, we're looking to start starting, what, about twenty thousand as well as in the case of Bosnia.
12:43
 So those with the Balkan cases and although there is a secular decline in the numbers quite sharply,
12:50
 so in some cases, as in the cases of Haiti and Somalia.
12:57
 Notice how a in Afghanistan and indeed in also in in Bosnia and in.
13:03
 Kosovo, they were talking about a long term presence of fairly high numbers of troops per local
population.
13:13
 If we bring Germany in, there is again a similar pattern when high numbers of foreign troops were
present over an extended period of time.
13:24
 So the. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was all but provisional.
13:35
 Of course, there was an attempt to transfer authority, remember authority to local forces.
13:43
 Local democratic forces in order to legitimated that authority, make it have a Buy-In and make it
credible for the local population.
13:49
 But we do need to go into this right now over the process of codifying that, namely combining
authority and legitimacy into a legal form.
14:00
 Arguably still extends to this day and we can talk about that.
14:12
 But I think that in many respects, Iraq has never really recovered its own legality,
14:17
 let alone its legitimacy or authority, certainly not in a very Burián sense, in a centralized sense since
2003.
14:24
 But I think perhaps the more most interesting for me anyhow diagram is this one where if the
intention was to reproduce in Iraq after 2003,
14:31
 a kind of occupation like that experience in West Germany and Japan,
14:41
 or indeed in after the Cold War in places like the Balkans or in Afghanistan,
14:46
 then these are the kinds of levels of ground troops that should have been present.
14:51
 With the exception of Haiti and Somalia, if we're looking at Germany, if we're looking at Afghanistan
in 2003, according to these calculations,
14:57
 that should have been over two million U.S. or allied troops in Iraq in order for that to be
correspondant presence,
15:08
 that Germany after 1945, even a couple of years after that, we're talking to three hundred twenty one
thousand troops.
15:15
 If one were to make the comparison with Afghanistan in 2005, it's half a million troops.
15:26
 The fact of the matter is that at its height, the Coalition Provisional Authority had no more than two
hundred thousand allied troops in Iraq.
15:32
 That's a significant number. It was a significant operation. But in terms of comparisons, it wants to
enforce authority.
15:42
 Then the argument was that it was not good enough simply to win the air war, to defeat Saddam
through air power.
15:53
 But you needed to then establish authority on the ground. So that was one avenue for trying to do
that.
16:03
 The other argument that has been presented and is not just relevant to Iraq.
16:11
 It's Roland Paris who who developed this in the context of the Balkan crisis and then some 15 years
ago in another context,
16:18
 is the idea that there should be. That there should be instituted institutionalization before
liberalization of the Democratic mainstream,
16:28
 democratic understanding of exoticness enforcement suggested that, OK,
16:41
 once you've got rid of the dictatorship or you really have to do is open up markets, allow for civil
liberties,
16:46
 allow for competitive elections, and that will emerge a fully developed liberal democratic.
16:53
 Institutional or state? Of course, the reality is that without the institutionalization of those agents of
civil society,
17:04
 be they market forces or political parties or trade unions or civic associations.
17:13
 The liberalization of any society, particularly society that had gone through the traumas,
17:20
 the successive traumas of war and sanctions likely or Iraq actually generates greater conflict.
17:25
 It it pluralize, but also divides and fragments.
17:32
 And so to rule a fragmented society under those kinds of material conditions of destruction,
impoverishment.
17:37
 As I was saying, division among classes between urban and rural, within the rural,
17:47
 between different kinship groups and in urban areas, between different militias or sectarian groups.
17:54
 That is a recipe for an exacerbation of existing conflicts, or at least the continuation of new conflicts
in a so-called post-conflict scenario.
18:00
 And I think that is pretty much what happened in Iraq after 2003.
18:12
 The outcome of these tensions that I've been describing of a foreign imposed rule that was heavily
militarized in a very fragmented
18:21
 society was the reinforcement of patrimonial what Max Baiba called patrimonial or client list forms of
rule that I mentioned earlier,
18:31
 the opposite of the barbarian Westphalian state where there is a legitimate monopoly over the
means of violence within a well-defined territory.
18:42
 That is what arguably the West and the United States administration under George W. actually
wanted.
18:53
 But what they got as a result of the way in which they handled the post occupation phase of of the
of regime change was a fragmentation,
19:02
 a reinforcement of tribal kinship groups in order to protect certain regions,
19:13
 especially as the occupation unfolded after 2003, the years of 2005, six, seven and beyond.
19:21
 Militias in urban settings. And as I was saying, tribal groups in rural areas, particularly in the west of
of of Iran,
19:28
 gained a monopoly over the means of violence in that territory.
19:42
 And therefore, the central authority in Iraq beats the CPA or its successors how to make deals with
these with its tribal elders,
19:47
 self-styled tribal elders. I mean, there's an anecdote told by Charles Tripp, a emeritus professor.
19:57
 So us on Iraq, which he actually witnessed, which which is that on the one hand,
20:03
 you would have all these tribal elders from several conflicted provinces turning up in Baghdad with
all their paraphernalia,
20:08
 you know, their swords and their their their tribal gear.
20:21
 That representation of traditional authority assuring the central, the Coalition Provisional Authority,
20:25
 the central authorities that they would be able to maintain order.
20:34
 And those very same people, once they got off their guards and left their ceremonial swords in their
hotel room,
20:38
 would the Hilton or whatever would turn up for dinner dressed in business suits with U.S. dollars in
them in their in their suitcases.
20:46
 So you get a sense there of that dual power and the way in which at the beginning of the 21st
century and arguably still today, post invasion,
21:00
 Iraq was ruled not through a librarian, bureaucratic, rational state, but rather through patriotism,
patronage and Clyde realism.
21:11
 Iraq has become a territory fragmented, politically sectarian and social logically segment tree states
or society.
21:22
 In other words, it is a failed or collapsed state, exactly the opposite of what was meant to have been
the outcome of this endogenous.
21:30
 Enforced Democratic rule. Thanks very much for your time and I'll see you at the seminar next week.

You might also like