Michael Barone interviewed President Bush yesterday. US News released a podcast which I’ve downloaded but won’t listen to until bicycling later. Barone’s recap indicates it is an interview well worth listening to. In one segment Barone asks about the Iraqi oil trust — the good news is that Bush has “raised the issue” with al-Maliki:
…He said he has raised the issue with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and said it could be one of two institutions that could unify the country, the other being the Army. But he added that the Iraqis have to come up with their own solutions.
Regular readers know that I’ve long backed the oil trust scheme. See, e.g., Can Iraq avoid the “Resource Curse”?:
Back on 8 May 2003 I wrote:
Oil wealth has been a curse for most countries who have it - particularly the Arab Gulf states. Where the revenues flow directly into the ruling government’s coffers, corruption and missapplication are the norm. Since meaningful general taxation isn’t required to fund the government, you loose one of the pilars of democracy: vigilant taxpayers.
Given the opportunity to design from scratch how the Iraqi oil assets are managed, we hope that the Iraqis can devise a scheme that avoids the “resource curse”. The core concept that appeals to me is to transfer ownership of all (or most) of the oil assets directly to the people - a variation of the State of Alaska structure. Then the new Iraqi government must tax the people for the funds to run the government, thereby inverting the usual wealth relationship in such states.
It is possible that today’s sectarian confict might have been avoided had the oil trust fund been implemented back in 2003 when Ahmed Chalabi first proposed it. Even now, I cannot think of another policy that has more power to move Iraq towards a stable society.
I don’t think anybody can predict where Iraq is going — and it is possible that the present government is part of the problem. Certainly we are seeing new negative developments, such as the Shia-Shia conflict between the Badr Brigades and the Madhi Army.
Richard Fernandez has a long, thoughtful, resource-rich analysis — recommended:
A few posts ago I remarked that the closest historical analogue to Iraq was the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, also a former ethnically mixed Ottoman state. That experience provides a benchmark against which to measure the length and duration of the challenge that Iraq represents as well as to understand the incentives of ethnic politics. The debate over how to handle the Yugoslav wars revolved around those who wanted to let the “ethnic cleansing” happen on the way to a more stable set of boundaries and those who wanted to keep the old Yugoslavia a multiethnic place. To some extent those are also the issues in Iraq now. The current Iraqi constitution, with its provision for federal states, reveals a preference for devolution among at least some Iraqis. But it is important to remember there were always a large percentage who believed in Iraq as a country; who thought of themselves as fundamentally Iraqi. Even surveys recently taken show a surprising support for a united Iraq. But the hope of achieving such a unitary, multicultural society is slipping away. And the terrible possibility emerges that the new Iraqi government is part of the problem and not part of the solution. While on the subject of comparisons with Yugoslavia it may be useful to remember that the architects of its civil war purposely stirred up trouble with the idea of grabbing pieces of the disintegrating state. It’s certainly plausible to imagine Iran and perhaps Syria licking their lips at the thought of picking up the pieces of Saddam’s old domain. For them unrest is not a bug; it’s a feature; disturbance not an aberration but an opportunity.
One solution to an Iraq divided by tribal and religious loyalties is to let it divide in a semi-orderly way yet manage the separation so that one doesn’t finish up with a dozen Somalias but a number of stable areas. The problem, as the fighting between the Badr Brigades and the Madhi Army shows, is that some way of dividing up the oil resource still must be found. Without some kind of central government to ensure that revenues are shared the seeds for future regional war will be planted. One simply remembers why Saddam went to war against Kuwait. It was for oil.
The task of managing peaceful devolution — if that goal is not changed by unforseen events — requires resources. It may require the half million men that the intel sergeant mentions or it may require less. One officer writing from Iraq to whose reference I’ve forgotten believes that only “unconventional solutions” will work. No massive armies of occupation, but more Lawrences. I hope he’s right. Lawrence’s greatest talent was his ability stir up ethnic unrest. He achieved no Arab state. But whatever the mission, it will require something. And that something will not be provided without a bipartisan commitment to midwifing the successor Iraqi state or states. More importantly, it will require an agile national leadership which can act opportunistically within the framework of a strategy rather than simply to implement a fixed vision. Perhaps the real flaw in Iraq was not a lack of force but a lack of imagination. From one perspective Iraq provides an opportunity perhaps of historic proportions; certainly Iran and neighboring countries with far fewer resources have treated it as such. The last three years have shown how ill equipped, politically and operationally, America has been to make use of that opportunity. That needs to change, a change should begin with the way Washington’s bureaucries do business under any administration. Washington is not the seat of empire. It’s the seat of local politics with the reach of empire.
Thomas P.M. Barnett’s proposed reconfiguration of US and Western “system administration” remains the best overall roadmap. Perhaps in 25 years or so the skills and capabilities will be there when next needed.
More SeekerBlog resources on the Iraqi Oil Trust Fund here.
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