Still a long way to go after military victory in Iraq

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Political Analyst, soedjati@cbn.net.id and Bantarto Bandoro, Editor, 'The Indonesian Quarterly', Centre For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta bandoro@csis.or.id

The fall of the Saddam regime in Iraq after just over three weeks of war has made it clearer than ever that the U.S. is the most powerful nation on earth in the third millennium. For Americans, perhaps, they need no further proof. When it comes to blowing up things and killing people, America has no equal. When it comes to war, the U.S. is definitely a "we" team.

When it comes to international diplomacy, however, the U.S. is too often a "they". Has the U.S. (and its allies) won the war? It has militarily, i.e., on the battlefield, but not quite. The U.S. is still far from long-lasting victory, for the political objective of the war has not been achieved: The promotion of democracy (from the barrel of a gun?). That is what the war was all about in strategic terms.

In fact, even one important military aim, which was the primary reason for the war in the first place, namely the existence of weapons of mass destruction, has yet to be vindicated. The statement from British Secretary of Defence Geoff Hoon that he is "convinced" of the existence of such weapons in Iraq is of no relevance. What is needed is hard evidence and solid facts!

Coalition forces are likely to find postwar challenges more complex than those inherent in the defeat of Iraq. The nation is at risk of civil strife, regional meddling, a military coup by antidemocratic forces and a host of other complex problems. The central question is whether the U.S. and its comrades, along with the international community, are ready to fight for long-lasting peace as doggedly as they fought the war.

Before the war, President George W. Bush's stated goals were to disarm Iraq and to end what, he said, was a continuing threat to international security. Only when the fighting began did the U.S. put the stress on liberation, by, among other things, naming the campaign Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Here, the U.S., in postwar Iraq, will be tested against its own policy on the basis of whether the liberation will turn Iraq automatically into a democracy and light the fire of political reform throughout the entire Middle East.

The Bush Administration stated repeatedly that its aim was not only to disarm and depose Saddam Hussein, but also to leave behind a robust democratic government and an open society along American lines.

If the achievement of democracy is truly regarded as the most ambitious political objective of U.S. war policy, then it is a dangerous folly. The vision of the U.S. of a new Iraq might run into a brick wall. Society in Iraq has persisted beneath the vast shadow of Saddam Hussein. The challenge the U.S. might encounter in the nation-building process is to transform Iraq's social and political institutions, economy and industries into something that would effectively deter resistance from the distant past.

Middle East politics have taught us that the region consists of dictatorships and monarchies where no successful democracy has taken root. And now the region is agitated and full of resentment against America for what many perceive as latter-day colonialist intervention in Iraq.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Bush's father, said, in a speech to the Nobel Institute, that he was skeptical about the ability to transform Iraq into a democracy as Iraq lacked functioning civic institutions, and that he also had witnessed bitter division between Iraqi religious and ethnic groups. All this hindered the development of some sort of political pluralism.

President Bush, responding to the skeptics, pointed to American success half a century ago in nurturing democracy within one of its World War II foes: Japan. But the analogy with Asia, which has grown over the past half century from a despotic region to one of the most democratized in the world, might undermine rather than support the position of the Bush government.

Winning the peace in Iraq will almost certainly be difficult. Rebuilding and governing postwar Iraq promises to be so complex and costly that even the U.S. may need to reach out to the international community to do the job properly. Unless the U.S. manages to reach some reconciliation with other members of the international community, it may have to pay not only the military costs of the war, but also the greater part of the burden of rebuilding Iraq, at a time when the U.S. economy is weakening. Thus, it is a matter of necessity that Iraqis be prepared to become multinational in their outlook.

We are not saying that the UN has all the answers. Nonetheless, the challenges of Iraq are such that a coalition of a different kind is required to encourage democracy and freedom in Iraq, a coalition of the global community, as represented by the UN.

The international community may rightly worry that to all intents and purposes Iraq could become ungovernable, and well turn into a permanent ward of the international community. However, there is just as much likelihood of that scenario burdening the U.S. for years to come if Washington dominates the post-Iraq war agenda.

Indeed, that U.S.-led coalition forces would win the war, at least in a military sense, seems to have been a foregone conclusion from the outset, albeit the war lasted longer than expected. But whether they really have won, or will ultimately win the war in a strategic sense, remains to be seen over the long run.

A more difficult question would then be whether it would really have been worth the cost. Perhaps such a question shall remain unanswerable -- if the cost of war is considered in moral and human terms -- as morality and humanity are hardly negotiable.