Post by RPankn on May 9, 2006 21:51:21 GMT -5
by Jonathan Cutler
April 30, 2006
If there is a central principle animating Noam Chomsky's commentaries on US foreign policy, it is his affinity for Realpolitik analysis. As Chomsky argues in a recent interview, "Our leaders have rational imperial interests. We have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're perfectly sensible." This methodological axiom presents some serious challenges for those trying to understand the US war in Iraq. With so much evidence of bumbling within the Bush White House, it is tempting to join the chorus of critics, led by the Democrats, who say that incompetence is the defining feature of US foreign policy. Is it possible to tell the story of the US invasion of Iraq as "perfectly sensible"?
Chomsky is adamant and he is right to warn against the idea that foreign policy elites are more fool than knave. "Consider the actual situation, not some dream situation... If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it... We have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world."
What, then, is the "actual situation" that led the Bush administration to make the "perfectly sensible" -- if entirely imperialist -- decision to invade Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein? Here, according to Chomsky, is the real world:
"If [Iraq is] more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran... So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington..."
Chomsky isn't making this stuff up. One can get quick confirmation of Chomsky's characterization of this "ultimate nightmare" scenario from the key "realists" of Republican foreign policy establishment -- folks like Bush Sr., former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James Baker, and Colin Powell. When presented with a Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, the "realists" opted to leave Saddam in power, rather than let the nightmare become reality. In a co-authored 1998 memoir, A World Transformed, Bush Sr. and Scowcroft insist that they acted to preserve "the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf" (p.489). In his 1995 memoir The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker recalls that he didn't want to "play into the hands of the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with the help of Iraq's Shiites and quickly transform themselves into the dominant regional power" (p.437). Colin Powell, in his 1995 memoir My American Journey, is equally blunt. "Why didn't we finish him off?... In March, the Iraqi Shiites in the south rose up in arms... But our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile toward the United States" (pp.512, 516).
The problem is that fear of this "ultimate nightmare" provided the rationale in 1991 for not invading Iraq, or more precisely, not promoting the political ascendance of the Iraqi Shiite majority. Chomksy argues that fear of the nightmare scenario will deter realists from supporting US withdrawal from Iraq. But did the "realists" get us into Iraq? "Realists" may keep us in Iraq, but did the "realists" unleash Iraqi Shiite power by terminating Sunni Baathist political and military rule? "Realists" may, in fact, be sensible -- at least in a self-serving way -- but Scowcroft, Baker, and Bush Sr. all publicly warned George W. Bush about the risks of unleashing the ultimate nightmare. Kissinger -- who first floated the idea of seizing the Eastern Province from the Saudis in the mid-1970s, prior to the Iranian revolution -- was explicit in a Washington Post Op-Ed. The key to any move to topple Saddam, he insisted, was the contour of "the political outcome," especially insofar as Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to cooperate in the formation of a "Shiite republic" that "would threaten the Dhahran region in Saudi Arabia, and might give Iran a new base to seek to dominate the gulf region." Chomsky is at a loss to explain -- in Realpolitik terms -- the 2003 decision by George W. Bush to invade Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shiite majority.
Gilbert Achcar, like Chomsky, is inclined to stipulate the decisive role of Realpolitik in US foreign policy. Looking at the case of Iraq, however, Achcar makes an exception. "In the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively," writes Achcar in a 2004 CounterPunch article, "the Bush administration has acted on ideological views so contrary to the 'reality principle' that they could only lead into this major nightmare of U.S. imperial policy... History will probably record this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed by an administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial interests."
Chomsky and Achcar both agree that the general aim of the invasion was based on "realism." As Chomsky says, the US would not have invaded Iraq "if its main product was lettuce and pickles... If you have three gray cells functioning, you know... the US invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources." Likewise, Achcar is "fully aware of the very oily factors" involved in US military intervention. However, Achcar insists that "many of its concrete decisions" -- chiefly the "clumsiness of de-Baathification... [and the] dissolution of the Iraqi military" -- represented "blunders" and "wild dreams" of "crackpot idealists" who allow "high-flying moral rhetoric" to help guide foreign policy "in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs."
For Achcar, the crucial decisions were not the ones that simply toppled Saddam Hussein but the ones -- made in May 2003, at the start of the formal US occupation -- to actively undermine authoritarian Sunni minority rule in Iraq. "Whatever the reason," says Achcar, "the fact is that Bush Jr. and his collaborators have acted for a while in conformity with their democratic proclamations." These decisions unleashed a major "nightmare" because they "opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize control of their own destinies... to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist forces, somewhat on the Iranian pattern." The "clumsiness" is particularly difficult to explain in the terms of Realpolitik since regime change -- without Shiite empowerment -- could have been accomplished "more effectively...had the Bush administration acted from a craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get hold of Iraq through an arrangement with the Iraqi army and other apparatuses of the Baathist state."
If there is room for rapprochement between Achcar and Chomsky, it is because Achcar actually agrees that the familiar "realist" crowd never would -- and never did -- jettison craftily Machiavellian perspectives on foreign policy. Achcar insists, however, that on the key questions regarding the political outcome in Iraq -- de-Baathification, military dissolution, and Shiite power -- the "administration was divided." Realists fought against all of these policies for post-invasion Iraq, favoring something more like a US-backed military coup that would result in a political outcome akin to Saddamism-without-Saddam and an "arrangement" with the Baathist state. There was, however, a rival faction within the Bush administration: the so-called neo-conservatives, vaguely defined as those who favored a "crusade for bringing democracy" to Iraq. Neo-conservatives championed comprehensive de-Baathification and dissolution of the Sunni-led military establishment -- even if it meant empowering Iraqi Shiites.
Chomsky, however, seems not to have taken note of neo-conservatives or any factional battles within the Bush administration. In his many interviews on the war in Iraq, he rarely if ever says anything about neo-conservatives (a peculiar asymmetry in light of neo-conservative vilification of Chomsky). His analysis posits not only Realpolitik, but a unified actor. One of the great merits of Achcar's analysis, by contrast, is his attention to the crucial split between neo-conservatives and realists in Washington.
Machiavelli for Zionists
Do neo-conservatives represent the antithesis of Realpolitik? Are neo-conservatives bumbling crackpot idealists who unwittingly opened Pandora's box in Iraq by substituting idealistic dreams of democracy ahead of realist Machiavellian statecraft? Indeed, Achcar suggests that the neo-conservative agenda for Iraq represents "a typical case of self-deception." Perhaps. Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan, in a typical attack on the neo-conservatives, published an October 2003 Realpolitik manifesto -- This Is Not a Time for Boy Scouts -- in which he condemned neo-conservative zeal as "almost indistinguishable from that of the liberal imperialists" who think foreign policy should be guided by morality. Another defender of Realpolitik, John J. Mearsheimer, dismisses neo-conservative theory as "essentially Wilsonianism with teeth."
Some neo-conservatives welcome that depiction, if not the accompanying criticism. William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, two prominent neo-conservatives, insist that their book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, "wears its heart on its sleeve" (p.ix). They present a relentless critique of "a narrow realpolitik that defined America's vital interests in terms of oil wells, strategic chokepoints and regional stability" (p.viii). Even as they celebrate "creating democracy in a land that for decades has known only dictatorship" (p.ix), they make no mention of -- and seem utterly oblivious to -- the prospect of Iraqi democracy emboldening Shiites in Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.
Kristol and Kaplan may be "Boy Scouts," as suggested by Brittan; or maybe they simply find it convenient to appear good-hearted and bumbling, as Chomsky warned. Either way, not all neo-conservatives wear their merit badges or their heart on their sleeve. The neo-conservative movement is hardly monolithic; there have been many fissures and splits along the way. The crucial point, however, is that some key neo-conservatives are as committed to cold-hearted Machiavellian Realpolitik as any so-called "realist." The battle dividing the Bush administration in Iraq is between two factions of Realpolitik strategists.
Indeed, as Achcar has recently noted, "in some neo-con circles" there is actually support for the same scenario feared most by Chomsky's realists: "some kind of Shia state controlling the bulk of Iraq's oil" that would align itself with Iranian Shiites and "unleash" Shiite power in the whole area, "including the Saudi Kingdom where the main oil producing area is inhabited by a Shia majority." To assume that evidence of neo-conservative support for de-Baathification in Iraq represents a simple blunder by naïve and incompetent Wilsonian idealists is, at best, a misunderstanding -- at worst, a serious underestimation -- of neo-conservative visions for US foreign policy.
Consider, for example, David Wurmser's book, Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (hereafter, TA). Wurmser published Tyranny's Ally while serving as a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank long identified with neo-conservative foreign policy analysis. After his time at AEI, Wurmser moved on to service within the Bush administration, most recently serving as Middle East expert in the office of Vice President Richard Cheney. Published in 1999, the book is a Machiavellian tour de force -- and a blueprint for US policy in the Middle East. There are striking parallels between the policies endorsed in Wurmser's book and those enacted by the Bush administration at the start of the US war in Iraq.
Wurmser directly confronts so-called "realist" fears regarding Shiite power in Iraq.
"The ensuing chaos of any policy that generates upheaval in Iraq would offer the oppressed, majority Shi'ites of that country an opportunity to enhance their power and prestige. Fear that this would in turn enable Iran to extend its influence through its coreligionists has led Britain and the United States, along with our Middle Eastern allies, to regard a continued Sunni control of Iraq as the cornerstone for stability in the Levant. Saudi Arabia in particular fears that any Shi'ite autonomy or control in Iraq will undermine its own precarious stability, because an emboldened Shi'ite populace in Iraq could spread its fervor into Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shi'ite northeastern provinces. The Saudi government also fears that this upheaval could spread to predominantly Shi'ite Bahrain, or to other gulf states with large Shi'ite minorities." (TA, p.73)
Wurmser's book is animated by a persistent focus on "balance of power" realist politics. "Iran and Iraq... are serious threats to the United States. How can we vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism without allowing one to benefit from the other's defeat? (TA, p.72). For Bush and Scowcroft -- and for the Clinton foreign policy team -- the only plausible response was a balance of power based on the "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran. Wurmser, however, proposes a Realpolitik basis for moving US policy from dual containment toward a "Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq" (TA, p.72).
Wurmser offers a direct challenge to the underlying factual premise of balance-of-power policies in the Gulf, even as he embraces the Machiavellian principles of balance-of-power politics. "U.S. policy makers have long presumed that the majority Shi'ite population of Iraq would serve as Iran's fifth column there; but would it?" (TA, p.72). Wurmser thinks not. Instead, he argues that "Iraqi Shi'ites, if liberated from [Saddam's] tyranny, can be expected to present a challenge to Iran's influence and revolution" (TA, p.74). More specifically, Wurmser claims that "Shi'ite Islam is plagued by fissures, none of which has been carefully examined, let alone exploited, by the opponents of Iran's Islamic republic" (TA, p.74, emphasis added). The idea of exploiting fissures is entirely consistent with realist theories of power balancing.
Wurmser argues that at the theological core of the Iranian revolution is "a concept promoted by Ayatollah Khomeini, the wilayat al-faqih -- the rule of the jurisprudent" that served as "the bulldozer with which Khomeini razed the barrier between the clerics and the politicians" (TA, p.74). For Wurmser, the central strategic fissure within Shiite Islam is between those who favor Khomeini's vision and those who reject the rule of the jurisprudent. "The concept of wilayat al-faqih is rejected by most Shi'ite clerics outside Iran (and probably many of those within Iran, too)... The current leading ayatollah of Iraq, Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani, has reaffirmed [this rejection], much to the chagrin of the Iranian government" (TA, p.75).
Wurmser suggests that the US could and should exploit this fissure to its own advantage. The "liberation" of the Iraqi Shia can be used to achieve a "Regional Rollback of Shi'ite Fundamentalism."
" shift of the Shi'ite center of gravity toward Iraq has larger, regional implications. Through intermarriage, history, and social relations, the Shi'ites of Lebanon have traditionally maintained close ties with the Shi'ites of Iraq. The Lebanese Shi'ite clerical establishment has customarily been politically quiescent, like the Iraqi Shi'ites. The Lebanese looked to Najaf's clerics for spiritual models [until it was transformed into a regional outpost for Iranian influence]. Prying the Lebanese Shi'ites away from a defunct Iranian revolution and reacquainting them with the Iraqi Shi'ite community could significantly help to shift the region's balance and to whittle away at Syria's power" (TA, p.107, 110).
The core of the Regional Rollback, however, is Iran. For Wurmser, so-called "realists" have always been correct to emphasize the link between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, but they have misunderstood the potential nature of the link. If realists have traditionally feared Iranian influence in Iraq, Wurmser argues that the more likely scenario is Iraqi influence in Iran. The demise of traditional Sunni rule over the Iraqi Shiites "could potentially trigger a reversal" of fortune for the Iranian regime.
"Liberating the Shi'ite centers in Najaf and Karbala, with their clerics who reject the wilayat al-faqih, could allow Iraqi Shi'ites to challenge and perhaps fatally derail the Iranian revolution. For the first time in half a century, Iraq has the chance to replace Iran as the center of Shi'ite thought, thus resuming its historic place, with its tradition of clerical quiescence and of challenge to Sunni absolutism... A free Iraqi Shi'ite community would be a nightmare for the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran" (TA, p.78-79).
For Wurmser, the liberation of Najaf and Karbala would promote and empower potential US allies in Iraq and Iran. Wurmser's strategy foresees US military intervention against the Sunni minority in Iraq, not primarily as a springboard for further military intervention in Iran, but as the Iraqi detonator for a populist, Shiite-led rebellion against rival clerics in Iran. Neo-conservative support for the political ascendance of Shiite Iraq is not about the principle of democracy. Nor are neo-conservatives blind to the ways in which regime change in Iraq might transform the relationship between Iraq and Iran. Neo-conservatives who favor de-Baathification in Iraq might seem like blundering fools who would unwittingly hand Iraq to Iranian clerics. Wumser's scheme, however, is to hand Iran to Iraqi clerics, especially the followers of Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani. For Wurmser, the road to Tehran begins in Najaf.
Wurmser is hardly alone in his strategic vision for the Middle East. His successor at AEI, Reuel Marc Gerecht -- formerly a CIA agent in Iran -- enthusiastically embraces the same vision for dual rollback in Iraq and Iran. In a May 2001 article entitled "Liberate Iraq," Gerecht dismisses "fear of an Iraqi-Iranian Shi'ite collusion upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. This kind of fraternity between Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ites simply does not exist -- except in the minds of Republican 'realists' who tragically used this argument a decade ago." An August 2002 article entitled "Regime Change in Iran?" makes the case for dual rollback and argues that the ascendance of the Iraqi Shia "will be brutal for the mullahs." Similarly, a March 2003 article by Michael Ledeen -- another prominent neo-conservative at AEI -- predicts, "If we understand this war correctly, the Iraqi Shi'ites will fight alongside us against the Iranian terrorists."
That is a very big "if" at the heart of neo-conservative thinking about Iraq and Iran. Richard Perle, doyen of neo-conservatives at AEI, writes in his 2003 book with David Frum, An End to Evil (hereafter, EE), that "President Bush took an enormous risk in Iraq. The risk could well have gone wrong -- and it could still go wrong" (p.36). Similarly, Gerecht warns that "the mullahs" -- once they saw signs of Iraqi Shiite rule in Iraq -- would fight back. Gerecht's August 2002 Weekly Standard article acknowledges that "the Bush administration should prepare itself for Iranian mischief in Iraq's politics."
In advance of the war, however, neo-conservatives found comfort in some "area studies" research -- which they published and promoted -- that found reason to believe Iraqi Shiites might ultimately prevail in any intra-Shiite competition between clerics in Iraq and Iran. In an April 2000 book Who Rules Iran?, published by the Washington Institute, Wilfred Buchta argues that Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i, successor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has "a theological Achilles' heel" -- unlike Khomeini before him, and unlike Sistani in Iraq, Khamene'i is not a Grand Ayatollah. In his review of clerical opposition to the Iranian regime, Buchta describes Sistani as "Khamene'i's most serious competitor for the religious leadership of Shi'is throughout the world" (p.89).
[Continued in next post.]
April 30, 2006
If there is a central principle animating Noam Chomsky's commentaries on US foreign policy, it is his affinity for Realpolitik analysis. As Chomsky argues in a recent interview, "Our leaders have rational imperial interests. We have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're perfectly sensible." This methodological axiom presents some serious challenges for those trying to understand the US war in Iraq. With so much evidence of bumbling within the Bush White House, it is tempting to join the chorus of critics, led by the Democrats, who say that incompetence is the defining feature of US foreign policy. Is it possible to tell the story of the US invasion of Iraq as "perfectly sensible"?
Chomsky is adamant and he is right to warn against the idea that foreign policy elites are more fool than knave. "Consider the actual situation, not some dream situation... If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it... We have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world."
What, then, is the "actual situation" that led the Bush administration to make the "perfectly sensible" -- if entirely imperialist -- decision to invade Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein? Here, according to Chomsky, is the real world:
"If [Iraq is] more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran... So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington..."
Chomsky isn't making this stuff up. One can get quick confirmation of Chomsky's characterization of this "ultimate nightmare" scenario from the key "realists" of Republican foreign policy establishment -- folks like Bush Sr., former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James Baker, and Colin Powell. When presented with a Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, the "realists" opted to leave Saddam in power, rather than let the nightmare become reality. In a co-authored 1998 memoir, A World Transformed, Bush Sr. and Scowcroft insist that they acted to preserve "the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf" (p.489). In his 1995 memoir The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker recalls that he didn't want to "play into the hands of the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with the help of Iraq's Shiites and quickly transform themselves into the dominant regional power" (p.437). Colin Powell, in his 1995 memoir My American Journey, is equally blunt. "Why didn't we finish him off?... In March, the Iraqi Shiites in the south rose up in arms... But our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile toward the United States" (pp.512, 516).
The problem is that fear of this "ultimate nightmare" provided the rationale in 1991 for not invading Iraq, or more precisely, not promoting the political ascendance of the Iraqi Shiite majority. Chomksy argues that fear of the nightmare scenario will deter realists from supporting US withdrawal from Iraq. But did the "realists" get us into Iraq? "Realists" may keep us in Iraq, but did the "realists" unleash Iraqi Shiite power by terminating Sunni Baathist political and military rule? "Realists" may, in fact, be sensible -- at least in a self-serving way -- but Scowcroft, Baker, and Bush Sr. all publicly warned George W. Bush about the risks of unleashing the ultimate nightmare. Kissinger -- who first floated the idea of seizing the Eastern Province from the Saudis in the mid-1970s, prior to the Iranian revolution -- was explicit in a Washington Post Op-Ed. The key to any move to topple Saddam, he insisted, was the contour of "the political outcome," especially insofar as Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to cooperate in the formation of a "Shiite republic" that "would threaten the Dhahran region in Saudi Arabia, and might give Iran a new base to seek to dominate the gulf region." Chomsky is at a loss to explain -- in Realpolitik terms -- the 2003 decision by George W. Bush to invade Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shiite majority.
Gilbert Achcar, like Chomsky, is inclined to stipulate the decisive role of Realpolitik in US foreign policy. Looking at the case of Iraq, however, Achcar makes an exception. "In the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively," writes Achcar in a 2004 CounterPunch article, "the Bush administration has acted on ideological views so contrary to the 'reality principle' that they could only lead into this major nightmare of U.S. imperial policy... History will probably record this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed by an administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial interests."
Chomsky and Achcar both agree that the general aim of the invasion was based on "realism." As Chomsky says, the US would not have invaded Iraq "if its main product was lettuce and pickles... If you have three gray cells functioning, you know... the US invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources." Likewise, Achcar is "fully aware of the very oily factors" involved in US military intervention. However, Achcar insists that "many of its concrete decisions" -- chiefly the "clumsiness of de-Baathification... [and the] dissolution of the Iraqi military" -- represented "blunders" and "wild dreams" of "crackpot idealists" who allow "high-flying moral rhetoric" to help guide foreign policy "in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs."
For Achcar, the crucial decisions were not the ones that simply toppled Saddam Hussein but the ones -- made in May 2003, at the start of the formal US occupation -- to actively undermine authoritarian Sunni minority rule in Iraq. "Whatever the reason," says Achcar, "the fact is that Bush Jr. and his collaborators have acted for a while in conformity with their democratic proclamations." These decisions unleashed a major "nightmare" because they "opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize control of their own destinies... to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist forces, somewhat on the Iranian pattern." The "clumsiness" is particularly difficult to explain in the terms of Realpolitik since regime change -- without Shiite empowerment -- could have been accomplished "more effectively...had the Bush administration acted from a craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get hold of Iraq through an arrangement with the Iraqi army and other apparatuses of the Baathist state."
If there is room for rapprochement between Achcar and Chomsky, it is because Achcar actually agrees that the familiar "realist" crowd never would -- and never did -- jettison craftily Machiavellian perspectives on foreign policy. Achcar insists, however, that on the key questions regarding the political outcome in Iraq -- de-Baathification, military dissolution, and Shiite power -- the "administration was divided." Realists fought against all of these policies for post-invasion Iraq, favoring something more like a US-backed military coup that would result in a political outcome akin to Saddamism-without-Saddam and an "arrangement" with the Baathist state. There was, however, a rival faction within the Bush administration: the so-called neo-conservatives, vaguely defined as those who favored a "crusade for bringing democracy" to Iraq. Neo-conservatives championed comprehensive de-Baathification and dissolution of the Sunni-led military establishment -- even if it meant empowering Iraqi Shiites.
Chomsky, however, seems not to have taken note of neo-conservatives or any factional battles within the Bush administration. In his many interviews on the war in Iraq, he rarely if ever says anything about neo-conservatives (a peculiar asymmetry in light of neo-conservative vilification of Chomsky). His analysis posits not only Realpolitik, but a unified actor. One of the great merits of Achcar's analysis, by contrast, is his attention to the crucial split between neo-conservatives and realists in Washington.
Machiavelli for Zionists
Do neo-conservatives represent the antithesis of Realpolitik? Are neo-conservatives bumbling crackpot idealists who unwittingly opened Pandora's box in Iraq by substituting idealistic dreams of democracy ahead of realist Machiavellian statecraft? Indeed, Achcar suggests that the neo-conservative agenda for Iraq represents "a typical case of self-deception." Perhaps. Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan, in a typical attack on the neo-conservatives, published an October 2003 Realpolitik manifesto -- This Is Not a Time for Boy Scouts -- in which he condemned neo-conservative zeal as "almost indistinguishable from that of the liberal imperialists" who think foreign policy should be guided by morality. Another defender of Realpolitik, John J. Mearsheimer, dismisses neo-conservative theory as "essentially Wilsonianism with teeth."
Some neo-conservatives welcome that depiction, if not the accompanying criticism. William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, two prominent neo-conservatives, insist that their book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, "wears its heart on its sleeve" (p.ix). They present a relentless critique of "a narrow realpolitik that defined America's vital interests in terms of oil wells, strategic chokepoints and regional stability" (p.viii). Even as they celebrate "creating democracy in a land that for decades has known only dictatorship" (p.ix), they make no mention of -- and seem utterly oblivious to -- the prospect of Iraqi democracy emboldening Shiites in Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.
Kristol and Kaplan may be "Boy Scouts," as suggested by Brittan; or maybe they simply find it convenient to appear good-hearted and bumbling, as Chomsky warned. Either way, not all neo-conservatives wear their merit badges or their heart on their sleeve. The neo-conservative movement is hardly monolithic; there have been many fissures and splits along the way. The crucial point, however, is that some key neo-conservatives are as committed to cold-hearted Machiavellian Realpolitik as any so-called "realist." The battle dividing the Bush administration in Iraq is between two factions of Realpolitik strategists.
Indeed, as Achcar has recently noted, "in some neo-con circles" there is actually support for the same scenario feared most by Chomsky's realists: "some kind of Shia state controlling the bulk of Iraq's oil" that would align itself with Iranian Shiites and "unleash" Shiite power in the whole area, "including the Saudi Kingdom where the main oil producing area is inhabited by a Shia majority." To assume that evidence of neo-conservative support for de-Baathification in Iraq represents a simple blunder by naïve and incompetent Wilsonian idealists is, at best, a misunderstanding -- at worst, a serious underestimation -- of neo-conservative visions for US foreign policy.
Consider, for example, David Wurmser's book, Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (hereafter, TA). Wurmser published Tyranny's Ally while serving as a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank long identified with neo-conservative foreign policy analysis. After his time at AEI, Wurmser moved on to service within the Bush administration, most recently serving as Middle East expert in the office of Vice President Richard Cheney. Published in 1999, the book is a Machiavellian tour de force -- and a blueprint for US policy in the Middle East. There are striking parallels between the policies endorsed in Wurmser's book and those enacted by the Bush administration at the start of the US war in Iraq.
Wurmser directly confronts so-called "realist" fears regarding Shiite power in Iraq.
"The ensuing chaos of any policy that generates upheaval in Iraq would offer the oppressed, majority Shi'ites of that country an opportunity to enhance their power and prestige. Fear that this would in turn enable Iran to extend its influence through its coreligionists has led Britain and the United States, along with our Middle Eastern allies, to regard a continued Sunni control of Iraq as the cornerstone for stability in the Levant. Saudi Arabia in particular fears that any Shi'ite autonomy or control in Iraq will undermine its own precarious stability, because an emboldened Shi'ite populace in Iraq could spread its fervor into Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shi'ite northeastern provinces. The Saudi government also fears that this upheaval could spread to predominantly Shi'ite Bahrain, or to other gulf states with large Shi'ite minorities." (TA, p.73)
Wurmser's book is animated by a persistent focus on "balance of power" realist politics. "Iran and Iraq... are serious threats to the United States. How can we vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism without allowing one to benefit from the other's defeat? (TA, p.72). For Bush and Scowcroft -- and for the Clinton foreign policy team -- the only plausible response was a balance of power based on the "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran. Wurmser, however, proposes a Realpolitik basis for moving US policy from dual containment toward a "Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq" (TA, p.72).
Wurmser offers a direct challenge to the underlying factual premise of balance-of-power policies in the Gulf, even as he embraces the Machiavellian principles of balance-of-power politics. "U.S. policy makers have long presumed that the majority Shi'ite population of Iraq would serve as Iran's fifth column there; but would it?" (TA, p.72). Wurmser thinks not. Instead, he argues that "Iraqi Shi'ites, if liberated from [Saddam's] tyranny, can be expected to present a challenge to Iran's influence and revolution" (TA, p.74). More specifically, Wurmser claims that "Shi'ite Islam is plagued by fissures, none of which has been carefully examined, let alone exploited, by the opponents of Iran's Islamic republic" (TA, p.74, emphasis added). The idea of exploiting fissures is entirely consistent with realist theories of power balancing.
Wurmser argues that at the theological core of the Iranian revolution is "a concept promoted by Ayatollah Khomeini, the wilayat al-faqih -- the rule of the jurisprudent" that served as "the bulldozer with which Khomeini razed the barrier between the clerics and the politicians" (TA, p.74). For Wurmser, the central strategic fissure within Shiite Islam is between those who favor Khomeini's vision and those who reject the rule of the jurisprudent. "The concept of wilayat al-faqih is rejected by most Shi'ite clerics outside Iran (and probably many of those within Iran, too)... The current leading ayatollah of Iraq, Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani, has reaffirmed [this rejection], much to the chagrin of the Iranian government" (TA, p.75).
Wurmser suggests that the US could and should exploit this fissure to its own advantage. The "liberation" of the Iraqi Shia can be used to achieve a "Regional Rollback of Shi'ite Fundamentalism."
" shift of the Shi'ite center of gravity toward Iraq has larger, regional implications. Through intermarriage, history, and social relations, the Shi'ites of Lebanon have traditionally maintained close ties with the Shi'ites of Iraq. The Lebanese Shi'ite clerical establishment has customarily been politically quiescent, like the Iraqi Shi'ites. The Lebanese looked to Najaf's clerics for spiritual models [until it was transformed into a regional outpost for Iranian influence]. Prying the Lebanese Shi'ites away from a defunct Iranian revolution and reacquainting them with the Iraqi Shi'ite community could significantly help to shift the region's balance and to whittle away at Syria's power" (TA, p.107, 110).
The core of the Regional Rollback, however, is Iran. For Wurmser, so-called "realists" have always been correct to emphasize the link between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, but they have misunderstood the potential nature of the link. If realists have traditionally feared Iranian influence in Iraq, Wurmser argues that the more likely scenario is Iraqi influence in Iran. The demise of traditional Sunni rule over the Iraqi Shiites "could potentially trigger a reversal" of fortune for the Iranian regime.
"Liberating the Shi'ite centers in Najaf and Karbala, with their clerics who reject the wilayat al-faqih, could allow Iraqi Shi'ites to challenge and perhaps fatally derail the Iranian revolution. For the first time in half a century, Iraq has the chance to replace Iran as the center of Shi'ite thought, thus resuming its historic place, with its tradition of clerical quiescence and of challenge to Sunni absolutism... A free Iraqi Shi'ite community would be a nightmare for the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran" (TA, p.78-79).
For Wurmser, the liberation of Najaf and Karbala would promote and empower potential US allies in Iraq and Iran. Wurmser's strategy foresees US military intervention against the Sunni minority in Iraq, not primarily as a springboard for further military intervention in Iran, but as the Iraqi detonator for a populist, Shiite-led rebellion against rival clerics in Iran. Neo-conservative support for the political ascendance of Shiite Iraq is not about the principle of democracy. Nor are neo-conservatives blind to the ways in which regime change in Iraq might transform the relationship between Iraq and Iran. Neo-conservatives who favor de-Baathification in Iraq might seem like blundering fools who would unwittingly hand Iraq to Iranian clerics. Wumser's scheme, however, is to hand Iran to Iraqi clerics, especially the followers of Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani. For Wurmser, the road to Tehran begins in Najaf.
Wurmser is hardly alone in his strategic vision for the Middle East. His successor at AEI, Reuel Marc Gerecht -- formerly a CIA agent in Iran -- enthusiastically embraces the same vision for dual rollback in Iraq and Iran. In a May 2001 article entitled "Liberate Iraq," Gerecht dismisses "fear of an Iraqi-Iranian Shi'ite collusion upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. This kind of fraternity between Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ites simply does not exist -- except in the minds of Republican 'realists' who tragically used this argument a decade ago." An August 2002 article entitled "Regime Change in Iran?" makes the case for dual rollback and argues that the ascendance of the Iraqi Shia "will be brutal for the mullahs." Similarly, a March 2003 article by Michael Ledeen -- another prominent neo-conservative at AEI -- predicts, "If we understand this war correctly, the Iraqi Shi'ites will fight alongside us against the Iranian terrorists."
That is a very big "if" at the heart of neo-conservative thinking about Iraq and Iran. Richard Perle, doyen of neo-conservatives at AEI, writes in his 2003 book with David Frum, An End to Evil (hereafter, EE), that "President Bush took an enormous risk in Iraq. The risk could well have gone wrong -- and it could still go wrong" (p.36). Similarly, Gerecht warns that "the mullahs" -- once they saw signs of Iraqi Shiite rule in Iraq -- would fight back. Gerecht's August 2002 Weekly Standard article acknowledges that "the Bush administration should prepare itself for Iranian mischief in Iraq's politics."
In advance of the war, however, neo-conservatives found comfort in some "area studies" research -- which they published and promoted -- that found reason to believe Iraqi Shiites might ultimately prevail in any intra-Shiite competition between clerics in Iraq and Iran. In an April 2000 book Who Rules Iran?, published by the Washington Institute, Wilfred Buchta argues that Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i, successor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has "a theological Achilles' heel" -- unlike Khomeini before him, and unlike Sistani in Iraq, Khamene'i is not a Grand Ayatollah. In his review of clerical opposition to the Iranian regime, Buchta describes Sistani as "Khamene'i's most serious competitor for the religious leadership of Shi'is throughout the world" (p.89).
[Continued in next post.]