Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Rogue State/Failed State Conundrum

Prior to September 11, and even afterwards, Bush administration foreign affairs concern has focused on nations, and rogue states in specific. If you look at our activities prior to 9/11 and immediately after, we concerned ourselves with nations like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, in part, because they made up an actual target that we could aim at. Afghanistan was a much more difficult problem, in that it was hardly ruled from the center and we could exert little or no influence over the countryside, even when we could influence the Taliban who ran the country.

Our invasion of Afghanistan, and our subsequent actions there, have placed a premium on sovereignty and pututative control over the country, rather than actual control over all places within the country. This is because we did Afghanistan on the cheap, never really putting ourselves in there full force with the necessary troops to control the whole country. As a result, much of the countryside is under control of war lords with only tenuous loyalty to the central government. In many places, ex-Taliban and Al Qaida figures exert great influence. In other words, Afghanistan, while putatively an ally, is on the edge of becoming a failed state again. This appears to be of little concern to the Bush Administration.

Iraq was, by all accounts, a rogue state. Under Hussein, Iraq seemed to have little regard for international agreements or other niceties. However, they were a coherent, controlled state. All parts answered to the center, and no one entered or exited the country without the explicit or implicit consent or understanding of Hussein (except, obviously, for those areas which were under International control, like the Kurdish north).

Iraq is now becoming a failed state. It is very likely that the result of these "elections" will be civil war. I used quotes because this is the most farcical democratic enterprise Iraq has seen in, well, I guess only a few years, since their referendum on Hussein which produced a 99.9% yes vote. In this case, voters do not even know most of the people they are voting for - that's kept confidential for security reasons - they don't know their platforms, because there are none, they don't know any policies, because there are none. This is essentially a popularity contest based on tribal and religious affiliation - hardly a harbinger of good things to come.

However, as it stands right now, Iraq is veering dangerously towards the status of another failed state. So, I have to ask you, which is worse. A rogue state that acts outside the bounds of civil society and rejects international standards in most of their actions, but which is at least controlled enough so that the center is in charge, or a failed state where all of the above bad things apply, except the country is an open and fertile ground for the breeding of future terrorists, where huge amounts of weapons can be used against us there, or smuggled out (easily) to be used against us here. The country could easily break into 3 parts, with the center facing bloody civil war and failed state status for decades to come.

Remember, the only country which was a real threat to the US in the last decade has been Afghanistan, and not because they had an overtly anti-American government, but because they had no government at all. Additionally, places like Somalia were a threat and breeding ground for Al Qaida because they were lawless places where Al Qaida could spawn. Therefore, it appears as if Iraq is becoming a greater threat, not less of a threat, due to our invasion. I can only see one solution.

We need to ensure that a strong leader who can unify the country and control his borders and population takes power there. Someone who may not be our friend, but we can convince him not to be our enemy. We need someone who will work with us against some of the other dangerous and bad actors in that neighborhood (like Iran, who is greedily licking their chops in anticipation of the Shia takeover of Iraq and subsequent subservience to Iran). In short, I have a proposal about who can do this.

Saddam Hussein.

We have our answer, we have our man, we even have him in custody and available for immediate use. Now all we have to do is act on it.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, if Saddam doesn't work out, what about Colonel Sanders?

8:06 PM  
Blogger Greg Apt said...

Ahh, Colonel Sanders, the Democrat's southern saviour. I think he'd make a great middle east dictator.

12:08 PM  

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