STATE FAILURE 101

Iraq spent another night in total darkness due to a cascading infrastructure failure that shut-down electricity throughout the country.  It was another major tactical victory for Iraq's global guerrillas in their campaign to keep the country in perpetual failure.  In contrast, the US is focused almost exclusively on what they consider Iraq's most important need:  January's elections for self-determination.  This asymmetry demonstrates a problem that will continue to dog US efforts in the country.       

Unmet Basic Needs

This recent infrastructure collapse underscores a basic fact about global guerrilla warfare:  it strikes at basic needs first and works its way up.  What are basic needs of the average resident of Iraq?  Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a good place to start (never thought you would see this again, did you?).  In Maslow's view, people must meet basic needs first, before they can consider more esoteric needs.  This makes sense.  You can't worry about job advancement if you spend your entire day on the hunt for fuel to heat your home or food for your table.  Global guerrillas strategy plays on this.  The disruption of systems that meet basic needs prevents the resuscitation of the state (a higher level need).  Here's how Iraq's guerrillas worked their way up the pyramid:

• Infrastructure attacks.  Ongoing assaults on electricity, oil, gasoline, water, transportation, and telephone networks deprive Iraqi's of the basic necessities of life.  This is particularly true in a modern society (as opposed to agrarian societies where people provide the bulk of their own basic needs).
• Ongoing crime and coercion.  Hostage taking, protection money, convoy hijacking, and theft reduce the street level security of the average Iraqi.  These criminal activities aid guerrilla funding and goals.
• Government destabilization.  The decimation of the national guard/police, the assassination (350 + since October) of government officials, and the intimidation of "collaborators" prevent governmental recovery.  These assaults keep the interim government and the US occupation forces psychologically unbalanced.

Alternative Loyalties

The ongoing assaults on basic services (physiological and safety) has collapsed the legitimacy of the Iraqi government.  People ultimately blame the government and the US for the lack of services and not the guerrillas.  In response to this collapse in legitimacy:

• People have opted for other forms of loyalty (to clan, tribe, and mosque) that can provide them ongoing support in difficult times. 
• These groups have lots of ancient baggage:  jealousies, hatreds, feuds, etc.  Selfish behavior is the norm since basic needs aren't met (Maslow suggests that selfishness is a response to unmet basic needs).
• Guerrilla entrepreneurs leverage this decentralized layer of group cohesion to build ventures that participate in the open source warfare of Iraq's bazaar of violence.

US Nation-Building

Unfortunately, the US effort to rebuild Iraq is out of synch (a full 180 degrees) with what is really needed.  If we map US efforts to Maslow's hierarchy we see something quite unsettling. 

• Elections and the establishment of a government/army get the most of the US effort.  The vast majority of the US effort is focused on building a viable Iraqi government that can provide the country the ability to self-actualize.  Think Green Zone...
• Hearts and minds.  Rebuilding schools and hospitals.  General clean-up activities.  These activities take the second most effort.
• Basic services get the least effort.  From the days that Iraq was looted just after the invasion, the US has demonstrated that it is uninterested in street level security.  Additionally, the vast majority of Iraq's infrastructure is guarded by local or outsourced forces (if at all). 

Comments

[jthomas]

I remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs from Michael Wilson's old Cloaks list in about 95. I wonder what he's done with his consulting firm Seven Pillars...

Once again, the United States is playing chess against an enemy who's playing go. Our irresistable direct force is once again strategically surrounded by an opponent who controls the entire map. He may cede us pieces, but does so only while exacting a great price. If there are a certain number of hostiles determined to wage even just infrastructural warfare, I have no idea how we can win the conflict. Can't guard everywhere.

Oh, but they're considering sending young girls into combat now. That will help for sure.

[Lisa Williams]

Can I just say I love that you're using Maslow's hierarchy? You kick some serious butt.

[dingo]

The destabilization model is useful to insurgents only where there is no local counter force with an interest in maintaining services. The survival of insurgencies in Kurdistan would be doubtful no matter how much insurgents tried to disrupt the system.

We seem to be heading in the 'Kurdish' direction in the Shiite south, where the relative quiet seems to be the result of largely surrendering control to the locals. They have an interest in maintaining stability so long as they believe the current process results in their control over the government and the eventual departure of the U.S. in the 1-2 year period following elections.

In the Sunni triangle, we have yet to develop such a counterforce. It's not good trying to do it with 'state' actors or institutions. Those institutions do not have the information infrustructure necessary to control the insurgency. Only locals who are 1) self-organized at the grass-roots level, 2) armed and violent, and 3) motivated to restore order in the sunni triangle will succeed.

[Jacob]

Where did you get the information that there has been an electric grid failure in Iraq?

[b]

Power plant fire turns off electricity across Iraq - still off this morning
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/13/a2.int.warpower.1213.html

Still off this morning

[Osama_been_forgotten]

Yeh, I was taught this stuff back in the late 70's, jr. high school. (gifted program though, not "normal" curriculum).

Excellent way to prove scientifically how flawed the Bush approach is.

Unfortunately, it won't fit on a bumper sticker, so the 60 Million Bad Apples who voted for Bush, who were not in the Gifted Program in Junior High, who watch Fox News, will either never hear, or never believe this article.

Sad.

[john neff]

How can you expect a president who has never experienced want, advised by yes-men who have never known want, to understand that a person who has to spend all their personal energies chasing the most basic necessities won't have time for "self-actualization"? It kind of reminds me of the story about Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake"...

[haydar]

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/iraq/?id=12129

An interesting article detailing the stark difference between military and political control. This is much more than a guerilla insurgency. It has become a large scale insurrection. To quote:

""Since November's assault on Fallujah no local leader has stood up as a go-between," between US forces and the local population, said Lieutenant Colonel Justin Gubler, who commands the battalion and half the city...

Lacking partners of any sort, American soldiers try to learn about the influence of tribal and religious authorities in the city as they conduct hundreds of house searches.

In this hostile environment, the battalion lives in a kind of fortified bubble, the daily target of somewhat inaccurate mortar fire and victim of random harassment as soon as they leave their compound.

"Everything we use... is brought from the outside, and we burn all our trash," said Snook. Even shower water is brought in, and drinking water comes all the way from Saudi Arabia. Electricity comes from generators."

[mark]

For what it's worth, I salute our President and all our troops for their service...Like him or not, our President is a man of strong convictions; he will do what he belives is best for this nation...He's not pussy-footing around the terrorists... As a country, we should unite and stand behind him.

[Kim McDodge]

Came upon this:

'To address the issue of basic needs, the Natural Step is utilizing the basic needs analysis of Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef ("Development and human needs" in Real-life Economics: Understanding Wealth Creation, Paul Ekins and Manfred Max-Neef, London and NY: Routledge). His work has been at the core of human scale development in Latin America. Unfortunately, few Americans are aware of it. Max-Neef's concepts are used extensively by the Natural Step community facilitators in Sweden.

Max-Neef postulates that "basic needs are finite, few and classifiable" and that they "are the same in all cultures and all historical periods." Rather than there being a hierarchy of needs as presented by Maslow, he believes these needs are always present. "What changes, both over time and through cultures, is the way or means by which the needs are satisfied." He believes needs are not substitutable--you can have lots of one fulfilled but it doesn't do anything about the rest. At the same time, through our selection of satisfiers, we can fulfill more than one need at once.

He suggests there are nine basic human needs: subsistence, protection/security, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity/meaning and freedom. He believes there may be a tenth, transcendence, but is not sure that it is universal (I would suggest it is).

Some of the needs and their satisfiers (there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence) are very straightforward, such as protection (curative and health systems) and understanding (formal or informal education). But in other cases we confuse needs and satisfiers. For example, he believes food and shelter are not needs, but rather, satisfiers of the need for subsistence. There are different ways we can meet that need, such as infant formula or breast feeding. Bottle feeding will satisfy the need for subsistence, but breast feeding will simultaneously satisfy the needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, identity and freedom.'

at this address:

http://www.mtn.org/iasa/tgmaxneef.html for an interesting quick summary.

[Jeff Fourmyle]

If you take Maslow's theory this seriously, you're required to believe that Fascism is a superior form of government to the anarchy that prevails in Iraq at this time, and that anyone willing to die for any cause is a fool. Mussolini made even the Italian trains run on time, fulfilling a fundamental need of modern society. Saddam Hussein was a first-class fascist, who kept Iraq relatively prosperous, at the expense of the higher levels of Maslow's list.

Unfortunately, the only quick path from fascism to democracy seems to pass through a war and an anarchic postwar stage. Anyone who has removed a bandage knows that a short intense pain is preferable to the long slow pain that would follow from an interminable cold-war strategy. Even with the quick path, it took decades of lend-lease to get through this stage in Europe after WWII, and it will probably take decades to get Iraq through it, too.

[Greg Avril]

Dear Sir:
I am from Haiti. I found your article while I was doing a research on the definition of failed state. The similarities between the situation in Iraq and Haiti is just incredible. More incredible is the fact that the US (and the rest of the international community involved in the Haitian crisis) have taken the same ill-fated approach: elections will solve Haiti's problems. As a result, armed gangs now control many parts of the capital, kidnappings are on the rise, the electoral process is seriously undermined, which indicate that Haiti might soon become a failed state (if it isn't one already). Do you think this term applies to Haiti?