JOURNAL: Iraq Update

In State Failure 101 I identify an unstable inversion of priorities in Iraq.  This can best be seen using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The main effort is being directed towards self-actualization (elections/democracy) rather than the delivery of basic survival needs (power, gas, and water).  Global guerrillas have surged into this gap.  Their attacks on infrastructure have been very effective:  every measure of basic services shows production below pre-war levels (gas, oil, electricity, water, etc.). 

Basic services are the core political goods of the modern state.  A failure to deliver these services will delegitimize any state that does not quickly correct the problem.  Allawi's interim government and the US occupation lost its legitimacy in large part due to this process.

We are about to see another victim.  The new government in Iraq is paralyzed (due to the descent of Iraq towards Primary Loyalties).  It can't find a way to divide the spoils among the winners.  While these factions continue to argue, the process of state failure continues to undermine its future legitimacy.  Democracy or no, we are close to that point now.  The UPI's Baghdad correspondent, Beth Potter, picks up on this trend:

Iraqi voters aren't happy.  They don't care that some of the biggest political changes ever to happen in their lifetime are going on in their country. All they know is that the electricity still is off for hours every day, the water doesn't always flow out of the faucets, there are still long gas queues at the stations, and the situation still seems pretty lawless in the streets.

NOTE:  Global guerrillas thrive in countries where the state has lost its legitimacy. 

Comments

[name]

> Global guerrillas thrive in countries where the state has lost its legitimacy.

Where exactly does that leave the US ?

[Oscar]

Well, name, there are certainly some types of global guerrillas that are thriving in the US. The interesting problem is that even if we bring all of Barnett's Gap into the Core, the Core is a great breeding ground for some types of GG-like organisations as well. The way the US seems to have handled this in the past is by containment, work-around, and co-option.

[Fred Schoeneman]

John,

I'm not so sure about the premise. If we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then to be sure food and water are at that bottom level, critically important, but man lived for hundres of thousands of years without gas & electricity. And if 14 million out of 24 million Iraqis were willing to register to vote, and 8 million of them actually showed up at the polling places -- which would compare favorably with our own voter turnout -- that suggests the Iraqi people are a little closer to the tip of that self-actualization pyramid than you may think.

And as long as we're talking about Maslow, a "guerilla" movement -- such as the one which is having some success in rolling back the basic services of which you speak -- is also, I think, becoming increasingly percieved as a serious net reducer of security, and security is perhaps even more important on Maslow's hierarchy than gas & electricity.

The question becomes, for normal Iraqis: Who will make us more secure, the ones who are bombing us at the polling stations and in our mosques, or the Allawi-US alternative.

f

[Ryan]

You moron, if you don't sort out the political processes involved in forming a new government, services such as you've pointed out, will never ever be administered properly if at all.

Its not about 'freedom of political will' its about forming a government which can handle the responsibilities of the needs the Iraqis want without having to resort to bloody oppression of ethnic groups other another.

Man, I imagine if the US Army declared martial law and shot anyone on sight for just being out of place, I'd hear the same shit, only in reverse.

[John Robb]

Fred, the guerrillas aren't in competition for broad popularity. They are too fragmented (and too concentrated within a single community) to form a state. All they need to do is reduce the popularity of those in power (and thereby keep the state in failure). That has clearly worked in the Sunni community re: the government and local leadership. Time will tell if a similar fragmentation will occur in the Shia community.

Ryan, you assume that the elections improved the stability of Iraq. That is clearly not the case. If anything, the country is even more divided and factionalized than it was before the elections.

[Ryan]

Ryan, you assume that the elections improved the stability of Iraq. That is clearly not the case. If anything, the country is even more divided and factionalized than it was before the elections.

The country was divided long before the US came into the foray, but we've helped them negotiate their differences. We've made them unite to the cause of one common goal. Besides, if political processes aren't worked out, then the economic and social environment will never be resolved, and this is the formost problem in helping bring the insurgency to an end.

Maslow doesn't apply here, and even if it does, it can only work backwards to achieve the longterm interest of the Iraqi people.

if the Economic and politcal aspects of the iraqi government were decided by the US and its allies, the people would never accept it. In this case we're helping to achieve legitimacy for the new administration which is trying to come along.

[Ryan]

Might I add that a stable political structure will help people invest and build in the country. Terrorism breeds in places where there is long term and large amounts of political instability. So yes, the Iraqis are right to get their political house in order before sorting out anything else.

[Fred Schoeneman]

John,

I absolutely agree with you that the guerrillas/terrorists/insurgents are having some success in weakening the state, at least in the short term. And I understand that according to your theory, their goal is to keep the state from succeeding, rather than to supplant it, at least in the short term. I guess I'm just more optimistic about human nature, though, in the long term, and believe that the nihilism represented by these sad fucks will ultimately be rejected and may even result in a strong secular state.

f

[andrew]

John, you wrote, "Basic services are the core political goods of the modern state. A failure to deliver these services will delegitimize any state that does not quickly correct the problem."

Services are the basis of legitimacy for the nation-state. Philip Bobbit, as you know, argues that the market-state derives its legitimacy by offering the broadest range of opportunities to its citizens, thus the focus on elections and self-actualization. How better to broaden opportunity than to put power in the hands of the populace. Could the US be working to foster the establishment of an Iraqi market-state by making opportunity the basis of legitimacy rather than services? Given the diverse makeup and skills of its population, I believe Iraq is a good candidate for this experiment, although I will grant that it has a long ways to go.