Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-67)
4 NOVEMBER 2003
MR DANA
ALLIN AND
MR JONATHAN
STEVENSON
Q60 Mr Hamilton: I was very interested
in your article, written together with Steven Simon, in the current
edition of Survival on The Moral Psychology of US Support
for Israel[2]
I want to go on to talk about that in a minute. First of all,
I really wanted to ask you about something you wrote in that article
about the dynamic that war in Iraq has almost certainly created.
You said "America is now stuck there. Even if Bush leaves
office in 2005, it is difficult to imagine the US withdrawing
its troops from Iraq in less than five years". How much has
the US experience in Iraq affected Washington's perception and
understanding of the insecurity of the Middle East region? Do
you think the US will try to use regime change again in order
to pursue its own interests in the region?
Mr Allin: On the latter part of
your question, the United States is going to be very inhibited
from attempting regime change again. For fairly obvious reasons
we are bogged down in Iraq. We are strategically very exposed,
we have a better sense, a sense which should have been there all
along and for many people was but nonetheless a more universally
accepted sense of the nation building obligations which go with
regime change. Apparently there really was a very strong conviction
on the part of many of the architects of this war that there would
not be a big nation building job in Iraq because there would be
a successful Iraqi state and society which could be decapitated
and then handed over to the good guys more or less intact. I know
that sounds cartoonish as I describe it, but it seems to me that
was the expectation.
Q61 Mr Hamilton: What does that say
about intelligence?
Mr Allin: Suffice it to say that
it has been disproved. As a very wise analyst of these affairs,
Mort Abramowitz, wrote George Bush may have gotten his campaign
aspirations of getting the United States out of nation building
and has done so by taking on the most challenging nation building
job since the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan. That
is a long-winded answer to a question which really has a simple
answer, which is just that I do not see us doing this any time
soon. I am sorry, I did not answer the first part of your question.
Q62 Mr Hamilton: The first part of
my question was really about Washington's understanding of the
insecurity of many countries in the Middle East, how insecure
they feel because of the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict, because
of the support that many Arab nations have for terror, because
of the lack of any democracy in the region. It seemed to me that
the United States Government applied a very simple set of criteria,
that there are countries in the Middle East which are not democratic,
which are fairly unpleasant regimes fairly often, without naming
names, and once they had some sort of democracy and legitimacy,
the whole region would change for the better and there would be
peace. Of course it is not that simple.
Mr Allin: No, it is not that simple.
In fairness, there is a reasonable calculation that the old bargain
of tacit approval of autocratic regimes in the Arab Middle East,
which has been American policy for well over a generation, was
delegitimised by 11 September, that this was in some sense an
inner-Arab insurgency which failed in the 1990s and was directed
out at the United States. Therefore, we could not be indifferent
to the lack of democracy in the Arab world and that was a profoundly
correct analysis, but the implication that there is something
bold and immediate which can be done about it is less justified.
Q63 Mr Hamilton: On 30 October the
BBC reported "The number of US troops killed in hostile action
in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat over on 1 May
officially reached 115 on Wednesday—exceeding the 114 listed
as killed by hostile fire during the actual war"[3]Do
you think, as casualties build up and now we have passed that
landmark tragic figure of 115 soldiers killed since the end of
hostilities, supposedly, that US public opinion is turning now
and is becoming more hostile to the war and to its aftermath,
the occupation?
Mr Allin: US public opinion is
obviously much less supportive of the administration's war plans
and post-war plans in particular. The latest polls show something
like a 50/50 split on whether the war was worthwhile at all. I
do not quite know in my own mind what the operational ramifications
of this are going to be. Probably the most disturbing possibility
is an excessive haste towards "Iraqification" and trying
to put a fig leaf over a failure. The political lines in the United
States are not at all clear on this. Obviously the Democrats and
the Democratic candidates are going to be trying to use this mood
of dissatisfaction, but I do not believe that any of the leading
Democratic presidential candidates would, if he became president
tomorrow, simply withdraw from Iraq. The answer to your question
is: yes, there is disaffection. Is it going to lead to a political
collapse of the policy? I do not think so. What it might lead
to is more ill-advised moves on the part of the Bush administration
to do things for political reasons which are not best on the ground
in Iraq.
Q64 Mr Hamilton: Do you think that
European governments have a completely different view of the global
scourge of terrorism, given the relations that, for example, the
UK have with Iran when the US has not diplomatic relations at
all and the view that many European nations take of Syria, which
is regarded not very favourably by the US administration? Do we
have a different view here in Europe and how does that affect
the war against global terrorism?
Mr Stevenson: There is relative
harmony on the view of the threat of transnational non-state actors
such as al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. How you treat rogue states
is a different question. As far as Iran goes, I do not know. I
think the actual gap between European and American views is probably
narrowing and that there is probably a greater degree of co-ordination
between how they behave. There seems in some ways to have been
a "good cop, bad cop" routine developing in the way
Iran is dealt with.
Q65 Chairman: Syria?
Mr Stevenson: There is a debate
going on even within the United States about how to deal with
Syria. A lot of people feel that there have been too many sticks
and not enough carrots, particularly since the Iraq intervention.
Q66 Sir John Stanley: Leaving the
security dimension aside, I should like to ask you how you think
the British and American Governments, through the CPA should be
going about the crucial business of making the transition from
the Interim Governing Council to establishing a government which
has some form of electoral mandate from the people of Iraq, which
is going to be able to take over the reins of political and security
power so the coalition can exit? Could you share with us your
thoughts as to what the Road Map is, because I certainly am very
uncertain in my own mind. For example, is it remotely realistic
to think in terms of some form of one person one vote system in
Iraq as it is? What is the basis for establishing some form of
electoral register or is that completely illusory? Is there some
other form of democratic procedure which will command the confidence
of the people of Iraq other than the one person one vote system?
Please tell us how you think the British and American Governments
should be getting from the Interim Governing Council to a democratically
endorsed government of Iraq and thereby make their exit?
Mr Allin: I wonder whether it
is possible for me to say I do not know. I do not consider myself
enough of an expert on Iraqi politics to answer that question.
If I may make a statement which might sound slightly flippant
but I fear it to be true: I fear that there are not enough American
experts in the CPA either. We do not really have a good concept.
The lack of expertise in the CPA in Iraq is somewhat shocking,
at least on the American side. As for what I would recommend,
I do not consider myself qualified to say.
Mr Stevenson: I do not either.
I just make the observation that the American approach, somewhat
in contradistinction to the European approach, has been that security
needs to be established before there can be any kind of wholesale
or even substantial political handover. That probably makes sense.
The second order consideration is that political systems and integrity
need to be established at local level first. That seems to be
happening. That may be something which the headlines belie, that
there has been some political progress in terms of the overall
stability and political viability at the local level. The default
position has been that the Iraqis should figure it out. The problem
is that the Governing Council which has been appointed or installed
is not likely to come up with a model which is going to serve
all interests. Yet one of the United States" main concerns
of course is that the Shiites not try to exact too much payback
for having been deprived effectively of the power owing to their
political majority.
Sir John Stanley: Thank you. This seems
to be a very central area where we as a Committee will need to
ask a lot of questions of our own government.
Q67 Mr Illsley: In the same way that
we have seen that the election campaign in America will have an
effect on the Road Map, you both just said that it is unlikely
that any candidate will withdraw from Iraq or make any statements
on that. Is anything likely to come out within the campaigning
over the next 12 months which could affect policies towards Iraq?
Is anybody likely to make any rash promises in terms of funding
and all the rest of it?
Mr Allin: No. The biggest concern
is that there will be pressure on the Bush administration to get
this issue off the front pages. I would only repeat what I said
earlier which was that a hasty handover of security to Iraq is
something which would be worrying to me. Obviously it is difficult.
I do not want to go too far with this because I generally support
their position, but the incoherence of the Democratic opposition
has a lot to do with the fact that they are just very, very angry.
They are very, very, very, very angry with President Bush and
believe that he got us into a mess and should be punished for
it. They do not really know how to translate that into constructive
policies and constructive proposals. To me the only constructive
proposal is that we are here now and we have to do everything
we can to make the most of it. The vote over the $87 billion appropriation
was classic. No one could give a really convincing argument for
voting against it. They just wanted to be seen to vote against
it. The other danger is in Iraq which is that this will be seen
to more significant in policy terms than it really is and that
the prospect of dwindling political support and driving the United
States out of Iraq will be taken more seriously by the insurgents
than maybe it should.
Mr Stevenson: So much has been
staked on Iraq, particularly by the US, that it makes it difficult
for it to become, and acutely for players, an issue in some way.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
We will get ready to move onto the third block which is centred
on Iraq itself. Thank you very much.
2 Survival: Volume 45, No. 3, Autumn 2003. Back
3
"US Iraq deaths exceed war toll", BBC News,
30 October 2003. Back
| 
