The Clipboard: Democracy in the new Iraq is a myth

From an article¹:

He doesn't want to be told how long and hard the road may be. He wants instant triumphs to hail. He can't stand the thought of all-engulfing complexity. But, whether you are for or against the coming war, there is a different duty: a duty to stay around, a duty of seriousness.

This isn't a Bosnia or a Kosovo - small territories with small populations. This is a big country, 23 million strong, divided by race, religion and bloody history and about to overdose on cruise missiles. This is a country of separatism, feuds, poverty and infinite corruption. (link)

This column looks at the problems the U.S. will face in attempting to transform Iraq into a democracy. Just how much thinking is being done by pro-war pundits about this?

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Complete text of the article, Democracy in the new Iraq is a myth, by Peter Preston

There is, alas, something ludicrous here. The prime minister who brought you Lords reform prepares to bring true democracy to Baghdad; the president of the hanging chads sees Iraq as the Switzerland of the Middle East, exporting freedom's ways to its neighbours. And yet nobody laughs out loud.
On the contrary, planning and daft promises proceed apace. After the war (say, in about six weeks) General Tommy Franks will move in as supreme administrator of Iraq - your friendly foreign military dictator. Then, a year or so later, there will be some Kosovo-style tandem, a UN-civilian governor standing beside a Yank in braid. And two/three/four years on? Milk and honey time. Going home time for our boys. Full elected government time. Provided, naturally, that those so elected are pro-American.

It's a scenario almost designed to invite scepticism, of course. Just look around the Arab world and sniff. We can send them Lord Irvine as UN high representative perhaps - but will that be enough? Yet the deepest doubts are coming not from the liberals who support this war, nor even from the liberals who don't. Rather, America's thinking right has the wind up.

Take Stanley Kurtz of the Hoover Institution (writing in New York's latest City Journal). The White House model, he says, is Japan after the second world war, with Franks as a MacArthur retread. But democracy - without roots, succour or tradition - doesn't grow overnight. There was, however imperfectly, a democratic legacy in Japan left over to build on. There was vibrant political debate and - by the 1920s - full male adult suffrage. And, crucially, there was a "sophisticated and modern bureaucratic class on hand to accept and implement the democratic reforms".

Let's hear it for these samurai turned bureaucrats. "Modern bureaucracies are generally democratising forces," writes Kurtz. "They embody intrinsically modern, democratic ideas - that a government office is distinct from the individual who holds it, that rules apply to all with equal force. They blow apart traditional social relations ...often powerful barriers to democratic reform ...by centralising authority and power in a national government."

MacArthur couldn't have succeeded without these samurai for change, just as Britain couldn't have left behind a democratic India without the transformation in Hindu thinking wrought by Ram Mohan Roy and the cultural transformation of Macauley's educational reforms. There was, again, an indigenous class ready to use the gifts of freedom. There were foundations to build on.

But where are those foundations in Iraq after 35 years of Saddam? Kurtz and other similarly glum American academics promptly spiral away into a distant future, three or more decades on, when new US schools and universities in Baghdad have produced the new young Iraqi elite they seek. Fine ...but you can see George W clouding over within 30 seconds.

He doesn't want to be told how long and hard the road may be. He wants instant triumphs to hail. He can't stand the thought of all-engulfing complexity. But, whether you are for or against the coming war, there is a different duty: a duty to stay around, a duty of seriousness.

This isn't a Bosnia or a Kosovo - small territories with small populations. This is a big country, 23 million strong, divided by race, religion and bloody history and about to overdose on cruise missiles. This is a country of separatism, feuds, poverty and infinite corruption.

It has technologists and engineers and the seeming apparatus of a modern state, to be sure. But nuclear science isn't political science. Those who remain within its borders, for all their technical proficiency, have had scant immersion in the western values we seek to export; and those, in their millions, who have fled Saddam to live in the west won't return en masse to pick up the burdens of reconstruction.

Who, politically, are these exiled outsiders? Mostly disparate forces gathered together under the umbrella of the Iraq National Congress. But the State Department and CIA don't want them back. They - half-remembered shades of Europe in 1945 - want the current infrastructure of administration to remain in place, because that's the only infrastructure there is. They want a democratic transformation supervised by the very same people who ran Saddam's last "election". They cannot be serious.

We could, quite rationally, be sitting round now charting a far more detailed approach. What acceptably Islamic electoral system for this "liberated" Iraq? First general past the post, like Pakistan? First son of former dictator past the post, as in Syria? The two-round system they use in Iran and Egypt (and France)? The block vote system of Kuwait, with as many votes in multi-member districts as there are candidates (and no women in sight)? Jordan's way with the single non-transferable vote (and monarch)? Israel's renowned list PR system, Sharon-plus?

I could make quite a decent Iraqi case for MMP, the mixed member proportional system Roy Jenkins embraced, probably with a cantonal twist if the word "federal" causes too many frissons. The Kurds and Sunnis and Shias will need their autonomy, the Turkomans and Assyrians will need their voice.

For now, though, and possibly forever, this is geek stuff, anorak heaven; good enough for a wet afternoon at Nuffield College but not remotely interesting to a prime minister who only needs seven options to forget. Regime change without thought, or probably change. Another disloyal jirga. The flip thing is to say that, doubtless, the supreme court will come up with an answer as needed - or maybe some Blair "independent commission". But that, alas, would mean laughing out loud.

reference=http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,892378,00.html