Toby Dodge

Iraqi Transitions: from regime change to state collapse

This paper focuses on the US occupation of Iraq from the seizing of Baghdad in April 2003 until the official hand-over of sovereignty to the Iraqi government in June 2004. It seeks to explain the reasons for the failure of US forces to impose order on and then stabilise the country by examining the political and sociological legacy of Saddam Hussein, US planning before and after the war and how the occupation set about trying to build political structures in post-Saddam Iraq. Ultimately it argues that the most important reasons for the failure of the occupation have been ideological. US administrators charged with planning for and then occupying the country fundamentally misunderstood the size and nature of the task they were about to undertake. They set out to apply neoliberal measures of state reform only to find that the state had collapsed and they were now involved in a prolonged exercise of state construction. They then applied a primordial understanding of Iraqi society, exacerbating a divisive and potentially violent sectarianism into Iraqi politics.

Iraq: The contradictions of exogenous state-building in historical perspective

Abstract This article compares Britains failed attempt at building a stable, liberal state in Iraq from 1914 to 1932 with the USAs struggle to stabilise the country after regime change in April 2003. It sets out a template for endogenous state-building based on the evolution of the European state system. It then compares this to exogenous extra-European state-building after both World War I and the Cold War. It focuses on three key stages: the imposition of order, the move from coercive to administrative capacity and finally the evolution of a collective civic identity linked to the state. It is this process against which Iraqi state-building by the British in the 1920s and by the USA from 2003 onwards can be accurately judged to have failed. For both the British and American occupations, troop numbers were one of the central problems undermining the stability of Iraq. British colonial officials never had the resources to transform the despotic power deployed by the state into sustainable infrastructural capacity. Instead they relied on hakumat al tayarra (government by aircraft). The dependence upon air power led to the neglect of other state institutions, stunting the growth of infrastructural power and hence state legitimacy. The US occupation has never managed to impose despotic power, having failed to obtain a monopoly over the collective deployment of violence. Instead it has relied on ‘indigenisation’, the hurried creation of a new Iraqi army. The result has been the security vacuum that dominates the south and centre of the country. The article concludes by suggesting that unsuccessful military occupations usually end after a change of government in the intervening country. This was the case for the British in May 1929 and may well be the case for the USA after the next presidential election in 2008.

State and society in Iraq ten years after regime change: the rise of a new authoritarianism

This article examines the rise of a new authoritarianism in Iraq ten years after the invasion that removed Saddam Hussein. It traces the centralization of political and coercive power in the hands of Iraqs Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki. From his appointment in 2006, Maliki successfully moved to constrain the power of parliament and the independent agencies set up by the American-led occupation to oversee the state. He removed key politicians and civil servants who stood in his way. This authoritarian centralization reached its peak with Malikis control of Iraqs special forces, its army and its intelligence services. The article analyses the civilian institutions of the state, concluding that political corruption has greatly hindered their reconstruction. The result is an Iraqi state with an over-developed armed forces, very weak civilian institutions and a dominant prime minister. Against this background, the sustainability of Iraqi democracy is in question. The article concludes by assessing the ramifications of Iraqs postwar trajectory for military interventions more generally.

The Causes of US Failure in Iraq

R O O F During the last quarter of 2006, perceptions in Washington DC about the civil war in Iraq drastically changed. In September, President George W. Bush was finally persuaded that things were not going well and agreed to a review of his administration’s policy.1 In early December this mood of pessimism was augmented by the publication of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report, co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The report did not mince its words: ‘The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success.’ In case there were any lingering doubts about the message he was delivering, James Baker stated at its launch: ’we do not know if it can be turned around’.2 This in turn forced Bush to admit ’it’s bad in Iraq’. ’I understand how tough it is and have been telling the American people how tough it is. And they know how tough it is.’3 Finally, in January, after the devastating November midterm congressional election results, Bush announced that ‘the situation in Iraq was unacceptable’, ’we need to change our strategy’.4 This new-found unanimity of pessimism did not lead to a united approach to solving the Iraq problem. The Baker–Hamilton report advocated giving much greater power to Iraq’s new ruling elite in the hope that they could succeed where the US government and military have so far failed. This, it was hoped, would allow for a reduction of US troops and hence American battlefield casualties. Bush remained committed to ‘staying the course’, focusing on victory, because, he argued, ’it’s a word the American people understand’.5 For the president this victory will be delivered by ‘surging’ US troop numbers, increasing those deployed to Iraq by 21,500. They will be involved in an attempt to impose The Causes of US Failure in Iraq

Can Iraq Be Saved

Using the Sykes–Picot agreement to explain the Middle East falsely extrapolates from a single moment. This misuse of history will lead to poor policy.

Intervention and dreams of exogenous statebuilding: the application of Liberal Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq

The central thesis of this article is that when faced with state collapse, rising violence, and a complex stabilisation effort, the US, UN, and NATO in Afghanistan and the US and Britain in Iraq, deployed the dominant, if not only, international approach available, Liberal Peacebuilding. The article traces the rise of Liberal Peacebuilding across the 1990s. It argues that four units of analysis within neoliberal ideology, the individual, the market, the role of the state and democracy, played a key role within Liberal Peacebuilding, allowing it to identify problems and propose solutions to stabilise post-conflict societies. It was these four units of analysis that were taken from the Liberal Peacebuilding approach and applied in Afghanistan and Iraq. The application of a universal template to two very different countries led directly to the fierce but weak states that exist today.

A Sovereign Iraq

The passing of UN Resolution 1546 and the granting of sovereignty to the Interim Iraqi Government were heralded in June 2004 as marking a watershed in both international and national attitudes to Iraq. In spite of the protracted negotiations in New York, the delivery of international legal sovereignty back to Baghdad was the most straightforward aspect of the whole Iraqi problem. Domestic sovereignty, the ability of the new Iraqi government to rule its population, is a long way off. The United States and the international community, through choice or necessity, will continue to be intimately involved in the day-to-day domestic politics of Iraq for many years to come.

The Crisis of the Iraqi State

To mark the tenth anniversary of the IISS Manama Dialogue process and to capitalise on the new light it has shed on security issues in the Gulf and the wider Middle East, this Adelphi brings together the results of two workshops held by IISS in its Middle East office in Manama. Featuring essays by nine IISS analysts and a number of outside experts, the book examines the most important geostrategic issues in the region, including the myriad security challenges it faces. These interlinked papers focus in particular on the regional ramifications of the civil war in Syria and the effects of the United States changing posture in the Middle East. The aim of this Adelphi is to both highlight and develop the ongoing discussions and debates about Gulf security that have taken place in the Manama Dialogue over the previous decade, and that will continue to do so over the next ten years. As such, it capitalises on the IISSs global reputation not only as the world leader in convening para-diplomatic events, but also as a provider of the best possible objective information and analysis on global military and political developments.

Chapter Five: The politics of Iraq: the exclusive elite bargain and the rise of a new authoritarianism

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was undertaken to dismantle a regime that had longthreatened its own population and regional peace, as well as to establish astable, democratic state in the heart of the Middle East. This Adelphi looksat the legacy of that intervention. It analyses the evolution of the insurgency,the descent into civil war and the ‘surge’ as a counter-insurgency strategy andexamines US and Iraqi efforts to reconstruct the states military and civiliancapacity. This book seeks to answer three questions that are central to thecountrys future. Will it continue to suffer high levels of violence or even slideback into a vicious civil war? Will Iraq continue on a democratic path, asexemplified by the three competitive national elections held since 2005? Anddoes the new Iraq pose a threat to its neighbours?

US intervention and possible Iraqi futures

Saddam Hussein ruled through the ‘shadow state’ a network of patronage and violence that transformed Iraqi society. For the United States to successfully break the shadow state and build a stable government, it has to change how it interacts with the Iraqi population. This would involve the move from despotic power, the deployment of military force to facilitate the states survivalal, to infrastructural power, and the creation of legal rational and legitimate state institutions that rule by consent. The only way to do this administratively and politically is to adopt a ‘micro-management’ approach. This would mean building state capacity and democratic institutions locally, from the ground up. By doing this, resentment and nationalist anger among the population could be reduced.