The current presidential campaign is increasingly centering on Iraq.  Both presidential debates so far and much of the Vice Presidential debate have shown this.  It is difficult to keep an accurate perspective on what exactly is occurring in this troubled country, but here is my attempt to do so.

• First, Charles Duelfer has just released his final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  He opened his report with these words from Saddam Hussein:  “We will never lower our heads as long as we live, even if we have to destroy everybody.”  Such a statement shows how far Saddam was willing to go to preserve his regime.  Although the report affirmed that Saddam had no WMD stockpiled, there was much to fear from Saddam.  Allow me to summarize some of the salient features of the report.  (1)  Duelfer shows that UN containment of Saddam was not working.  He writes:  “By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support.  Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime.”  Duelfer rejects any suggestion that the sanctions were working.  They were not!  (2)  Saddam believed that WMD were essential to the preservation of his power, especially during the Iran-Iraq and 1991 Gulf wars.  (3)  Saddam engaged in strategic deception intended to suggest that he retained WMD.  This deception extended to members of his own government.  (4)  He fully intended to resume real WMD production after the expected lifting of UN sanctions, and he maintained weapons programs that put him in “material breach” of UN resolutions, including Resolution 1441.  (5)  He instituted an epic bribery scheme aimed primarily at three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the intent of having them help lift those sanctions.  Duelfer is of course referring to the now scandalous Oil for Food program.  He writes:  “Saddam personally approved and removed all names of voucher recipients.”  Alleged beneficiaries of such bribes included individuals in China, as well as some close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac.  France, Russia and China did indeed work hard to help Iraq skirt and escape sanctions.  Indeed, one Iraqi intelligence report uncovered by Duelfer says that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its UN veto against any US effort to attack Iraq, which it did threaten to do.  Therefore, no one can argue that anything the UN was doing in Iraq was working.  It was a dismal failure and was really, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, a “coalition of the bribed.”  The so-called “containment” of Iraq was a miserable failure and, had President Bush backed off in 2003 without unambiguous disarmament by Saddam, Saddam would have beaten the UN sanctions and its containment policy.  John McCain has perhaps stated it best:  “Those who criticize that decision [to go to war in Iraq] would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war.  But there was no status quo to be left alone.” 

• Second, we forget so quickly that Saddam saw himself as the glorious Arab leader, a new Nebuchadnezzar, who would unite all Arabs under his leadership.  He would use any means necessary to achieve that glorious end.  He regarded his people, indeed all Arabs, as a humiliated people.  By any means, he would restore their glory and honor.  In the words of David Brooks, “Saddam knew the tools he would need to reshape history and establish glory: weapons of mass destruction.”  These weapons had what Duelfer and his team called a “totemic” importance to him.  With these weapons, Saddam had defeated the evil Persians (Iran).  With these weapons he had crushed his internal opponents.  With these weapons he would deter what he called the “Zionist octopus” in both Israel and America.  But in the 1990s, with the world against him, he undertook a tactical retreat.  He would destroy the WMD while preserving the capacity to make them later.  He would foil the inspectors and divide the international community.  He would induce the UN to end the sanctions it had imposed and then, with them lifted, he would “reconstitute his weapons and emerge greater and mightier than before.”  So with this “longer perspective,” Saddam worked patiently to undermine the sanctions.  He personally constructed the list of those in France, Russia and China that he would bribe.  He sent out his oil ministers to curry favor with China, France, Turkey and Russia.  He established illicit trading relationships with Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and other nations to rebuild his arsenal.  It was working.  He had acquired about $11 billion through illicit trading.  He built palaces with the oil-for-food program.  France, Russia and China lobbied to lift sanctions against Iraq, and Duelfer says in his report that Saddam was “palpably close” to ending sanctions.  So, in Brooks’s words, “with sanctions weakening and money flowing, he rebuilt his strength.  He contacted WMD scientists in Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and elsewhere to enhance his technical knowledge base.  He increased the funds for his nuclear scientists.  He increased his military-industrial-complex’s budget 40-fold between 1996 and 2002.  He increased the number of technical research projects to 3,200 from 40.”  As Duelfer reports, “Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem.”  More than any other government report, Duelfer’s report has been politicized and distorted.  It is a story of a megalomaniac.  Brooks concludes, “We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed.  He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle.  He was on the verge of greatness.  We would all be living in his nightmare.” 

• Finally, a word about the Christian church in present day Iraq.  Driven by a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting their homes, offices and places of worship, Iraq’s Christian community is steadily dissipating.  The Iraqi government and church officials estimate that as many as 30,000 Christians have left Iraq since a string of church bombings in August.  Hundreds more are leaving every week.  Today the Christian population is estimated to be 850,000, down from 1 million before the war and the 1.4 million in the 1987 census.  This mass exodus is robbing Iraq of a politically moderate and largely pro-Western population.  The campaign to uproot the country’s Christians has ranged from car bombings and grenade attacks targeting churches to smaller-scale violence such as the killing of dozens of Christian beauty-shop and other store owners.  There is daily harassment designed to intimidate Christians to leave.  Many Christian families have had letters slipped under their doors threatening to kill them if they do not leave.  The terrorist campaign is having its desired effect—Christians are fleeing Iraq in record numbers.  It is difficult to view this as a positive development.

See Wall Street Journal (8 October 2004), David Brooks’s editorial in the New York Times (9 October 2004) and news report by Yochi Dreazen on Christians fleeing Iraq in the Wall Street Journal (27 September 2004).

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SHOULD TURKEY BE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

Within the European Union, there is a growing controversy about whether Turkey should be admitted as the EU’s newest member.  Why?  Turkey is a member of all the other big European organizations, from the Council of Europe to NATO.  But there are four key differences about Turkey:  It is very large; it is very poor; not all of it is in Europe; and it is Muslim.  Any day now, the European Commission will publish its assessment of whether Turkey has done enough in its reforms and in its economy to warrant EU membership.  If the go ahead is given, then EU leaders must decide if they desire to begin talks to effect membership.  Here are the issues:

1. Turkey already has 71 million people.  If it joins the EU, within 15 years it will overtake Germany as the largest member, with the heaviest voting weight in Brussels (the EU’s capital) and the largest national block in the European Parliament. 

2. Turkey’s GDP is only 20% of the EU25 average, way below all existing members.  Over 1/3 of its people are in agriculture.  Therefore, vast amounts of aid will pour into Turkey.  There is also the risk that waves of poor Turks will pour into other EU countries. 

3. Although Istanbul is in Europe, there is no dispute that some of Turkey is a part of Southwest Asia.  But even back in 1963, the then Common Market decided that Turkey was eligible for membership.

4. That Turkey is Muslim is perhaps the biggest hurdle.  Although 12 million citizens of the EU are Muslim, there is the deep conviction that Islam, by its very nature, is incompatible with the secular, liberal democratic order within the EU.  Of course, the other fear is that, with Islamic fundamentalism on the rise, there is increased hostility to a Muslim country being a part of the EU. 

The United States strongly supports Turkey’s EU membership.  Its position dovetails perfectly with the US desire to see democracy and freedom triumph in the Middle East.  Turkey is a perfect example of how this could work.  To deny membership now would send a dangerous message to the radicals that the West will never accept a democratic Muslim country.  To say yes to Turkey will send the opposite signal of hope and purpose for Muslims. 

See The Economist (18 September 2004), pp. 14, 30-32.

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THE PROBLEM OF OIL

As I am writing this, the oil price per barrel has exceeded $50.  But such a price has less effect than it did a generation ago.  Compared with 1973, the US now uses almost 50% less energy for each dollar of output.  But at $50 per barrel, the issue of oil remains a problem for the US.  How should we think about this?

• First, although we blame greedy oil companies, OPEC or someone else, the reality is that the oil companies and OPEC underestimated global demand, especially from China.  Since 2001 China’s oil use has jumped 36%.  Such an error caused OPEC and companies to underinvest in new production capacity.  In 2002 the world had 5 million barrels a day of surplus production capacity; today it has little. 

• Second, there are two other realities that the world, and especially the US, must face:  (1)  World oil production cannot rise forever; (2)  Barring miraculous discoveries, more oil will come from unstable regions of the world—especially the Middle East. 

• Third, both presidential candidates are living on another planet when it comes to their energy proposals.  John Kerry proposes to make the US independent of Middle East oil mainly through conservation and an emphasis on “renewable” fuels (biomass, solar and wind).  George Bush argues we must produce our way out of this mess.  But drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with possible reserves of 10 billion barrels, might provide 1 million barrels a day, or 5% of present US demand.  American output peaked in 1970; it is down 34% since then.  Arctic drilling will not restore this. 

• Fourth, a report recently issued by the PFC consulting company argues that the world currently uses 82 million barrels of oil per day—i.e., 30 billion barrels a year.  Their conclusion is sobering:  The world already uses about 12 billion more barrels a year than it discovers.  The report suggests that world oil production will peak in 2020 at 100 million barrels per day.  Two unstable regions of the world will supply most of the world’s oil—the Middle East and Russia. 

• Finally, the US must reduce its consumption of oil.  Whether the American people like it or not, we must especially curb gasoline use.  Energy efficient vehicles must be adopted and used.  There should probably be a fuel-efficient tax to curb gasoline use.  We can no longer hide our heads in the sand.  We have not wisely used or managed this resource of God’s earth.  The time to change behavior is now, before our dependence on foreign oil reaches crisis proportions.

See Robert Samuelson’s brilliant article in the Washington Post (6 October 2004). 

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