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It
should not surprise anyone if I feel duty-bound, as
a professor of economics, to draw upon my modest expertise
in neoclassical economics to look ahead, beyond the
impending war against Iraq, and contribute to the
nation-building efforts in that benighted country
as soon as we have finished destroying it.
About
a hundred and fifty years back, Karl Marx had proclaimed
that the British have a “dual mission” in
India: they were there to destroy and rebuild Indian
society. First, they must dismantle those archaic
institutions that had produced centuries of barbarism
and stagnation, blocking her progress to higher forms
of economic organization. Once this historical debris
had been removed, the British would lay the foundations
of a civilized society, duly equipped with property
rights, labor markets and an indigenous bourgeoisie.
India would then be ready to join the civilized world
as a near-equal of European nations.
India
proved to be more refractory than Marx had anticipated.
As a result, when the British left India, some two
hundred years after they had launched their dual mission,
it was hard to tell if they were in the first or second
phase of their dual mission. Judging from the average
height of Indians, which had shrunk by about a quarter
of an inch between 1900 and 1950, it would appear
that the British were still engaged in downsizing
India. In any case, no foreign or native observer
could have made the mistake of thinking that in 1947,
the year of her independence, India was even close
to laying claims of equality with Britain. If this
was not bad enough, even before the British terminated
their glorious rule, the Indians had plunged into
a great paroxysm of carnage, perhaps to announce to
the world that they had reclaimed their country, and
would run it according to native ideas of just governance.
It was a great pity that the ungrateful Indians had
forced the departure of their British philosopher-guardians
before their education was complete.
Once
the sun set on the British Empire, their dual mission
fell into neglect. Although the United States inherited
the mantle of global power, it would not be free to
exercise this power in the service of the dual mission.
During this era of the Cold War, when the Soviets
were busily seducing the poor huddled masses of Asia,
Africa and Latin America with dreams of socialist
revolution, the greatest part of the energies of the
CIA was spent returning these societies to the sober
discipline of military dictatorships or absolute monarchies.
This was mostly a thankless task.
Opportunely,
these adverse conditions changed in 1991 with the
collapse of Soviet power. Once again, the historical
conditions were appropriate for Western bourgeoisie
to resume their dual mission, interrupted by the Cold
War, among the half-breeds of the Periphery. No sooner
were the conditions ready than Iraq, the least civilized
of the Arab states, offered United States the opportunity
to launch the dual mission with great fanfare, with
nearly all the nations of the world in attendance.
Yet, though United States was superbly endowed, it
was not quite resolved to take upon itself the kinds
of risks that attend such great undertakings.
There
is not another region of the Periphery where the need
for resuming the dual mission is stronger than in
the Fertile Crescent, still steeped in obscurantist
obsessions and misogynist dreams. When the British
gained control over this region in 1917, they understood
that the time they had was too short to complete even
the destructive phase of their dual mission. As a
result, they decided to leave behind a surrogate -
a Jewish state in Palestine - who would continue to
do their job long after their departure. Once this
Crusader state was on the ground, it could safely
be trusted to complete the first phase of the dual
mission, at least in the neighboring territories.
Israel
has discharged its historic duties with serious purpose.
But as these things go - and nothing in this region
happens in accordance with the natural laws of history
- the insertion of Israel has created some problems
of its own. It has increased the recalcitrance of
some Arab states who arrogantly and blindly presume
that they have the right to live by their own archaic
laws and traditions, even if this obstructs the forward
march of history. It is imperative that these unnatural
states should be destroyed.
Although
Iraq offered this opportunity as early as 1990, United
States was not yet ready - as I stated earlier - to
embark on its dual mission. It was still burdened
by painful memories of its failed dual mission in
Vietnam, which despite massive efforts had reverted
to the primitivism of communal ownership and social
equality. As a result, after dislodging the Iraqi
barbarians from our oil fields in Kuwait, the United
States lost nerve. It declared victory, and shrank
back from the much greater task of launching the dual
mission in Iraq and the rest of the region.
It
is time now for the Son to atone for the sins of the
Father. The Son stands at the head of a coalition
- consisting of Zionists, apocalyptic Christians,
and assorted corporate interests - that is ready and
resolved to renew the dual mission, starting with
Iraq, and then moving to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia,
Libya and Pakistan. There is so much destructive work
that needs to be executed in these countries; the
backlog has been building up for quite some time.
It
is of the utmost importance to note that the new dual
mission promises to be different. When the British
and French initiated the destructive phase of their
dual mission some two hundred years ago, their work
proceeded slowly, since their firepower was not sufficiently
developed at the time. It took the French nearly 50
years, from 1820 to 1870, to kill half the population
of Algeria. The British faced a more difficult task
in India; they simply did not have the firepower to
terminate half their population. As a result, they
put in place a variety of policies that would produce
an abundant harvest of famines, managing to kill off
millions. Still, their kill rate was too slow to match
the French record in Algeria.
The
new dual mission led by the Bush-Blair crew can finish
its demolition job much faster. The destruction which
the British and French took decades to accomplish
can now be completed in mere days, even hours. Indeed,
if the Bush-Blair crew were not moved by humanitarian
concerns, they could depopulate all of Iraq in a few
minutes. This would have the further advantage of
converting the dual mission into a “singular”
mission, since there would be no rebuilding to do,
at least for a couple of hundred years. Instead, they
plan to implement a strategy of “shock and awe,”
which depends on the simultaneous delivery of hundreds
of cruise missiles to produce the effect of the Hiroshima
bomb without producing its human casualties. As the
Iraqis watch the missiles coming in, they will be
seized with mind-blowing awe, a sight they will treasure
for the rest of their shortened lives. And when the
missiles hit their targets with pin-point accuracy,
exploding into a thousand infernos, the Iraqi awe
will swiftly be converted into shock.
The
Iraqis who survive their ordeal of “shock and
awe” will, of course, quickly queue up for surrender
to American tanks, drones, robots, or any moving object
made in USA. Once the rites of surrender have been
completed - and televised to prime-time American audiences
- the Iraqis can return to their homes, if these haven’t
been reduced to rubble, and wait with baited breath,
but without water and electricity, for the second
phase of the dual mission, for the benefits of peace
and democracy to start pouring in. I suspect that
the wait may be long.
Historians
of technology will tell you that technology rarely
advances at the same rate on all fronts. Thus, while
the technology for completing the destructive phase
of the dual mission has made impressive progress in
the past decades, the rebuilding technology has yet
to catch up. At the press of a few buttons on ships
stationed thousands of miles away, we can dismantle
simultaneously - and almost instantly, if we are so
inclined - all the power stations, bridges, sewage
treatment plants, and water purification plants in
Iraq that survived the first Gulf War. On the other
hand, we are still a long way from inventing automated
plants which can build power stations, bridges, sewage
treatment plants, and water purification plants at
the press of a button. The Pentagon has commissioned
MIT and Stanford University to design robots that
will be able to rebuild a country’s civilian
infrastructure from the rubble of those that are destroyed
by bombs and cruise missiles.
There
is a further problem. Rebuilding of the slow kind
requires money - tens of billions of dollars - given
the dramatic success with which we are likely to execute
the first phase of the dual mission. Where will this
come from at a time of rapidly escalating budget deficits,
when the demands of the rich for tax cuts have not
yet been fully satisfied? There will be many in the
administration who will be tempted to revise their
thinking on the dual mission. “If we can be so
effective in the first phase, do we need to undertake
the second phase?” Under the circumstances, it
is doubtful that any money will be quickly forthcoming.
We cannot count on oil revenues either, since Saddam
may choose to go down in a blaze - the blaze of the
burning oil fields. And if we turn to our allies,
they are likely to decline. Most likely, they will
say, “This dual mission is yours, Imperial Highness,
not ours.”
Where
will the Americans find the money to start rebuilding
the new, free, democratic, post-war Iraq? We could,
of course, draw down the nearly $5 billion in economic
and military assistance we have provided to Israel
for several decades now, especially since a democratic
Iraq will have eliminated the imminent peril from
Iraq’s yet-to-be-developed nuclear arsenal. But
perish the thought! A Congressman proposing to sacrifice
that sacred cow would instantly put his political
career in jeopardy. Thankfully, we do not have to
take recourse to any radical measures. The rebuilding
of Iraq can begin without offending Israel.
The
solution to our predicament comes from neoclassical
economics, such as our better undergraduates in economics
are expected to master before they graduate from college.
Let me explain, drawing upon my modest expertise in
economics, how the time-tested principles of neoclassical
economics can be employed to rescue Iraq’s post
phase-one economy. Our bright senior in economics
knows, a la Heckscher-Ohlin theory of international
trade, that a country’s comparative advantage
lies in making the best use of its most abundant resources.
When their markets are left free, every country will
- and should - export products which make the most
intensive use of their abundant resources. All that
we need to do then is to review quickly the most abundant
resources that are likely to become available in post-war
Iraq. It is an ill wind that blows no good. It is,
therefore, unlikely that the most high-tech war that
is about to be unleashed on Iraq will fail to create
some quite lucrative opportunities for Iraqi entrepreneurs.
The first place to look for these opportunities is
in the rubble of post-war Iraq.
Improbable
as this may sound, Iraqis are likely to find their
most valuable opportunities in the bombed-out sites,
both military and civilian. I think I am not being
overly optimistic when I assume that United States
will be generous - maybe, even to a fault - in dispatching
its arsenal to chosen targets. Almost certainly, the
dispatched arsenal will include daisy-cutters, micro-wave
bombs, cruise missiles, and anti-tank artillery shells
laced with depleted uranium. As a result, once the
war is over, we can reasonably expect that Iraq will
possess an abundant supply of empty warheads, precision-guidance
systems, and other assorted bomb and missile parts.
The post-war government in Iraq should assign its
best engineers to collect, grade, and recondition
its war debris for export. In order to prevent this
lethal material from falling into the wrong hands
- such as the two remaining members of the axis of
evil - I am quite sure that the United States military
will be eager to snap up the Iraqi exports.
A
second potent source of post-war opportunities will
be presented by the human casualties of the war. According
to one UN estimate more than 1.3 million Iraqi children
under the age of five will be at risk of death from
starvation during and after the war. If we assume
that 10 percent of these children will die in the
immediate aftermath of the war - a fairly conservative
estimate - they can serve as an invaluable source
for body parts. I recommend that the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) should make arrangements
to deliver thousands of refrigerated containers to
all parts of Iraq to ensure that the children can
be frozen as soon as they die. Once this program comes
into operation, no American children have to die needlessly
because of unavailability of fresh body parts.
War
tourism offers a third set of opportunities for Iraq.
I admit it is a new concept, but that should not prevent
the Ministry of Tourism in Iraq from exploring its
potential for generating export revenues. I do not
doubt that once the war is over, there will be a considerable
interest in the capitals of most Third World countries,
and especially the Arab countries, to evaluate the
magnitude of the damage that the Americans are capable
of inflicting at short notice on any country. The
first cohort of war tourists will consist of the heads
of states, their ministers, generals, wives, and other
hangers-on. Imagine the sobering effect this tourism
will have on these visitors. I am sure that the whipping-boy
theorists of the Iraq war will strongly support this
new tourism, and they might even persuade the Pentagon
to subsidize this cost-effective way of promoting
US hegemony. Perhaps the officials of France, Germany
and Belgium can also be persuaded to join this tourist
crowd.
I
will list one more opportunity that the war is almost
certain to create: making commercial use of the depleted
uranium left behind by American artillery. According
to a scientific paper in the Iraqi Journal of Medicine
(Spring 1995), several Iraqi hospitals reported sudden
elevations in the rates of cancer remission - even
in advanced cases - in the months following the first
Gulf War. Upon investigation, the scientists found
that all these hospitals were located in areas that
were close to the scenes of battles, and enjoyed very
high levels of radiation left from the use of depleted
uranium shells by the US military. The Iraqi Ministry
of Health should capitalize upon this finding, and
invite multinationals to set up cancer treatment facilities
that will take advantage of the uranium radiation
that is sure to be gifted to Iraq by the new war.
It is important, however, that these multinationals
use only local doctors and nurses to staff these facilities.
I
am sure that if I gave my economic thoughts freer
rein, I could come up with several additional ways
of finding economic opportunities in the wreckage
of the Iraqi economy, the debris of dams and powerplants,
the maiming and mutilation of the Iraqi people. The
modest proposals that I have offered should demonstrate
to the Iraqi people that they should not despair at
the thought that the constructive phase of America’s
dual mission in Iraq may be stalled by burning oil
fields, the need to provide additional tax breaks
to the richest Americans, or the growing budget deficit.
They can start rebuilding their economy from the wreckage
of war itself. And for this they should be eternally
grateful to Americans far having advanced the arts
of war to the point where they sow seeds of hope in
the midst of destruction. No Jhengiz, no Halaku, no
Attila, no Tamburlane ever offered half as much to
mankind.
M. Shahid Alam is a professor of economics at Northeastern
University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth
of Nations was published by Palgrave (2000). He
may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
© M. Shahid Alam.
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