Bloodless Coup

A Good Iraq Post, and Some Inside Baseball for IR Geeks

Duck of Minerva has a retrospective on the buildup and execution of the Iraq War (2003 - 200?):

The overall assumption evident throughout the political appointees of the Administration (and among Neo-con talking heads) was that inside each little Iraqi was an American just waiting to get out. The head of Iraq may have been poisoned by Saddam, but the body was healthy, and if we cut off the head, the body would simply grow a new one more to our liking. But, people are not born as rational economic actors with well-ordered preferences that naturally emerge in a free market--be it political or economic. The free market (both politically and economically) that the neocons (including Cheney and Bremmer) sought to create in Iraq may have been possible to creat, but it could not and would not exist prima-facie in a post-Saddam environment. Indeed, as my colleagues here are quite adept at explaining, the rules of markets are social constructs, and must continually be reinforced through a social process of legitimation.

Perhaps if Bush had a few Constructivists on his NSC, things might have gone a bit better.

(a momentary pause while you stop laughing at the insanity of that last statement)

(The constructivism stuff is the inside baseball. Trust me, the idea of Bush's NSC having any sort of constructivist is genuinely funny).

The whole post is worth a quick read. The point highlighted above is worth reiterating: markets may evolve naturally, but they won't necessarily be markets that US citizens might recognize. Setting a large group of oppressed people free does not immediately translate into efficient markets. This should have been obvious to anyone. That it wasn't obvious to the entire foreign policy decision-making structure of the US Government is both staggering and a disgrace.