The ever-diligent Badger has been reading Al Sabah, which he describes as “the Green Zone newspaper”, and gives his translation (scroll down) of what today’s edition says about the progress of the negotiations over the terms of a SOFA and MOU, including its assessment that this could be signed “in the coming [unspecified] period of time.”
Badger does great work, digging around in the Arabic-language primary sources for all of our benefits. Just one critique, though, He describes the present Iraqi government as “the Green Zone leadership”. I think this is too reductive a view of what’s been going on in Baghdad. Georgraphically– and yes, also politically– the Maliki government has a non-trivial presence outside the Green Zone, as well as inside it.
For example, when Maliki and Talabani hosted Pres. Ahmadinejad in Baghdad, this was done not inside the GZ but, as I recall, in the substantial compound that Talabani maintains outside it. In other words, the current Iraqi political leadership is not completely under the thumb of the US military, though it may still depend on it in several important ways.
I see what’s been going on in Iraq in recent months very much as a “struggle for the soul of the Maliki (et al) government”, with the non- and anti-US actors in that struggle having tipped the balance in their favor.
I’ve been reading Tim Weiner’s excellent book “Legacy of Ashes” recently. It’s a very well-sourced and intensely depressing history of the CIA. It reminds us that in earlier decades, in Syria, Iran, South Vietnam, Latin America, and elsewhere, the US government would frequently overthrow other governments, including those that had been quite duly or even democratically constituted.
In Iraq, thus far, it has not done this to Maliki’s government, even though Maliki has been straying further and further off the US-defined reservation. (Maintaining those lovey-dovey relations with Iran, for example.)
It is worth reflecting a little on this fact and what it says about the US’s currently grossly over-stretched role in the world… Also, what it says about the nature of national power in the present world, and the fact that the “legitimacy” of international actors has become a lot more important in the current century than it was back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
4 thoughts on “Badger’s sit-rep on the US-Iraq SOFA etc talks”
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Helen,
You might look at Hobbes Leviathan again and you will see in Chapter X that Bush and by extension, the US, has lost or been diminished in nearly all primary sources of power.
Rich
Thanks Helena. When I referred to “GZ political leadership”, I wasn’t actually trying to characterize Maliki government, since everyone knows their HQ is in the GZ. Rather, I was trying to point out that the group AlSabaah referred to as the “political leaderships” (that it says have in effect authorized Maliki to sign), refers to the leadership of the parties that are knee-deep in the “political process” (shorthand “GreenZone”), because otherwise you might think they were also referring to those outside that process.
Obviously what is actually signed or not signed by year-end will tell us a lot…
As an economist, I guess I have been focusing on the various reports and analyses concerning the demise of the Doha round as an economic counterpart to your assertion in that last paragraph. The Doha demise is undoubtedly reflective of a new correlation of forces and more specifically the clout of the so called “emerging economies” like India and Brasil that have also eclipsed US hegemony, albeit in the economic policy arena.
I entirely agree in applauding Badger’s work.
I see what’s been going on in Iraq in recent months very much as a “struggle for the soul of the Maliki (et al) government”, with the non- and anti-US actors in that struggle having tipped the balance in their favor.
I’m glad you are coming round to this point of view. I’ve been saying such things in comments on blogs, including JWN, for a month now. The point of course is the visceral Iraqi reaction, once it became clear that the US was planning openly to steal Iraqi sovereignty and oil rights. It was brutally, and foolishly, done.
Two points:
1) Maliki has not turned out to be the puppet that everyone supposed. He has turned out to be susceptible to Iraqi opinion.
2) I am not certain that Maliki is as ready to sign, as one might suppose. The SOFA or MOU is the great point, even the ace card, where Iraq can obtain concessions from the US. I am certain that he is under great pressure to persist until he obtains what is widely acceptable in Iraq. It could even be that no agreement is acceptable – I myself see that to be the case, but I could be wrong.
So I have been trying to detect who is saying what, from Badger’s translations and elsewhere. From what I can see, Kurdish politicians in Baghdad, and the central leadership of ISIC, are speaking positively about the MOU, as one would expect. Maliki’s entourage are much more circumspect. The circumspection round Maliki speaks to me volumes: it has to be a reflection of much wider sentiment. Maliki would certainly go for a quiet life, if he could.
We will see what happens.