BY DOUG LORIMER
As the US-British-Australian military invaders struggle to crush the resistance of the Iraqi people, a behind-the-scenes diplomatic battle has begun between Washington and London over the anticipated spoils of war.
"We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future", US Secretary of State Colin Powell bluntly told a congressional committee on March 26.
"We would not support ... essentially handing everything over to the United Nations for someone designated by the UN to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation", Powell added. He said the "centre of gravity" in any post-war Iraq administration would remain with the "coalition".
Powell's remarks were ostensibly aimed at rejecting calls by France and Russia for the UN to take charge of administering Iraq after the US-led forces have overthrown Iraq's government. However, his remarks were also a response to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's argument that the UN should be put in charge of the reconstruction of war-damaged Iraq, a move which would provide more possibilities for British companies to secure contracts.
Washington wants to limit the UN role to providing "humanitarian" aid and is pressing ahead with its plan to put a US-dominated administration in charge of the multi-billion-dollar "reconstruction" effort, with the work being contracted out exclusively to US corporations.
On March 21, British international development secretary Claire Short returned from Washington after two days of talks with US officials. She was unable to convince them to back a UN Security Council resolution giving the UN the leading role in Iraq's post-war reconstruction.
Short's visit to Washington came in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt a week earlier by British trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt to persuade US officials to allow British companies to bid for the reconstruction contracts being awarded by the US government's Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to the March 23 British Observer, Hewitt telephoned USAID head Andrew Natsios after "intense lobbying from UK firms and trade bodies, who have argued Britain should be rewarded for the supportive stance it has taken over Iraq".
Natsios agreed to give consideration to British companies in awarding reconstruction contracts. However, on March 24 USAID awarded its first contract — for the management of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr — to Stevedoring Services of America. It beat Britain's P&O, one of the world's three largest port operators and a firm that is larger than SSA.
'Plum job'
The same day, the Pentagon awarded its first reconstruction contract for the repair of Iraq's oil facilities. Not surprisingly, it went to US Vice-President Dick Cheney's Halliburton company, from which he resigned as CEO in 2000 but is still being paid up to US$1 million a year in "deferred compensation".
"Since it's still unknown how much damage has been or will be done to Iraqi oil fields in the war, it's difficult to estimate the contract's eventual dollar value", CNN/Money web site staff writer Mark Gongloff commented on March 25, adding: "But its biggest value could be that it puts Halliburton in a prime position to handle the complete refurbishment of Iraq's long-neglected oil infrastructure, which will be the plum job."
Getting Iraq's oil fields to pre-1991 production levels will take at least 18 months and cost about $5 billion, with $3 billion in annual operating expenses, according to a recent study by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, named for President George Bush senior's secretary of state during the first Gulf War.
"I am clear that the United Nations must be centrally involved in dealing both with the human crisis and in helping Iraq rebuild once [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] is gone", Blair told a London press briefing held the day before his March 26 meeting with US President George Bush at Camp David outside Washington.
In his congressional testimony, Powell conceded that the UN should have a role in a post-war Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for Washington to get other countries to contribute to the cost of reconstruction. "If we ask these nations to go get funds from their parliaments, it makes it a lot easier for them to get those funds and contribute those funds to the reconstruction effort ... if it has an international standing", he said.
"There's a useful role for the UN, not only in humanitarian things but also other things", the March 26 Washington Post quoted an unnamed US official. "But I would say we're talking about a UN role, not UN rule."
Part of the reason for Washington's hostility to giving the UN little more than a token role in a post-war Iraq was expressed in a March 26 article on the Blair-Bush summit by Nile Gardiner and John Hulsman on the web site of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based right-wing think tank closely linked to the Bush administration.
Denationalisation of oil
Gardiner and Hulsman argued that giving the UN any role more than providing humanitarian emergency relief would open the way to France, Russia and Germany having a say in how a post-Saddam Iraq is governed. "The UN", they argued, "should play a subordinate role on the Iraq issue, with the United States and Great Britain taking the lead in administering a post-war Iraqi transition government... It is important ... that Paris, Moscow and Berlin play no significant part in the creation of the new Iraqi state."
The Heritage Foundation, and other right-wing think tanks, linked to the Bush administration, have argued for the denationalisation of Iraq's oil industry, a move that Paris and Moscow would certainly oppose, since it would abrogate the contracts French and Russian oil companies have with the Iraqi state oil company for the development of large, new Iraqi oil fields.
If, as Washington plans, post-war Iraq is to be administered by the Pentagon's Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, rather than the UN, all of US imperialism's economic competitors, including British companies, will find themselves left out of the corporate carve up of Iraq's oil industry.
A March 26 Reuters dispatch from London bluntly expressed the concerns of British capitalists at the prospect that only US corporations will get their snouts in the trough: "Britain may be standing beside the United States in the battle to drive Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, but the spoils of war promise to be thin for British companies — and even thinner for European rivals."
From Green Left Weekly, April 2, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.