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90–076 PDF 2003

S. HRG. 108–167

BEYOND IRAQ: REPERCUSSIONS OF IRAQ

STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION POLICIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 12, 2003

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening statement ... 6

Galbraith, Hon. Peter W., distinguished fellow, Institute for International

and Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, DC ........... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11

Kemp, Dr. Geoffrey, director, Regional Strategic Programs, The Nixon Center,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 15

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 20

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 3

Wisner, Hon. Frank G., vice chairman, External Affairs, American International Group, New York, NY ........................................................................... 25

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28

(III)

(1)

BEYOND IRAQ: REPERCUSSIONS OF IRAQ

STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

POLICIES

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2003

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in room SD–

419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar (chairman of the committee), presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Alexander, Sununu, Biden, and Feingold.

The CHAIRMAN. The meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee

is called to order. This is the third of a series of hearings on the

post-conflict Iraq situation. During our first two hearings, administration witnesses identified the needs and problems in rebuilding

Iraq, and outlined the administration’s responses. Those hearings

have given the American public and the Congress insight into the

complex decisions involved in formulating United States policies in

post-conflict Iraq.

Today, the Foreign Relations Committee will hear from expert

witnesses from outside the Bush administration. And we welcome

Ambassador Peter Galbraith, from the National Defense University, a long-time associate of this committee, and, of course, a

former Ambassador; and Dr. Geoffrey Kemp, director of Regional

Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, who was very helpful to

the committee prior to Iraq, and we look forward to his comments,

especially at this juncture; and Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, cochair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, which recently published the report, ‘‘Iraq: The Day After,’’ an extensive

and very important contribution. Ambassador Wisner is a manytime participant in our hearings, a long-time friend of all of us.

We’re delighted that all three of you are here to share your wisdom

this morning.

Each of these experts has a wealth of experience and knowledge

on Iraq, the Middle East region, and United States foreign policy.

We’ve asked them to examine our policies and our plans in Iraq

from three perspectives.

First of all, how should the United States deal with domestic

issues in Iraq and in other Middle Eastern countries; in particular,

how can we promote the prospects for democracy or stability or economic reform, all simultaneously? And, second, what are the repercussions of United States’ policies in Iraq on regional political and

2

economic issues, on traditional regional alignments, and on the

evolving Middle East peace process in which the President has become very, very much involved in recent days?

Finally, what is the likely impact of our policies in Iraq on broader foreign policy concerns, including the war on terrorism, nonproliferation efforts, generally, and our relations with the United

Nations, our NATO allies, and other nations?

The ramifications of United States’ policies in Iraq go far beyond

the Iraqi people or Iraqi territory. Nations throughout the Middle

East, including regimes that have supported terrorists, are assessing how the United States and coalition reconstruction of Iraq will

affect their own interests. An American presence in Iraq that is devoted to achieving democracy and a healthy economy puts enormous pressure on states in the region to undertake reform. It improves our ability to encourage the transformation of repressive

countries, such as Iran and Syria, and to promote the liberation of

minorities across the Middle East. The achievement of democracy

and a sound economy in Iraq could dispel growing anti-Americanism and dampen Islamic extremism and terrorism. It could

raise expectations in the region for general economic growth, personal freedom, and women’s rights. By improving the United

States’ credibility and underscoring the benefits of participation in

a global economy, success in Iraq could also provide added impetus

for a permanent diplomatic resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

These opportunities will not be realized if we fail in Iraq. In the

worst case scenario, an ineffective or unsuccessful reconstruction

effort could lead to sustained civil unrest or even open civil war between ethnic or religious factions. In that event, Middle East states

might become more repressive, more entrenched, their populations

more divided and extremist. Anti-American sentiments already festering could spread, leading to an increased threat of terrorism.

As we work to reconstruct Iraq, we must prepare for unintended

consequences of our efforts. And this, the committee has stressed

during the chairmanship of my distinguished colleague, Senator

Biden, last year, and during the extensive discussion of Iraq which

we have had this year. If United States’ policies inspire more agitation for democracy in Iran, for instance, a crackdown by the

mullahs might ensue. In Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, while

reformers may be strengthened, existing divisions might be intensified, leading to instability in countries that have long been friends

of the United States. These states already face demographic pressures, stagnant economic growth, uncertain political succession,

and smoldering regional disputes, which threaten to undercut stability. None of this, in my judgment, should dissuade us from pursuing the most aggressive and effective reconstruction and reform

agenda possible in Iraq, but we must be flexible enough to deal

with problems and consequences, and farsighted to see those consequences throughout the region.

Achieving ambitious goals in Iraq and the Middle East will require that we act with both patience and a sense of urgency. We

must understand that our prospects for success depend greatly on

what we do in the next several months. Right now, we are at a critical stage in that reconstruction, and no expense should be spared

to show signs of progress and to demonstrate our commitment. But

3

we must also keep in mind Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s admonition to avoid unrealistic expectations. Success may not be instant,

and we have to be prepared to stay in Iraq as long as necessary

to win the peace. And if the international community knows that

the United States will not run out of patience in Iraq, we may find

it easier to generate contributions that reduce our burdens and to

gain support for our diplomatic initiatives.

The military victory in Iraq has presented us with a once-in-ageneration opportunity to help remold the Middle East. We must

speak frequently to the American people about the costs and benefits of seizing this opportunity. Historically, Americans have been

anxious to disengage from postwar commitments. This impulse is

understandable; but, in the case of Iraq, we do not have the luxury

of disengaging after the battles have been fought. It would be irresponsible and contrary to our own national security interests to

walk away from Iraq before it becomes a dependable member of the

world community. We would provide an incubator for terrorist cells

and activity.

The American people know this. A recent poll by the Program on

International Policy Attitudes found that an overwhelming 86 percent said the United States has, ‘‘the responsibility to remain in

Iraq as long as necessary until there is a stable government.’’ And

nearly as many, 73 percent, said that pulling out prematurely,

‘‘would be unwise and immoral.’’ As leaders, the President and

Congress must make the case for why we are risking American

lives and spending American resources in Iraq. We may spar over

particular policy decisions, but we must not let partisanship or inattention undermine the basic United States’ commitment to rebuilding and democratizing the country.

[The opening statement of Senator Lugar follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR

This is the third in a series of hearings on post-conflict Iraq. During our first two

hearings, administration witnesses identified the needs and problems in re-building

Iraq and outlined the administration’s responses. Those hearings gave the American

public and Congress insight into complex decisions involved in formulating U.S.

policies in post-conflict Iraq.

Today, the Foreign Relations Committee will hear from expert witnesses from outside the Bush administration. We welcome Ambassador Peter Galbraith, from the

National Defense University, Dr. Geoffrey Kemp, Director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center, and Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, a co-chair of the

Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, which recently published the Report:

‘‘Iraq: The Day After.’’ Each of these experts has a wealth of experience and knowledge on Iraq, the Middle East region, and U.S. foreign policy. We have asked them to examine U.S. policy

and plans in Iraq from three perspectives:

First, how should the United States deal with domestic issues in Iraq and in other

Middle Eastern countries? In particular, how can we promote the prospects for democracy, stability, and economic reform?

Second, what are the repercussions of U.S. policies in Iraq on regional political

and economic issues, on traditional regional alignments, and on the evolving Middle

East Peace process?

Finally, what is the likely impact of our policies in Iraq on broader foreign policy

concerns, including the war on terrorism; non-proliferation efforts; and our relations

with the United Nations, NATO allies, and other nations?

The ramifications of U.S. policies in Iraq go far beyond the Iraqi people or Iraqi

territory. Nations throughout the Middle East, including regimes that have supported terrorists, are assessing how U.S. and Coalition reconstruction of Iraq will

affect their own interests. An American presence in Iraq that is devoted to achieving

democracy and a healthy economy puts enormous pressure on states in the region

4

to undertake reform. It improves our ability to encourage the transformation of repressive countries such as Iran and Syria and to promote the liberation of minorities

across the Middle East. The achievement of democracy and a sound economy in Iraq

could dispel growing anti-Americanism and dampen Islamic extremism and terrorism. It could raise expectations in the region for general economic growth, personal freedom, and women’s rights. By improving U.S. credibility and underscoring

the benefits of participation in the global community, success in Iraq could also provide added impetus for a permanent diplomatic resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But these opportunities will not be realized if we fail in Iraq. In the worst case,

an ineffective or unsuccessful reconstruction effort in Iraq could lead to sustained

civil unrest or even open civil war between ethnic or religious factions. In that

event, Middle East states might become more repressive and entrenched, their populations more divided and extremist. Anti-American sentiments, already festering,

could spread, leading to an increased threat of terrorism.

As we work to reconstruct Iraq, we must prepare for unintended consequences of

our efforts. If U.S. policies inspire more agitation for democracy in Iran, for instance, a crackdown by the mullahs might ensue. In Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, while reformers may be strengthened, existing divisions may be intensified,

leading to instability in countries that have long been friends of the United States.

These states already face demographic pressures, stagnant economic growth, uncertain political succession, and smoldering regional disputes, which threaten to undercut stability. None of this should dissuade us from pursuing the most aggressive and

effective reconstruction and reform agenda possible in Iraq, but we must be flexible

enough to deal with problems and consequences throughout the region.

Achieving ambitious goals in Iraq and the Middle East will require that we act

with both patience and a sense of urgency. We must understand that our prospects

for success depend greatly on what we do for the next several months. Right now,

we are at a critical stage in Iraqi reconstruction, and no expense should be spared

to show signs of progress and to demonstrate our commitment. But we also must

keep in mind Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s admonition to avoid unrealistic expectations. Success may not be instant, and we have to be prepared to stay in Iraq as

long as necessary to win the peace. If the international community knows that the

United States will not run out of patience in Iraq, we will find it easier to generate

contributions that reduce our burdens and to gain support for our diplomatic initiatives.

The military victory in Iraq has presented us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help remold the Middle East. We must speak frequently to the American

people about the costs and benefits of seizing this opportunity. Historically, Americans have been anxious to disengage from postwar commitments. This impulse is

understandable, but in the case of Iraq we do not have the luxury of disengaging

after the battles have been fought. It would be irresponsible—and contrary to our

own national security interests—to walk away from Iraq before it becomes a dependable member of the world community. We would provide an incubator for terrorist cells and activity.

The American people know this. A recent poll by the Program on International

Policy Attitudes found that an overwhelming 86 percent said the United States has

‘‘the responsibility to remain in Iraq as long as necessary until there is a stable government,’’ and nearly as many, 73 percent, said that pulling out prematurely ‘‘would

be unwise and immoral.’’ As leaders, the President and Congress must make the

case for why we are risking American lives and spending American resources in

Iraq. We may spar over particular policy decisions, but we must not let partisanship

or inattention undermine the basic U.S. commitment to rebuilding and democratizing Iraq.

The CHAIRMAN, It’s my privilege to turn now to the distinguished

ranking member, Senator Biden, for his opening statement.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As is often

stated on the floor of the Senate, I’d like to associate myself with

your remarks, in the interest of time. You’ve covered all, or most

of all, of what I had planned on saying in my opening statement,

and it will not surprise our witnesses we’re in agreement, you and

I, on this subject.

I would like to emphasize just two, maybe three, points. One is,

the poll results you cited are encouraging. I have been of the

5

view—and you know this well; you share the same view—the

American people are prepared to do whatever they are told or convinced is in the interest of the United States, including making sacrifices.

We are going to see more body bags come home. They’re going

to come in dribs and drabs, as we both, you and I, predicted last

October. If we have only American uniforms guarding oil fields,

guarding buildings, guarding checkpoints, maintaining peace and

order, it’s inevitable. And it’s a heck of a price to pay, but it’s an

inevitable price to pay.

It’s also going to cost us and the world community, God willing,

if we do this right, billions of dollars. There’s not enough oil in Iraq

to provide for all of the needs, let alone the billeting of our troops

in that country for the expected time. And that expected time, of

most informed observers, is a whole lot more than a year, and less

than 10. Everybody can argue in between, but nobody is, any

longer, talking about being able to bring American forces home in

the near term.

And which leads me to the primary point that I wish to make

and I hope our witnesses will speak to, and that is that, as I said,

I firmly believe if you tell the American people the facts, they will

do whatever it takes, and they’re prepared to do it. One of the

things that this notion about Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz saying,

‘‘We cannot have unrealistic expectations’’—the American people

have no real good expectation yet, because they have not been told

yet, by the President or others, what is likely to be expected of

them, other than the generic phrase, ‘‘We’ll stay as long as it

takes.’’ And we’re soon going to find, I predict, that an awful lot

of those National Guard units in Delaware and Indiana and California and Wisconsin and all over the United States, who are there,

who are now being extended for another 6 months and 8 months

and 4 months—you’re going to find that, in the neighborhoods back

home, people are going to want a broader, clearer explanation of

what is expected and what it’s going to take.

And so I’m going to ask, at some point, not that any of the three

are military experts, but what are the realistic expectations of how

long we are going to be deeply involved, whether that means with

75,000 forces or where we have now over 160,000 forces, or whether that means with large numbers of deployed MPs, or whatever

it means, just what are we talking about here? What do these three

experts think we’re talking about here, in terms of duration? In

broad terms. Broad terms. I’m not looking for someone to say ‘‘16

months and 4 days,’’ or ‘‘9 years and 2 months,’’ but just in broad

terms.

And the other point that I’d like to make, and I’ll cease, is, before

the war, we heard a great deal of discussion about the so-called democracy domino theory. And I’d like to hear our witnesses talk

about what impact they think will occur in the region if we handle

the situation in Iraq well, as it relates to democratization in the

region, and what is the impact—it’s a version of which you said,

Mr. Chairman—if we do not get it right.

And, most importantly, I’d like to know, from these three men,

who I have an inordinate amount of respect for—I mean, they’ve

been before this committee, and I count two of them as personal

6

friends, because I’ve known them longer and I’ve known them more

intimately—I’d like to know what you all think constitutes success

in post-Saddam Iraq. What is it? Because we talk about democratization, we talk about stability, we talk about—we use a lot of

phrases, but I’m not sure what we really mean by what constitutes

success.

For me, the notion of being able to have a democratic—a liberal,

democratic government in Iraq in the near term would be difficult

even if the Lord Almighty came down and sat at the witness table

and told us every single decision to make. I think it would be difficult, even with divine guidance. But I do think it’s possible to

have a stable democracy, to paraphrase a delegate from Pennsylvania at the Continental Convention, that ‘‘squints toward democracy,’’ one that is more of a republic, that has a growing and sustained respect for human rights, for the rule of law, for the marketplace. But I think that’s a pretty tall order, all by itself.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to get a sense, at some point, from the

witnesses, what they think would constitute success in Iraq. And,

again, we have a number of specific questions, all of us.

I really am grateful to the three of you for being here. We’ve

called on you many times, and the record should note that the

chairman and I and others on this committee call on you personally, as well. Poor Dr. Kemp was sequestered in my office for about

2 or 3 hours this week, my asking his advice. I did the same with

Peter. I’ve often done it with Frank. And so your commitment to

trying to get this right, across party lines, in a bipartisan way, is

something that is greatly appreciated and very much needed.

So I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m anxious to hear our witnesses.

[The opening statement of Senator Biden follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR.

Mr. Chairman, I join you in welcoming our distinguished witnesses today.

Last July and August, you and I held a comprehensive set of hearings on Iraq.

One of the panels we convened was devoted to the subject of the regional context.

In fact, Dr. Kemp testified on that panel.

Clearly, the aftermath of hostilities in Iraq cannot be viewed in a vacuum. The

ultimate success of our efforts to create a stable, representative government at peace

with its neighbors will both influence and be influenced by the regional environment.

A number of important American interests intersect in the Middle East—including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the war on terrorism, the decades long goal of achieving Arab-Israeli peace, our nation’s dependence on energy

supplies, and the glaring absence of democracy in the Arab world.

For better or worse, the United States is now a Middle Eastern power. In fact,

we are the pre-eminent power. With 150,000 troops in Iraq and alliances stretching

across the region, we have deeply vested interest in seeing the Middle East evolve

in a positive direction.

We look to our witnesses today to help us identify the choices we face and to offer

guidance on the larger strategic focus of American policy in the region.

Are Iraq’s neighbors playing a constructive or destructive role? What objectives

do the Syrians, Iranians, and Turks have?

Could a different U.S. policy toward Iran have an impact on Iranian actions in

Iraq? How would Iran react to an aggressive regime change policy? How would it

respond to a policy of engagement? How will the composition of the next Iraqi government affect Iranian perceptions and behavior? More broadly, what should our

policy be toward Iran?

How should we conceive of security in the Persian Gulf? Should we expect to see

the military competition between Iraq and Iran continue? How will the smaller

7

states of the Gulf react to the new reality? Is it time to think of a new security architecture for the Gulf—if so, what would be its main elements?

What is the best way to deal with Syria and get it out of the terrorism business

and get it out of Lebanon? Can coercion alone work? Is there a credible alternative

to the present regime in Damascus and how would that impact our interests?

What is the best approach to take with respect to Saudi Arabia? What reforms

can we realistically expect the Royal Family to take? What should our long-term

posture be with respect to the Kingdom?

Before the war we heard a great deal of discussion of the so-called ‘‘democracy

domino theory.’’ I’d like to hear what impact our witnesses think the war has had

on regional attitudes toward democracy. What is the best way to advance democracy

throughout the region?

I’d also like to hear the assessment of our witnesses regarding the reconstruction

effort in Iraq. Ambassador Wisner chaired a Council on Foreign Relations Task

Force that produced a first-rate planning document for post-Saddam Iraq. Ambassador Galbraith, who served on the Committee staff for several years, was recently

on the ground in Iraq for three weeks. And Dr. Kemp has consulted closely with

Europeans and Arabs on the Iraq issue.

Where in your judgment could we be doing better? Have we done enough to involve our friends and allies in the reconstruction and peacekeeping effort? What sort

of political process would you design for the post-conflict transition?

There is a lot of ground to cover and I look forward to your testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Biden.

Let me indicate that we’ll hear the witnesses in the order of, first

of all, Ambassador Galbraith, then Dr. Kemp, and then Ambassador Wisner. All of your statements will be made a part of the

record in full, so you need not ask for that to happen. It will. And

each of you may proceed to summarize or extemporize, but present

the ideas that you have in the most effective way possible. The

Chair will be liberal in terms of the time that’s required to do that,

because the purpose of the hearing is to hear you, not to constrain

you, but to make certain that your ideas are fully presented. And

then we will have questioning by the members.

Procedurally, there will be a rollcall vote, I am advised, on the

Senate floor at 11 a.m. So, at that point, we probably will have

completed the original testimony by the witnesses. We’ll be into the

questioning period. We’ll take a short recess, so that members may

vote, and then come back. We will ask for your patience during

that recess.

It’s now a privilege to call upon you, Ambassador Galbraith, for

your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. PETER W. GALBRAITH, DISTINGUISHED

FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC

STUDIES, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON,

DC

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden, Senator

Feingold, Senator Alexander, as a former staff member of this committee, it is, of course, a real honor to be invited back to testify.

I consider that the work I did for this committee in the 1980s and

1990s, documenting the atrocities of the Saddam Hussein regime,

to have been some of the most important of my career. And what

I talk about today draws on 20 years of experience with Iraq, as

well as a 3-week trip I took shortly after American forces entered

Baghdad, from April 13 to May 2 of this year.

I would note, for the record, that while I’m an employee of the

Department of Defense at the National Defense University, my

views do not necessarily reflect the views of those institutions.

8

Operation Iraqi Freedom has transformed Iraq. Even Iraqis opposed to the American occupation embrace the result—that is the

removal of Saddam Hussein. And, in 3 weeks, I saw many scenes

of joyful liberation. Shi’ites exuberantly marching on a pilgrimage

to Karbala, that had been banned for 27 years; Kurds posing for

family pictures on ruined Iraqi tanks; picnickers playing soccer in

the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s vast palaces in Mosul; and

ex-political prisoners banging away at toppled statues of the fallen

dictator.

And, everywhere, I saw the evidence of the horror of Saddam’s

regime. Men literally digging up corpses with their bare hands,

names inscribed on dank cell walls of people shortly before being

executed, and, everywhere, Iraqis holding faded pictures and scraps

of paper as they searched for loved ones who had disappeared.

Because of this exceptional record of genocide, murder, and cruelty, I believe President Bush’s decision to remove this regime from

power can be fully justified as a humanitarian intervention very

similar to those the United States undertook in Bosnia and Kosovo

in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, U.S. goals in Iraq have been, in my view, seriously undermined by the conduct of the immediate postwar period.

This includes the failure to stop the catastrophic looting of Baghdad, the slow pace of restoring essential services, and an uncertain

and confused approach to postwar governance.

When the United States entered Baghdad on April 9, it entered

a city largely undamaged by a carefully executed military campaign. However, in the 3-weeks following the U.S. takeover, unchecked looting effective gutted every important public institution

in the city, with the notable exception of the oil ministry.

The physical losses include the National Library, which was

looted and burned—equivalent to our Library of Congress, it held

every book published in Iraq, all newspapers from the last century,

as well as rare manuscripts; the Iraqi National Museum, where the

losses number in the thousands, not as bad as we originally

thought, but still large, and, in value, well over $100 million;

banks; hospitals and public-health institutions; the universities in

Baghdad and Mosul, where it’s not just the equipment and furniture that was gone, but decades of academic research; and government ministries, almost all of which were looted and/or burned.

Even more surprising, the United States failed to secure sites related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program or obvious locations holding important intelligence. Ten days after the Marines

took over Baghdad, looters were banging open safes and setting

fires in Iraq’s unguarded Foreign Ministry. Important sites related

to Iraq’s WMD program, such as the Iraqi version of the Centers

for Disease Control, or the Tuwaitha Nuclear Facility, were left unguarded and were looted.

There is a remote chance that dangerous biological or radiological material could end up in the hands of terrorists. But what

is fairly certain is that the United States lost vital information related to WMD procurement, Iraqi foreign-intelligence activities,

and possible links to al-Qaeda. I have described this in more detail

in my prepared statement.

9

The looting was both predictable—it happened in 1991—and at

least partially preventable. In spite of meticulous planning for the

warfighting, I saw no evidence of any plan to secure critical sites.

Obviously, U.S. forces could not protect everything, but even the

more limited forces that entered Baghdad could have protected

more.

The looting cost billions in property damage, demoralized educated Iraqis with whom we will want to work, and undermined

Iraqi confidence and respect for the occupation authorities. This

has complicated the task of the coalition provisional authority and,

in my view, has likely increased the risk to U.S. personnel in the

country.

The fall of Saddam Hussein has left a political vacuum that the

U.S. civilian authorities were slow to fill. General Garner did not

arrive in Baghdad until 13 days after the Marines entered the city,

and did not effectively set up operations for days after that. Even

today, staff of the coalition provisional authority remain ensconced

behind concertina wire in Saddam’s palaces, traveling around

Baghdad only with full military escort.

The lack of preparation and planning, as well as the much-publicized bureaucratic battles between agencies of the U.S. Government, have created confusion in the minds of Iraqis, and undermined confidence in the coalition. Early on, Garner and his team

moved to reappoint prominent Ba’athists to top positions. Then, on

May 16, Ambassador Bremer announced that all senior Ba’athists

were disqualified from top posts. Similarly, General Garner traveled around Iraq promising that a representative assembly would

soon be named to choose a provisional government. Ambassador

Bremer reduced the Iraqi participation in the new administration

to a small appointed advisory council. These radical changes in

course contribute to an impression of incoherence.

The first weeks of the U.S. occupation have shown the limits of

American power in Iraq, and the missteps have served to limit

American power in the country.

In my judgment, any occupying power has a relatively short window before the goodwill generated by liberation is replaced by

anger and frustration at the inevitable lack of progress in improving the quality of life for the people of the country. For the reasons

outlined above, the United States may have an especially short

window in Iraq.

This, in my view, requires transferring real power to Iraqis as

soon as possible. The problem is, which Iraqis?

The coalition provisional authority should give up the search for

mythical insiders who can help lead Iraq to prosperity and democracy. Unless we plan on staying in Iraq for the decade or more

needed to develop alternative leadership, we must work with the

leadership that exists. And these are the former exiles and the

Kurdish leaders.

Iraqis, even if exiles and Kurds, will have more local knowledge

than the coalition authorities, enabling them to avoid some of the

more obvious mistakes the Americans have made. And from the

U.S. perspective, it is far better to have Iraqis blaming their own

provisional government for the inevitable shortcomings of the occupation than for everyone to be blaming the United States.

10

The long-term challenge facing the United States in Iraq is developing a democratic political system while holding the country together. Decades of dictatorship have contributed to a crisis of identity within Iraq that cannot be wished away. While there are many

Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs who proudly consider themselves Iraqi,

many other Shi’ites look at themselves primarily through the prism

of their religion.

As an oppressed majority, many feel it is their turn to run the

country on their own. The Ba’ath ideology encouraged Arabs to

think of themselves less as Iraqis and more as part of the larger

Arab nation. Sunni Arabs, now fearful of losing their historic privileges, may again find pan-Arabism an attractive alternative to minority status within Iraq.

For the last 12 years, four million Kurds have governed themselves in a de facto independent state protected by the United

States and Great Britain. With their own elected parliament and

having enjoyed relative freedom and prosperity, the Kurds have no

desire to return to control from Baghdad. For most Iraqi Kurds,

Baghdad is associated with decades of repression and, more recently, Saddam Hussein’s genocide.

With Kurdish replacing Arabic as the language of the schools in

the North, of the media and the government, the Iraqi identity has

largely disappeared in the Kurdish region, especially among younger people. While Kurdish leaders understand that independence is

not a realistic option, virtually no Kurd would choose to be Iraqi

if given a free choice. And over the long term, it is, in my judgment, hard to hold a democracy together where the population of

a geographically defined area overwhelmingly does not want to be

part of that country.

Holding Iraq together by force is not an option. The Kurds now

control the only remaining Iraqi army, the 100,000-strong

Peshmerga, who posses the heavy weapons they have long coveted.

It is unlikely that a future Iraqi regime will have the power to destroy Kurdish self-government, and inconceivable that the United

States would or could coerce the Kurdistan region into accepting

political arrangements for a future Iraq that did not include a continuation of much of the current level of self-government.

The Kurds, after all, were America’s second major ally in the recent war, sustaining more casualties than the British and compensating for Turkey’s non-cooperation by creating the desperately

needed northern front.

If Iraq cannot be held together by force, then the only alternative

is to build incentives for its peoples to form a voluntary union. Fortunately, the prospect of oil revenue does provide an incentive for

Iraq’s diverse peoples to stay together.

The Iraqi opposition has long supported federalism as the model

for a future Iraq, a position both secular Arab and Shi’ite religious

parties have reaffirmed since the fall of Baghdad. While there are

different views of federalism, it will clearly be a loose federation.

The Kurds look to Canada and Bosnia as possible models. They

will want a single Kurdistan parliament and government, the

power to tax and spend, control of police, ownership of natural resources—although oil revenues likely would to be pooled—and the

right to maintain a Kurdistan self-defense force. Like Canada, the

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Kurds will insist on equality of the Kurdish and Arab languages,

and that Iraq not define itself as an Arab state.

It is not clear how the Arab parts of Iraq would organize themselves. Some Shi’ite leaders have spoken of creating a predominantly Shi’ite province in the South that would, in essence, be a

mirror of the Kurdistan province. Others have spoken of using the

existing Arab governates as a basis for federalism. It is likely that

a future Iraqi federation will be asymmetric, meaning Kurdistan

will have more power than other federal units. Federalism, especially when combined with revenue sharing, resolves many of the

contradictions of modern Iraq. In the South, the Shi’ite religious

parties may be able to adopt a more Islamic form of local administration without imposing it on the aggressively secular Kurds or on

all of Baghdad. Federalism may help ease the fears from Sunni

Arabs about domination from an unholy alliance of Kurds and Shi

’ites. And federalism may persuade the Kurdish people, over time,

that they can have a place within Iraq.

Creating a federation will be complicated. Among the difficult

issues to be resolved will be the boundaries of different provinces,

and particularly how much territory south and west of the former

green line would be included in Kurdistan. Presumably, this would

have to be resolved by local referendums or censuses. All parties

will have to take into account the interests of other communities

who may have their own demands for self-government, such as the

Turkomans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans. The United States should

refrain from imposing its own views on the outcome and should

avoid coercing any of the parties into accepting political arrangements they will later regret.

It seems to me that President Bush had it right when he outlined his vision of Iraq as a place where Shi’ite and Sunni and the

Kurds can get along in a federation. Indeed, in my view, this is the

only way Iraq can long survive.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Galbraith follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR PETER W. GALBRAITH, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES, NATIONAL DEFENSE

UNIVERSITY

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Operation Iraqi Freedom has transformed Iraq. Even Iraqis opposed to the American military occupation embrace the result—the removal of Saddam Hussein and

his Ba’ath regime.

In three weeks in Iraq beginning April 13, I saw many scenes exemplifying the

joy of liberation. These included:

• Shiites exuberantly marching to Karbala to commemorate as-shoura, an important religious pilgrimage banned for 27 years;

• Kurds posing for family pictures on ruined Iraqi tanks;

• Picnickers in Mosul playing soccer on the grounds of Saddam’s hundred acre

palace, and swimming in his swimming pool; and

• Ex-political prisoners banging away at toppled statues of the fallen dictator.

Everywhere, there are signs of the horror from which the people of Iraq escaped.

In Mosul, I watched as men dug up bodies with their bare hands. The forearms of

each corpse had been tied together with nylon rope, and bullet fragments lay nearby

in the ground. On this trip, I had the opportunity to visit prisons and torture centers near Kirkuk and Baghdad that I heard about from survivors who had escaped

in the 1990s. If anything, these places were more horrific than even the survivors

could convey. And every place in Iraq (except for the Kurdish-governed region), I

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encountered Iraqis holding faded pictures and scraps of papers as they searched for

loved ones who disappeared into Saddam Hussein’s murder apparatus.

For thirty-five years, the peoples of Iraq endured a regime that carried out two

genocides, the ‘‘anfal’’ campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s and the destruction of the Marsh Arabs in the 1990s, that murdered hundreds of thousands

of political foes, that routinely engaged in torture, and that killed upwards of

300,000 Shiites in the months following the failed 1991 uprising. (Just one mass

grave near al Hillal contains 30,000 corpses.)

Because of this exceptional record of genocide, murder, and cruelty, I supported

President Bush’s decision to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime

from power. I believe the war can be fully justified as a humanitarian intervention

to save lives, very similar to those the United States undertook in Bosnia and

Kosovo in the 1990s.

A CATASTROPHIC AFTERMATH

Unfortunately, U.S. goals in stabilizing Iraq, and creating conditions for democracy in that country were seriously undermined by the U.S. failure to prevent catastrophic looting in Baghdad and by an uncertain and confused approach to post war

governance. While Ambassador Bremer has clearly brought greater coherence to

U.S. efforts, it may be impossible to recover from the weak start to the Coalition

occupation.

When the United States entered Baghdad on April 9, it entered a city largely

undamaged by a carefully executed military campaign. However, in the three weeks

following the U.S. takeover, unchecked looting effectively gutted every important

public institution in the city—with the notable exception of the oil ministry.

The physical losses are huge. They include:

• The National Library, which was looted and burned. Equivalent to our Library

of Congress, it held every book published in Iraq, all newspapers from the last

century, as well as rare manuscripts. The destruction of the library meant the

loss of an historical record going back to Ottoman times.

• The Iraqi National Museum, which was looted. While the losses of archaeological artifacts are not as great as originally feared, thousands of items have

been smashed or stolen. The 34 display pieces stolen include some of the museum’s most valuable items. The 5000-year-old Warqa Vase contained the first images of religious ceremonies and is estimated to be worth as much $100 million.

• Banks, which were attacked everywhere.

• Hospitals and other public health institutions, which were stripped of medical

equipment, medicines, and, in some cases, patient beds.

• Baghdad and Mosul Universities which were stripped of computers, office furniture, and books. The furniture and computers are replaceable. Decades of academic research went up in smoke or was scattered, and is not easily replaced.

• Government ministries, which were looted and/or burned. At the Irrigation Ministry, millions of dollars worth of hydrologic records may have been lost, a matter of vital importance in a country known as the land of two rivers. These

losses will certainly complicate efforts to undo one of the worse crimes of the

Saddam Hussein regime, the systematic draining of the southern marshes. The

Ministry of Higher Education held records of professional qualifications that are

now lost.

• The National Theater, which looters set afire nearly three weeks after U.S.

forces entered Baghdad.

Even more surprising, the United States failed to secure sites related to Iraq’s

WMD programs or obvious locations holding important intelligence. As a result, the

United States lost valuable information that related to Iraq’s WMD procurement,

paramilitary resistance, foreign intelligence activities, and possible links to alQaeda. Let me provide a few examples:

• On April 16, looters attacked the Iraqi equivalent of the Center for Disease Control taking live HIV and live black fever. The building had long been considered

a highly suspicious place by both UNMOVIC and UNSCOM, and had been subject to repeated inspections. It is quite possible that the building contained evidence relating to Iraq’s biological weapons program, but if that is the case we

may now never now. The Marine Lieutenant who watched from next door as

looters ransacked the building told us: ‘‘I am afraid I am responsible for Armageddon, but no one told me what was in that building.’’ Fortunately, I saw no

13

reason to believe that terrorists were involved in the theft of biological material,

but this cannot be completely excluded.

• The warehouse at the Tuwaitha Nuclear site was left unguarded and looters

took yellow cake and other material that could be useful for terrorists wanting

to make a radiological weapon, and certainly could make the looters (and their

families) sick.

• ABC news found the personnel records of the Fedayeen Saddam in the basement of Uday Hussein’s unguarded house. Uday Hussein headed the Fedayeen

Saddam, a paramilitary group that provided some of the deadliest resistance to

U.S. forces on the way to Baghdad.

• Ten days after the U.S. took over Baghdad, I went through the unguarded Iraqi

Foreign Ministry going from the cooling unit on the roof to the archives in the

basement, and rummaging through the minister’s office. The only other people

in the building were looters, who were busy banging open safes and carrying

out furniture. They were unarmed and not at all threatening. Foreign Ministry

files could have shed light on Iraq’s overseas intelligence activities, on its procurement of WMD, and on any connections with al-Qaeda. However, we may

never know about these things, as looters scattered and burned files during the

ten days, or longer, that this building was left unguarded.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE LOOTING

The unchecked looting cost billions of dollars in property damage, including the

damage to buildings and the value of lost property and equipment. Some of what

was lost or destroyed is truly priceless, including pieces taken from the National

Museum and the archival material destroyed at the library. But the losses are not

just material.

The looting was profoundly demoralizing to the very Iraqi professionals on whom

we need to rely in rebuilding the country. University professors, government technocrats, doctors, and researchers are all linked to the looted institutions. Some saw

the work of a lifetime quite literally go up in smoke. The looting also magnified

other problems: the lack of electricity and potable water, the lack of telephones, and

the absence of police or other security.

Most importantly, the looting served to undermine Iraqi confidence in, and respect

for, the U.S. occupation authorities. I have no doubt that this has complicated the

task of the occupation authorities and increased the risk to U.S. personnel in the

country.

COULD THE LOOTING HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?

War causes disruption, and the speed of the U.S. advance to Baghdad clearly

saved Iraqi and American lives. Some of what happened was, in my view, unavoidable. It is certainly was no surprise that Baghdad’s electricity went out, and I cannot tell if the months-long blackouts could have been shortened with better planning

and more resources. Similarly, it is no surprise that, with the collapse of the regime,

the police melted away creating a vacuum filled by criminals and vigilantes. This

happens in post conflict situations, and it takes time to restore law and order.

The failure to protect any important public institution is, however, inexplicable.

The looting was predictable. Exactly the same thing happened in 1991 in the parts

of Iraq taken over by rebels during the March uprising.

While more troops would have enabled the U.S. to do more, the looting of the

most important sites could have been prevented with the forces we had on the

ground. Government ministries in Baghdad are surrounded by high walls and solid

gates, as are many other important public institutions. By securing even a few

dozen of the most important places, the U.S. could have prevented a bad situation

from becoming a catastrophic one.

POLITICAL CONFUSION

The fall of Saddam Hussein left a political vacuum that the U.S. civilian authorities were slow to fill. General Garner did not arrive in Baghdad until 13 days after

the marines entered the city, and then did not effectively set up operations for days

after that.

Further, the initial period was characterized by multiple missteps—many of

which suggested to me a lack of planning. Early on, Garner and his team decided

to reappoint senior Baathists to top positions. This produced a predictable, and understandable, reaction among lower echelon officials who had expected American

rule would look radically different from Saddam’s.

14

The initial decision to reappoint judges from the old regime shocked Iraqis even

more. The old judges had administered injustice for 35 years, and with mass graves

being uncovered every day, Iraqis desperately want justice. Even more incomprehensible, the American official in charge of prisons had apparently begun to consult

with Au al-Jabouri, the warden of Abu Ghraib on how to reestablish an Iraqi prison

system. Abu Ghraib was the most notorious prison in Iraq, and with the Khmer

Rouge’s Toul Sleng, probably the most deadly prison in the world since 1945.

Ambassador Bremer quickly, and rightly, reversed these decisions, disqualifying

high Baath officials from public office. But the initial appointments—and then the

sudden reversal—created an impression among Iraqis that the U.S. authorities did

not quite know what they were doing.

The handling of the political transition has contributed to the impression of incoherence. General Garner traveled around Iraq promising that a representative assembly would soon be convened to name provisional government. Ambassador

Bremer has reduced Iraqi participation in the new administration to a small, appointed advisory council. In this case, I think General Garner had the better of the

argument. However, the greater damage comes from the appearance of uncertainty.

A POLITICAL PATH

The first weeks of U.S. occupation have shown the limits of American power in

Iraq. The missteps have also served to limit American power in the country.

The United States cannot decide the political future of Iraq, although can help

influence the process. This has a short term and long term dimension.

In my judgment, any occupying power has a relatively short window before which

the goodwill generated by liberation is replaced by anger and frustration at the lack

of progress in improving the quality of life of the people of the country. For reasons

outlined above, the United States may have an especially short window in Iraq.

This means transferring real power to Iraqis as soon as possible. The problem is,

which Iraqis?

The U.S. occupation authorities should, in my view, give up the search for the

mythical insiders who can help lead Iraq to prosperity and democracy. Obviously,

there are many talented men and women who stayed in Iraq through the Baath period, and probably some of them are committed to liberal democracy. However, given

the nature of Saddam’s regime, any such person kept his or her views secret, or was

dead. Except for the Kurdish-controlled region, there are no identifiable leaders

from inside Iraq with democratic credentials.

Unless we plan on staying in Iraq for the decade (or more) needed to develop an

alternative leadership, we must work with the former exile leaders and the Kurdish

leaders. While it easy to belittle the exiles as ‘‘Saville Row’’ or ‘‘armchair’’ revolutionaries, I think this is very unfair. Many are talented individuals, deeply concerned with the future of their country. They have kept alive the cause of freedom

in Iraq for decades when the international community, and even the United States,

saw Saddam Hussein as a strategic partner, not a pariah.

Iraqis, even if exiles and Kurds, will have more local knowledge than the coalition

authorities. They know enough to avoid some of the mistakes ORHA made, such as

working with the old Iraqi prison authorities. And, from the U.S. perspective, it is

far better to have Iraqis blaming their own provisional government for the inevitable shortcomings of the occupation than for everyone to be blaming the U.S.

VOLUNTARY UNION

The long-term challenge facing the United States in Iraq is developing a democratic political system while holding the country together. Most people in Iraq do

not primarily identify themselves as Iraqis, and one group, the Kurds, would prefer

not to be Iraqis at all.

Iraq is an ancient land but a relatively new state cobbled together at the end of

World War I from three quite different Ottoman Provinces—largely Kurdish Mosul,

Sunni Arab Baghdad, and Shiite Basra. Throughout its ninety-year history, Sunni

Arabs have run the country, often brutally repressing the non-Arab Kurds and the

majority Shiites. Clearly, this historical domination of the country by one group has

impeded the development of a single national identity.

The Shiites speak of themselves primarily through their religious identity. While

the Shiites are not separatists, many feel their status as long time victims and as

the majority population entitle them to run the country. This terrifies Sunni Arabs

who not only fear the loss of historic privilege but also retribution. Ironically, Saddam Hussein’s pan-Arab Baath ideology also encouraged Sunni Arabs to think of

themselves not primarily as Iraqis but as a unit of the larger Arab nation.

15

The people least accepting of an Iraqi identity are the Kurds. For the last twelve

years, four million in Kurds have governed themselves in a de facto independent

state protected by the United States and Great Britain. With their own elected parliament and having enjoyed relative freedom and prosperity, the Kurds have no desire to return to control from Baghdad. For most Iraqi Kurds, Baghdad is associated

with decades of repression and, more recently, Saddam Hussein’s genocide. With

Kurdish replacing Arabic as the language of schools, media, and government, the

Iraqi identity has largely disappeared in Kurdish-run regions, especially among

younger people.

Holding Iraq together by force is not an option. The Kurds now control the only

remaining Iraqi Army—the 100,000 strong peshmerga who now possess the heavy

weapons they long coveted. It is unlikely a future Iraqi regime will have the power

to destroy Kurdish self-government. It is inconceivable that the United States

would—or could—coerce the Kurdistan Region into accepting political arrangements

for a future Iraq that did not include a continuation of the current levels of selfgovernment. The Kurds, after all, were America’s second major ally in the recent

war, sustaining more casualties than the British, and compensating for Turkey’s noncooperation by creating the desperately needed northern front themselves.

If Iraq cannot be held together by force, then the only alternative is to build incentives for its peoples to form a voluntary union. Fortunately the prospect of sharing oil revenues does provide an incentive for Iraq’s diverse peoples to stay together.

The Iraqi opposition has long supported federalism as a model for a future Iraq,

a position both secular Arab and Shiite religious parties have reaffirmed since the

fall of Baghdad. While there are different views of Federation, it clearly will be at

best a loose federation. The Kurds look to Canada and Bosnia as possible models.

They will want a single Kurdistan Parliament and government, the power to tax

and spend, control of the police, ownership of natural resources (although oil revenues may be pooled), and the right to maintain a Kurdistan self defense force. The

Kurds will insist on equality of the Kurdish and Arabic languages, and that Iraq

not be defined as an Arab state.

It is not clear how the Arab parts of Iraq would organize themselves. Some Shiite

leaders have spoken of creating a predominantly Shiite province in the South, in

essence a mirror image of Kurdistan Province in the north. Other Arabs have proposed using the existing 14 Arab governates as a basis for federation in their part

of the country. It is likely that in a future Iraqi federation will be asymmetric— meaning Kurdistan will have substantially more power than the other federal units.

Federalism—especially when combined with revenue sharing—resolves many of

the contradictions of modern Iraq. In the South, the Shiite religious parties may be

able to adopt a more Islamic form of local administration without imposing it on

the aggressively secular Kurdish leadership or on all of Baghdad. Federalism may

help ease fears from Sunni Arabs—particularly those in the Baghdad-RamadiTikrit-Samara heartland—about domination from an unholy alliance of Kurds and

Shiites. Federalism may persuade the Kurdish people, now accustomed to running

their own affairs that they can do so without separating from Iraq.

The future of Iraq will have to be sorted out with the agreement of all the relevant peoples—i.e. the Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites. The United States should

refrain from imposing its own views on the outcome, and should avoid coercing any

of the parties into accepting political arrangements they will later come to regret.

Creating a Federation will be complicated. Among the difficult issues to be resolved will be the boundaries of different Provinces, and in particular, how much

of the territory south and west of the former green line should be included in

Kurdistan. (Presumably, there should be local referendums or censuses to decide the

matter). All parties will have take into account the interests of other communities,

such as the Turkomen, Assyrians, and Chaldeans.

President Bush had it right when he outlined his vision of Iraq as a place where

‘‘Shia, and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a Federation.’’ Indeed this is

the only way Iraq can long survive.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ambassador Galbraith.

Dr. Kemp, would you please give us your testimony?

STATEMENT OF DR. GEOFFREY KEMP, DIRECTOR, REGIONAL

STRATEGIC PROGRAMS, THE NIXON CENTER, WASHINGTON,

DC

Dr. KEMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Biden, for your kind remarks.

16

I believe these hearings are very timely. And I just might add,

as a footnote, that I actually worked for this committee, way back

in 1976, as a consultant. And, at that time, the preoccupation was

the implications of the major American military presence in Iran

and what that meant for the region. So I guess it’s familiar territory for me.

I was asked to talk about some of the broader regional issues

stemming from the ongoing situation in Iraq, and I will do that,

but I’d just like to preface it with a couple of background notes,

which I think reflect some of the points you’ve all made so far this

morning.

I mean, it’s interesting to recall that in the months preceding the

Iraq war, when the international debate took place on the wisdom

and the consequences of using military forces to overthrow Saddam

Hussein, one issue on which both supporters and opponents of the

war concurred was that the United States and its allies would defeat the Iraqi Armed Forces and that the most difficult problems

were likely to arise after victory. And this prediction was correct.

The short-term glory of a quick, decisive, and remarkably effective

military victory has been replaced by a more sober realization of

America’s long-term strategic commitments to the region.

Most troubling of the events, of course, are the problems of how

to reconstitute Iraq’s military forces and bring law, order, and a

better quality of life to the citizens of Baghdad, Basra, and other

Iraqi cities. Particularly difficult is the need to bring responsible

Iraqi’s into the decisionmaking process while assuring a balance of

representative leaders within Iraq’s diverse population. How to

deal with the majority Shi’a population is probably the most complicated task.

Now, when we go and look at the regional issues and how Iraq

affects that, I think it’s important to remember that there were lots

of benefits for Iraq’s regional neighbors while he was in power, because so long as he was in power, he posed no direct military

threat to his neighbors, thanks to U.N. sanctions and the formidable U.S. presence in the region and the enforcement of the northern and southern no-fly zones. Iraq’s oil exports were contained by

lack of investment and the U.N. Oil for Food Program. A tight, but

by no means foolproof, embargo on military supplies assured that

Iraq’s conventional weapons were not in good condition.

Nevertheless, under these constrained circumstances, Saddam

retained enough internal power to rigidly control his country and

prevent large-scale instability. These conditions suited a number of

neighbors, especially Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Farther afield, traditional rivals of Iraq, such as Egypt, did not

have to share the limelight with the leader of Baghdad, who was

isolated in Arab circles and unable to exert Iraq’s traditional influences on Arab politics. Many countries, directly or indirectly, profited from the flourishing black market trade with the Saddam regime. With the coalition victory, these perks have all ended.

So several realities must be acknowledged at the outset, particularly when discussing short-term conditions. Until Saddam and his

entourage are found dead or alive, and the issue of Iraq’s WMD is

resolved, and the day-to-day conditions of Iraq is improved, it

would be premature to pass judgment on what has happened since

17

the war, except in the short term. Postwar scenarios are always

messy. And while clearly there was a lack of foresight and preparation for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein, perhaps because his

army collapsed so quickly, Iraq is very much a work in progress

and, therefore, requires the most careful scrutiny by the U.S. Congress and the American public; hence, the reason I’m so pleased

you’re having these hearings.

This is the time to look at the facts on the ground and interpret

them in a sound and sober manner. No one, anymore, doubts the

effectiveness of U.S. military power in destroying regimes such as

the Taliban and the Iraqi Ba’athists. But the early mistakes of the

administration in handling the postwar reconstruction need to be

fixed quickly.

At this time, post-Saddam Iraq does not look like post-war Germany or Japan; it looks more like Afghanistan or Bosnia. The coming months will be decisive in determining whether or not a brilliant military campaign and faulty postwar policies can be formulated into a successful outcome.

Now, I’d like to focus on three regional countries and how they’re

affected by what’s happening in Iraq and the perennial problem of

our European allies.

One country I think it’s important to talk about is Syria. During

the first week of the fighting, when things were not going so well

for the coalition, the leader of Syria, Mr. Bashar al Assad, gave a

blistering interview to the Lebanese newspaper, al Safir, in which

he, in effect, called for guerrilla operations against American occupying forces equivalent to those conducted against both the United

States and Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s.

However, once the war went well for the coalition, both Secretaries Rumsfeld and Powell weighed in against Syria, including a

visit by Secretary Powell to Damascus. Since that time, Syria has

remained quiescent. One reason for this is that the United States

has been on record for many months indicating that Syria’s involvement in support for terrorism that kills Americans, notably its

protection of Hezbollah, will eventually become a target for U.S.

wrath. This was put very explicitly by Deputy Secretary of State

Richard Armitage in an address to the U.S. Institute of Peace, on

September 5, 2002, when he said, in effect, ‘‘Hezbollah is part of

the A-team, and we will come after them.’’

So Syria, Mr. Chairman, finds itself in a difficult position, accused of harboring Ba’athist renegades and possibly storing Iraqi

weapons. Syria fears that Iraq could emerge, with American help,

as a powerful challenge to its own influence and interest in the region; and, therefore, it may have an interest in destabilizing our

presence there. However, the Syrians must be very careful, for they

now have to consider that, on their border, they have three extremely powerful military establishments: Turkey, Israel, and the

United States. Any false move by Syria could prove fatal to the

Assad regime. However, Syria, along with its neighbor, Lebanon,

will want to keep the pot boiling, if only because both Syria and

Lebanon have unresolved issues with Israel. In the case of Syria,

until the Golan Heights problem is addressed as part of a formal

agreement with Israel, Syria’s interests will lie in non-cooperation

18

with the United States, but not to the point where it is likely to

attract a military response.

Now, we come to Iran, which I think may be the most important

country at this point in time. Iran has huge stakes in what is happening in Iraq. It also has the most potential to influence, for good

or ill, how the situation in Iraq emerges. Of course, there was no

love for Saddam Hussein in Iran, and no tears when his regime

was ousted. Iranians are still bitter about their isolation during the

8-year war with Iraq and the fact that they were victims of massive

chemical attacks. Nevertheless, as described above, they benefited

from Saddam Hussein’s control of the country in his containment.

Now they face a formidable American presence on all their borders.

They are literally surrounded by American military power, whether

in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, or Turkey.

Iranians fear both a strong pro-Western Iraq, but also an unstable Iraq that they do not control. Iran will be under great pressure

from its own nationalists to continue to exercise a nuclear insurance policy—that is to say, build a nuclear infrastructure, but not

to cross the nuclear threshold and build nuclear weapons, not, at

least, at this point in time. Iran will clearly be influenced by how

the United States handles the Iraqi military situation and how we

deal with the rebuilding of the Iraqi Armed Forces as they consider

their own security needs. If the United States sets out to provide

Iraq with modern conventional technology, including weapons that

could ultimately have an offensive capability, then Iran will clearly

continue its own strategic modernization and perhaps cross the nuclear threshold.

However, the most immediate issue for Iran is the future of the

Shi’ite community in Iraq. As the majority group, the Shi’ites have

the power to determine Iraq’s future. It would be quite wrong to

assume that Iran controls the Iraqi Shi’ites, yet they do have

strong influence with certain Shi’ite factions.

Control for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi Shi’ites is perhaps

the most serious problem confronting both the United States and

Iran. Many Iranian reformers—that is to say, those who want to

change the constitution of the Iranian regime rather than mount

a counter revolution—believe that the re-emergence of Najaf, as a

center for Shi’ite learning, will have a powerful impact on the theocracy of the Iranian revolution and could strengthen the hands of

those who believe that hard-line Iranian mullahs will have their

authority further undermined if countervailing theocratic voices

emerge in Najaf, voices that are respected and listened to by a

growing number of Iran’s more moderate clerics.

Thus, the future of the Tehran regime may be affected by how

the United States manages the Shi’ite question in Iraq. If it does

so in a sensible and effective way, it could achieve the best of both

worlds for Iraq and those in Iran who want modernization and reform.

For Iran’s hard-line mullahs, the coming months will be crucial

for the future of their power base. If events go badly for the coalition forces in Iraq, with more and more attacks on U.S. and U.K.

soldiers, some Iranians may be tempted to use the occasion to further undermine the American presence by participating in terrorism. The effect of this would be to draw American forces deeper

19

into the occupation of Iraq, and would, at some point, lead to voices

in the United States calling for massive retaliation against Iran if

its sponsorship of such acts was clear and proven.

Alternatively, if the mullahs decide to be pragmatic and to follow

a wait-and-see policy, then there are those in Iran who believe that

there are opportunities for the United States and Tehran to address some of their longstanding disputes and for Iran to reappraise its own foreign policy on matters such as the Arab-Israeli

conflict, its support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and

even their nuclear program. Were the Iranians to use the new balance of power in the region to reassess their relationship with

America, this could, indeed, become one of the great positive outcomes of the war.

But for this to happen, Mr. Chairman, the United States must

adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced policy toward Iran and

stop using simplistic sloganeering, including extremely unwise and

potentially dangerous talk about destabilizing or overthrowing the

regime in Tehran. Such behavior will only convince the hard-line

mullahs that they must resist the American military presence, and

make it difficult for the reformers, both inside and outside the government and on the universities and the streets, to push for their

own reforms.

Now the question of Israel, Mr. Chairman. Aside from Kuwait,

no country benefited more, in the short run, from the coalition victory than Israel. Ever since the founding of the Jewish state in

1948, the Israeli military strategic concerns focused threats from

three primary fronts: Egypt, Syria, and the East. So long as Iraq

was controlled by a hostile leader, Iraq’s military potential could

never be ignored by Israel, particularly since it had engaged in previous Arab-Israeli wars. The Israeli fear was that if Saddam was

not removed decisively by the United States, there could come a

time when he would be able to reconstitute his weapons programs,

the sanctions would end, and Iraq would, in a matter of years, reestablish itself as the predominant military power on the peninsula. This is no longer the case.

Israel now has strategic dominance over all its neighbors and no

longer has to worry about an eastern front. It is the only nuclear

power in the region and has the support and largesse of the United

States. Some Israelis believe, possibly even Prime Minister Sharon

himself, that, for this reason, Israel must use the victory in Iraq

to make bold strategic decisions about its own future with the Palestinians and its place in the Middle East.

Last, Mr. Chairman, what about Europe and NATO? All these

scenarios about what’s going to happen in Iraq are subject to the

ebbs and flows of the reconstruction and stabilization program

itself. In the worst case, one can imagine a situation where the

United States finds itself deeper and deeper embroiled in counterterrorist operations, and U.S. casualties continue to mount on a

daily, if not weekly, basis. Once the number of U.S. casualties lost

in the postwar period exceeds those lost during the war itself, the

political stakes for the administration will become even greater.

How long the American people will wish to stay in such an inhospitable region without clear results is anyone’s guess, but—and I

think this is one of the reasons you asked us these questions

20

today—the betting perhaps might be ‘‘not forever.’’ On the other

hand, if things go better than expected in Iraq, and a viable leadership emerges within a year, then, indeed, the contagion effect, the

positive contagion effect, may have benefits for the region and

international security. However, Mr. Chairman, whatever happens,

the United States cannot do it alone—why it is so important eventually to bring in outside powers, including the much maligned Europeans.

Despite the hope on the part of some that Europe would just

start meddling in the Middle East, geopolitical realities rule this

out. It is Europe, not the United States, which is adjacent to the

Middle East. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner. As EU expansion continues, perhaps eventually including Turkey, its relationship with the Middle East and the Muslim world will grow ever

closer. But this, in turn, could lead to serious conflict potential, as

representative governments continue to elude most Middle Eastern

countries. Europeans argue, with frequency that we are all familiar

with, that a failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict has a profoundly negative impact on the political and social environment in

the Middle East, which, in turn, affects the Europeans directly.

This, finally, brings up the question of NATO and its potential

involvement in Iraq. If the United States and Britain decide that

a broader military presence is required, NATO is the natural

choice, as has been the case in Afghanistan. A NATO decision to

participate would go a long way to repair the bitter schisms that

developed in the period leading up to the war. However, such a development would invariably mean that key NATO members, other

than the U.S. and U.K., would have to have a greater say in the

management of Iraq. This could be to the benefit of the United

States, which has neither the temperament nor the will to be a permanent hegemon in such an inhospitable region of the world.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kemp follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GEOFFREY KEMP, DIRECTOR OF REGIONAL STRATEGIC

PROGRAMS, THE NIXON CENTER

BACKGROUND

In the months preceding the Iraq war, an intense international debate took place

on the wisdom and consequences of using military forces to overthrow Saddam Hussein. One issue on which supporters and most opponents of the war concurred was

that the United States and its allies would defeat the Iraqi armed forces, and that

the most difficult problems were likely to arise following victory. This prediction was

correct. The short-term glory of a quick, decisive and remarkably effective military

victory has been replaced by a more sober realization of America’s long-term strategic commitments to the region.

Recent events have provided the wake-up call. First, the new round of terrorism

in Saudi Arabia and Morocco suggests that Al-Qaeda is back in business. Now it

is to be hoped that America’s war on terrorism has been joined by more vigorous

efforts by key Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, to engage in closer intelligence and law enforcement cooperation. Most encouraging are signs that the Saudi

government is prepared to address the problems posed by Islamic extremists in its

own country, including a reevaluation and revision of school curricula and the funding of Madrassahs in other countries. Further east, the security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious. President Karzai is making a valiant effort to extend his

authority outside Kabul but reconstruction programs are woefully behind schedule

because of poor security. Absent a secure environment essential foreign investment

will not materialize and economic conditions will deteriorate. The most telling statistic is that the opium trade is once again booming with drug cartels back in business. Perhaps most disturbing are reports that Pakistani intelligence operatives are

21

once more interfering in a heavy-handed way in Afghan politics, and warning that

the Western military presence will not go on forever but that Pakistan will remain

a powerful neighbor.

Second, the much-vaunted ‘‘roadmap’’ for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and an

eventual peace settlement is off to a precarious start. Palestinian rejectionists continue to use terrorism to undermine Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’s hopes for

substantive negotiations with Prime Minister Sharon. The role of Yasser Arafat remains highly controversial. The Bush Administration is convinced he will continue

to be an obstacle to peace and are urging European leaders not to meet with him.

The good news is that President Bush seems committed to the roadmap but what

will this mean in practical terms? Will he put greater pressure on Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon to explicitly curtail further settlement activity in the West Bank and

Gaza Strip, or will he limit his intervention to continued pressure to have the Palestinians curb the violence? If the White House is to be taken seriously, both Israel

and the Palestinians must be persuaded to take painful actions in the hope of rebuilding trust. The fact that Prime Minister Sharon has officially endorsed the roadmap is important. The best indicator of this is the angry response his endorsement

has generated within his own party and within the settler communities.

Most troubling for the administration are the difficult questions of how to reconstitute Iraq’s military forces and bring law, order and a better quality of life to the

citizens of Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities. Particularly difficult is the need

to bring responsible Iraqis into the decision-making process while assuring a balance of representative leaders within Iraq’s diverse population. How to deal with the

majority Shia population is the most important and most complicated task. If a

moderate Shia leadership emerges that is supportive of democracy and not an Islamic state, the repercussions in the neighborhood could be far reaching and could

eventually pose a major challenge to Iran’s conservative mullahs. For this reason

hardline elements in Iran will continue to interfere in Iraq and this raises the risks

of a U.S.-Iran confrontation.

From Washington’s perspective, the most dangerous scenario would be successful

military or terror operations against U.S. or British forces in Iraq. This would require the allies to take a tougher line and deploy additional military forces at the

very time Iraq’s residual security forces are in limbo. This, in turn, will undermine

hopes for the speedy establishment of a representative Iraqi regime and the drawing

down of occupation forces.

For the foreseeable future the U.S. will have to sustain a major military presence

in the region if it wishes to protect vital interests. It will require patience and it

will be costly and increasingly controversial. If the White House handles this mandate poorly, the Middle East could prove to be a political nightmare for yet another

American president.

REGIONAL WINNERS AND LOSERS

With this background in mind, one way to assess the impact of the fall of Saddam

Hussein on the regional and international environment is to describe the winners

and losers from this event and how they could change dependent upon the success

of the stabilization and reconstruction programs.

So long as Saddam was in power he posed no direct military threat to his neighbors, thanks to UN sanctions and the formidable U.S. presence in the region and

the enforcement of the northern and southern no-fly zones. Iraq’s oil exports were

contained by lack of investment and the UN Oil for Food Program. A tight, but by

no means fool proof, embargo on military supplies, assured that Iraq’s conventional

weapons were not in good condition. Nevertheless, Saddam retained enough internal

power to rigidly control his country and prevent large-scale instability. These conditions suited a number of neighbors, especially Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Iran and

Saudi Arabia. Farther afield, traditional rivals of Iraq, such as Egypt, did not have

to share the limelight with the leader in Baghdad who was isolated in Arab circles

and unable to exert Iraq’s traditional influence on Arab politics. Many countries, directly or indirectly, profited from the flourishing black market trade with the Saddam regime. With the coalition victory these perks have all ended.

In the short term, the clear regional winners from the ouster of Saddam Hussein

have been Kuwait and Israel. If the U.S. succeeds in building a stable, pluralistic,

humane and economically viable Iraq, the positive impacts for U.S. regional and

global policy will be considerable. In contrast, if Iraq emerges as an unstable, violent

and ethnically conflicted entity, the outlook for U.S. policy will be grim. The most

likely outcome is probably a mixture of good and bad with ambivalent implications

for the administration’s grandiose designs for changing the Middle East.

22

Several realities must be acknowledged, particularly when discussing the shortterm conditions. Until Saddam and his immediate entourage are found alive or dead

and the issue of Iraq’s WMD is resolved and the day to day conditions of Iraqis improve, it would be premature to pass definitive judgment on current policies. Postwar scenarios are always messy and, while clearly there was a lamentable lack of

foresight and preparation for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein, perhaps because

his army collapsed so quickly, postwar Iraq is very much a work in progress and

therefore requires the most careful scrutiny by the U.S. Congress and the American

public. This is the time to look at the facts on the ground and interpret them in

a sound and sober manner. No one anymore doubts the effectiveness of U.S. military

power in destroying regimes such as the Taliban and the Iraqi Ba’athists, but the

early mistakes of the administration in handling the postwar reconstruction need

to be fixed quickly. At this time, post-Saddam Iraq does not look like postwar Germany or Japan; it looks more like Afghanistan or Bosnia. The coming months will

be decisive in determining whether or not a brilliant military campaign and faulty

postwar policies can be formulated into a successful outcome.

The tasks facing the coalition forces in Iraq are truly formidable. Security remains

the key because without it, nothing else will work. (For instance, infrastructure cannot be repaired if the moment it is, facilities are looted.) But security concerns must

be balanced against the priorities of establishing good governance and a justice and

reconciliation process that deals with the horrendous legacy of the Ba’ath party.

This includes the huge problem of Iraq’s internally displaced persons, especially

Kurds and Shias, and the growing resentment of these groups who, as in the case

of the Kurds, embraced the Coalition victory and fought alongside its forces. The

Shia population was less enthusiastic in view of the terrible legacy of 1991 and their

perceived abandonment by the U.S.

REGIONAL CONSEQUENCES

• Syria

For the last couple of years, prior to the war, Syria’s leadership under Bashar al

Assad reestablished close relationships with its Ba’athist cousins in Baghdad. The

bitter personal feud between Bashar’s father, Hafez al Assad, and Saddam has

ended and Syria benefited greatly from trade with Iraq, including the illegal importation of Iraqi oil through Syria’s pipeline. Whether there was any military cooperation and how extensive it was remains one of the intelligence mysteries of the war.

But the fact of the matter is Syria opposed the war.

During the first week of the fighting when things were not going so well for the

coalition, Bashar al Assad gave a blistering interview to the Lebanese newspaper

al Safir in which he, in effect, called for guerrilla operations against American occupying forces equivalent to those conducted against both the United States and Israel

in Lebanon in the 1980s. Once the war went well for the coalition both Secretaries

Rumsfeld and Powell weighed in against Syria, including a visit by the latter to Damascus. Since that time Syria has remained quiescent. One reason for this is that

the United States has been on record for many months indicating that Syria’s involvement in support of terrorism that kills Americans, notably its protection of

Hezbollah, will eventually become a target for U.S. wrath. This was put very explicitly by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in an address to the United

States Institute of Peace on September 5, 2002 when he said, in effect, ‘‘Hezbollah’s

part of the A-team and we will come after them.’’

Syria finds itself in a difficult position, being accused of harboring Ba’athist renegades and possibly storing Iraqi weapons. Syria fears that Iraq could emerge as a

powerful challenge to its own influence and interest in the region and therefore may

have interests in destabilizing the American presence. However, it must be very

careful for it now has on its borders three countries with extremely powerful military establishments, Turkey, Israel and the United States. Any false move by Syria

could prove fatal to the regime. However, Syria, along with its neighbor Lebanon,

will want to keep the pot boiling if only because both Syria and Lebanon have unresolved issues with Israel. In the case of Syria, until the Golan Heights problem is

addressed as part of a formal agreement with Israel, Syria’s interests will lie in noncooperation with the United States but not to the point where it is likely to attract

a military response.

• Iran

Iran is the country that probably has most at stake with what is happening in

Iraq. It also has the most potential to influence, for good or ill, how the U.S. policies

emerge. Of course, there was no love for Saddam Hussein in Iran and no tears when

his regime was ousted. Iranians are still bitter about their isolation during their

23

eight-year war with Iraq and the fact that they were the victims of massive chemical attacks. Nevertheless, as described above, they benefited from Saddam Hussein’s control of the country and his containment. Now they face a formidable American presence on all borders; they are literally surrounded by American military

power whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq or Turkey.

Iranians fear both a strong, pro-Western Iraq, but also an unstable Iraq that they

do not control. Iran will be under great pressure from its own nationalists to continue to exercise a nuclear insurance policy, that is to say, build a nuclear infrastructure but do not cross the nuclear threshold and build nuclear weapons, at least

not at this point in time. Iran will clearly be influenced by how the United States

handles the Iraqi armed forces and rebuilds them. If the United States sets out to

provide Iraq with modern conventional technology, including weapons that could ultimately have an offensive capability, then Iran will continue its own strategic modernization and perhaps cross the nuclear threshold.

The most immediate issue for Iran is the future of the Shiite community in Iraq.

As the majority group, the Shiites have the power to determine Iraq’s future. It

would be wrong to assume that Iran controls the Iraqi Shiites. Yet they do have

a strong influence with certain Shiite factions. Control for the hearts and the minds

of the Iraqi Shiites is perhaps the most serious problem confronting both the United

States and Iran. Many Iranian reformers—that is to say, those who want to change

the constitution of the Iranian regime rather than mount a counter revolution—believe that the reemergence of Najaf as a center for Shiite learning will have a powerful impact on the theocracy of the Iranian revolution and could strengthen the

hands of those who believe that hardline Iranian mullahs will have their authority

further undermined if countervailing theocratic voices emerge in Najaf which are respected and listened to by a growing number of Iran’s more moderate clerics. Thus,

the future of the Tehran regime may be affected by how the United States manages

the Shiite question in Iraq. If it does so in a sensible and effective way it could

achieve the best of both worlds for both Iraq and those in Iran who want modernization and reform.

Iran also has major economic stakes in what happens to the Iraqi economy.

Should the Iraqi oil industry receive massive infusions of foreign investment to reconstitute its damaged oil infrastructure, Iraq could, in theory, raise its oil production beyond that achieved during the past ten years. Dependent upon whether Iraq

rejoins OPEC, its role as a key supplier could influence the pricing policies of OPEC.

If Iraq is as rich in oil as some analysts predict, a time could come in the next decade when Iraqi production could threaten Iran’s own woefully stretched and under

invested oil industry. This could pose a serious problem for Iran given that its own

economic problems require that it continue to generate foreign currency from oil

earnings until such time as it can develop its huge natural gas reserves, which remain fallow, thanks to the effectiveness of American sanctions.

For Tehran’s hardline mullahs, the coming months will be crucial for the future

of their powerbase. If events go badly for the Coalition forces in Iraq, with more

and more attacks on U.S. and British soldiers, some in the Iranian regime, particularly in the Ministry of Security and Information and the Revolutionary Guards

Corps will be tempted to directly interfere and use the occasion to further undermine the U.S. presence by participating in terrorism. The effect of this would be to

draw the American forces deeper into occupation of Iraq and would, at some point,

lead to voices in the U.S. calling for massive retaliation against Iran, if its sponsorship of such acts was clear and proven. The parallel concerns about Iran’s nuclear

capacity would also be a factor. the mullahs would have to fear that if they play

a confrontational role in Iraq, they could, themselves, become the targets of American wrath. Alternatively, if the mullahs decide to be pragmatic and to follow a

‘‘wait and see’’ policy, then there are those in Iran who believe that there are opportunities for the United States and Tehran to address some of their longstanding disputes and for Iran to reappraise its own foreign policy on matters such as the ArabIsraeli conflict and the support of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Were

the Iranians to use the new balance of power in the region to reassess their relationship with America this could, indeed, become one of the great positive outcomes of

the war.

But for this to happen, the United States must adopt a more sophisticated and

nuanced policy towards Iran and stop using simplistic sloganeering, including extremely unwise, and potentially dangerous, talk about destabilizing or changing the

regime in Tehran. Such behavior will only convince the hardliner mullahs that they

must resist the American military presence and make it difficult for reformers, both

inside the government and on the universities and streets, to push for their own.

24

• Israel

Aside from Kuwait, no country benefited more in the short run from the Coalition

victory than Israel. Ever since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, the Israeli

military strategic concerns have focused on threats from three fronts—Egypt, Syria

and the east. So long as Iraq was controlled by a hostile leader, Iraq’s military potential could never be ignored by Israel, particularly since it had engaged in previous Arab-Israeli wars. The Israeli fear was that if Saddam was not removed decisively by the United States, there would come a time when he would be able to reconstitute his weapons programs, the sanctions would end and Iraq would, in a matter of years, reestablish itself as the predominant military power on the peninsula.

This is no longer the case. Israel now has strategic dominance over all of its neighbors and no longer has to worry about an eastern threat. It is the only nuclear

power in the region and has the support and largesse of the United States. Some

Israelis believe, and possibly even Prime Minister Sharon himself, that for this reason, Israel must use the victory in Iraq to make bold strategic decisions about its

own future with the Palestinians and its place in the Middle East.

The three underlying threats to Israel’s future (aside from a very intense and difficult internal struggle amongst Israelis themselves) are terrorism, weapons of mass

destruction and demography. Israel’s formidable military forces cannot stop terrorism and the spread of WMD. Only the United States and the international community can do this. The demographic challenge to Israel is stark. Within ten years

there will be more Arabs living in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River and Israel cannot continue occupation of this territory and remain a democracy with a Jewish majority which, of course, is the underlying purpose of Zionism. The fact that Prime Minister Sharon has talked about ‘‘occupation’’ and the

possible evacuation of settlements suggests that this reality has sunk in even to

those hardliners in Israel who for many years pursued a Greater Israel strategy.

In other words, at a time of strategic superiority, with the full backing of the United

States, Israelis are debating whether this is the moment to finally compromise on

the territorial issue and accept the fact there will be a Palestinian state.

• Europe and NATO

All regional scenarios will, of course, be subject to the ebbs and flows of the reconstruction and stabilization effort in Iraq itself. In the worst case, one can imagine

a situation where the United States finds itself deeper and deeper embroiled in

counterterrorist operations and U.S. casualties continue to mount on a daily, if not

weekly, basis. Once the number of U.S. casualties lost in the postwar period exceed

those lost during the war itself, the political stakes for the administration will become even greater. How long the American people will wish to stay in such an inhospitable region without clear results is anyone’s guess, but the betting would be

not forever. On the other hand, if things go better than expected in Iraq and a viable leadership emerges within a year, then, indeed, the contagion effect may have

positive benefits for the region and international security. Whatever happens, the

United States cannot do it alone which is why it is so important to eventually bring

in outside powers, including the much maligned Europeans.

Despite the hope on the part of some that Europe would just stop meddling in

the Middle East, geopolitical realities rule this out. It is Europe, not the United

States, which is adjacent to the Middle East. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner. As EU expansion continues, perhaps eventually including Turkey, its relationship with the Middle East and the Muslim world will grow ever closer. But this in

turn, could lead to serious conflict potential as representative government continues

to elude most Middle East countries. Europeans argue that a failure to resolve the

Arab-Israeli conflict has a profoundly negative impact political and economic environment in the Middle East.

Immigration, both legal and illegal, from Muslim countries has become a critical

factor in contemporary European politics. Europe has huge political, economic and

strategic stakes in what happens to its south and southeast. Europeans know that

there can be no stability in the Middle East without the direct and powerful involvement of the United States. Like it or not Europe needs America’s help to manage

its own neighborhood. But America must be sensitive to European, as well as Arab

and Israeli concerns as it presses its agenda on the region. Without European cooperation, American diplomacy will fail and without American diplomacy, European

hopes for peaceful relations with the Muslim world will be stymied.

Which brings up the question of NATO and its potential involvement in Iraq. If

the U.S. and Britain decide that a broader military presence is required, NATO is

the natural choice, as has been the case in Afghanistan. A NATO decision to participate would go a long way to repair the bitter schisms that developed in the period

leading up to the war. However, such a development would invariably mean that

25

1The reports referred to can be accessed on the Council on Foreign Relation’s Website at:

http://www.cfr.org

key NATO members other than the U.S. and the UK would have a greater say in

the management of Iraq. This could be to the benefit of the United States which

has neither the temperament nor the will to be a permanent hegemon in such an

inhospitable region of the world.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Kemp.

Ambassador Wisner.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK G. WISNER, VICE CHAIRMAN, EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP, NEW

YORK, NY

Ambassador WISNER. Senator Lugar, Senator Biden, it is a real

pleasure to be here, again, before your committee and to join two

men, who I respect as much as I do, Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Kemp;

and, Senator Alexander, an honor, as well, to be able to appear before you, I think, for the first time.

I bring to the table today some reflections on the two subjects

that Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Kemp have addressed, on Iraq and on

the region around it. Borne of a number of a number of years of

experience in the region, including my own time in the diplomatic

service, which included a time as Ambassador in Egypt during the

first gulf war, a period of reflection on nearly two-and-a-half decades of Saddam’s persistent attempts to undermine American interests in the region, repress his own country, engage in terror and

subversion, and commit aggression against his neighbors, I bring,

as well, today, Senator Lugar, to the table, the reflections that

were put together by the Council on Foreign Relations in two reports 1 that came out earlier this year, and both of which I will

leave for the record today.

In my written testimony, I have advanced a number of contentions about the situation and about American policy. Let me summarize these in four points.

The first, which I consider absolutely vital as all of us look at the

future in Iraq, is the issue of the maintenance of law and order;

of public security. The United States has done a number of things

right in Iraq. But one has to recognize that, where we’ve succeeded,

we’ve made a huge contribution through the liberation of the country, through feeding its population, and we’re moving rapidly to reestablish its infrastructure.

That said, it is time now to move to involve a broader international community, as my two fellow witnesses have pointed out.

We’ve begun to do so by establishing the basis of international legitimacy with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution

1483. We are already sharing the humanitarian and stabilization

burdens of Iraq, and we’re starting to reach out for financial support. These are powerfully important directions in American policy,

for we cannot and should not try to bear the burden alone, but

broaden the base to increase the legitimacy of ours and the coalition’s efforts.

More needs to be done to involve the United Nations in the process that is underway in postwar Iraq. The United Nations is not

only playing the roles I mentioned shortly before, but has the poVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:42 Nov 03, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 90076 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
26

tential of playing a significant role, as it has elsewhere, in the process of constituting a politically sovereign Iraq, a constitutional and

political dispensation that will lead the country forward. It has experience, and we’d do well to call on it.

It is not wise, in my judgment, for the United States to rush to

judgment or try to impose a political outcome, even in the interim,

on Iraq. It takes time for the communities of the country, divided

as they are, to come together to identify their leaders to reach some

common ground even before the July deadline is approached. This

said, and as the Council on Foreign Relations reports indicate frequently, restoring Iraqi sovereignty is absolutely critical. Restoring

Iraqi sovereignty is important, not only to Iraq and the region, but

to our capacity to achieve American objectives in the country; and,

therefore, making clear what we’re about is most important.

But I return to my opening contention, public order is essential;

and that has not yet been achieved. Without it, there is no political

or economic progress possible, nor will there be public confidence

in the United States, the coalition, and our role in the postwar

Iraq.

This means the United States is required to assign sufficient and

adequate forces. It means, as well, we must move rapidly to recruit, train, and deploy Iraqi police, intelligence, and security services to bolster the peace-and-order situation.

My second argument is that the United States has yet clearly to

articulate, and must do so, a vision for the postwar Iraq, a vision

important for Iraqis, for the region, for the world at large, and for

the people of the United States. That vision has a number of components that we need to hear come together.

The commitment of the United States and the coalition to see the

job through in Iraq for as long as it takes is clearly one aspect. Another is a commitment to the restoration of complete Iraqi sovereignty within a political structure that we would recognize as

just, based on democracy, even, to steal Senator Biden’s argument,

that democracy is partly achieved and also ‘‘squints toward the future.’’ A federal system of organization to take into account the disparate communities and ethnic groups inside of Iraq. A free market, which is in Iraqi’s hands, and Iraqis who control not only their

oil, but other natural resources. A vision of a democracy that shows

the greatest of respect for the dominant religion of Islam, but allows for the free practice of faith. A vision of democracy that

strengthens Iraq’s past bias toward social and gender equality. A

vision that sees Iraq as a unified nation, one free of weapons of

mass destruction. A vision of an Iraq that calls for peace with its

neighborhood, with Iran, Turkey, and the Arabs.

The absence, Senator Lugar and Senator Biden, of such a statement, such a clear and articulated statement of American intentions, leaves Iraqis unsettled, and the region, as well.

My third argument is based on a view that I hold very strongly,

is that the United States will not be able to complete its job in

Iraq, achieve our objectives in Iraq, unless there is a broader

framework of stability in the region. You cannot treat Iraq in isolation. And, therefore, it is important, at the same time that we pursue our most important objectives in Iraq, that we address, as matters of equivalent priority, the issues that keep the region alight.

27

The Israel-Palestinian matter is, of course, the one that comes,

first and foremost, to mind. And here, with the publication of the

roadmap based on 242 and 338, the President’s own commitment,

we have taken a first and very important step. But it’s rough. As

the blood that spilled in recent days indicates, we are going to have

a tough time ahead of us, and I can only hope that we will treat

this matter with the importance and sustained involvement that it

deserves. Peace, without a determined American involvement, cannot be achieved—not today, not in the past, not in the future.

I believe that it is also possible to take advantage of the momentum of the outcome of the war in Iraq to reconfigure our relationships with other centers of power in the region, as well as address

the region’s longer-term issues of political order and economic

progress.

First, in terms of the region’s political—of our relationships with

the region’s major powers, I put the question of Iran at the center.

It is absolutely right, as Geoffrey Kemp noted, that, for the first

time in our history and in Iran’s, we are near neighbors in Afghanistan, the gulf, and in Iraq. We cannot afford the luxury of standing

back from Iran, criticizing it from a distance.

We have to recognize that, as neighbors, we have a real and immediate national interest to attend to, and that we cannot attend

to them without dialog and without engagement. We need to understand where the Iranians are with regard to the future of Iraq,

Afghanistan, the peace process, terror, weapons of mass destruction. We need to engage in our interests without trying to guess

what will be the political changes in the future inside of Iran,

which we will only dimly perceive. We have immediate American

interests to attend to.

I also believe the time is right to strengthen ties to the key pillars of American policy in the Arab world—notably to Saudi Arabia

and to Egypt—not, for any moment, setting aside the priority we

must attach to the war on terror, but to recognize, in these two

countries, the United States has old and longstanding friends, and

their evolution in the future is of critical national importance to the

United States.

Yes, it is important that the United States back democracy and

free markets as the best way out of the stagnation of the Arab

world over the past many decades. At the same time, the nations

of the region, including our old friends, are old societies with deep

and longstanding cultures where change can occur as long as it’s

approached carefully and with respect.

I close with an argument, Senator Lugar, that comes back to the

final contention of your opening statement, and that is my fourth

point. It is absolutely clear to me that the United States has got

to be clear about its objectives, the administration and the Congress, so that the American people will understand what’s at stake

in this region in the time that we will be involved, for we will be

involved for a long, long time to come. We are committed to a region in a manner that is unparalleled to any American commitment since the one we undertook in Western Europe after World

War II. This will demand blood, it will demand treasure, it demands a vision and political engagement of more than just the U.S.

Government. It’s a commitment that needs to be articulated, SenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:42 Nov 03, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 90076 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ator Lugar, I would argue, as clearly as you made it this morning,

by both the administration and the Congress before it settles fully

into the American conscience, that we are in the Middle East and

we’ll be there for some years to come.

Senator Biden closed his remarks with a series of questions. I

can’t pretend I can answer all of them in the time available to me,

but I’d like to argue that, in terms of trying to understand how

long and how many American troops will be involved and what will

constitute success, I would suggest that we be very careful about

setting dates and times; but, rather, be clear about the objectives

that we want to achieve. If we’re clear about the objectives that we

hope to achieve politically, the reestablishment of peace and security, regeneration of the Iraqi economy, and to break those responsibilities, as the Council on Foreign Relations tried to do in its December report, into phases, we set objectives that Americans can

understand; and, therefore, the timing becomes a secondary matter.

We assumed, in our deliberations, that we might be in Iraq for

3 to 5 years. Dates were much less important than deciding what

objectives we would try to achieve at each step along the way. I say

this, because I watch, as well, the example of the American involvement in Afghanistan, next door, and I watch, with concern,

that our objectives are not broadly clear and deeply felt, and, therefore, deeply committed to; and, therefore, that Afghanistan is, at

the moment, slipping through our fingers. It is profoundly important that we get it right in Afghanistan and in Iraq if we are to

maintain our credibility as we go forward in this troubled century

and face other crises where we will need friends, allies, financial

commitment. If the United States isn’t persistent, clear about

where it’s headed, what stages it needs to go through in achieving

goals in Afghanistan and in Iraq, we’re going to find it hard to lead

in future crises.

Senator, thanks very much for the privilege of appearing before

you.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Wisner follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK G. WISNER, VICE CHAIRMAN, EXTERNAL

AFFAIRS, AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP

IRAQ, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND U.S. POLICY: GETTING IT RIGHT

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you today, Iraq, the Middle East,

and U.S. Policy. As you may know, I have been involved in two major reports on

post-conflict planning. First, I co-chaired with Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian the

Council on Foreign Relations/James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy report

‘‘Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq.’’ I subsequently served as

a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ task force which issued the report

‘‘Iraq: The Day After.’’ In addition, I have visited the region and spent the last many

months meeting with officials from across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia about

what needs to happen next in Iraq and its neighborhood.

What is clear is that Iraq’s future will have significant consequences far beyond

its borders. An unstable chaotic Iraq will spill its problems across boundaries and

draw neighbors in to fill the power vacuum. A stable democratic Iraq, on the other

hand, has the potential to set a political example for the rest of the region and become an engine of economic growth. To help Iraq achieve this latter vision, America

must be clear in its goals and steadfast in its commitment. We must be mindful of

regional dynamics, cognizant of the interests of others and honest about our own

limitations.

29

IRAQ—NEXT STEPS

Establish law and order. The lack of law and order in Iraq threatens to destabilize the entire region. And it threatens to destroy the tolerance of the Iraqi population for the continuing U.S.-led military presence inside Iraq. Rampant violence,

score-settling, and political uncertainty are allowing elements of the old regime to

reconstitute, criminal groups to flourish, and compelling ordinary citizens to take

matters into their own hands. Public security must be established and services restored for people to return to work and get Iraq moving again. Without sustained

law and order, the loftier goals that we set for the region will be nothing more than

fanciful fleeting dreams.

A robust, multinational security presence throughout Iraq’s main population centers is required to establish basic security and deal with holdouts from the Ba’athist

regime. Iraq’s security forces need retraining and depoliticization. The task of building a new political order in Iraq must be shared with the United Nations, and our

allies and partners who maintain constabulary and deployable national police forces.

NATO’s support of the Polish-led multilateral security force is a step in the right

direction.

Articulate a vision. The Administration needs to articulate a more detailed vision

for what it wants to foster in post-Saddam Iraq. The undertaking before us is truly

massive, and we need to set realistic, achievable goals that can be readily understood, accepted, and embraced by the citizens of Iraq, America and the region.

The long-term goal for Iraq continues to be a sovereign, democratic, economically

vibrant country, at peace with its neighbors and free of weapons of mass destruction. It will take years to achieve this, beyond the timeframe of an American occupation. But America must commit to stay in Iraq long enough to plant the seeds that

sets Iraq on the right course. At local levels, communities should be organized to

facilitate the handing over of political and economic responsibilities. At the national

level, a consensus among Iraq’s disparate communities and those committed to a

modern, secular state, respectful of its religious heritages will serve the country

well.

Including others. The U.S. vision must be as inclusive as possible. Iraq’s neighbors

have a vital stake in Iraq’s success. They are well aware that chaos in their backyard is troubling on its face, but could also translate into chaos at home. Our partners in Europe and the Muslim world can provide much needed security capabilities

and help remove the lingering suspicion that America is set to conquer Iraq. Over

time, international support will allow America to reduce its profile and restore confidence in our role in the region. Whereas the Iraqi war divided us; the pursuit of

stability can help reunite us, even though the latter effort may take time.

There also must be active consultations among the U.S., Iraqis, their Arab neighbors, Iran, Turkey, our European Allies as well as other members of the Security

Council. The goal should be to bring as many international partners as possible into

the effort of rebuilding Iraq and promoting a more secure Middle East. As we saw

in the run-up to the war, the failure to confront differences and disputes up front,

had disastrous implications for several of our country’s most important relationships

and gave rise to outright attempts to thwart our objectives.

GETTING IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Setting clear and achievable goals. The defeat and subsequent collapse of Iraq

confirmed America’s military prowess. In the aftermath of the military phase, we

have seen ample reason to fear that while we have won the war, we may lose the

peace. Washington’s commitment to improve the lives of Iraqi citizens must remain

paramount.

It is essential that we work to prevent the current instability from infecting the

entire region. We must establish clear goals and work toward realizing them. Such

goals would include: achieving success in, and eventual disengagement from, Iraq;

fostering regional stability (including momentum on the Israeli-Palestinian front, a

quiet well-orchestrated engagement with Iran and a strengthening of relations with

key Arab partners) and promoting freer politics and markets in the region.

Maintaining momentum toward Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Getting it right in the

Middle East means not just a different Iraq, but also a fair and just solution to the

Palestinian-Israeli conflict. American presence in Iraq has raised hopes that Washington will commit its good offices and resources to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This seemingly endless crisis has come to represent the violent history of set backs

and defeats that Arabs and Muslims have experienced at the hands of western powers. It has an on-going and crushing psychological effect on the entire region. The

President’s visit to the region and his strong support for the road map is a welcomed

recognition of the need to tackle this vexing problem. The newly launched peace

30

process, as well as the full involvement of the President is an enormous step. Considerable determination will be required to maintain momentum.

Still, previous attempts at peacemaking offer two distinct lessons. First, any new

effort must be ‘‘front loaded,’’ with steps devised to end terror and stop settlement

construction. Second, American involvement is necessary, but not sufficient, for

peace. The Arabs and Europeans must be called upon to use their influence, as we

begin to wield ours. Positive statements made by Arab leaders after the U.S.-Arab

Summit at Sharm el’Sheikh are movements in the right direction. But if this initiative fails to maintain momentum, and stability in Iraq remains elusive, moderates

throughout the region will be further undermined and we will have lost the few

voices that still support American activity.

Capitalizing on the new political context. The United States is Iran’s ‘‘neighbor,’’

in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and to some extent Pakistan. This new political context provides the opportunity to revisit with Iran some very basic questions

such as:

• What constitutes stability? What constitutes security?

• What role does each side understand the other to be playing? What role does

each side see for the other?

• What broad outcomes do we seek on critical areas of difference including Israel/

Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, etc.

Our interests dictate that we engage Iran now and not await political change in

Iran. Iran is no more prone to revolution than are other countries. The 1979 revolution was the result of decades of political organization that brought together key

Iranian domestic institutions such as the clerical establishment, wealthy land owners, charitable organizations, and eventually the military. Today, such organized political opposition simply does not exist. Even if sudden political change were to

occur, it is unclear whether a new Iranian government would distance itself from

the policies America finds most threatening.

Iran’s nuclear ambition is supported by a considerable portion of the population,

and there can be no papering over its ties to terrorism. A clear set of disincentives

must be devised to dissuade such practices. At the same time, such disincentives

must be accompanied by a corresponding set of incentives to foreswear such activity.

Providing only bad and worse alternatives will drive Iranian leadership to take the

very actions we seek to avoid. We risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Strengthening our ties with key Arab partners. While America’s world changed

dramatically on September 11th, we must remember that the Middle Eastern countries are facing cataclysmic changes. The second Intifada that began in September

2000 sparked unprecedented disgust and rage that is directed at local leaderships,

who appear impotent to deal with both domestic and regional challenges. September

11th, 2001 brought the United States into direct contact with the region, and ‘‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’’ of March 2003 tore at the very fabric of local societies. The

recent terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Morocco have put the region further on

edge. In other words, the region is experiencing political whiplash.

Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Syrian support in fighting terror and building a

more secure Middle East is instrumental. We must prioritize what we are asking

of each country, in order that they can work with the United States while satisfying

the needs of their people. We can nudge states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt toward

change. But we would be better served by doing so quietly and respectfully. We can

not and should not brook opposition to ending terror and its origins.

Promoting freer politics and markets in the region. America’s rhetoric leading up

to the war created considerable expectations. Instability in Iraq, however, has created cynicism about America’s real motives. The region’s leadership and people have

both finally recognized that slow economic growth rates and increasing joblessness

are fast becoming problems of a significant magnitude. The Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) is the right vehicle to help encourage political and economic participation. However, we have yet to articulate exactly how MEPI money will be used,

how local citizens can access it, and our benchmarks for success. It would also be

useful to rethink how easing access to the WTO may serve American and regional

national interests.

GETTING IT RIGHT AT HOME

Our goals in Iraq and the region must be understood by Americans and articulated by the Administration in cooperation with Congress. There are sacrifices

ahead and years of work required. Our forces and our resources will be stretched

beyond anything we have prepared for.

31

Our intelligence and diplomatic capacities in this region must be strengthened.

Our businesses and civil society institutions must become more involved. The commitment we have made is tantamount to rebuilding Europe after World War II. We

have done it before. We can do it again. But we cannot do it on the cheap; and we

cannot do it if we become distracted by other worthy challenges.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Wisner.

Let me say that the committee will adopt a 10-minute rule for

the first round, and we’ll have a second round if that is necessary.

It may well be, given the numbers of questions that we have for

all of you.

I’ll begin the questioning at this point.

I’m curious, really, to get an impression from the three of you,

as veterans of the trail, of how our Nation ought to prepare in the

future. We have a work-in-process in Afghanistan, as you’ve pointed out, Ambassador Wisner, and clearly in Iraq. These are different

situations from Germany and Japan, the World War II situation

you cited as our last big challenge. Each of you have pointed out

reasons why.

In the case of Iraq, which consists of disparate groups that were

grouped together, perhaps arbitrarily, by history a few decades ago,

can there be a sufficient sense of Iraqi identity in which Kurds and

other groups are prepared to say, ‘‘We are Iraqis’’? The same might

be the case in Afghanistan. Certainly, our experiences in the

former Yugoslavia, indicates that in this particular era, the United

States has not faced threats from very large powers, like Germany

or Japan or nation-states of that variety, but, in fact, is dealing

with terrorism by dissident sects of people with different sorts of

issues. That may be part of the history of why certain peoples came

together. We have really a distinctly new set of challenges.

Now, this committee and others, and the press, are now replete

with the fact that the military operation was superb, the planning

was remarkable. In our testimony, one witness after another came

to say, ‘‘The day after the hostilities start, law and order will be

required. Who will be the policemen?’’—all the things that we’re

discussing today. These were not hidden issues.

We were unable, in this committee, to find very much from the

administration about what they were going to do. I would just say

this is sad, in a sense, because the administration, in my judgment,

wasn’t well prepared.

So we’ve been through that. Aspects of this, as Ambassador Galbraith points out, are very severe. The looting, which was predictable, is going into hundreds of millions, and maybe billions, of dollars. Now we ask for a business plan of how we might begin to recoup, through oil sales or various other things, money coming back

in the door. There are already huge losses that are very tough for

the Iraqi state, huge debts that have not been resolved. We had,

in our last testimony, the thought that there’s a moratorium

throughout 2004. Still, we have hardly settled what the liabilities

of this state that we’re trying to work with vis-a-vis the rest of the

world are.

Now, this leads me to wonder—we do not have, at least institutionally, in the United States, as best I can tell, a training institute

or a sophisticated graduate school or any group of people that think

about the hereafter for military action. We all call upon our governVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:42 Nov 03, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 90076 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ment to mesh gears; but, as a matter of fact, they are equal tasks.

People involved in the military train, they think through scenarios,

they work this to a fare-thee-well. Thank goodness that they do so,

in terms of our security. But what about the hereafter? Who does

the training for this? On an ad hoc basis, we picked up a few people from various agencies that go out to the Pentagon for awhile,

they go out to Kuwait and, sort of do their best, but it is still a

pick-up game all the way along.

My own view, I suppose, is that the American public, by and

large, supports the military aspect. We understand that mission.

We’re prepared to devote funds and training and so forth, and we

understand victory. But perhaps what we have not tried to think

through, and we must, is the so-called nation-building or peacekeeping or whatever. Here, we have said we’re not involved in this;

and, therefore, we have not devoted resources to it. And when we’re

forced to do something of that variety, we try to improvise; and, in

this case, not very successfully. But the fate of not doing it successfully is likely to be very, very tragic.

So I’m wondering, from your own experience—each of you have

faced this, in a way, because you’ve had, in your roles in government, to improvise—please fill in the gaps here. Is there value in

facing up front, as an administration, as a Congress, the fact that

the threats to our country from instability—from failed states, from

incubators of terrorism, and what have you—are likely, without

being able to name names or know where we’re going to head—to

lead to a requirement for a very large number of skilled Americans? Now, add to that the point you’ve all made that America

should not do it alone. To what extent should this be a NATO function? For example, should it be an international function in which

we bring together in preparation, people from several nations, all

of whom come together to share these skills in the same way that,

in a rough way, we’ve tried to work with NATO partners in military niches or various things that they do? It just seems to me that

we’re at a threshold of an important here that we really have to

make. The failure to make it is likely to lead to either good luck

or bad luck coming from this situation, without any predictability,

and no constituency whatsoever, in the American public understanding of why we have such people or what we are about.

Do any of you have any reaction to this general scenario?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. You’ve hit on absolutely critical questions. And the first point I would underscore is the close connection

between getting the postwar right, the nation-building, and our

military resources. Where we don’t get it right, we actually put our

troops in danger and we increase our military commitments. I realize that this committee has been concerned for decades over our

unfortunate tendency to starve our diplomatic instrument while,

we support well our military instrument, as we should. But somehow we don’t see the connection between the two. And that is absolutely true in this case.

I think it’s unfortunate that, at this point in time, there’s discussion of even closing down the Army’s Peacekeeping Institute at

Carlisle, which trains our military people. And certainly my students at the National War College understand that peacekeeping

is a critical part of what the military does. They may not like it,

33

but they understand that that is part of the mission that they

have.

The CHAIRMAN. This is about to be shut down?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. I understand that there is discussion of

shutting it down, and some legislation pending to try to keep it

open. That is my understanding. I haven’t looked at it that closely.

I would make just a couple of other points—nation-building is

critical, and it is something that the United Nations does, and it

does rather well. I had the privilege of participating for 18 months

in the mission in East Timor. Now, the United Nations has many

inefficiencies, but, as we can see in Iraq, nation building is a very

difficult and complicated task.

I think it’s fortunate, in Iraq, that the United Nations has chosen

Sergio Vieira de Mello, who is absolutely the most capable diplomat

I’ve encountered. I think he can and should play a critical role, particularly in the political process, because I think his persuasive

skills will be very valuable. But the U.N. has resources in the area

of justice, of CIVPOL, and other areas that can be helpful.

A second point I’d make is that we need to rethink how we do

some of these things. There was an evident lack of planning. People

were recruited to go to Iraq at the very last minute, and so, naturally, they didn’t have time to figure out who was who. And they

ended up making some horrendous mistakes. They actually worked

with the head of Abu Ghraib Prison, or at least consulting with

him. This man who ran the most notorious prison in the world

since 1945.

We also have to be prepared to take risks. You cannot occupy a

country and not assume a certain element of risk for your personnel. It is a dangerous business. You should not take unnecessary risks, but when some of your civil authorities never got out

of the Republican palace. That’s ridiculous.

Ambassador WISNER. Senator, I join Peter Galbraith in—I think

the questions you put before us are really the challenging ones.

As I think back on the experience of the United States, over recent years, and the issue that you raise of, ‘‘How do you go about

planning for a postwar period,’’ I’m struck, I think, by the principal

fact that it’s fundamentally a political question. It’s a political

question and it’s a commitment on the part of the United States

to doing the job of nation-building. We actually are quite good at

nation-building. We showed it in Western Europe, in Japan, in

Korea. We have a good track record. At the same time, our history

also tells us that we got very disappointed with the mission of

being nation-builders. It fell into disfavor as a result of the war in

Vietnam, and, of course, during the crisis in Somalia, the very concept of nation-building took further hits, and it was politicized in

the American environment.

I believe the starting point, therefore, is to look, frankly, at the

kinds of crises, the risks the United States will be running in this

century, and recognize that the question of nation-building is going

to be with us for a long time to come, and it’s part of our political

responsibilities, not only as a nation with interests in the world,

but being clear with our own people about the commitments we’re

asking from them.

34

From that flows, as Peter has just said, a number of practical

steps that one has to take. I recall reading the history of the last

2 years of World War II, the bloody fights inside the U.S. Government over what shape nation-building should take with regard to

Germany and Japan, and how far off the plans in those two regards were from the outcome. One is always reminded of General

Marshall’s wonderful statement that plans never work out the way

you think, but you always must plan. In the Western European

context, we worked out very different arrangements. We have to be

flexible. But the political mindset, that we would stick with it, that

we would have the right people, we would follow policies with

broad principles, all of that made sense, and that we would have

the resources available to be a nation-builder. I believe we know

how to do it. It’s a question of establishing the political priority and

a consensus among ourselves the job needs to be done.

You asked specifically about NATO and the international dimension, the coalition dimension of nation-building and our responsibilities in these post-conflict phases. We’ve all been talking, during

the course of the morning, about the role the United Nations must

play, or NATO or ad-hoc coalitions. All can play roles, and they’re,

indeed, playing roles right now in Iraq.

As we sat down to think about the coming conflict in Iraq, in

New York, at the Council, we all recognized that one of the toughest problems about the first phase, justifying our intervention in

Iraq, would be where it would leave us when the war was over,

who we would have on our side, what our legitimacy would be. Getting our diplomacy right struck us as absolutely important. It

couldn’t be truer today.

It is possible to get our diplomacy right. I think the world is, on

the whole, prepared to cooperate, to try to share some of the burdens to create an Iraq that will be more stable, and accommodate

the United States, key members of the coalition, in their diplomacy,

to contribute treasure, contribute funds, contribute forces. It is important the United States not only look for that, not to escape responsibilities, but to involve the world and to legitimize our presence in Iraq by enveloping it in a stronger international consensus,

to get the level of our profile down so that we are not the targets

of all the criticism and the failures, a point I think Peter made

when he talked about making certain we get Iraqis into office as

quickly possible. The same is true of broadening the base of the

international coloration of our efforts there.

So let me associate myself with your two remarks. We are nation-builders, we will be nation-builders. We must prepare to be nation-builders, accept that responsibility. And, second, it’s best done

in a coalition framework, an international framework. We have an

opportunity in Iraq to do that.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Kemp, do you have anything to add?

Dr. KEMP. I have very little to add to what my two colleagues

have said, Mr. Chairman. I mean, I would just stress that I think,

you know, historically, the United States has not wanted to set up

a colonial service, so there are not institutions that train civilians

to go out and manage the rest of the world, as some countries have

done in the past; and that part of the problem is that, you know,

we have extraordinarily effective military forces who can intervene

35

anywhere in the world unilaterally, without any support from anyone, apart from forward logistic bases, but we do not have this

backup capability, which we now see is so essential. And yet other

countries do. Other countries have far more effective constabulary

forces than we do. They are much better suited for peacekeeping,

because they train for it for years.

And the question really is, Do we try to duplicate these capabilities, ourselves, through building new institutions and calling them

nation-building or peacekeeping, whatever you like, or do we cooperate? And that seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that is the fundamental dilemma the United States faces at this time. It is going

to be a unilateral power that essentially writes its rules and does

what it likes, or are we going to work with others? And if the latter

is the case, as I think it should be, then, indeed, there has to be

an understanding that the upcoming conflicts that we’re going to

face will have a front end which we will deal with, because we have

the strong military; and the back end, that we’re going to need

enormous support and help for. And, in that regard, I think working closely with the NATO countries is a good place to start.

I would just conclude that I think what you’re pointing out reflects a deeper problem in the diminishing regional skills that are

now available to many of the institutions in the U.S. Government.

For instance, one of the complaints in the early days of the occupation of Iraq has been the absence of Arabic speakers. And if you

talk to anyone in the intelligence agency, much the same thing can

be said there. This may have improved since 9/11, but we clearly

still have a long way to go.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

As the three witnesses know, your answer to the chairman’s last

question has been a constant drumbeat by the chairman and me

and others in this committee for the last year. I would offer two

observations and then ask some specific questions.

One, I think this town is a reflection, Dr. Kemp, of what hasn’t

happened. When the Berlin Wall came down, the intellectual institutions that were erected over the past 40 years remained, and everyone was looking for a job, in effect. I’m not being facetious when

I say that. We had a whole lot of Soviet experts, a whole lot of

Eastern European experts, a lot of arms-control experts, a lot of

very brilliant people, who, for 50 years, guided our policy. We did

not have the focus of the most significant minds in this country,

in and out of government, focusing on the region we’re now talking

about. There were people who had expertise, but you didn’t have

entire think tanks and institutions built around just dealing with

these issues we’re now confronting. And it’s taken time. I remember—well, at any rate—so it’s taken time. And I hope we speed it

up a little bit.

And Dr. Kemp’s comment, that concluding comment, that we

have to—paraphrasing—we have to make a decision about whether

we’re going to move unilaterally or not, and that we may be able

to unilaterally handle the front end, but the back end of the process, we need help.

36

One of the things that I spent the last 12 months apparently falling on deaf ears in the administration is, you can’t expect a back

end if you don’t have some discussion on the front end. The idea

that we can unilaterally decide where we want to change the world

and then, after the fact, go out to the rest of the world and say,

‘‘Now, by the way, you clean it up with us, and you take on the

major responsibility in doing that,’’ they may do it, because they

have no choice because the chaos that may be left if we don’t do

it and they’re left with it, but it sure would be a heck of a lot better

had we had a thing called diplomacy at the front end of this process, which I think was sorely lacking.

Which leads me to a point I want to make for—well, relative to

the last hearing, this hearing, and future hearings. Speaking only

for myself, but I suspect the committee may share a similar view,

when we discuss with you, as we will today and in the future, why

we were so unprepared for the post-Saddam period, it is not to assign blame. It is not to say, ‘‘Aha, I told you so. You didn’t do what

you were supposed to do. You failed.’’ That is not the purpose; at

least it’s not my purpose.

The answer to that question as to why we were so woefully unprepared—although there were some serious successes; the oil

fields are basically intact, people are not starving, there’s not major

exoduses, there’s not major flight, and there is not major recriminations that are going on at the moment, so there are genuine successes—but why were we so unprepared? The answer to that question is important, not because we need to assign blame, but to determine whether there is an ideological impediment to this notion

of nation-building that exists among very important people in this

administration.

The people who have been primarily in charge are very, very,

very, bright people, among the most informed and brightest people

I’ve dealt with in 30 years as Senator. It’s not that they could not

have known what the Council recommended in a number of its

areas, including establishing stability and the need for, on page 3

of your executive summary or on page 5 of the first report to the

Council, of establishing law and order. There’s no one in this administration who could have failed to understand that. They aren’t

tone deaf.

And what I’m trying to get at, the reason I keep pursuing this,

is—look at Afghanistan. I am not saying anything out of school. Dr.

Rice has said it publicly. When I would meet with her once a week,

back when I was the chairman, we were pushing, many of us in

this committee, for expanding the international security force beyond Kabul so that there was something other than that there was

a prospect that Mr. Karzai would be something other than the

mayor of Kabul. We talked, in great detail, about the need for all

the aid to go through his hands, so he had something to disseminate in Herat or something to disseminate in other parts of the

country, that there was some reason for the warlords needing him.

I remember midway through this debate, after we lost the debate, and the State Department lost the debate, on expanding the

ISAF and making it more muscular and so on, so forth, Dr. Rice

said, ‘‘There is stability.’’ I said, ‘‘Yeah, Ishmael Khan is in control

of Herat.’’ She said, ‘‘Yes, there’s stability.’’ That was a definition

37

of stability. That was the objective. And then we’re told that that

country has never been able to be controlled by a central government.

So what I’m trying to get at here—I want to make sure you understand the context of my questions—is, I think there’s a great

ideological divide here, among the neo-conservatives and the rest of

the administration and many of us, as to what is doable and what

is the objective. Because I can’t, for the life of me, believe that the

leading lights in this administration didn’t understand the very

things that the Council and each of you have recommended, ahead

of time, as to what were some glaring deficiencies.

And so that’s the context in which I ask the questions here, is

whether or not we’re running up against a need for a change in the

predominant thinking of the administration in order to get the job

done, or whether or not there is a consistency that we only need

to tweak a little bit here.

Now, toward that end, let me go specifically to my questions. The

idea of the involvement of NATO, the EU, and the United Nations—you’ve all mentioned them being involved, in one way or another—can any of you be specific with me—other than in State Department terms, which are bland, impressive, and have little content terms—of telling me precisely what role do you look for for

NATO? Should NATO forces comprise 50 percent of the, quote, ‘‘occupying forces’’? Should they comprise 75 percent? Should we be

sharing, as we did in Bosnia, having, in a military commander,

who was an American, but making up only 15 percent of—I mean,

in Kosovo—making up only 15 percent of the forces? Are we talking

about—have we already met the goal of involving NATO because

we’ve got the Poles and the Brits there? I’m of the view this administration told me that we already have NATO involved. So what do

you mean by NATO involvement?

The second question is, what kinds of—I think, again, Dr. Kemp,

you said—you all reflected the same thing that Dr. Kemp said,

which was that there is a need for there to be—this has to be internationalized more. I assume you mean that in terms of decisions

on governance within Iraq. When I speak to our interlocutors in

France, Germany, even Great Britain, Spain, Italy, they basically

say, ‘‘Look, you want us in on the deal. We’ve got to have’’—and

I think it was your phrase, Dr. Kemp; I may be mistaken—we’re

going to have to, in effect, yield complete dominance on every decision of consequence that’s made. There has to be some input that

they have.

And with regard to Iran—and I’ll come back in a second round,

because I have some very—with regard to Iran—I had an opportunity to spend some time with Dr. Kemp, and I’ve had some time

in the past with Ambassador Wisner, to talk about Iran—there

seems, to me, to be an absolute—and it goes back to this ideological

divide that I perceive that exists in the administration—an absolute—put it another way——

I believe, if, tomorrow, the reformers prevailed in Iran and established what we would call a democracy along the lines of an Islamic state, like Turkey, that that new democratic government

would be unwilling to give up its nuclear capacity, that it would

be unwilling. There’s no government I can perceive in Iran that

38

would voluntarily say, ‘‘You know, we’re in a rough neighborhood

here, and the idea of us having the ability someday to have a nuclear capability is something we’re going to foreswear.’’ And so any negotiation with Iran seems, to me—forces any administration to come face to face with how do you—not eliminate,

but how do you constrain, control, and/or have total transparency

about any nuclear program? And that, to me, from my discussions

with leaders in this administration and in the last administration,

as well, a nonstarter. You cannot start with that as being something that may end up being at the end of the negotiation; therefore, no discussion.

So if you could speak to me about any of what I’ve raised, and

then I’ll come back in a second round to pursue—because I realize

what I’ve asked you cannot be answered in a very short—pick any

piece of it to respond to. I’d appreciate it.

Dr. KEMP. I’ll just respond on the nuclear Iran, and maybe my

colleagues will add on the other points.

Senator, this is a critical issue, because I think, first, we have

to be very clear what we mean by Iran’s nuclear program. I mean,

at the moment—we’ll know more on June 16, when the IAEA Governors meet to decide whether or not Iran has violated any of its

NPT commitments—but there is an important distinction between

an Iranian nuclear program that includes all the infrastructure for

a full fuel cycle and an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Senator BIDEN. Agreed. I meant an Iranian nuclear structure not

an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Dr. KEMP. Right. Well, my argument would be that if Iran had

turned into Turkey, we could live with an Iranian nuclear infrastructure that was under IAEA safeguards, and Iran had signed

the additional protocol. I think that would be far less dangerous,

for instance, than the current situation we have in Pakistan, where

we have a government that is not under any safeguards, that is

ruled by a military dictator, who could be overthrown at any time.

So I would be more comfortable, frankly, with a reformed Iran that

still had a nuclear potential, than a regime in Tehran that conducts terrorism and has not signed the additional protocol.

But, clearly, how the United States thinks about putative Iranian nuclear capability has to be a function of other things the Iranian Government is doing in its foreign policy, particularly terrorism and how it deals with Iraq and Afghanistan. If they re-configured their foreign policy in a way that was acceptable to us on

those issues, I think we could be more laid back about the nuclearinfrastructure issue.

Ambassador WISNER. Peter, forgive me, I’m jumping in right

here on the tail end of Geoff Kemp’s remarks about Iran and the

nuclear issue.

I think perhaps I see it a bit differently. I agree with Geoff that

what we have before us is an extraordinarily dangerous situation.

The Iranians are developing capabilities that could one day be

weaponized. The question is, Will they weaponize them, and what

will deter them from weaponization?

At the heart of the matter, whether they see eye to eye with us

politically or they do not, or they change their policies, this problem

is going to continue to exist. I think it’s very important, therefore,

39

to focus with the Iranians, in dialog with the Iranians, on fixing

the inspection regime, increasing the safeguards, going to 93-plus–

2, making it clear that—understanding that we cannot live with a

process that goes to weaponization, that, in the context of progress

on other fronts, we will not be able to turn our back on—the Iranians will continue to have a capability. But we’re going to live

with ambiguity with the Iranians, whatever happens in the end.

And I think the best we can move for at the moment is to intensify

the internationalization, the safeguards, and introduce 93-plus–2.

As to your first point, I would, frankly, welcome NATO being, as

early as possible, a player in the Iraq front, starting with logistics

and planning functions, moving to command functions, increasing

the numbers of forces, and would associate with your wish in that

regard. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the objective is to

put security in the hands of Iraqis and to train and equip police

and Iraqi security forces.

Senator BIDEN. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that in every place

we’ve tried to do that, it’s taken years and years. So anybody who

thinks this is going to occur in 6 months or 8 months, I’m willing

to bet my career that they’re wrong.

Ambassador WISNER. At the rate we turn out Afghan battalions,

you’re absolutely right.

Senator BIDEN. The rate we did it in Bosnia, the rate we did it

in Kosovo, the rate we did it anywhere, it is a very tough deal.

Ambassador WISNER. True enough. At the same time, if we don’t

start now and start with large numbers, we won’t reach the objective. International forces, in short, will not be the final arbiter of

Iraqi security.

The second point——

Senator BIDEN. On that point, though, let me—international

forces will not be the final arbiter. But can we get to the final arbiter without international forces?

Ambassador WISNER. No, we have to——

Senator BIDEN. I mean, and internationalizing the force, that’s

really the question now. That’s the next piece here, isn’t it?

Ambassador WISNER. I’m fully in agreement. And, therefore, the

role that I briefly outlined for NATO makes a great deal of sense.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just interrupt you to try to get perhaps

to Senator Alexander before we have a break, in fairness, so he can

get into the situation, because he won’t be coming back.

Senator Alexander.

Senator ALEXANDER. Well, thanks, Mr. Chairman and Senator

Biden. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the testimony. I just have one area

I want to explore a little bit that Mr. Galbraith got me to thinking

about, and Mr. Wisner, as well.

I want to talk about the Iraqi identity, if there is one. It seems

to me, Mr. Galbraith, that you’ve suggested that the two principles

that might unite the national identity of Iraq are basically the

principles that unite a university and its president, which are, No.

1, get our share of the money; and, two, leave us alone.

I mean, those would be the—and I’m not really being facetious

with that—that we talk about nation-building, and all of you talked

some about, you know, comparisons in history to that. But we don’t

40

have much comparisons in history to this kind of nation-building,

as I think—at least not the ones we usually think about.

We think about Germany. You mentioned Germany. You mentioned Japan. You mentioned Korea. But all those are nations who

are nations because of the great principles or conditions that usually create a nation, and those are almost always the same. They

begin with religion. They usually have to do with ethnicity. They

often have to do with a common language. Then there are some

cultural attitudes. Then there sometimes is a common enemy. And

when all those factors are in play, you have a nation.

And so one says, ‘‘I’m a German,’’ or, ‘‘I’m a Korean,’’ or, ‘‘I’m a

Japanese.’’ And what we forget, as Americans, is if we move to Germany, we don’t become German. If we move to Japan, we don’t become Japanese. If we move to Korea, we don’t become Korean.

And we look at the world in terms of people moving here. And

if a Korean or a Japanese or a German moves here, we expect

them to become Americans. And what makes them Americans?

Well, none of the things I just—not many of the things I just suggested, because we come from many places, have many different religions, started out with different languages, and our ethnicity has

really nothing to do with what it means to be an American. In fact,

we deny that it has anything to do with it.

So in trying to apply our notion of what it means to be a nation

to Iraq, seems to me to be completely impossible, and we should

recognize that to start with. It wasn’t a nation to start with; it was

just lines drawn in the sand around three different kinds of people.

And Mr. Wisner then—after World War I, then Mr. Wisner then

began to state the principles that we might suggest to them. Now,

they’re all great-sounding principles—you know, free market, the— you know, I can think of the things that unite us: liberty, equal opportunity, rule of law, individualism, democracy, laissez faire—we

might suggest all that, but it would be as if the French were suggesting it to us 230 years ago.

So the question is, If we were going to—if someone were going

to write, ‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’’ in the new nation of Iraq, I mean, who would do it? Who is the Washington and

Jefferson and Madison? And then what would they say? Would

they say, ‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident. Give us our

share of the oil money and leave us alone in our three sections’’?

Those are the truths. Is there anything else that unites the Nation

of Iraq—are there any principles? Are there any cultural attitudes?—besides federalism and a share of the oil money?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Senator, I think you’ve really put your

finger on the central problem of Iraq. It is not a nation-state, because it’s not a single people, not a single nation. The Arabs are

part of a larger Arab community. The Kurds are, in fact, part of

a larger Kurdish community. And there are other peoples there, as

well.

If we were back in 1919 or 1923, I think we might wish to reconsider the idea of creating Iraq. It has been basically a failure for

most of the people who live there for its entire history, and this

didn’t just begin with Saddam Hussein.

But, unfortunately, we’re not in 1923; we’re in 2003. And it

would be very complicated, and possibly bloody, to redraw the

41

maps there or to break Iraq up into two, much less three, states.

It would have enormous regional repercussions.

Now, the fact is, it isn’t much to hold a state together, when the

only reason to do it is to say that it would be very messy if it broke

up. And, having served in the former Yugoslavia, I can tell you a

lot about those complications.

So the truth is, there isn’t much there, and that is why I strongly

recommend a political system that basically allows each of Iraq’s

major ethnic and religious communities to have almost complete

self-government within a single internationally recognized border.

We should try to provide an incentive for them to stick together,

which is sharing some very large oil revenues. Whether that lasts

or not, I don’t know. And if there can be a peaceful divorce some

point in the future, not in 2003, but in 2013, I don’t think that that

should necessarily concern us very much.

I want to touch on one point that’s so critical to this. You talked

about a number of things that are absent in Iraq, like a common

language. Islam is the predominant faith, but you have the two different branches. There is no common ethnicity. And the issue of the

common enemy—well, if you are a Kurd, an Iraqi Kurd, the main

enemy that you have had for 90 years has been the Iraqi army.

And it is the Iraq army, not a foreign army, that actually committed genocide against the Kurds—an open and shut case of genocide. And the Iraqi Army engaged in brutal repression of the Shi

’ites.

So if we go in with a vision of nation-building, that we’re going

to recreate in Iraq a multiethnic Iraqi state on the American

model, we are really doomed for failure. We should understand

this. Let’s accept, for example, that the Kurds will keep the self

government they now have. Let’s accept that they would even retain their own military, at least for the time being. Because what

they worry about is not any foreign country; it is that there will

be a resurgent Baghdad that will resume the repression to them.

And, frankly, if you were in their shoes, you would feel the same

way.

Senator ALEXANDER. What this all makes me think about is, we

correctly celebrate our diversity so much, which is a magnificent

strength of our country, that we tend to forget that our greater accomplishment is defining a set of principles and attitudes that creates one—you know, the ‘‘e pluribus unum’’ idea. You know, it is

a rare and very difficult thing. And it seems to me that it would

be misguided to try to impose that idea upon a set of circumstances

so dramatically different than anything that exists here, and certainly for the foreseeable future.

Ambassador WISNER. Senator, I’d have to agree with that. At the

same time, you don’t want to be unnecessarily gloomy. Iraq may be

a new nation of 80 years standing, but it is a very ancient culture,

and the history of communities living side by side is the more common, rather than communities divided. The fact of Iraq’s history is,

it is true of much of the region. I wouldn’t, therefore, say that you

cannot create a nation of communities. But that ought to be the

right objective.

At the same time, in setting your objective of allowing the communities to coalesce, identify their leaders, bring those leaders toVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:42 Nov 03, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 90076 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
42

gether, create the incentives that Peter has talked about that will

tie them together, I would argue that it is really important to surround them in a framework of democratic principles.

Now, lest one thinks those democratic principles are alien to

Iraqi culture, Iraqi political culture contains very strong liberal

principles. If you go through the recent experience, even the dreadful years of Ba’ath rule, respect for women’s rights, women’s participation, social objectives were all—have always been in the forefront of Iraqi political thinking.

Now, I would only argue that you divide matters into two time

zones. One is to get a basic political structure in which the communities live side by side. That’s your first objective, and that’s the

realistic first objective. But, second, to create democratic principles

that, over time—and I recall Senator Biden’s statement of ‘‘squinting toward democracy’’—where maturing habits allow you to arrive

at a greater set of democracy. The way I would see it is two different timeframes.

Dr. KEMP. I’ll defer, because I think my two colleagues have answered the question very appropriately.

I would only add that, for a period for 32 years, Lebanon, which

is an equally diverse and complex society, actually did form a national covenant, and the groups did work together. But, unfortunately, in 1975, it all came tumbling down. So the record in the region is not a good one of these societies living together like this.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me intervene at this moment to say that we

do have the rollcall vote proceeding, and the committee will stand

in recess for about 10 minutes until Senators have had a chance

to vote, and then we will return for more questions.

Thank you.

[Recess.]

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing is called to order again.

Let me ask a question about our public diplomacy in the area.

Each of you have touched upon this, in a way. The thought has

been that, obviously, progress must occur with the Israel-Palestine

question, and perhaps with other questions, for people in the area,

not only of Iraq, but the surrounding nations, to have a better feeling about the United States, about our objectives, about who we

are and what we are doing. Many people have been quoting a recent Pew Foundation report indicating, country by country, the

large percentages of people in that region, but, likewise, in Europe

and elsewhere, who have a dislike for America, for our objectives,

for us. Those percentages appear to have increased during the

problems of hostilities in Iraq. Perhaps in the postwar period, why,

things will improve. They have in Australia, for example, and

anecdotally in some other countries.

Each of you are veterans of that area. What do we need to do?

And does it make a difference? In other words, is it important that

America be liked by more people so that they have greater confidence? Or do we simply accept the fact, as some have suggested,

that we have tough things to do, difficult jobs, and we believe we’re

on the right course of history; in due course, people will catch up

with us. What is your own judgment about the importance of public

diplomacy and public opinion in Iraq and in the surrounding countries?

43

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Mr. Chairman, I think the first point

about public diplomacy is that it is the policies and the results that

matter most. I think, as you know—and I worked on those issues

for this committee—so often, we hear, ‘‘If only people understood us

better.’’ But I think the core of the problem is that people do have

an idea about what our policies are, and they simply disagree with

them. In this part of the world, I think it’s obvious that a genuine

commitment to solving the Palestine-Israel conflict, the restoration

of Iraqi sovereignty, a number of these steps will produce results.

I think there are some things that we can do, in the Iraqi context, that will be very important. One of them is to really get out

the story—and, again, it’s not telling a story; it is just the facts—

about what the Saddam Hussein regime was about. I’m not sure

that this should be done by the U.S. Government. I think this is

the perfect thing for an international commission, like the

Bassiouni Commission, which you’ll recall documented some of the

crimes in Bosnia and was a precursor to the International Criminal

Tribunal. But that information should be recorded, a record created, and the people responsible for massive crimes should be identified. And doing that will help make the case that what we did in

Iraq was, in fact, the right thing.

I think there’s a larger point, which is that—and one that Senator Biden, I think, was also alluding to—in the whole process, I

think it is important to have respect for the opinions of others,

even if we disagree with them. And I think sometimes our officials

need to realize that statements made for domestic consumption

have ramifications abroad. I’m sorry to say I think we rubbed the

salt unnecessarily in the wounds with the Germans and the

French. I don’t think it served any national interest. And I think

this is true of some of the comments that have been made about

post war Iraq. The Iraqis, for example, were constantly saying to

me, ‘‘Is the looting of our museum your idea of a little bit of exuberance? Of democracy?’’

So we need to be careful in some of our statements, because in

this interconnected world, they have an audience beyond the domestic one. These things are heard around the world.

The CHAIRMAN. Anyone else have a view on public diplomacy?

Ambassador WISNER. I’d perhaps add a couple of thoughts to Peter’s statement. I think that, in addition to the fact that our policies will decide the framework of public opinion—some people will

like them; others will not; perfectly fair—I would also argue that,

as a core view of the success of the United States over the past 50

years, I hold to the notion that we have been successful because

we appear to operate within international norms. We appeared to

try to legitimize our efforts by going through the United Nations,

involving international instances, building coalitions. And while not

everybody agreed with what we were doing or what we stood for

on a given case, a given instance, the fact that the United States

attempted to subject itself to an international—a framework of

international norms, improved our policy. To take the opposite view

that our national interests will override an international consensus, then I think we open ourselves to huge doubts about the

legitimacy of American efforts.

44

It does not mean that the United States shouldn’t defend its

most essential interests—of course we should—but to, as a general

practice, try to accommodate the broader international concerns.

The second comment I would make is that one of the reasons

we’ll never be fully understood is that people approach problems

with different assumptions. And if you simply talk about the conclusions, you won’t—in the Arab world, there is a deeply held assumption that the United States wishes to weaken the Arab world.

We weakened it most recently by invading Iraq. We weaken it by

undermining the oil industry. Whatever. There are many assumptions about malign American purposes.

To come back to a point Geoff Kemp made, we’ve got to have people who know those assumptions and, therefore, can engage in the

dialog. And that means a serious strengthening of our information

services.

In the U.S. Government, over the past 10, 15 years, we have reduced the effectiveness—the numbers, the standing of officers who

are skilled in international communications and—from a high point

in the immediate postwar period to a low point in the 1990s. I

think, in a world in which we’ve discovered is much hostility and

even questioning of American policies and purposes, part of the

work this committee can contribute to is to making certain our people speak Arabic, know the culture of the region, but also are

skilled in the practice of understanding arguments, understanding

assumptions, and, therefore, being able to debate the conclusions

on the same ground that the arguments are being advanced.

Dr. KEMP. Mr. Chairman, I have just two points I’d like to add

to what my colleagues have said.

The Pew report that you cited is, of course, extraordinarily troubling. But, you know, it’s just the last of many troubling opinion

polls we’ve seen out of the region over the last 10, 15 years.

There’s a certain ambiguity here, because I think that both that

poll and what you actually see in the Middle East reflects also another component that we should not, in any way, minimize. That

is to say that while public opinion is very, very critical of the behavior of the U.S. Government, there are still huge, long lines outside every American embassy in the Middle East, of people trying

to get visas to come to this country. And so you have the anomaly

of fortress America in downtown Cairo, where Frank was, or out

in the boondocks, as in Kuwait. But, still, the people want to come

here. So there’s this ambiguity about America and American policy.

And I think, on the policy issue, I’d just like to reiterate what

my colleague said, that, you know, like it or not, the Palestine issue

is a touchstone for how we are seen to be handling the broader

issue of the region. And it’s obviously not the case that this is the

only problem to resolve, after Iraq. But were we to succeed, were

the President to succeed in bringing about a solution to the ArabIsraeli conflict, this, I think, would have enormous momentum for

the good.

And, I must say, I was in Europe last week when the President

went to Sharm el-Sheikh and Aqaba, and it was remarkable how

impressed people were that he did seem, at last, to be taking this

burden on himself, rather than deferring to Secretary Powell. And

I think that if we get over this immediate crisis we’re in right now,

45

and the administration takes the plunge, then I think, ultimately,

it could be the best public diplomacy we could have, other than, of

course, a success in Baghdad.

The CHAIRMAN. Sort of doubling back to one of the purposes of

the hearing, at least anecdotally, observers of the President’s visit

with the Arab leaders noted that, within the Arab leadership group

meeting with the President, there were very great strains. Not everybody likes each other. As a matter of fact, there are a number

of problems that, leaving aside the Israelis and Palestine, per evidence in the meeting, come back to some of the things we’re talking

about today. What if some degree of democracy—human rights,

freedom—occurred in Iraq in this area in which there are some elements of that elsewhere? It’s not totally devoid of those thoughts.

At the same time, a good number of regimes that do not manifest

this, that apparently have a lot of unhappy young people, in particular, who feel really thwarted at every turn by what they feel

are elderly types, still abound. What does this mean, in terms of

the dynamics? Even as we are busy talking about the Arab world,

the fact is, this is made up, as all of you pointed out today. There

are very sophisticated situations in different countries at different

degrees of development.

Well, you argue as the devil’s advocate that the Iranians see Saddam as certainly a bad ruler, but, nevertheless, as one who brought

stability. It’s much the view, for instance, of the Chinese with regard to the North Korean regime. One reason to provide a lot of

fuel and food and not to withdraw them or use that leverage is the

fear that somehow the regime might collapse and North Koreans

might spill over into China, and other bad things might occur. The

evaluations are often made on the basis of stability. That is, nothing happens. There’s a containment of the situation.

Now we’ve upset that. And, at least for the moment, it would appear that something different is going to emerge in Iraq that might

offer hope, in the best instance, to the best instincts we would hope

of people who might seek freedom.

How do we then work with our old friends in Saudi Arabia, in

Egypt, to name two that are good friends, to understand what’s occurring before strange things happen in those countries? As the

power that can send people everywhere, can we handle all of the

problems that we are called upon to handle? Do we face a new set

of difficulties, not of our own making, shall we say?

Ambassador WISNER. Senator, really extraordinarily important

questions. I was very troubled, as the debate took place leading up

to the war in Iraq, that somehow, as part of our justifications and

public dialog, there were arguments being advanced that democracy could be forced down the throat of Iraq by Americans. I didn’t

believe it then; I don’t believe it now.

I also don’t believe that democracy can be exported, either from

this country to the rest of the Arab world, certainly not under pressure, not to be seen to be coming out under pressure.

That said, Iraq does give us a terrific opportunity, if we get it

right, to build on some of the liberal traditions that have existed

in Iraq, to have a coalescence of the communities where there are

incentives that bring them together. All of these will send powerful

signals.

46

But the Arab world, much like the Muslim world, each country

sees its own dilemmas in its own ways. And people are at various

different ends of the world of evolution. A society like Egypt is extremely sophisticated, has long experience with political institutions. In the gulf, the experience is much more recent, merging

from tribal societies to modern societies within one generation.

One must take into account, obviously, these regional differences.

But I believe what happens in Iraq will send a very powerful signal, and working for the long-term success of democracy in Iraq is

the right American objective.

Second, that our own dialog, diplomatic dialog, with other nations in the region, including two of the governments that I believe

are key pillars of America’s presence in the region, Saudi Arabia

and Egypt, that we care and listen and watch how they are evolving, how they’re taking public opinion into account. Very important.

I believe our explicit work has to be discrete, respectful, and

work to strengthen institutions in these societies in Egypt, where

you and I met on many occasions. The United States can do a lot

associating itself with the education, the press, the judicial institutions.

Egypt is changing. All of the Middle East is changing. Our objective should be to associate ourselves with change and to not appear

to be imposing the pace or content of change, but nurturing it and

furthering it along, and, at the same time, creating the right image

about the United States, addressing issues that matter hugely to

people in the Middle East. The involvement in the peace process,

as Geoff has just underscored, is critical to our overall image and

ability to promote our thoughts about democratic institutions, a

democratic future, and free markets.

The CHAIRMAN. Ambassador Galbraith, I’d like to ask, because

you were in Baghdad, as you pointed out, fairly rapidly after the

military conflict ended. If a member of this committee, or a delegation of Senators, were to go to Baghdad tomorrow, what should we

ask for? What would be the most useful intervention on our part?

Obviously, the intervention of Senators in Baghdad, at this particular point, is an imposition upon everybody. They’re busy, and

they have lots of things to do. On the other hand, it is important

for us to have some better understanding and to raise the right

questions or offer the right comments of support. Can you offer any

counsel or advice to Senators of this committee who might be on

such a mission?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Travel to Iraq would be extremely useful for the Senators of this committee and, if I might add, also the

staff. The question is, what is it that you’ll be able to do once you

get there? And if the kind of restrictions that have existed on congressional travel remain, then I would have some doubts about the

wisdom of going from a substantive perspective. With current restrictions, you could have photo op, and a chance to cheer the

troops, which is very important to do, but it wouldn’t give you a

good sense of the scene in Baghdad.

My sense of the security situation in Baghdad, during the day,

is that it is a place you can go around. And while I was there, I

traveled around without any protection, sometimes by myself. I

47

went into buildings, as they were being looted such as the Foreign

Ministry. Frankly, the looters were very friendly.

They lit treaties to show me around, because it was dark. There

was no electricity.

Now, I’m not sure that a senatorial delegation could quite do

that, but I think one absolutely would have to insist upon being

able to get around. I think you should look at the physical destruction and make some of your own decisions about some of these

issues that I’ve raised.

I would certainly want to talk to the political leadership, the

former exiles who have established offices there. It is very interesting to see how people are actually holding court, who’s coming,

and the kind of political dialog that’s being undertaken.

Ideally, I would urge you to see some other parts of the country.

I think it would be very useful to do what Senator Biden and Senator Hagel did, and go up to Kurdistan and meet with the parliament and get a sense of what is possible. Now, they certainly

have not created a perfect democracy, by any means, but they have

created, against enormous odds, a pluralistic society, and they did

actually manage to hold completely fair elections. They had the unfortunate problem that the elections produced a tie, and you know

what happened with a tie in this country; imagine if that happens

in your first election. And then I would also want to go to Karbala

or Najaf and talk to some of the clerics.

But it is my view that you could carry out such an itinerary with

a high degree of confidence in the security.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you for those insights.

Let me note that the distinguished ranking member has just returned, and I want to recognize him, as I’ve had the monopoly of

all of you for much more than my allotted 10 minutes.

Let me just comment to the ranking member, after you’ve raised

questions and answers, it would be my intent to adjourn the hearing. I’ve had a good opportunity. I wanted to make certain that you

do, too.

Senator BIDEN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I’m sorry I got—there is a dangerous no-man’s land for United

States Senators, and that’s between the floor and the elevators,

and I was importuned by a number of reporters on matters that

were beyond my competence to respond to, and the more I told

them I didn’t know, the more they’d ask questions and believed I

knew something.

At any rate, if the chairman went to any of these issues, please

just let me know, and I will literally read the record.

With regard to the role of the United Nations, if you can, in as

specific terms as you can, had you Ambassador Bremer’s job right

now, you’re sitting in his spot, what would you recommend, specifically to the President, about further U.N. involvement, if you

would? If you would. Anyone.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. My own preference would actually have

been to put all of this under a U.N. mandate. But beyond what was

in the resolution I think there are some discrete things that the

United Nations can do. The most important, in my view, relates to

the area of justice. This really requires impartiality, and I think

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that is much more likely to come from the United Nations or be

seen as coming from the United Nations.

Senator BIDEN. When you say ‘‘justice,’’ you mean a judicial system?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. I mean two things. One of them is the

judicial system. So I would bring in the United Nations and give

them the task of vetting judges. In fact, I think, basically, you have

to get rid of all the old Iraqi judges. They administered injustice

for 35 years, and I don’t think you can credibly have a new beginning with people who have done that.

The U.N. could undertake a process of identifying and recruiting

new judges. There are a lot of capable Iraqi lawyers, so I think it

is doable. I would also let the United Nations do the documentation

of the crimes that took place under the Ba’ath regime. And, ideally

I would have an international criminal tribunal to try the leading

culprits of the old regime. I know that this administration is not

keen on such things, but it is such an open and shut case of massive criminal conduct that we really ought to take it to the entire

world. We have a number of the senior leaders in custody and we

ought to try them in Iraq before a U.N.-mandated tribunal.

Incidentally, people complain about these trials as being long and

slow. Indeed I may be testifying later this month in the Milosevic

trial, which has gone on for more than a year. The fact is that

genocide is a very complicated crime, and it’s not like a discrete

murder case. In a routine murder case you may have a perpetrator,

a victim, a handful of witnesses and some gunpowder. In these

international tribunals, you have to prove the murder of hundreds

of thousands of people. That is a very big task, and it’s no surprise

that this takes a long period of time. But I think it is important

to do that, and that is a role I would also assign to the United Nations.

There are other things that the United Nations is doing in Iraq,

in the development area and the humanitarian assistance. Obviously, those kinds of activities should continue. And I would urge

the President and Ambassador Bremer, to take advantage of the

very special skills of Sergio Vieira de Mello. It was the United

States who wanted him in that job. He will be very good at helping

to forge a political consensus. This is what he’s done his entire career.

Senator BIDEN. Yes, let me stop—and I’m going to ask the others

to come in, too, but let me specifically ask you about the last point.

‘‘Forging a political consensus’’ really means being part of forging

a new government in Iraq, an Iraqi Government. Now, how does,

in the present circumstance, a U.N. representative—within the

constraints of the resolution that he’s operating under now, how

does he or any other U.N. personnel get involved in that process?

One of the things that I have believed is—for a long time—and

I am happily disabused of the notion if it’s warranted that I be disabused of it—is that there are conflicting, genuinely conflicting, interests here, on our part. One is to get the heck out as quick as

we can, in terms of being the face of the Iraqi Government. And,

two, is making sure we don’t move so fast that we end up leaving

a government in place that does not have any reasonable prospect

of developing into a quasi-democratic institution.

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We have several models. We have the model we tried to pursue

in Bosnia, which you are extensively familiar with, where, when we

went to elections quickly, in my view, we guaranteed that the most

extreme nationalists of each of the competing factions would become the representative of that portion of the population. No time

to develop any new or more moderate blood, if you will.

We have an example in Kosovo, and we have an example in Afghanistan, where the world community, under our leadership, met

in Germany with a group of Afghanis, somewhat boisterous and

somewhat contentious, but it resulted in a consensus pick by the

vast majority, at that moment, of the varying factions within Afghanistan, of a single man, who was going to transition to a pluralistic government, in time.

I don’t know what the plan here is. I don’t know what the mechanism we’re looking at here is. And so when you say to me that we

get the diplomatic skills and the negotiating skills of a particularly

talented diplomat assigned by the United Nations to this process,

how does he, or anyone else, get in the game? Should he be sitting

in the room with Bremer? Should they be now talking about what

is the outlying of—and the steps to be taken to transition to an

Iraqi control of Iraq? I mean, how does this, in mechanical ways,

happen?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. These are extremely good questions. I

think that Sergio Vieira de Mello probably should be playing a supporting role to what Bremer is doing, and I think it’s very likely

that that is what he is doing. In some instances, he definitely

should be in the room. In other instances, he ought to be tagteaming with Bremer, meeting with the different Iraqis, helping in

this process of trying to find a consensus.

You’ve touched on something that I should have talked about

which actually is terribly important, that is, What is the exit strategy? My view of the process is, first to establish a provisional government as quickly as possible—accepting your point of, not wanting to do it too quickly and not wait too long either—but establish

a provisional government as quickly as possible by some kind of

loya-jirga process, which I think actually worked rather well in Afghanistan, and then move to elections. And here’s another role, I

think, for the United Nations.

The United Nations has a lot of experience in conducting elections in post-conflict situations and, I think, does it extremely well.

And, again, I think the result is likely to be more widely accepted

if done by the United Nations.

I think the analogy to Bosnia is not a good one—— Senator BIDEN. I’m not suggesting that any of these are analogous.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. No, but——

Senator BIDEN. I’m just saying the——

Ambassador GALBRAITH [continuing]. But this is raised continuously.

The problem in Bosnia was that—it was the product, as you

know, of a peace treaty in which the power, in November and December 1995, still rested with Tudjman, Milosevic, and the parties

in Bosnia. NATO and the High Representative came in and, over

time, increased their power. And, in that context, I agree that it

50

probably would have been better for the elections to have been delayed until more had been done including the arrest of some of the

war criminals.

This is a completely different situation. The coalition has all the

power, and is being blamed for the shortcomings, some of which are

areas where we could do better, and some of which are inevitable.

Turning this over to Iraqis in some kind of coalition government

does make sense, incidentally. The Iraqi’s are looking at a Bosnia

type of model with a rotating leadership in which the three top positions are held by a Kurd, Shi’ite, and Sunni.

The one caveat I would have is that this provisional government

may have a rough time, and may become quite unpopular. When

the elections are held, the more extreme elements, and particularly

the religious parties, may campaign against that government because it hasn’t delivered. And even if we had done everything right,

it was not going to be able to deliver. People have very unrealistic

expectations in these circumstances, but I don’t know how you

solve that problem. I think the worst alternative is for the United

States to continue to govern Iraq.

Senator BIDEN. Gentlemen, would you each comment on that for

me?

Dr. KEMP. I have very little to add to what Peter said, and it’s

not something I’m intimately familiar with. I would only suggest

that an area where perhaps an international hand, the U.N. or otherwise, might be advisable at some point concerns, you know, the

central issue of the oil industry and who is going to control it and

how is the money going to flow, because that is the issue that all

the neighborhood is worried about, and there are all these conspiracy theories that that was the reason we went there. And, ultimately, how the oil wealth of Iraq is distributed will make or break

all these proposals for federation or confederation.

So I would argue that some U.N. involvement in the management of the financing and the oil industry is going to be important

to convince the donors we want to bring into Iraq from around the

world that this is an above-board operation and that they have

nothing to worry about and that there is transparency.

Senator BIDEN. Ambassador Wisner.

Ambassador WISNER. Senator, I think the main points have been

made.

Let me go back to a remark of Peter’s and focus on it for just

a moment. I think the starting point is to revise our policy a bit.

Of course the coalition is responsible right now for re-establishing

law and order, for setting in place the essential feeding and infrastructure services, getting the oil back up and running. But I’d like

to think that it would become the policy of the United States to

shift the visible responsibility toward the United Nations, and that

means, at the moment, that Sergio de Mello, who is a terrifically

capable, smart, man, would begin, in very close consultations with

Mr. Bremer, working through the steps that have to be taken in

the Iraqi political process and assuming a greater and greater responsibility, to the point that when you move from an advisory

council to an interim government, from an interim government to

a constituent assembly, the U.N. umbrella over the operation becomes more and more visible.

51

I argue that because a U.N. umbrella, a U.N. tone, will bring, in

fact, the practical advantages that Mr. Galbraith talked about, the

practical advantages of real experience. But, more importantly, it

legitimizes the political process in the minds of Iraqis, in the eyes

of Arabs, and around the world. It allows the United States to play

its role behind the scene.

We are going to have to be very careful in Iraq that the wrong

people don’t emerge in the political process, people we can’t deal

with, people who will subvert the very principles that we believe

in and went to war for. But it is better if we exercise that veto behind the stage, rather than on stage. Having the U.N. out front is

exactly where we ought to be.

So I would argue, basic principle, begin to shift the responsibility

for the political development away from a coalition and toward a

U.N. responsibility.

Senator BIDEN. Well, my observation is there are only two places

in Iraq where there has been, over the last decade, an ability for

there to develop any political leadership. One has been in the

Kurdish-controlled areas, and Senator Hagel and I spent some time

up there. And it was remarkable, the progress they made under the

no-fly zone, with revenues, let alone the number of hospitals,

schools, et cetera—I mean, literally, the quality of life—and the

mosques and the religious leaders within the mosques.

And so I don’t know any other place in Iraq where you’re likely

to find, in the near term, meaning months, indigenous groups, individuals, or leadership, beginning to flourish or show the ability to

participate. And it seems to me that—well, I shouldn’t—that’s my

concern about how quickly we transition.

And the second concern is yours, Peter, that unless we have, in

the meantime, in my view, established stability, order, security,

gotten the major infrastructure up and running and functioning,

that whatever that transition—whatever government you want to

call it—when it comes time for elections, is going to be the whipping boy for the more radical elements within the country, establishing the very state that Ambassador Wisner is, by implication,

concerned about. We don’t want the wrong people, quote, unquote,

end up running Iraq. We’ll not let that happen, and all that we will

be viewed as is having illegitimately dethroned the process that we

were essentially attempting to establish in the first place.

So it leads me to this question. We ought to be able to walk and

chew gum at the same time; I understand that; I’m not suggesting

that we can only do one thing at a time—but is the most urgent

need establishing order—safe streets, the ability of people—I am

told that Iraqi police officers will not show up at their police stations on duty because they are fearful that they will be killed on

the way, that they will literally—literally—there is such a lack of

sense of safety on the street that even those police officers that

we’re trying to develop and bring back are reluctant to go on post.

And as part of that question, how important is it that we produce

the body? How important is it that Saddam Hussein be determined, with certainty, to be dead or alive in captivity? Because

there is a stretch of a parallel, Peter. As long as Kharijites, as long

as those boys were wandering the countryside, in Bosnia, in

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Srpska, the ability of actually being able to get anything really

done was, I think, nonexistent.

I realize it’s not the same. But if you read the press accounts of

folks on the ground in Iraq, like you were for 3 weeks, the ghost

of Saddam Hussein seems to loom very large, in terms of the

chances people are willing to take to begin to build this new Iraq.

And you have Chalabi before your organization, Frank, up in New

York—I think it was in New York; didn’t he speak to the Council?—saying that he’s sure Saddam Hussein is not only alive and

well, but that he is orchestrating and paying for and coordinating

these attacks on American soldiers and the killings that are taking

place. And, if I’m not mistaken, I thought I heard him say, in an

interview yesterday, that he believed that Saddam had this plan in

place from the beginning, that it was not—there was a decided decision not to resist, in any meaningful way, quote, the invasion, because he couldn’t, and so there was already this plan—was made

at the same time to be able to engage in, essentially, guerrilla warfare once we were in occupation.

Now, I don’t know if that’s urban lore or whether it’s real, but

how much of that is absorbed in Iraq by Iraqis as fact? And how

does it affect conduct or participation?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Well, you raise a lot of issues.

First, I’d like to just come to the point you made about the two

sources of leadership. And you’re completely right. There are the

Kurds, and there are the mosques. It was very apparent to me,

going to what was Saddam City, now al-Sadr City and to Karbala,

within a week of the U.S. takeover, that the mosques had filled the

gap. There were armed men on the streets providing security in

Karbala. They were picking up the garbage. And they were restructuring the school curriculum.

The trouble is if we delay a long time in setting up a provisional

Iraqi government, will another leadership, an alternative leadership, develop? I’m not sure that that’s the case. And there is the

problem, if we go with our favorite exiles, some of whom—they’re

talented people; they shouldn’t be belittled—and, incidentally, they

stayed with this—— Senator BIDEN. I am not belittling them.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. But you’ve seen the kind of suggestion

that Chalabi is a Saville Row revolutionary. A lot of these people

took significant personal risks, and they pursued a cause when it

basically seemed hopeless. But there is the question, if you install

a provisional government in Iraq will that strengthen a radical alternative? These concerns are some of the reasons why, in fact, a

federal system is very much in our interest. If certain parts of Iraq

become more radicalized—such as the south—there will be other

parts that remain in the hands of secular moderates. Kurdistan is

clearly going to be a moderate, secular, very pro-American region.

It’s probably the most pro-American place in the world.

On the question of the body, I think, there’s a difference between

the Karadzic/Mladic case and the Saddam case. Karadzic and

Mladic were genuine heros to a real constituency in the Bosnian

Serb Republic and, indeed, in Serbia, itself. I think Saddam is

much more a discredited figure, and this comes to the issue Senator Lugar had raised, I think in your absence, about public diploVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:42 Nov 03, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 90076 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
53

macy. This is another reason why it’s so important that we get the

record out about this regime, on the killings and the corruption—

because I think that will serve to further undermine Saddam’s support.

Senator BIDEN. If I can refine my point slightly, I did not believe,

and do not believe, that Saddam Hussein has a constituency. I

think Saddam Hussein is mortally feared by all constituencies. And

so my question really was, absent producing the body, and the

urban lore that he’s alive and well and coordinating attacks, does

that prevent people who disliked him, hated him, or people who

would otherwise be willing to cooperate and prepare to transition

to a new government, does that keep them on the sidelines out of

fear that the man’s coming back?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. I think the answer to that, largely, is

no. I think it has a limited scope in the so-called Sunni/Arab triangle, you know, the Fallujah, Tikrit, Samarra, some of the Sunni

areas of Baghdad. But, other than that—and there are plenty of

people who are coming forward in those areas—but, other than

that, I think——

Senator BIDEN. OK.

Ambassador GALBRAITH [continuing]. People accept that he is

gone. That was clearly true in the initial period, as we were advancing toward Baghdad, but I think a lot of that had to do with

what happened in 1991 and a sense that, ‘‘The United States, here

it is, it’s encouraging us Shi’ites to rebel again. Will it let us down

again with the horrific consequences?’’ I think people now understand that Saddam is gone and that the U.S. is there.

Ambassador WISNER. Senator, your first question was, ‘‘Is law

and order the overriding objective?’’ I’d like to argue that, bluntly,

yes is the answer; but, ‘‘yes, but.’’ And that is, law and order must

be improved—adequate coalition forces have got to be available,

Iraqis brought into positions of security responsibility, intelligence

services, the rest—all have to be near-term objectives for the coalition.

At the same time, adequate security is linked to politics. To get

a political framework in which the component parts of Iraq feel

that they are going to get a hearing and will be responsible, will

be consulted, will be contributing to the future of their own country, gives the security forces legitimacy. We cannot be the government and, therefore, moving down the road as fast as circumstances permit to create a political authority seems, to me, connected very directly to the issue of law and order.

Second, on the——

Senator BIDEN. Was Bremer right in postponing the commitment

made by Garner about transitioning?

Ambassador WISNER. In my judgment, he was. But what bothers

me is that there now is not a view of where we go next and who

will be involved and what will be the rules of the road. So we’ve

ended one—we’ve talked about a short-term—ended one formula, a

short-term interim advisory council. But a point I tried to make in

my opening remarks, the issue of vision, of where we’re going, so

that Iraqis understand what the rules will be, that remains to be

set out.

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I would add, just quickly, on that point, I’m not totally discouraged about the sources of leadership in Iraq. It’s not just Kurds

and mosques. Iraq is a remarkable country. The depth of education

exceeded that virtually in any other Arab country. There are substantial numbers of high-quality academics, professionals, there are

people who performed ably in the civil service. And then there are

the traditional elements of Iraqi power, the tribal structures, not

all of which are necessarily corrupt—were necessarily fully corrupted by the Ba’ath regime. In short, how you bring these constructive elements to the table is part of the political process that

I would like to see the U.N. share in.

And I’d just add, as well, that if you talk, as I’m sure Peter and

Geoff have, to Iraqi Shi’a, there are many who say they see the importance of dividing the mosque and the state, and that there are

intellectuals, businessmen, professionals who are deeply devout,

who could speak on behalf of the mosque, but are not, themselves,

clerics.

I think Iraq, properly consulted, brought forward carefully,

watching who is of real quality and has respect in the community,

could actually produce a leadership that would do credit to it and

to our efforts.

Dr. KEMP. I have very little to add, Senator Biden, except to embellish your first point. I mean, I think we all said, in different

ways, at the beginning of this hearing, that we do not want to repeat in Iraq what has happened in Afghanistan. And, essentially,

if, indeed, President Karzai is still the mayor of Kabul, it is because there is not law and order outside Kabul, and that, therefore,

the security issue, obviously, has to be the No. 1 priority. Without

security, you cannot rebuild infrastructure, and until you really rebuild infrastructure, you can’t regenerate the economy and get people work and jobs and be more content.

The situation we do not want to be in is, months from now,

when—if Iraqis are asked, ‘‘Were you better off 6 months ago than

you are today,’’ and they answer in the positive, then we will be

in trouble, because if you read the press reports, if you read an extraordinary report that the International Crisis Group issued yesterday about the day-to-day conditions in Baghdad as we enter

these summer months, it really is, I think, quite disturbing. And,

therefore, I would say that has to be Ambassador Bremer’s No. 1

priority.

Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank you.

I have many more questions, but I’ll have many more opportunities, and I won’t trespass on your time anymore. Thank you for

very, very helpful testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden.

I join you in thanking our witnesses. Each of the papers you presented were really very important contributions, and I hope that

they will have wider circulation than simply the testimony for this

committee today. We thank you for being so forthcoming in your

responses, and we look forward to seeing you again—if not soon on

this issue, on various other areas of American foreign policy.

The hearing is adjourned.

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[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]

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