Sovereignty?

sovereignty :: supreme power especially over a body politic : freedom from external control : autonomy

From Rahul Mahajan at Empire Notes:

Let's sum up the transfer of sovereignty. The United States keeps 14 military bases, at least 130,000 troops. It also keeps control of the new Iraqi military (which is to be under the command of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez). It keeps control of the purse-strings. UN Security Council Resolution 1483 gives the United States (the "coalition") total control over Iraq's oil revenue -- it goes into a bank account labeled the Iraq Development Fund administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

So, the new sovereign government of Iraq will have a military controlled by a foreign power, will be occupied by a foreign military, will have no revenues, and "will not need law-making authority." An interesting definition of sovereignty.

It should be fairly clear what this sham is all about. Once they claim hard enough the government is sovereign, then, without needing to make laws, it can sign binding contracts with foreign corporations. And, just by the way, Bush can claim before the elections that he's created a sovereign government in Iraq.

But in the Washington Post article,

Brahimi joined Negroponte in trying to play down expectations that the provisional government will exercise the full range of authority that a subsequent elected government will wield. He said the interim leaders should be mindful that they have not been "democratically elected" and that they should refrain from "entering into long-term commitments." [italics is mine]

It will be interesting to watch over the next few months if the interim leaders are indeed "mindful", or if U.S. energy corporations get long term contracts. Or even if they don't get the long term contracts initially, they will be in good position to get them in the future. This has me wondering again to what extent this war was pushed because of oil, and it has me going back to December 2003 when Wolfowitz decided that France, Germany, and Russia were barred from the rebuilding contracts:

It is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States to limit competition for the prime contracts of these procurements to companies from the United States, Iraq, Coalition partners and force contributing nations. Thus, it is clearly in the public interest to limit prime contracts to companies from these countries.

Although I suspect that those countries wouldn't have received any contracts even if they weren't officially barred, it still raises the question of why they were. The smaller the competition for the contracts, the higher the winning bid will be, which is not in Iraq's interest, and not in the U.S. taxpayers interest in that sense as well. So while it may benefit the U.S. companies, and hence at least part of the U.S. "public", it may not be the best for the Iraqis.

Josh Marshall wasn't sure of the real reason of this, Kevin Drum thought the U.S. was just being bitter, and Andrew said that we had to teach France a lesson.

It seems to me that this is a good reason for nation building to be done by the United Nations.

And what are "essential security interests of the United States", anyway? Are they U.S. troops? WMD? Oil? And who - or what - do they need protection from?

Fellow bloggers?

Posted by Palabris at April 29, 2004 04:59 PM