IRAQ'S ONLY HOPE
So long as America insists that Iraq be a single nation under one government, it will inspire chaos
BY LEW ROCKWELL

Lew Rockwell is a paleolibertarian political commentator and economist in the United States. Rockwell is the founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama and Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies. Other stories by Lew Rockwell

The lessons of Iraq pose challenges for our understanding of the state. The idea was that the Iraqi government would be "decapitated," and that once Saddam and his few henchmen were crushed, the country could breathe free.

Bush surely believed it; otherwise he and his team would have put something in place for what followed the overthrow, and otherwise he would not have held his victory dance in full flight gear. No, he had a model in his mind of a dictator who ruled by force alone. Bush figured that he could use more force than Saddam, and that would be the end of it.

But now look! Iraq is in civil war. Sunnis long for the days of Saddam. Shiites long for total power, and, as the majority, they figure that they might just get it and use it against their historic enemies. The Christians and Jews have largely fled the country. And the tit-for-tat killing grows ever more gruesome. The U.S. military is killing too: largely out of fear and in the belief that it is all in self-defense. 

Which raises the question: Just how integral is the state to society? Can we expect every society that loses its state to fall into chaos such as Iraq is doing today?

Let's first distinguish the state from society. The state is the only entity that is permitted to maintain a legal monopoly on the use of aggressive force. It, therefore, operates according to its own law. If you steal or kill, you get in trouble. The state steals and kills as part of its standard operating procedure, and there is no higher law to keep it in check. 

On the face of it, the role of the state - the legal monopolist of aggressive force against person and property - is absurdly implausible. There is no obvious reason why any society should put up with it. Ah, but then ideology comes into play. We are told that the state serves high religious, philosophical, economic, or social-scientific ends. I won't bother listing them because doing so would take up the rest of the article.

The point is that the state is unstable without an ideology to back it up and convince people that it is necessary. But ideology is not all it needs. It must also put together a matrix of interest-group privilege, as a means of placating the opposition. The state can kill some of its enemies but it can't kill them all (as America is discovering in Iraq). What it must do is co-opt them into a variety of arrangements - usually financial - that reap mutual benefit. 

For more on this, see the State of the Union address.

So on one hand, the state is always in a unique position as the sole entity that can legally loot, beat, kidnap and hang. On the other hand, it must also cultivate the population, lest it be overthrown. 

Yes, Saddam killed his enemies, but his preferred method was to buy them off. He had all important religious leaders on the payroll, and helped religious minorities when they needed it. He was generous with public works and maintained the semblance of law and order. He walked a thin line, avoiding religious extremism while not going overboard in Western-style liberalism. He also cultivated an Iraqi-style nationalism to cover the ideological angle. Once Saddam was gone, the glue that held together the factions was gone. The result is what you see today.

Let us return, then, to our original question. Does the overthrow of any state risk turning society into a current-day Iraq? The answer is no. You see, the Bush administration's fateful error was not in overthrowing Saddam. (I'm leaving aside the issue of imperialism here: The law of nations allows no state the right to overthrow foreign regimes.) Rather, the fateful error was in attempting to create a new state.

The very possibility of a new central state is precisely what has set off the bloodshed. It is not the case that the groups in Iraq cannot get along. What they cannot do is get along under a central state ruled by some other group. 

So what should happen? America should abandon Baghdad. It should allow the country to "fall apart" in the same way that Gorbachev let his empire dissolve. Iraq would split into many states, some of them noncontiguous. Governing units of all shapes and sizes would appear. The main reason for the ghastly killing - fear of the rule by one group over another - would vanish. Here is the highest hope for peace.

So long as America insists that Iraq be a single nation under one government, it will inspire chaos and killing. LW