Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Jeff Cooper on Iraqi Privatization

Jeff Cooper blogs at Cooped Up on news reports that "the Iraqi Governing Council is moving ahead with plans to privatize Iraq's state-owned industries":

Given the still-persistent effects of three decades of Ba'athist rule, there are really only two groups, at this point, who would have the resources to purchase Iraq's state-owned industries. The first is Ba'athist collaborators--those who grew rich under Saddam's regime--and I refuse to believe that these individuals would be viewed as a viable option. That leaves the second group: foreign investors.

At one level, this makes a certain amount of sense: foreign investors will have the business expertise to rebuild moribund industries. And yet the apparent decision to take this step now, at a time when the US continues to control the Iraqi government, is tone-deaf to the extreme. It's widely believed, in the middle east, in Europe, and even in this country, that the decision to invade Iraq represented an effort to take control of Iraq's resources. Moving ahead with privatization at this point--when buyers will almost certainly not be Iraqi and, indeed, will likely include a large component of Americans; when prices are likely to be depressed by the postwar disarray--will only reinforce the impression. The decision not to privatize the Iraqi oil industry stands as a counterweight, but how effective it will be remains to be seen.

I tend to agree more often with Prof. Cooper's wine tasting notes than his politics, but I think he nailed this one. In his book, The Politics of Prudence, the great conservative intellectual Russell Kirk argued that "a soundly conservative foreign policy, in the age which is dawning, should be neither 'interventionist' nor 'isolationist': it should be prudent." Exactly. And, for the reasons Cooper outlines, I think this strategy is most imprudent.