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PERCEPTION
AND REALITY
Oiling the wheels of a
tribal society
By Reuven
Brenner
Austrian Karl Renner (1870-1950), who
was foreign minister after World War I and also the
first president of the new Austrian Republic
(1945-1950), suggested a solution to rising nationalism
within the Habsburg Empire. Some of his recommendations
- though neglected at the time - are worth a closer
examination. They lead toward an alternative way of
looking at the situation both in Iraq and the Middle
East, and toward solutions not considered at present.
Renner argued that the economic sphere should
cross national boundaries, and that there should be a
central, supra-national government - anticipating
features of the European Community (although two World
Wars and many smaller conflicts later). He also
suggested redrawing the empire's maps around countries
homogeneous in language. According to him, this could
have solved the nationalist problems in nine-tenths of
the Austrian Empire: native language stood as proxy for
ethnicity in the empire.
In places where people
were too intermingled to be separated, special
provisions and institutions were to guarantee equal
rights and an impartial administration. Renner's precise
idea was that each individual, irrespective of his
domicile, should be a member of one ethnic organization
which would have agencies all over the empire - much
like the Catholic Church, once it became independent of
the state. Renner was not successful in carrying out his
ideas. United States president Woodrow Wilson's policies
and principles were just one of the many obstacles he
faced. Since the Wilson principles are still among the
obstacles that keep solutions in the Middle East out of
sight, let's take a closer look at them, and see if they
can be overcome and allow one to perceive an Iraqi
solution from a new angle.
A possible solution
is to first offer each Iraqi citizen an immediate stake,
by committing to distribute a fraction of oil revenues,
an equal sum to every Iraqi man, woman and child, with
the remaining funds being managed by a properly
structured trust fund. This idea roughly follows the
very successful Alaskan model. Once this is done, powers
can be delegated to lower, tribal levels. This
sequencing gives a greater chance for rebuilding Iraq
and the Middle East on sounder foundations. By looking
at a sequence of historical events, we'll see why.
As Mark Twain wrote, history may not repeat
itself, but it sure rhymes. Let us see what rhymes, and
what does not.
Ethnic groups within arbitrary
borders
I do not know how the conflicting
territorial claims of Romanians, Greeks, Serbs,
Albanians, Turks and others would have been settled if
they had been left on their own at the end of the 19th
and beginning of this century. But, as with Iraq during
the 20th century - born in 1920 with arbitrary borders
drawn in the sand - they were not left alone.
Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877, on behalf
of the Bulgars (shaping Bulgaria's borders), and later
Germany helped Turkish ambitions (shaping Turkish
borders). In 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which Serbia wanted and thought it could
get with Russian support. But the Russians could not
help because they lost the war with Japan in 1904-5. In
1912, another Balkan crisis arose as a consequence of
the successful war which the Christian states of that
peninsula (Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece)
fought against the Turks.
This crisis, too, was
solved without a general European war. Even when the
victors quarreled over the spoils and a second Balkan
war broke out (1913) that pitted Serbia, Greece, Romania
and Turkey against Bulgaria, prompt capitulation on the
part of Bulgaria prevented widening of the conflict.
Despite such evidence of failure of putting
nationalist principles for guiding political actions,
the principle of "self-determination" and the legitimacy
of "nation-states" triumphed after World War I, probably
the culmination of nationalism going awry (race was yet
to be invented as another misguided political
principle). These principles still prevent perceiving
possible solutions in the Middle East, in Iraq in
particular.
Principles and demography
The demographic map of the world shows that
ambitions based on nationalist principles are in
conflict, since ethnic groups either do not live in
compact territories or their territories became part of
bigger entities because some great powers in the past
drew arbitrary lines in the sand.
In what was
once Yugoslavia, about 9 million Serbs, 4.7 million
Croats and 10 million others: Albanians, Hungarians,
Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Bosnian Muslims
intermingle. In what has been for the last 74 years
Czechoslovakia, 10.5 million live in the Czech Republic,
5 million in Slovakia, of which 600,000 are Hungarians.
(This demographic distribution is already the result of
the expulsion of 2.4 million Sudeten Germans in 1945).
In the midst of Azerbaijan (whose majority is Muslim),
there is the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave of about 150,000
Armenians (who are Christians). In the South of Armenia,
at the Iranian border, there is Nakhichevan, which
belongs to Azerbaijan, though there is no territorial
continuity. The former Soviet Union's five Central Asian
republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - all have mixed,
intermingled populations.
Such demographic
patterns are neither unusual, nor typical of only
communist, Ottoman, British or Russian empires.
Switzerland's population consists of a 65 percent
German-speaking majority, Eighteen percent French, 10
percent Italian and 1 percent Rhaeto-Romansch speaking
population, who share a pleasant existence, and shared
it even when France and Germany were at each other's
throats. In 1910, what was the Austro-Hungarian Empire
with its 52 million people, did not share a pleasant
existence. It consisted of 23.9 percent Germans, 20
percent Magyars, 12 percent Czechs, 10 percent Poles, 4
percent Slovaks, 5 percent Croats, 3.8 percent Serbs,
7.9 percent Ruthenians, 6.4 percent Romanians, 2.6
percent Slovenes, 2 percent Italians and 1.2 percent
Mohammedan Serbo-Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In what defines the borders of Iraq today, there
are the Shi'ites in the south, the minority of Sunni
Arabs concentrated in the Sunni triangle, and the Kurds
(who happen to be Sunnis, too, but disliking their Arab
counterparts), in the north.
What can adherence
to the principle of "self-determination" imply when
looking at such patterns?
President Wilson's
administration did not raise these questions when
committing itself to the idea of "self-determination"
after World War I. Nor were they addressed years later
when the idea found its way into the United Nation's
1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law,
with a predictable unsatisfactory distinction between
the right of self-determination and the right of
secession.
Whatever Wilson's personal views, his
administration's interest in "self-determination" was
pragmatic and two-fold (though based on disregard of the
overlapping ethnic map of Europe). The administration
hoped that the new nation-states emerging from the
collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would
counterbalance the strong German nation-state. At the
same time, the administration hoped that nationalism as
an idea of linking people, establishing loyalty and
achieving international recognition of political
legitimacy, would prove to be a strong competitor to the
communist doctrine. After all, the latter also sought to
re-link people, demand their loyalty, and obtain
political legitimacy. But unlike nationalism, it was
based on the notion that there is an insurmountable
animosity between classes: allegiance to the social
class should dominate those of ethnicity, religion,
language and culture
Wilson's administration
miscalculated. The policy prevented neither German nor
communist aggression. Adherence to the abstract
principle of "self-determination" also showed that the
creation of small nations did not solve the problem of
other smaller ones, which now found themselves within
new borders. They were just called "minorities", so as
to deflect their claim to nationhood and
self-determination. Language, too, can be an effective
weapon.
The internationally recognized principle
may even have made things worse by raising expectations
of any group which had any grievances, and which could
now appeal for assistance to the Great Powers in the
name of "self-determination". Such expectations could
only start conflicts or prevent them from being settled
quickly.
Jumping many decades, this brings us to
Iraq. During the Cold War, the West needed the Middle
Eastern countries in their fight against communism.
However, the large oil resources, and the eventual
cartel prices, had as a consequence allowing these
countries not only to buy arms, but also, once a
ruthless politician got to power, to use the money and
the arms internally, with minorities bearing the burden.
The consequences were similar to those in Europe almost
a century ago. The new countries fought one another
constantly, as did minorities within these countries.
What are the solutions?
Whether or
not Renner's principles could come eventually to life in
the Middle East and elsewhere, and provide a permanent
solution for ethnic rivalries, I do not know. They seem
plausible, since they mean decentralizing and
de-politicizing culture and religion. Having
institutions along the lines he advocated gives smaller
roles to government, and more to voluntary
organizations, dispersing powers. Renner's solution
reminds one of the separation between church and state.
However, since among Islamic countries only Turkey
achieved that, and there are no Mustafa Kemal Ataturks
on the Islamic horizon, Renner's suggestions seem at
present a very long, very distant shot.
But have
there been any political-institutional arrangements that
have been not just offered, but tried, that succeeded in
diminishing ethnic, religious and linguistic conflicts?
One system that has been pursued with obvious
success is the melting pot of the federal US government
- an example of a state creating in the course of time a
new, large tribe with the most open financial markets in
the world. When its financial markets were closed to
some groups - Afro-Americans prominent among them -
symptoms of aggressive "tribalism" surfaced within the
US too.
However, at the same time, new
organizations came into being, such as the civil rights
movement that started to restore trust between the many
"tribes" living under the US's federal umbrella. These
new institutions were also successful in transforming
governments into a source of capital for these
marginalized groups, when financial markets remained
closed, offering them hope and a stake in the system.
The debate today in the US asks whether or not capital
markets have now been opened sufficiently to members of
these groups, and thus whether government should no
longer single them out for preferential treatment,
whether at universities or for obtaining government
grants. But forget about the US model for the Middle
East: it's not in the cards. The ethnic tribes in the
Middle East are not about to melt (how long have the
Catholics and Protestants in Ireland been fighting?),
and they do not have the maze of institutions needed to
support open financial markets.
Countries such
as Canada, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland have pursued
other solutions. Though they have each faced conflicts
of their own, their problems pale in comparison to those
other multi-ethnic states such as Russia, the Balkans,
the Middle East and several African and Asian states. It
is no accident that the Western states have on the whole
found the more stable solution. They had open capital
markets, more checks on government power, a wide variety
of voluntary organizations dispersing power, and
bringing about greater accountability. They also allow
experimenting with a wide variety of new organizations.
Whereas some other countries around the world have such
institutions, most those in the Middle East, Iraq in
particular, do not.
What can be done?
First execute an idea that has been in
circulation for a while, modeled after the Alaska public
trust fund, which would offer each and every Iraqi a
fraction of oil revenues. The other portion would be
invested and could not be spent without well-defined
voting procedures. This arrangement would ensure that
people had an immediate stake in the new Iraqi system,
and incentives to both prevent sabotage and cooperate.
The oil revenues could be managed by an international
trust fund.
With this arrangement in place, Iraq
could be roughly remodeled along the - for the moment -
unique Swiss lines, where the French, the German and the
Italian-speaking have each carved out territorial
entities. There is one Italian Canton (Ticino), many
German ones, a few French, the last French one - Jura -
having been carved out from the German canton of Bern in
1974, through a series of votes because of the French
minority's dissatisfaction with the German majority's
misallocation of funds. Once the revenues from oil
having been solved first, and allocated proportionately
among the tribes, a major potential obstacle for
delegating powers to lower levels has been eliminated,
since there is less to redistribute on the central
government level. And, as noted, the groups living now
within Iraq's borders, do live in rather geographically
distinct territories.
With revenues from oil
being widely dispersed, the chances of much funds going
for rebuilding centralized military and police powers
are diminished. "Power" has been dispersed and brought
closer to the people. Whether or not such dispersion of
financial clout will lead to developing - bottom up - a
"canton"-like federal arrangement as in Switzerland, or
lead to a breakup of Iraq along ethnic lines - time
would tell. Both solutions seem more stable than what
the world now faces.
If the tribes do not see
eventual advantages of staying together, so be it. The
separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic did not
end in any great disaster. If the ethnic groups now
populating Iraq can't get along, and will end up
fighting, the resulting instability can be more easily
contained, since none of the groups would have as much
financial (oil-generated) clout as Saddam Hussein had.
The best scenario would obviously be if these tribes -
now having stakes in stability because of shared oil
revenues administered by impartial outsiders (some
Swiss, maybe?) - slowly find ways of making deals, and
trade and live together. But even if one is prepared for
the worst-case scenario - of the three major tribes not
finding a modus vivendi and breaking up within
the anyway artificial borders of what now defines Iraq -
the harm is minimized.
Ideas have long lives.
Embodied in institutions, they outlive their usefulness
- and bring about instability. Ideas, which were
initially useful in fighting misgovernment by foreigners
and which were a response to growing mistrust among the
increased population within each European "tribe", were
transformed into deeds and institutions. These
institutions sustain myths, create habits, which are
then exported to other countries. Habits of thought
slowly harden into character - with the origins of
thoughts and events that set this sequence in motion,
long forgotten.
Oil money sustains both
dictatorships and much outdated institutions and
character traits. This is why the crucial first step in
achieving stability in the Middle East is to disperse
the funds among people living within the now recognized
borders, rather than let it flow through the hands of
unaccountable and corrupt rulers and governments. Unless
the people within the present Iraq borders are given
such tangible stake in the future, "democracy" and
"constitutions" will become nothing but empty promises
and worthless pieces of paper, with the vast majority of
people mired in poverty and ignorance.
After
all, keep in mind that for decades Latin American
countries had beautifully written constitutions and
people voted. Yet Latin America stayed poor and
unstable.
Reuven Brenner holds
the Repap Chair at McGill's Faculty of Management. The
article draws on his last book, The Force of Finance
(2002).
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
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