How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

By Michael Elliott

Just how clever is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual godfather of the war on Iraq? The memo he signed on Dec. 5 makes you wonder. The paper fleshed out for the public who is eligible to win prime contracts, funded by $18.6 billion of U.S. tax money, to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and supply its new army. Only firms from supportive nations can bid, which rules out those from antiwar countries like Russia, Germany, France and Canada. In its tact, timing and logic, the memo is a disaster. It was released just as the Bush Administration was launching an international effort to restructure Iraq's debt, much of it held by the excluded nations. Its reasoning is sophomoric and its language, in the words of one diplomat, a sort of "diseased English." Even on its own terms, the memo will not accomplish what it sets out to do, since companies from disfavored nations will still be able to work in Iraq, just not as prime contractors. But that benefit will not quiet the diplomatic row.

The justification for the memo, such as it is, warrants setting out in full. "It is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States," writes Wolfowitz, "to limit competition for the prime contracts of those procurements to companies from the United States, Iraq, coalition partners and force-contributing nations. Therefore, it is clearly in the public interest to limit prime contracts to companies from these countries." As a logical proposition, that paragraph can be reduced to the following: Because A, therefore A--the sort of tautology that would get any high school student a failing grade.

But the nonsense doesn't stop there. The Pentagon policy was plainly designed to reward those countries that have supported the war and punish those that have opposed it. (Let us gloss over that Turkey, which would not let U.S. troops transit to Iraq, is on the approved list, while Canada, which has sent cash to Iraq, and Germany, which has offered to train a new Iraqi police force, are not.) That, it appears, is the "essential security interest" that justifies limiting competition for these contracts. So you might suppose that it is similarly in the national interest to limit those that could win subcontracts too.

Not at all. Prime contractors can choose whomever they would like to do the real work in Iraq and have already done so. The giant U.S. construction firm Bechtel, for example, has about 150 subcontractors in Iraq, including companies from Germany and other nations that opposed the war. It's easy to understand why. Much of Iraq's ravaged infrastructure, which has been short of spare parts for more than a decade, was built by German, French or Russian firms. A prime contractor trying to repair power grids and oil-pumping stations would be doing a poor job if it didn't turn to the companies that installed them in the first place.

Even if you accept the memo's argument that "limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq" (in other words, war naysayers have to join the occupation if they hope to fully cash in) "and in future efforts" (what future efforts, by the way?), its timing was idiotic. Wolfowitz's findings were posted on a Pentagon website just as President Bush was phoning other heads of state to ask them to give a fair hearing to former Secretary of State James Baker III, whom Bush has just deputed to help renegotiate Iraq's hefty debt. Of the $21 billion (excluding interest) that Baghdad owes to non-Arab states, more than $9.3 billion is due to Germany, Russia, Canada and France. (The U.S. is owed an additional $2.2 billion.) Political leaders in debtor countries left off the list yelped at the bizarre conjunction of events, while U.S. allies like the British sighed at the plan's unhelpful diplomacy. In the best case, Baker will have to spend time on his travels smoothing ruffled feathers--one reason the White House, which had initially signed off on the Pentagon policy, later suggested that it was less than thrilled by the way and time it was announced.

So why did the Pentagon choose to alienate major allies just now? Why didn't the Administration use a stiletto rather than a bludgeon, quietly handing out prime contracts to its friends without yelling about it? As always, you can explain things as a conspiracy or a screwup. In the first view, the memo is the latest proof that the Pentagon is running its own foreign policy and simply doesn't care whether it ticks off people in foreign capitals--in fact, rather enjoys doing so. Maybe I've got a case of seasonal goodwill, but I doubt that things are so crass. Of late, senior Defense Department officials have been acting almost house-trained when traveling overseas: witness Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mild reaction last month to the European Union's latest plans to set up its own defense organization alongside NATO.

The other view, though, is more worrying: that the Bush Administration has such limited central control over policy that officials can say what they like, when they like, without anyone attempting to coordinate a coherent message. That would not matter if Washington were the capital of a tin-pot nation of little consequence; it does when it's the capital of the world's only superpower, on whose actions countless millions depend. It's not brains you need to figure that out but a small dose of common sense. Not much of that in evidence last week. --With reporting by Matthew Cooper/Washington, Peter Gumbel/Paris and J.F.O. McAllister/London

With reporting by Matthew Cooper/Washington, Peter Gumbel/Paris and J.F.O. McAllister/London