Monday, August 18, 2003

The issue of burden-sharing in post-war Iraq has come front and center again. The Bush administration appears to have decided not to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution permitting broader international participation.

U.S. firms -- such as Kellogg, Brown & Root (a unit of Halliburton), Bechtel and at least eight other companies -- play a central role. They are carrying out the contracts that absorb the bulk of the $5 billion per month cost to the U.S. taxpayer of America's involvement there. One has to wonder how large a role channeling that money to those firms plays in the administration's decision to keep other big potential international partners out.

That doesn't mean that it is desirable for the United States to put up the money and other countries' companies to reap the benefits. But it is perfectly clear that if there were a U.N. resolution and countries such as France, Germany and India were thus enabled to participate -- and their companies allowed to be involved in reconstruction -- then those countries would be prepared to ante up troops and money, thus reducing the burden on the United States in both areas.

As of now, the United States has around 140,000 troops in Iraq. The United Kingdom has 11,000 and 17 other countries are providing another 10,000. Other current troop providers, whose forces are serving under U.S. or British command, include Poland, Italy and Spain and smaller countries such as Estonia and Macedonia. All troop donors are European so far. U.S. requests outside of Europe to the Dominican Republic, Mongolia and the Philippines, for example, are pending.

U.S. firms with big contracts in Iraq, awarded by the government without competitive bidding, are flourishing. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's former firm, showed a 2003 second-quarter profit of $26 million, a major turnaround from its 2002 second-quarter loss of $498 million. Bechtel was awarded a $680 million contract. Military contractor Alliant Techsystems' first-quarter earnings rose 32 percent.

The consumers in Iraq of some of the services of Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown & Root -- the U.S. forces on the ground -- appear to be less than satisfied, with some still living off combat rations with limited water supplies, a situation that some of them consider to be due to civilian contractors' understandable reluctance to expose themselves to danger in a hostile environment in Iraq. Fighting in Iraq continues to claim American lives, 58 since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1.

The logic of setting out an end-game to U.S. rule in Iraq, in terms of the presence of our troops and the financial cost as well as the colonial political aspects of the current American role, would seem to dictate internationalization of the issue through the United Nations as quickly as possible.

If that evolution of the problem of Iraq is being delayed to increase the profits of some U.S. companies, there is definitely something wrong.

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