If U.S. Opts to Go It Alone in Postwar Iraq, Instability Is Likely to Follow

Whatever President Bush was planning before the bullets began flying in Iraq, the nature of the war should change the nature of the peace.

By all indications, the administration has envisioned the reconstruction of Iraq as a predominantly, if not entirely, American production. But that plan was built on the assumption that the Iraqis would greet U.S. soldiers as liberators. Now it’s clear that American forces face a more ambivalent reception: welcome in some quarters, fierce resistance in others.

While most Iraqis probably won’t be sorry to see Saddam Hussein deposed, war inevitably creates grievances. The coalition forces have made extraordinarily rapid progress. But they have been compelled to employ greater force than they originally hoped to defeat Hussein’s military. That has meant more civil destruction and more civilian casualties -- a problem exacerbated by Iraqi tactics of intermixing their forces with civilians.

American and British forces, despite tragic exceptions, still look to be targeting carefully, although no one knows the exact number of civilian deaths. Using too little force could also increase the risk of postwar instability by allowing too much of the Republican Guard or Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary force to survive as the nucleus of a future terrorist or guerrilla movement.

But the fact remains that the more often Iraqis see U.S. weapons destroy a friend’s home or kill a neighbor, the less likely they are to feel a lilt in their heart when they walk past an American with a gun after the war. The deaths of seven U.S. soldiers in two suicide car bombings since the war began ought to be a wake-up call that not everyone in the country will be enthusiastic about a lengthy U.S. stay.

“The longer the war lasts, the longer you have populations under siege, the less it is going to look [to the Iraqis] like a war of liberation, and the more it is going to look like a war against them,” says Marina Ottaway, an expert on democracy-building at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. So, some analysts believe that as the war moves toward its endgame, Bush should consider a new rule of thumb: the more intense the fighting, the stronger the case for international participation in the reconstruction.

The dominant voices around Bush, characteristically, don’t see things that way. The administration already has drafted plans for a retired U.S. general to direct the remaking of Iraq under the supervision of Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who’s running the war. And the Bush team already has let contracts, solely to American companies, to begin mammoth projects that range from rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure to reforming the schools. Such a headstrong approach promises trouble, diplomatically and on the ground.

Even Bush’s one real ally in the war is growing concerned. One senior British official says Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair agree that coalition military forces should retain control of Iraq immediately after the conflict, and that a representative Iraqi government should regain power as soon as practical.

But the two sides haven’t agreed on how to get from the first point to the second because Blair wants the United Nations to have a significant role in shaping the post-Hussein Iraqi government, and key players in the Bush administration are determined to marginalize the international body while retaining unilateral control of the major decisions. “A lot of what is driving them is that they don’t want the French or Russians to be involved,” said the British official.

In fairness to Bush, as the coalition prosecutes the war and plots its aftermath, it faces a series of conflicting pressures. It’s natural that those who fought the war would not want to give too much say in its aftermath to those who stood on the sidelines, jeering. And Bush, with good reason, doesn’t want to cede control over security decisions to any international institution while thousands of U.S. soldiers are still at risk patrolling a postwar Iraq.

But the lesson of U.N. involvement in other recent postwar rebuilding projects -- Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan -- is that Bush wouldn’t have to lose control over security to broaden international participation in the reconstruction. In each case, the U.N. delegated authority for security to others (such as NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo) while focusing on building civilian institutions, notes Roland Paris, a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies nation-building.

Bush may be so embittered at the U.N. that he’s reluctant to turn to it now. But building a genuine international umbrella over the postwar administration of Iraq -- whether by involving the U.N., NATO or neighboring Arab countries -- could offer the United States two big advantages. More international participation would increase the odds that other countries will help fund the reconstruction. And it would reduce (although not eliminate) the danger of resistance after the war by Iraqis hostile to a foreign presence.

Bush understands that Iraq may not welcome Americans indefinitely. But his solution seems shortsighted. To lessen the risk of a backlash while minimizing international participation, the administration has signaled that it may try to quickly devolve power to a new Iraqi government; the Pentagon wants to install a new government even before Hussein falls.

But it will surely take time to identify indigenous leadership in a country that’s lacked real political participation for more than 30 years; moving too quickly could force Bush to rely too heavily on the Iraqi exiles who have undeniable appeal to American conservatives, but an uncertain following in Iraq itself. And that could seed more instability.

Which is why Ottaway’s principal recommendation in a recent paper was: Slow down. Don’t rush to impose a government, write a constitution or organize elections for Iraq before the country sorts itself out, even if that requires a transitional international administration between military and Iraqi control.

That’s good advice. If the war is any guide, the peace in Iraq will also hold plenty of surprises for the United States, not all of them pleasant. It would be better if we approached the postwar challenges cautiously -- and better yet if we didn’t have to face them alone.

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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at www.latimes.com/brownstein.