Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 3, June–July 2009, pp. 131–162
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L. Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad on 12 May 2003 with a broad mandate and plenary powers. As administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), he was charged with governing Iraq and promoting the development of a functioning democracy that, it was hoped, would serve as a model for the entire Middle East. Bremer could dispose of all Iraqi state assets and direct all Iraqi government officials. He possessed full executive, legislative and judicial authority. His instructions from Washington were quite general, and for the most part oral. Over the next several months he received plentiful advice but little further direction.
As a practical matter, Bremer’s powers were much more limited than they appeared. He had no direct authority over 98% of official American personnel in Iraq, who were under military command. Most Iraqi officials had abandoned their offices, which had in turn been ransacked in rampant looting that had stripped most public facilities throughout the country to the bare walls and beyond. The Iraqi army had deserted en masse, as had much of the police force. Several billion dollars in Iraqi funds were immediately available, but beyond this ready cash, the state was basically broke and producing no further revenue. Washington was still under the impression that the occupation would largely pay for itself and had made provision for only limited financial support for reconstruction. As a result, the CPA relied, throughout its lifespan, principally on Iraqi money to fund both reconstruction and Iraqi government operations.
Neither could Bremer count on much help from the rest of the world. The invasion had been launched against the advice of several of America’s most important allies. Many of Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran and Syria, were hostile to US efforts and suspicious that the United States might eventually want to overthrow their regimes as well. The decision to treat Iraq, for legal purposes, as a conquered nation further increased the controversy associated with the enterprise. The occupations with which most Iraqis were familiar were the British control of their country after the First World War and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, then in its fourth decade. These were not reassuring precedents. An alternative to formal occupation would have been a UN-authorised ‘peace-enforcement operation’, as in Bosnia or Kosovo. This sort of arrangement might have attenuated (but not eliminated) Iraqi and regional resistance to the American presence. The price for such an endorsement would have been some level of international oversight. In the bitter aftermath of the failed attempt to gain United Nations Security Council approval for the invasion, neither the United States nor the UN was interested in having the latter assume such a role in Iraq’s governance.
On 22 May, the UN Security Council formally recognised but did not endorse the United States and the United Kingdom as occupying powers. Attempts were made to enlist as many coalition countries as possible, but with limited success. The United Kingdom had contributed a large contingent of troops for the invasion...
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James Dobbins, the first US envoy for Afghanistan after the 11 September attacks, directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. He is the principal author of a series of RAND studies on nation building and is a Survival Contributing Editor.
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