The Social Construction of a Political Solution

“Iraqi Women View for Votes and a Taste of Power,” by Sam Dagher. The New York Times, January 28 2009.

“A real choice for the people.” The Economist, January 22 2009.

     Last few years or so, it has repeatedly been said (mostly on cable news channels) that there is no ‘military solution’ to winning the Iraq War, and that a ‘political solution’ had to come first. Ideally, this would mean a capable Iraqi government with bureaucratic institutions that could maintain order and security. As if counterinsurgency and the surge (the military solution) would cause sufficient political changes to happen overnight. Instead it might be conceived as a campaign taking place in sequence over a variety of fronts, from summer 2006 to the present day. From Anbar Province, to Baghdad and the surrounding belts, to Basra and then back to Sadr City, and now to Diyala and Mosul.

     The military solution was the significant reduction in violence, which has remained relatively steady. Terrorists still assassinate and murder civilians in suicide bombings today, but the insurgencies (both Sunni and Shia) and their resultant civil war are now over. What has emerged, however, is an Iraqi government that espouses nationalism as opposed to sectarianism, and increasingly strong security and state institutions (of course, these are not without their own intrigues). In this context, the success of the military solution has created conditions where Iraqis can negotiate their own political representation with and rule by the state. In these conditions, state-society relations can progressively become, in a word, civil. Discursive political opportunities are thereby opened for Iraqis to peacefully make demands and record their representation into the state.

      So, the military solution (a two and one-half years campaign) has created (one might say socially constructed) the social conditions from which a political solution can self-organize: a system of individuals rationally interested in survival, reacting to the incentivized reality of opportunities and threats created by social interaction and and an emphasis on self-restraint in the security practices of U.S. forces. Given the six-year trajectory of the Iraq War that has led up to the provincial elections on the 31st of this month, its actually pretty remarkable. If we’re lucky (Machiavelli always said fortuna is best dealt with by possessing the loyalty of the people), the legitimacy of the Iraqi state will continue to grow through this election and into the next one. In this way, we might say that, after near defeat due to the strategic incompetence of initial leadership, American civilian and military forces in Iraq might have (very) tentatively succeeded at state-building (the development of new state institutions and economic growth) and nation-building (the emergence of internally peaceful national communities) In most times (you could even say ‘normal’ times), citizens would identify themselves with the same identity. Karl Deustch’s optimistic theory of nationalism comes to mind. Fukuyama will tell you its really the same word, but then why write two books with each concept as the title?

Meh

Lots of paper writing and reading lately, some summaries are posted at the Antilibrary blog. Related to a comment I made to Lexington about politics, war, and legitimacy (and don’t miss the Clausewitz roundtable too) is this story out of San Francisco. Normally Huffington Post blogs are crap, but the story is indicative of Virilio: after all, its a post about the illegitimate use of violence against lawbreakers trying to drum up more attention, to create ‘tele-presence’ and focus the media’s attention on the act itself.