Liberty from the people
<a href=www.indianexpress.com>The Sunday Express
Liberty takes on democracy Setting up his argument, Fareed Zakaria argues the vote is only one ingredient of a liberal society. From a working justice system to civil rights, there’s much more
The future of freedom
Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad
By Fareed Zakaria, Penguin/Viking, Price: Rs 395
“Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists,’’ said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about Yugoslavia in the 1990s. ‘‘That is the dilemma.’’ Indeed it is, and not merely in Yugoslavia’s past but in the world’s present. Consider, for example, the challenge we face across the Islamic world. We recognize the need for democracy in those often-repressive countries. But what if democracy produces an Islamic theocracy or something like it? It is not an idle concern. Across the globe, democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been re-elected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights. This disturbing phenomenon — visible from Peru to the Palestinian territories, from Ghana to venezuela — could be called ‘‘illiberal democracy’’.
For people in the West, democracy means ‘‘liberal democracy’’; a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. But this bundle of freedoms — what might be termed ‘‘constitutional liberalism’’ — has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West. After all, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via free elections. Over the last half-century in the West, democracy and liberty have merged. But today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart across the globe. Democracy is flourishing; liberty is not.
In some places, such as Central Asia, elections have paved the way for dictatorships. In others, they have exacerbated group conflict and ethnic tensions. Both Yugoslavia and Indonesia, for example, were far more tolerant and secular when they were ruled by strongmen (Tito and Suharto, respectively) than they are now as democracies. And in many nondemocracies, elections would not improve matters much. Across the Arab world elections held tomorrow would probably bring to power regimes that are more intolerant, reactionary, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic than the dictatorships currently in place.
In a world that is increasingly democratic, regimes that resist the trend produce dysfunctional societies — as in the Arab world. Their people sense the deprivation of liberty more strongly than ever before because they know the alternatives; they can see them on CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera. But yet, newly democratic countries too often become sham democracies, which produces disenchantment, disarray, violence, and new forms of tyranny. Look at Iran and Venezuela. This is not a reason to stop holding elections, of course, but surely it should make us ask, What is at the root of this troubling development? Why do so many developing countries have so much difficulty creating stable, genuinely democratic societies? Were we to embark on the vast challenge of building democracy in Iraq, how would we make sure that we succeed?
First, let’s be clear what we mean by political democracy. From the time of Herodotus it has been defined, first and foremost, as the rule of the people. This definition of democracy as a process of selecting governments is now widely used by scholars. In The Third Wave, the eminent political scientist Samuel P. Huntington explains why:
Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of political systems.
This definition also accords with the common sense view of the term. If a country holds competitive, multiparty elections, we call it ‘‘democratic.’’ When public participation in a country’s politics is increased — for example, through the enfranchisement of women — that country is seen as having become more democratic. Of course elections must be open and fair, and this requires some protections for the freedom of speech and assembly. But to go beyond this minimal requirement and label a country democratic only if it guarantees a particular catalog of social, political, economic, and religious rights — which will vary with every observer — makes the word ‘‘democracy’’ meaningless. After all, Sweden has an economic system that many argue curtails individual property rights, France until recently had a state monopoly on television, and Britain has a state religion. But they are all clearly and identifiably democracies. To have ‘‘democracy’’ mean, subjectively, ‘‘a good government’’ makes it analytically useless.
Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government but, rather, government’s goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source — state, church, or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. it is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, that emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it places the rule of law at the center of politics. Constitutional liberalism developed in Western Europe and the United States as a defense of an individual’s right to life and property and the freedoms of religion and speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of government, equality under the law, impartial courts and tribunals, and the separation of church and state. In almost all of its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or ‘‘inalienable’’) rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting its own powers, to secure them. Thus in 1215 at Runnymede, England’s barons forced the king to limit his own authority. In the American colonies these customs were made explicit, and in 1638 the town of Hartford adopted the first written constitution in modern history. In 1789 the American Constitution created a formal framework for the new nation. In 1975 Western nations set standards of behavior even for nondemocratic regimes. Magna Carta, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the American Constitution, and the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.
The Nub
In a world that is increasingly democratic, regimes that resist the trend produce dysfunctional societies — as in the Arab world. Their people sense the deprivation of liberty more strongly than ever before because they know the alternatives; they can see them on CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera. But yet, newly democratic countries too often become sham democracies, which produces disenchantment, disarray, violence and tyrannySince 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact both have existed in the past and persist in the present. Until the twentieth century, most countries in western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democracies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had limited power. In 1830 Great Britain, one of the most democratic European countries, allowed barely 2 per cent of its population to vote for one house of Parliament. Only in the late 1940s did most Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. But one hundred years earlier, by the late 1840s, most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism — the rule of law, private property rights, and increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The ‘‘Western model of government’’ is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.
For decades the tiny island of Hong Kong was a small but revealing illustration that liberty did not depend on democracy. It had one of the highest levels of constitutional liberalism in the world but was in no way a democracy. In fact in the 1990s, as the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong drew near, many Western newspapers and magazines fretted about the dangers of this shift to Hong Kong’s democracy. But of course Hong Kong had no democracy to speak of. The threat was to its tradition of liberty and law. We continue to confuse these two concepts. American and Israeli politicians have often chided the Palestinian Authority for its lack of democracy. But in fact Yasser Arafat is the only leader in the entire Arab world who has been chosen through reasonably free elections. The Palestinian Authority’s problem lies not in its democracy — which while deeply flawed is at least half-functioning — but in its constitutional liberalism, or lack thereof.
An Interview with Isabel Allende: "What Are People Waiting For?"
CounterPunch
By LAURA FLANDERS
Editors' Note: Chilean author Isabel Allende has lived through a dictatorship once and she's not about to sit by and watch democracy stolen a second time.
In her latest memoir, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile, she explores her recollections of her homeland, the lessons of its history, and her understanding of what it means to be Chilean, and now, an American.
Allende was interviewed by Laura Flanders and by the audience of Working Assets Radio, a call-in program heard Monday-Friday on KALW-91.7 fm in San Francisco and on www.workingassetsradio.com. The interview took place on May 29, 2003.
LF: The coup of September 11, 1973 in Chile, which overthrew your cousin Salvador Allende, and the attacks on the same date in the United States. You say these two September 11ths, separated by almost thirty years have come to make all the difference in your life and that the attacks on the United States shifted your relationship both to Chile and to this country your home, now, for many years. Can you explain?
IA: Well. On a Tuesday, September 11, 1973, we had a military coup in Chile. It was a terrorist attack on a democracy sponsored by the CIA. Many years later, we had a terrorist attack on this democracy, on the United States, where I am living. I think that in my mind, both events have a great meaning because in the first one, I lost my country. I had to leave, and I lived in exile for many, many years. And the second event made me feel I belonged -- I gained a country. And the feeling came for the first time; I felt that I could relate to the vulnerability that people were feeling.
When I came to the United States 16 years ago, one of the things that I told my husband was that this was a very arrogant country. It was a sort of childish optimism and childish arrogance that, nothing could happen here, that everybody was safe and we would prosper indefinitely and that everything would always be better and better. And that's not how life is in the rest of the world. So I always felt very alien. And then, for the first time, on September 11, 2001, I think that people realized how life is for the rest of the world and I could relate to that.
LF: Now, when you go to Chile in your writings here in the latest book, My Invented Country, the majority of the book is about the pre-1973 period, in which, as you describe it, Chileans, certainly of the class to which you belonged, had some of the same denial, at least as you describe it. You say: "We Chileans had no idea what a military coup entailed, because we had a long and solid democratic tradition." You write: "No, that would never happen to us, we proclaimed, [pointing at "Banana Republics" elsewhere] because in Chile even the soldiers believed in Democracy. No one would dare violate our constitution."
IA: Well, it was violated. In 24 hours, everything changed. And it can happen anywhere. It happened in Italy in Spain in Germany, it has happened everywhere in world. So no one is immune to something like that. And I think that it is important to remember that. That we only appreciate what we have when we lose it. And that can happen with health or that can happen with democracy. And it did happen that way in Chile.
LF: Were you aware, immediately, of the change that had just happened in your life?
IA: No. It was very sudden. It happened in a day, but we were not aware because there was censorship. All the media was censored and there was now news, only rumors. Also, because we had this long tradition in democracy, we thought that the soldiers would go back to their barracks in a week and they would call elections again. We never - I think that not even the military - expected it to last 17 years and have the brutal characteristics that id had. It was a surprise.
LF: Now, many of the Allende family - the closer family, perhaps, left, right after the coup. I think you said before; there was a plane sent, or a boat from Mexico on which people were able to leave. You didn't. You stayed, you continued to do work of a kind a*| at what point did you realize you have to get out and you went to Venezuela?
IA: I think it was like a year later. I realized a*| slowly I realized that I had been involved in things that were a*| that you could lose your life for - like hiding people and smuggling information out of the country and trying to put people in embassies to find asylum and that sort of thing. I got more and more scared. I felt that the circle of repression was closing around my neck and there was a point at which I just couldn't take it anymore. There were several signs that I was in a "black list." All this was, as I have said before, just rumors. Nothing was ever confirmed. The rules changed all the time. The repression became more and more efficient, more effective. And that happened rapidly, but in stages.
You know, it is something very strange: You learn to live with things. For example, something is taken away, like let's say, the freedom of the press or a*| yeah, let's say that you're telephones are tapped so you say "Okay, I can live with that" and then the next day something else, and then you say, "Okay, I will have to live with that too," and so forth. And then after a few months, you realize that you have lost everything. But, you got sort of used to it. And then there's a point when you're talking torture at breakfast time with you kids. And all of a sudden you have this epiphany or this revelation in which you realize what kind of life you are having a*| and then there is a point where I left.
LF: Ultimately, Pinochet was tripped up on his own legal shenanigans, leaving open the cases of the many, many, many disappeared and thus leaving the legal case open enough to prosecute. When he was indicted, there was an excitement throughout Latin America in particular, that finally, justice would be served - that finally, there would be an end of this culture of impunity. What's happened to that feeling now?
AI: Well, I think we know that there is impunity, but there is impunity in the world. Look at the horrible things that other people have done - the United States to begin with - and there is impunity. People who should have been punished for their crimes have not. And people who have not committed crimes go to the electric chair. So the world is a very unjust, unfair place and we have to live with that. Historically, there is impunity for most crimes.
LF: Do you think Americans generally have the sense of there being a "Culture of Impunity" right here?
IA: No. Not at all. I think that we have, in the United States, that we are the best country in the world, that we have the best democracy, that justice is always served, that the bad guys always pay, that the good guys are always rewarded, etc. The Hollywood thing.
But when we analyze our history and our country, we realize that a lot of things go wrong, very wrong.
LF: You comment about 9/11 that in a sense it gave you a different mission, a new mission a*| how would you describe the difference?
IA: When I came to this country, I came because I fell in love or in lust with a guy. I was not following the American Dream. I did not know that the American Dream existed, and I came here with the idea that I would get this guy out of my system in a week and I would go back. And that was 16 years ago, he's still in my system, and I have become American.
I love this country and I want to change the things that I don't like, and I think that I belong and I have a mission. My mission is to be a bridge between two cultures.
I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish, my books are published in English. I find myself with a microphone, addressing audiences all the time. So, I am in a position to tell them the things that I see abroad and people don't know here. They're misinformed or they don't care, because they don't know, really, what's happening.
LF: What is the top of your list of things to tell?
IA: Peace. Peace is the top of the list, because we think that we can go into another country and invade another country and we have the right to do so. And we invent all kinds of excuses to do it and now are inventing excuses to invade Iran or Syria or whatever. And that is not something we can do w/ impunity. Sooner or later, we pay for that. And I think that people should know that.
CALLER: Keith in Fairfax - Will the US apologize?
IA: No, the United States will not apologize and that's not the point. The point is that we don't commit the same thing again and again. Because, the same thing was done in Nicaragua, in Guatemala. We supported the Contras, we supported Noriega in Panama. We have supported all the worst dictatorships in all of Latin America. We have destroyed democratic governments to install tyrants - the kind of government that we will never tolerate in this country.
So, that is what needs to be changed. Have a vision of the world. When September 11 happened, people asked for the first time the question, "Why do they hate us?"
They had never asked the question before, and they were not even aware of what was going on abroad.
The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks and then it disappears into thin air. And then Iraq pops up, and then we forget about Iraq again and now we focus on something else. Our span of attention is really short.
CALLER: David, talking about The House of the Spirits and how the end upset him [reconciliation] -
IA: The intention of the ending was reconciliation. It says very clearly in the book: not everybody who needs to be punished will be punished. And it says that we have to get over a*| we cannot pay back with violence. We have to a*| Never forget, but forgive. And keep on with our lives. And I think that that has happened in Chile.
That ending of the book was really attacked everywhere when the book came out. And time has proved that that was the only way we could go on and recover democracy. We had to let go. And we had to let go of the idea a*| sometimes even of the idea of justice just to keep on looking at the future.
You know, this was thirty years ago. I've met innumerable people who were victims of the dictatorship. I never have met anybody who says: "I want to rape the rapist, I want to torture the torturer, I want to kill the murderer. Never. People don't want to do that because they're different, they're better. They just want the truth to be known, the dead to be honored, and to go on w/ their lives.
LF: You clearly don't forget, do you forgive the United States for what they did in Chile?
IA: The United States as a country didn't even know what was going on in Chile. It was the government. And you cannot blame the population of the United States for what Kissinger and Nixon did a*| or the CIA. The same way that you cannot blame the United States today for what's going on in Iraq. Because, most people don't even know, what we see on TV is a video game. We don't really know what's going on in there. Now, we have the obligation as educated people to get the information, but not everybody does that.
LF: The story that has grabbed my attention this week is the news from Guantanamo Bay, where we're being told that US officials are essentially planning to turn the place into a death camp - with its own death row, it's own execution chamber. We've already been told that this is a place where 680 detainees can be kept without trial, there will be tribunals without juries and appeals. Now there is talk of even a death sentence being imposed. At what point do we say, here in the United States, do you, with your experience in Chile say: this is just too familiar? We must call this by its name, and what is it?
IA: Well, this is what happened in Germany, with the Nazis. Slowly but surely, the concentration camps and the death camps appeared all over the country and in other countries too. And people thought that they could stand it. Okay, they could just tolerate it because it didn't affect their personal lives.
We have to stop it. We have to stop it now, before it gets out of hand. This government is doing things that are not allowed in our constitution. So we have to react. What are people waiting for God's sake?
Laura Flanders is the host of Working Assets Radio, your open line to the newsmakers of tomorrow and today. Join a live, caller-driven conversation, Monday-Friday, 10-11 am PST at Working Assets Radio and on KALW, 91.7 fm, in San Francisco. She can be reached at: Lflanders@aol.com
US control of Baghdad and its crude may signal new assault on OPEC-- Some see emerging ‘super-giant producer’ rivaling Saudi Arabia
Al-Jazeerah.info
Ed Blanche
Special to The Daily Star, 6/7/03
Reconstruction will cost billions of dollars, and temptation to step away from cartel ú and its production quotas ú will be strong
BEIRUT: The US conquest and occupation of Iraq has given the Americans control of one of the world’s major oil producers, one that many believe has untapped reserves that could rival Saudi Arabia’s and Russia’s. US control could also weaken the grip of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on world markets and, in particular, Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s dominant member.
So as the Americans help restore Iraq’s oil industry, badly run down by two wars and 13 years of United Nations sanctions, the key question is whether the country will remain in OPEC now that it has resumed oil exports, albeit at a modest level, after the UN Security Council unshackled it from sanctions imposed in 1990.
The Americans have long sought to weaken OPEC, which has been feeling growing pressure from non-cartel producers, particularly Russia, which is vying with Saudi Arabia for dominance of the world oil market. It has also been grappling with what many of its members see as an alarming excess in global oil supplies.
This struggle for influence over the oil market should also be seen as part of a wider battle for political leadership in the Gulf. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, a cousin of Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon-backed leader of the main exile group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), believes his country could double its proven reserves of 113 billion barrels through widespread exploration and become a “super-giant producer” like Saudi Arabia, putting 10 million barrels on the market every day. That is clearly a scenario in which Iraq is outside OPEC.
Iraq has a geographic advantage that cuts the cost of reaching Western markets ú pipelines that link it to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. (There are other pipelines to the Red Sea, which the Saudis helped build during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but Riyadh is unlikely to allow Baghdad to use them if it breaks with OPEC.)
With that kind of output, with low production costs attracting consumer states away from higher-cost regions like the North Sea, an Iraqi oil industry managed by US-based companies would have the capacity “to bring OPEC to its knees,” according to Chalabi.
There are divisions within OPEC itself, particularly over the cartel’s quota system, designed to keep prices at or above $25 a barrel. Algeria, Nigeria and some of the other members are demanding larger shares of OPEC’s production total, which would have to be at Saudi Arabia’s expense.
Iraq’s de facto oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban, said on May 26 that “we really don’t have any problem with OPEC” and that the question of withdrawing from the cartel was not currently on the agenda of the US-appointed administration running Iraq. US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said whether Iraq stays in OPEC is entirely up to the Iraqis. “We will support their decision, not impose a decision,” he declared on April 28.
But Philip J. Carroll, the US executive chosen by the Pentagon to advise Iraq’s post-war Oil Ministry, has suggested that Iraq might be best served by disregarding OPEC quotas, the strongest indication so far that the Americans might push whatever government emerges in Iraq into breaking ranks with the cartel. It also underlines the repeated allegation that one of the imperatives that drove the Americans into invading Iraq in the first place was to control its oil resources, the better to lessen its reliance on Saudi Arabia.
As it is, the return of Iraq ú which has operated outside OPEC since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait ú as a major exporter under a new government would cause considerable uncertainty. Iraq has the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, and its return to the market unconstrained by the cartel could further erode OPEC’s already limited ability to set prices. It might even trigger a price war that would weaken the Saudis and other cartel members. That would, of course, delight the Americans (and other consumers), who have been hoping to break OPEC’s grip on pricing for many years.
Carroll, formerly Royal Dutch/Shell’s chief in the US, insists that he is not the instrument of an Iraqi oil policy that would sabotage OPEC. But as he told The Washington Post in mid-May: “In the final analysis, Iraq’s role in OPEC or in any other international organization is something that has to be left to the Iraqi government.”
Already, officials in the Oil Ministry ú now supervised by US forces ú are actively considering pulling Iraq out of OPEC and exporting as much oil as possible, as soon as possible, to maximize revenue once the oil fields have returned to full capacity.
Earlier this year, US-backed Iraqi exiles, including Ahmed Chalabi, whom the Pentagon wants to see in key government posts drew up a policy document which recommended that Baghdad renounce OPEC’s production restrictions, and noted that it may have to withdraw from the cartel if it sought to impose unacceptable ceilings.
Before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was producing more than 3 million barrels per day (bpd). With the imposition of UN sanctions in 1990, it was excluded from OPEC’s production quotas. Under the UN’s “oil-for-food” agreement it was allowed to produce all that its increasingly dilapidated oil industry could manage and before the US invasion was producing around 2 million bpd. Output ground to a standstill because of the conflict but is expected to resume on a limited scale in the next few weeks.
Iraqi oil officials estimate the country will be able to export around 750,000 bpd by late June, with expectations that this can be boosted quite rapidly to 1.5 million bpd, half of which would be for domestic consumption. Production is expected to hit the pre-1990 OPEC quota level of 3 million bpd within 18 months and 3.5 million bpd six months after that. Then, by opening up fields that have gone untapped because of the sanctions, it is anticipated that production could reach as high as 6 million bpd in five or six years ú almost as much as Saudi Arabia’s output level.
That would amount to nearly one-quarter of OPEC’s current targeted production of 24.5 million bpd and would mean that other OPEC members would have to give up a lot of output ú and revenue ú to accommodate Iraq. With increased output pushing prices down, OPEC would be in trouble. The Saudis, as the cartel’s largest producer with nearly one-third of its output, would be under intense pressure to lower their output.
As it is, OPEC’s share of the world oil market has dropped from a peak of around 90 percent in the 1970s to around 39 percent now. This is because since the OPEC-induced oil shocks of the 1970s and the recession they caused, the US and other industrialized states have sought to obtain more oil from non-OPEC producers. Current US and European efforts to open up giant new fields in West Africa, the Caspian Basin, Siberia and elsewhere will further undermine OPEC’s clout.
OPEC is scheduled to meet in Qatar on June 11 to consider a new cut in production ú currently running at 25.4 million bpd ú to accommodate Iraq’s return to the market and avoid a possible price collapse.
Before the US invasion, former Venezuelan Oil Minister Humberto Calderon opined: “After the war there will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production and I wouldn’t be surprised is schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC.”
The US-British declaration that they are the occupying powers and will continue to run Iraq underlines their control of the country’s oil industry. The coalition’s failure to produce even a transitional government by now means that it will remain in charge for a lot longer than expected ú up to a year, according to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Even proposals for an Iraqi government have been downgraded to the level of an “Iraqi authority” with lesser, though still undefined powers.
The Bush administration ú which Victor Poleo, professor of graduate studies in oil economics at Central University in Caracas, Venezuela, calls “an oil directorate” because of its strong links to the oil industry ú has already made clear that the lion’s share of the fat contracts worth an estimated $30 billion-$100 billion will go to US firms. That includes refurbishing and exploiting the oil fields.
Russia, France and China, which had supported Baghdad in the UN Security Council in 1991-2003, are unlikely to be allowed to implement the major oil contracts they signed with Saddam Hussein’s regime, which means urgently needed investment from that quarter will not be forthcoming. The Americans are expected to urge the Iraqis to privatize what had been a state-owned industry that enriched Saddam and his henchmen on a vast scale.
Privatization is anathema to most of OPEC, particularly the Saudis, but if Iraq goes that route, opening up to large amounts of outside investment, it would put the other producers under pressure to do the same since they are increasingly in need of investment to upgrade and expand their oil industries, in most cases their primary revenue-earner. Such a move would also weaken OPEC’s influence.
Carroll has said that Iraq might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and ignoring the quotas set by OPEC, giving the strongest indication so far that a future Iraqi government might quit the cartel that Baghdad helped found in 1960.
He told The Los Angeles Times on May 16: “Historically, Iraq has had, let’s say, an irregular participation in OPEC quota systems. They have from time to time, because of compelling national interest, elected to opt out of the quota system and pursue their own path. They may elect to do that same thing. To me, it’s a very important national question.”
Leading figures in OPEC, and elsewhere in the oil industry, do not believe the Iraqis themselves will quit the cartel, but could do so with US prodding. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi declared in late May that he saw no reason why OPEC could not cope with Iraq’s resumption of exports and said it would be “folly’ to leave the market to determine oil prices.
Maintaining oil prices, and revenues, would be a key priority for any Iraqi government, he noted. “Iraq, like other producing states, be they in or out of OPEC, is keen to realize a fair and stable income from its petroleum resources,” he said, “and more particularly for the reconstruction and rebuilding of its production capacity.”
Fadhil Chalabi says he prefers staying within OPEC, but he also stressed that “Iraq is going to need a lot of money in the next five years ú up to $300 billion … Iraq must maximize revenue from its oil ú with or without OPEC.”