During a June 11, 2011 meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher suggested that once prosperous, Iraq should repay the US the money it has spent there since launching the Iraq War campaign in 2003. Following the meeting Rohrabacher stated in a press conference at the US Embassy that: “We [United States] would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the megadollars we have spent here in the last eight years“ (Congressman wants Iraq).
According to various reports, the Iraq War has cost the US anywhere between $700 billion and $4 trillion dollars. Economists and policy makers on both sides of the political spectrum often deflate or inflate the figure in order to justify and condemn the war respectively, but a more realistic number would probably fall between $1 and $2 trillion (Herszenhorn).
An ill-conceived idea
In addition to being ethically imprudent, the congressman’s suggestion carries serious foreign policy implications for the US. Forcing the Iraqi people to pay for an already unpopular and unjustified war that has created a breeding ground for extremists and brought the country to the brink of a civil war would be a major foreign policy blunder.
Iraqi reparations to the US would increase the already high level of anti-American sentiment that exists in the country today largely as a result of the war, and empower anti-Western political parties there.
Most dangerously it could breathe a new life into Iraqi extremist groups by enhancing their recruitment efforts. The reparations will most certainly provide a new source of disgruntlement for the Iraqis, something that extremist movements like al-Qaeda could tap into in order to increase their numbers and effectiveness.
A lesson from history
History has shown us that a country forced to pay unjust and excessively large reparations can easily get enveloped by its extremist forces. Following World War I the defeated Germany was overwhelmed by war reparations it had to pay to the victorious allies, specifically France and Britain.
Economically devastated and politically humiliated by the reparations, Germany witnessed a radical surge in nationalism among its population that included elevated levels of anti-British and anti-French sentiments. This allowed the zealously nationalist and militant National Socialist German Workers’ Party led by Adolf Hitler to take over Germany, a development which ultimately led to World War II.
Should the US proceed with Rohrabacher’s suggestions, it could produce something akin to what transpired in Germany following World War I.
“Take their oil”
Congressman Rohrabacher isn’t the only politician that has offered the suggestion that Iraq should cover America’s expenditures during the war. Donald Trump, best known for his business ventures and his NBC television show The Apprentice, made similar statements during his early bid for future US presidency.
In an interview on the O’Reilly Factor, Trump stated that “You take the [Iraqi] oil, and you take whatever is necessary for them, and you take what’s necessary for us, and we pay ourselves back $1.5 trillion or more.”
To put that into perspective, Iraqi’s average GDP over the past three years has been around $80 billion, so we’ll be levying a tax which is over eighteen times larger than that figure. Such a policy will likely undermine Iraq’s economic development and trigger out of control inflation. It will also make it easy for Iraqi radicals to blame any economic hardships befalling the country on the reparations to the US, even in cases where reparations wouldn’t be the cause of such hardships.
Since the war was imposed on the Iraqi people without a legitimate cause, underlined by the lack of evidence regarding the Iraqi threat to America’s national security, the backlash against the reparations would be immense, not only in Iraq, but across the entire Middle East. By forcing Iraq to pay for a war that has resulted in over 100,000 civilian deaths, we will be providing Middle Eastern radicals with yet another means of spreading anti-US agenda throughout the region.
Sources
- Congressman wants Iraq to repay US for war cost. (2011, June 11). USA Today. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
- Herszenhorn, D. (2008, March 19). "Estimates of Iraq War Cost Were Not Close to Ballpark" . The New York Times. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
Enver Guseynov - I majored in International Affairs with emphasis on Middle East and have written several research papers and articles on the region.
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