American Iraqi Post-war Reconstruction Of National Strategy And Policy Research

The key problem that this paper studies is how the U.S. carries outnational-rebuilding in post-war Iraq. Based on the concept of national-rebuilding, thepaper builds a theoretical framework, attempts to combine the macro-level andmicro-level research together. It will explore the U.S. national-rebuilding activities inpost-war Iraq from both strategic and specific policy implementation level. The paperis divided into five parts:The first chapter reviews the transformation of the U.S. national security strategyafter “9·11”. The new "anti-terrorism" strategy regards the combination of terrorismand weapons of mass destruction as the most major threat, and it adopts a pre-emptivedoctrine and utilizes the promotion of democratic values to anti-terrorism. In thiscontext, the United States launched Iraq war and overthrew Saddam’s regime,involving in a large-scale national reconstruction activities. In essence, the Post-warreconstruction of Iraq could be seen as the political transition leading by the U.S. Thecore objective is to establish a Western-style democratic institution in Iraq so the U.S.can gain a foothold in the Middle East to promote democracy and maintain itsgeopolitical political interests. From Bush administration to the Obama administration,the core goal of the U.S. Iraq strategy has not changed; the main contents areadvancing democratization process in Iraq and keep it on the U.S. strategic orbit.According to this objective, the United States carries out post-war reconstruction inIraq from political, social, and economic aspects, shaping this nation in accordancewith its own strategic interests.The second chapter explores the core issue in post-war Iraqreconstruction—political reconstruction. The post-war Iraq appears a trend of being afailed state. The main cause is that it highly depended on the strong power in itsmodern political history. Behind this "power-dependent", it reflects the fragilenation-state identity, pre-war strategic cognitive errors and complex geopoliticalenvironment constitutes major obstacles for the post-war political reconstruction inIraq. Faced with this scenario, the Bush administration’s political reconstructionpolicy is inadequate. Although he led Iraq to achieve a radical transformation of thestate system and sent provincial reconstruction teams to improve the governancecapacity of the Iraqi government and to consolidate the democratic system establishedin Iraq, the effects are very limited and the democracy in Iraq is still fragile.The third chapter is dedicated to research the most critical and challenging issue inthe post-war Iraq reconstruction—social reconstruction. Due to the war, millions ofIraqis have become refugees, displaced to neighboring countries, which constitutesthe most urgent problem to deal with, when rebuilding the post-war Iraq society. Theproblem of Iraqi refugee not only affects the national reconstruction process, but it isalso related to the stability of the situation in neighboring countries and the region.The lack of a robust civil society is the structural contradiction in the socialreconstruction of post-war Iraq, which not only led to a sectarian, ethnic conflicts, but also have negative influences on the democracy established under the auspices of theUnited States. The power dependence in the modern political history and the absenceof the market economy are two important reasons for the lack of Iraqi civil society.Faced with this situation, the USAID has adopted a series of policies: providinghumanitarian relief to refugees and help the internally displaced persons in Iraq toresettle; on this basis, it also provides capital, technology assistance to promote theestablishment of Iraq civil society organizations and enhance their ability. But theinertia of the historical development of Iraq makes it difficult to achieve acomprehensive social transformation in the short term.The fourth chapter focuses on economic reconstruction of post-war Iraq. The U.S.aim of post-war Iraq economic reconstruction is to establish a market economicsystem and control the country’s rich oil resources. However, the long—term oil andthe state led economic model constitutes a structural impediments to the economictransformation of post-war Iraq. Experienced a war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwaitled to the international community sanctions and the Gulf War, Iraq’s economy is notonly highly militarized, but also suffered a fatal blow. In this case, Saddam Hussein’sregime established a food rationing system and through the “oil-for-food "program, itobtained huge profits. Nomenklatura controlled Iraq’s oil smuggling and theprivileged economic channels of international trade while the general public relied onfood rations scrape track economic dependency-forming a patron—client relations.In order to deconstruct this backward relation, the United States tries to promoteprivate economic development in post-war Iraq. However, due to the long history ofthe economic model and capacity limitation of the U.S., the oil industry is still thepillar industry of Iraq economy. At the same time, Iraq’s factions forces launched afierce battle around the oil resources and this severely restricted the role of oil couldhave been played in the post-war economic reconstruction and development.The fifth chapter as the conclusion part of this paper, it makes an overallassessment of the U.S. post-war Iraq strategies and policies. It concludes that theobjectives of United States launched the Iraq war and carried out post-warreconstruction have been initially achieved, Iraq has became an important strategicfulcrum for the U.S, in the Middle East. But for the U.S. strategic contraction and thisnational reconstruction is beyond the normal process of historical development in Iraq,leading to the continued turmoil of the post-war situation in Iraq, the strategic benefitsof the reconstruction activities remains to be further observation and research.