Just looking now at the headlines on a number of the big news sites, it’s clear that the Pentagon’s decision to bar French, German and Russian companies from bidding on Iraqi reconstruction contracts is getting a lot of attention.
But as I noted earlier, the bigger story is that the administration can’t even get its story straight. Are we trying to get retribution toward these countries by stiffing them on the contracts or are we trying to come to some sort of agreement with them to refinance and restructure Iraq’s mammoth foreign debt?
It pretty obviously can’t be both.
One reader suggested to me today that perhaps the Wolfowitz directive banning the bids from these three countries is a bargaining chip we’re putting on the table as part of Baker’s negotiation strategy.
But, believe me, it’s not. It’s just that everybody is pursuing their own policy and nobody’s coordinating anything.
And then there’s the Baker appointment.
One might say that if we didn’t have James Baker to turn to to handle international debt crises, we might have to invent the Treasury Secretary.
I mean, this doesn’t just fall under the Treasury Department’s general purview. It’s one of its main responsibilities.
In an insightful column in Newsweek, Richard Wolffe makes the point we’ve been hinting at for the last few days …
Unless Baker is about to declare Iraqâs independence, there are only two explanations for his appointment. Either the president feels that Powell, Snow and the rest of his cabinet are incapable of dealing with Iraqâs debts. Or the president is giving Baker a far broader role in resolving Iraqâs future. Both explanations are deeply unsettling for his much-vaunted foreign policy team and for the rest of the world. When Baker travels to European and regional capitals, the worldâs leaders will think that Bakerânot Powell, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Riceâhas the influence with the president to get things done in Iraq. Yet we, and they, canât be sure of that. After all, in official terms, Baker is just talking about Iraqâs debts.
In fact, I think it’s both. It signals a lack of confidence in his team and Baker has a much larger brief than we’re being told.
As I’ve tried to argue over the last couple days, in the current context, handling the Iraqi debt issue inherently takes you well beyond technical matters of debt refinance.
This is another tacit admission of the failure of the president’s policy in Iraq. We went into Iraq to overturn the geopolitical dynamics of the region. Now Baker, an opponent of everything the architects of the war stand for, is being sent in to reach an accomodation with the status quo powers to pave the way for our departure.
