Wolfowitz's grasp
IN HIS DIRECTIVE restricting prime contracting bids for Iraq's rebuilding to the coalition of nations that toppled Saddam Hussein, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz justified the exclusion of companies from France, Germany, and Russia by saying it "is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."
Wolfowitz's assertion would be true if the old Tammany Hall practice of punishing one's enemies and rewarding one's friends were the be-all and end-all of national security. But a statesman with a wide-angle vision of America's interests would recognize the value of cultivating, enhancing, and -- when need be -- repairing relations with allies and partners.
Pentagon officials talk about high-tech weapons and highly trained special forces as force multipliers, but nothing magnifies America's clout in the world more powerfully than being able to act in concert with countries such as France, Germany, and Russia.
So even if it satisfies a primal urge to settle scores with governments in Paris, Berlin, and Moscow that have had a shameful record of collusion with Saddam's regime, and even if their companies' exclusion from prime contracts might be popular domestically, the Pentagon's directive actually runs counter to "essential security interests of the United States."
One of those interests is to help Iraqis root out the Ba'athist counterrevolution and rehabilitate an economy and infrastructure that Saddam's wars and plundering left in ruins. For this purpose, President Bush should welcome all the help he can get from other countries -- even if in the past they valued their commerce and their would-be oil contracts with Saddam above the plight of Iraqis.
As a practical matter, if the crushing foreign debts Saddam incurred are to be forgiven or alleviated -- an absolute necessity if Iraqis are to have any real chance to recover rapidly from the Ba'athist nightmare -- major holders of those debts will have to cooperate.
Russia is the country that holds the most debt from three decades of selling arms to Saddam. France is second on the list, while Germany and the United States are in a virtual tie for third. Not surprisingly, Russia has already hinted that it will resist entreaties to help restructure Saddam's debt if Washington does not rescind the Pentagon directive on prime contracts.
Having just appointed former secretary of state James Baker as a special envoy to oversee the complex work of persuading Iraq's international creditors to lift some of the debt burden, Bush cannot afford to alienate Iraq's creditors and America's partners. Soon enough a sovereign Iraqi government will make its own decisions about Saddam's old clients. For now, Bush should put the repairing of trans-Atlantic rifts -- and the welfare of Iraq -- ahead of the ephemeral pleasures of score settling.
