The NYT presents this story with an oddly positive spin. The guts of it is a World Bank study estimating that Iraq can only ‘absorb’ $6 billion in reconstruction spending in 2004. To put it another way, given a total cost estimate of $55 billion (which has not been challenged), only about one-tenth of the job will be done by the time the US and presumably (if things are going at all well) Iraqi elections are held next year.
This is ‘good news’, because it seems likely that the total amount available from non-US donors might be a couple of billion, which, as a proportion of $6 billion, can be spun as a successful outcome.
But the unnamed American officials quoted at the end of the story are right to be ‘ unhappy over any suggestion that Iraq cannot “absorb” more than $6 billion in the first year’. As one correctly observes, “You can’t get the country back on its feet until the power is back on.” So, if the World Bank is right, and all the evidence so far suggests that it is, Iraq is not going to be back on its feet for quite a few years to come.
There’s no easy resolution here. The correct policy would have to been to let the UN inspections proceed, relax economic sanctions when no weapons were found and try to deal with the problems of the Middle East as a whole before focusing on Iraq. As it is, the world, and particularly the Coalition of the Willing will have to make the best of a bad job. It’s still not clear exactly what this will mean, but the process of lowering expectations has already begun.
Update Even with lowered expectations, I find this story in The Economist hard to believe. Apparently, thousands of workers from Bangladesh and India have been imported for all the jobs on American bases in Iraq because “Iraqis are a security risk”. Can this be true?
John Quiggin 
The process of adjusting expectations was begun by me, here, a few weeks ago when I told the world (at least that part of it which is clever enough to find this excellent site) that the objective is and always was to reduce Iraq to a state of picturesque, medieval poverty and ignorance. The Road to Damascus travelled by the US is not that of St Paul, but that of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, and the job will not be done until such a movie, complete with pre-WWII stereotypical Arabs and pre-industrial revolution street scenes (populated by engaging but comfortingly incompetent merchants, unwashed and illiterate urchins) could be shot virtually without any alterations to the real city.
Or to put it another way, the the NYT can put a positive spin on the World Bank study because the real Iraq project is progressing very well!
Gordon
Well, from what I understand most of the $87 billions are ending up back in the US in the form of Halliburton consultant fees and military spending.
yeah and I ask you – what was it all for?!…
Hey man! Try to do ur best!
The US and Britain have prior, historical experience in Marshall plans in Europe and Japan. With this experience their administrations would never have contemplated a commitment to Iraq of less than 2-5 yrs and probably greater. They will no doubt be confident that the unchaining of a command economy and the unleashing of a market economy, will produce an exponentially improving one. Reliable, basic utility provision is just the start. The necessarily slower implementation of local police, courts and the rule of law will go a long way to facilitating economic independence and self-rule.
It remains to be seen how quickly a market economy can produce the goods for ordinary Iraqis. The notion that somehow a certain aid budget must be met to achieve Iraqi self-reliance and independence is fanciful. Kick-starting the engines of a modern free-market economy, for a resourceful people may be all that is required. Of course the forces of past privelege and darkness will do all they can to frustrate the process, now that they must sing for their supper, instead of barking for it.
Unless you completely endorse the use of weapons inspectors in espionage as implied by:
“The correct policy would have to been to let the UN inspections proceed, relax economic sanctions when no weapons were found and try to deal with the problems of the Middle East as a whole before focusing on Iraq”;
You could not conclude that we could “relax economic sanctions when no weapons were found”.
Inspectors don’t “find” anything. They inspect. The toughest criticisms of Scott Ritter and Richard Butler were precisely that they were seen to be collecting intelligence (rightly or wrongly) for the Israeli and US Governments respectively. They did the right thing in the circumstances. Orthodox inspectors have no teeth unless they have cooperation. In Iraq there was little.
To then suggest that doing next to nothing could be a “correct” foreign policy is bizarre. How can a policy be “correct”? Do you give your policy a Credit or High Distinction? I could argue for a conditional pass here, but we’ll let it slide. The problems of the ME are based in a fanatical and loathesome political culture backed up by an unreformed religion. How we could “deal with this as a whole” much beyond occasional sparring with regimes we don’t like is lost on me.
‘Inspectors don’t “find” anything. They inspect. ‘
Too deep for me, I’m afraid.