Another Promised Land?
VIEWPOINT
by Eldon Griffiths
Imagine an American protectorate where nearly everything you need is “free.” Hardly any rent or mortgage payments because the government pays for your house. No deductions from your paycheck because the state provides health services, pensions, and extra money when you get married, have children and send them to study abroad.
This kind of “socialism” normally would be a prelude to financial disaster (as in the Soviet Union), or national bankruptcy (as the Germans fear could happen if their obese welfare state isn’t pruned). Suppose however that the country in question also has no income tax, gas tax or sales tax; that its treasury never borrows (only lends); that it imports three times more luxury goods per head than the U.S.,yet still ends up with a balance of payments surplus so large that each year it’s able to invest 10% of its GDP overseas.
Moreover, this tax-free paradise is located in the world’s most dangerous neighborhood, next door to Iraq, Iran and Syria. It’s also the most pro-American nation in the Arab world, a Muslim country that’s moving faster than any other toward free elections, open markets, human rights and democratic government.
Where is it? You’ve got it: Kuwait. The secrets of its success? O-I-L,and the U.S. connection.
I went to Kuwait not long ago with a World Affairs Council delegation to see how it is faring l3 years after George Bush I launched the first Gulf War to expel Saddam Hussein’s torturers and 12 months to the day since Bush II again used it as a platform from which to invade Iraq.
Two wars fought over its territory might well have left Kuwait prostrate. Yet compared with the thicket of oilrigs and barefoot Arabs riding donkeys I first saw there in the late l960s, today it’s an urbanized palace. No bigger than the Mojave Desert, whose harsh landscape it resembles, Kuwait has more five-star hotels than Beverly Hills, more $10 million homes than Bel Air, more 100-foot yachts than Newport. What keep it safe from attack are the U.S. Army and the Brits, who once were its colonial masters (and original tutors in democracy).
We visited the Iraqi border, heavily guarded and dangerous but still frequently crossed by Kuwaitis with relatives in Basra. At Camp Arifjan, the largest American supply base built since World War II (Kuwait’s expense), thousands of U.S. troops rotating out of Iraq were being “decompressed” before flying home while thousands more rotating in were being “up-armed” with bulletproof vests.
Visiting a former oil field where the Iraqis set fire to the wells, I recalled the world’s worst man-made fires and the oil spills that in 1991 did 10 times more eco-damage than the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. Yet as world oil prices rise, Kuwait is pumping more oil and gas than ever before, earning this tiny country a GDP that’s two and one half times larger than Orange County’s.
Politically, Kuwait is maturing. Attending a debate in the National Assembly, I heard the Minister of Finance being verbally torn to shreds by an opposition member who accused him of failing to stop a developer from making a killing on an attractive piece of land where the government had promised to build professional offices. Next day the minister resigned,compelling evidence of the advance of parliamentary democracy, Kuwaiti style.
Kuwait has a long way to go before it can claim to have fully representative government. Half its population (women) is still excluded from the vote,though we were assured that this “will come soon.” But Kuwait leads the Arab way toward more responsible, more transparent, more accountable government, and this sets a good example for its demoralized big neighbor, Iraq.
Kuwait’s future almost entirely depends on what happens in America. The Kuwaitis are therefore following the U.S. election campaign with a mixture of hope (that both parties will stand behind the commitment to defend them made by Bill Clinton as well as George W. Bush) and fear (that Sen. Kerry might tilt toward getting out of Iraq,and leaving Kuwait, like Vietnam and Somalia, to its fate).
Yet nowhere in the Middle East have I come across Arab leaders so outspokenly pro-American as the Kuwaitis, a large proportion of whom were educated at U.S. universities.
“Without the Americans we are finished” was a constant refrain. “Will the U.S. stay the course?” we were asked.
My response was that no U.S. president is going to bug out of Iraq, let alone abandon Kuwait; but that whoever controls the White House before long will look to the Iraqis and their neighbors to provide more of their own mutual security. Prediction: If peace prevails, Kuwait and Iraq, within a decade, will start moving toward an arrangement not unlike the European Common Market whereby France and Germany ended centuries of war by mixing up their economies and opening them up to free trade.
Between capital-wealthy Kuwait and labor-abundant southern Iraq, there is a potentially rich co-prosperity zone based on the huge developable oil fields that underlie both sides of their frontiers and the agricultural resources and markets of the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin.
A pipedream? Maybe. But think of Hong Kong and the upsurge of the neighboring south China hinterland of what only yesterday was an aggressive Chinese dictatorship. Or nearer home of the maquiladora where U.S. (and Japanese) capital works with Mexican labor to produce some of the most competitive goods on offer in America.
Times change, history moves on. A reconstructed Iraq before long must earn its own living. And Kuwait can’t expect to remain a U.S. protectorate where everything’s free forever.
Griffiths, a resident of Laguna Niguel, is an author, lecturer, journalist and former member of the British House of Commons.
