Stardate 20021012.0609

(On Screen): In its desperate search for supporters and allies, Iraq's diplomats have been signing trade deals all over the place in hopes of making other nations vote for their wallets. The most high profile example of that was a $60 billion deal made with the Russians for trade, to begin when the sanctions were lifted.

Dooley sends me this article from the Economist which says that there's been a lot more of that going on than I had realized, and that a goodly part of that has been with major companies in Europe, and that American companies are pointedly being frozen out.

Of course, it's a question of more than intellectual interest whether these kinds of deals would survive a "regime change".

All this must be bad news for those excluded from the party: the Americans. Yet they do not seem too worried. That is because there is one teeny doubt about all these deals. Will they be worth the paper they are written on when Mr Hussein one day becomes a former dictator?

American oilmen insist that any new regime would tear up existing contracts. After all, they were signed by a ruthless tyrant with companies eager to keep him in office. Why would any democratic Iraqi government, especially one brought to power by America's efforts, honour them? The head of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella opposition group, has openly declared that “American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil”—if he gets to run the show. Assorted other opposition leaders have been touring Texas making similar promises to the oil giants.

Things could get messy, even so. The fractured and incoherent Iraqi opposition may be prepared to say anything to win friends and credibility. But Deutsche Bank's oil experts argue that, although a change of Iraqi regime would mean that “some kind of legal clear-out is inevitable, the history of political overthrows shows that root-and-branch bureaucracies survive intact, and there is a clear hope that the contracts will remain valid.”

The entire article seems to assume that either Saddam wins, or the Iraqi expatriates do. It discounts the third possibility: that Iraq is run by an American military government for five to ten years before any new Iraqi government is established. In that case, all these European countries will be dealing not with junior bureaucrats left over from the previous regime, but with the staff of someone like General Franks (who may be that governor), who would clearly have not even the faintest interest in maintaining continuity with the policies and agreements established by Saddam.

Which would tend to make them particularly unhappy about the possibility of an American invasion; hardly surprising their governments are so heavily opposed. They've sold their souls to Saddam.