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| Iraq |
| Odious Debts Incurred by Tyrants - RESET! |
| 2003-04-21 |
| From the Weekly Standard: Irwin N. Stelzer NOW THE RECONSTRUCTION BEGINS. What it will cost no one yet knows. Nor do we have a clear idea where the many billions will come from. But we do know this. The amount of outside aid that Iraq will require will depend on a prior decision: How much of the country's oil and other resources should be devoted to paying off the debts and obligations incurred by Saddam Hussein to pay for his wars, his weapons programs, and his palaces? We do not know enough yet to answer that question. But the data already in hand suggest that debt repudiation might play an important part in the rebuilding of Iraq's economy. Well over 2,000 years ago Aristotle wrote what might serve as the executive summary for any policymaker wrestling with the finances of postwar Iraq. "At the time when a democracy replaces an oligarchy or a tyranny . . . some do not want to fulfill [public] agreements on the grounds that it was not the city [i.e., the government] but the tyrant who entered into them, . . . the assumption being that some regimes exist through domination and not because they are to the common advantage." Would a current-day wonk, his copy of "The Politics" tucked under his arm, tell the president to have the new, democratic Iraqi government forget about past debts? Not necessarily. I am told by my Hudson Institute colleague Ken Weinstein, whose understanding of philosophers' musings far exceeds that of this mere economist, that Aristotle intended to provoke a discussion rather than provide a clear guide to policy. So let's discuss. Americans will probably be torn by our natural inclination to support the sanctity of contract, and the contradictory feeling that the Iraqi people should not have their futures blighted by debts incurred by a bloody tyrant. Such debts are known by students of the subject as "dettes odieuses"--odious debts--a concept developed by Alexander Nahum Sack, a government minister in czarist Russia and, after the revolution, professor of law in Paris. Sack argued that when a government changes hands, the liability for public debt remains intact, with one important exception: If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population that fights against it, etc., this debt is odious for the population of all the State. This debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime's debt, a personal debt of the power that has incurred it, consequently it falls with the fall of this power. There is lots more of this article - go and read it. |
| Posted by:Leigh |
| #2 Time, then, to Ctrl-Alt-Del the Baad party's deals. |
| Posted by: KP 2003-04-21 19:56:22 |
| #1 The Saddamites owed the Russians billions. The Russians clearly did not expect to collect unless they could save Saddam's ass and keep him in power. I think the new Iraqi regime should not disappoint them. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2003-04-22 01:06:55 |