Stephen Pollard: There is a conflict in Washington too

It does not matter if the UN or the US runs post-war Iraq. What matters is democracy – which is opposed by the State Department

Forget about the differences between George Bush and Tony Blair over post-war Iraq and the role of the United Nations. Whatever the means might be, both are clear about the end they want to see. Concentrating on the divide between the US and the UK over the role of the UN misses the real story: not the divergence of opinion between coalition members, but differences within the United States government itself.

Speaking at yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions, Tony Blair made clear who he thought should run Iraq after the war: "Iraq should not, in the end, be run by the Americans, should not be run by the British, should not be run by any outside force. Iraq should be run, for the first time in decades, by the Iraqi people." Iraq, in other words, should be democratic. The clearest statement on the subject by President Bush, from a speech in February, made much the same point: he wants an outcome where Iraqis are "moving toward democracy and living in freedom". When, in the past, the US had had to engage in military action, it did not "leave behind occupying armies; we left constitutions and parliaments."

The President was not simply sharing his thoughts with the world. He was also attempting to end a battle within his administration over the future shape of Iraq, between those who want to see a democratic Iraq, and those who want to see Iraq run by the US. It is a sign of how entrenched positions are that, despite President Bush's clear words – leaving no doubt that he wants to see a democratic Iraq – it is a battle that has still not been won. Speak to those close to the State Department and you get one view; speak to their Pentagon equivalents and you get quite another. I have spoken to both.

The caricature view, peddled by many Europeans, is that the State Department, headed by Colin Powell – the man Europe can do business with – is a force for moderation and sanity against those nasty, trigger-happy neo-conservatives centred around the Pentagon. Most caricatures have a basis in fact. This fashionable European view is thus unique, since it is the Pentagon which is on the side of democracy and self-government for Iraq, and the State Department which wants to see Iraq run as something approaching a US colony.

The Administration is still drawing up final plans for post-war administration, but the State Department has already put in its bid. It has drawn up a detailed plan for the first two years, which would see a military governor with subordinate US officers running individual ministries. Iraqis themselves would merely serve on a powerless "consultative committee".

The State Department never wanted this war. Just as it was diplomats and the foreign and defence policy establishment who backed Saddam in the past, so today their preferred option was to keep him in power but, as they put it, "stuck in his box". Their overriding concern, across the globe, has always been with one thing: stability. The nature of a regime is irrelevant. That stability might be the stability of terror – and cost the lives, for instance, of millions of Iraqis – but such factors are dismissed in the Foggy Bottom mindset as irrelevant. Stability is good. Change is bad.

The Pentagon thought otherwise: that not only did Saddam pose a real, existing threat, but that lasting stability comes only when people are free. The State Department's stability was stability forced by gunpoint, and thus no stability at all.

Having lost the battle against war, the State Department has now tried to make the best of a bad job: US control of Iraq. Throughout Saddam's period in power, the State Department has feared one thing in the wake of his departure: what the former Secretary of State, James Baker, called the "Lebanonisation of Iraq". Colin Powell puts it this way: "It would not contribute to the stability we want in the Middle East to have Iraq fragmented into separate Sunni, Shia and Kurd political entities." With Saddam gone, whichever group ends up controlling the levers of power, in this view, will inevitably provoke the others into rebellion, plunging Iraq into civil war and almost certainly causing its break up. The solution: put Americans in control. But make it seem something other than that by finding an acceptable (pliant) replacement for Saddam – and be sure he is Sunni to keep central Iraq quiet.

The Pentagon argues that this is a recipe for precisely the situation it is meant to prevent. With a strong, unitary central government, each ethnic group will – rightly – fear winner-takes-all domination of the centre by another group. That almost guarantees conflict. The only long-term viable solution, and the best way of preserving Iraq's integrity, is democracy – specifically, a form of federation between the different regions and ethnic groups in which each wields real power over its own affairs: a democratic balance of power.

The advocates of democracy point to the experience of the Kurds since 1991, which shows what can happen. Under the protection of the US air force, they have an elected assembly and decent municipal government. As the Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, put it recently: "Look to the people of northern Iraq. Beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein and his regime for more than a decade, they have shown a remarkable ability to manage longstanding differences and to develop relatively free and prospering societies... Democracy is possible in Iraq."

The dispute as to the shape of post-war Iraq is, in another form, the same battle that was fought between the "realists" during the Cold War, who argued that détente and engagement was the only sensible policy towards the Soviet Union; and those who rightly believed that it was a war which could be won. This is a battle between the cynicism which so often characterises foreign and defence policy, and the idealism which is the only way the world can be changed for the better.

The omens are not good. President Bush is speaking the language of democracy, but the State Department has been making the running. Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's envoy to the Iraqi opposition, is reported as having decided that federalism – democracy – is too risky, and that the only realistic way forward is simply to replace the top three Baathist officials in each ministry with US officers "advised" by Iraqis.

This would be a disaster. It would give credence to all the arguments about this being an imperialist war, and would antagonise the rest of the Arab world – to put it mildly. Colin Powell is, I am told, in favour of a swift transfer to the UN. But other than for PR purposes – as a way of selling the situation to the rest of the world – whether it is the US or the UN which is in charge is almost irrelevant. The important point is not which power operates a centrally administered Iraq but whether that model is the right model for Iraq.

Removing Saddam is a good thing in itself, and had to be done. The Iraqis will certainly be better off without him. But failing to follow through by sowing the seeds for a properly democratic Iraq would not merely be a wasted opportunity; it would be a betrayal of the purpose of this war – and of the people of Iraq.

stephenipollard@hotmail.com

Stephen Pollard is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels think tank