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We had it, and we threw it away.

I don’t believe the popular line that attacks on Coalition troops in Iraq take place because the Iraqis are angry about lacking electricity, water and other services. That theory certainly doesn’t explain the dreadful bombing of a mosque a few hours ago.

But there’s no denying that when you are trying to win over a country, it doesn’t help if nothing bloody works.

This story from Stephen Pollard made me think that some loyal US bureaucrats might as well go out and slit a few of their own soldiers’ throats. In a hot country like Iraq with intermittent electricity supply and a dodgy phone system, mobile phones make a tremendous difference. They save time, inconvenience and sometimes lives. So here’s how the State Department has gone about getting this great aid to the restoration of normality up and running:

Compounding the impact of the US’ military overstretch on security has been the State Department’s crippling bureaucratic mindset. Rather than recognising the exceptional nature of the Iraqi situation, officials have insisted at every point in applying the full rigour of US health and safety requirements, licensing procedures and other sundry impediments to progress. Take the mobile phone network. The sensible solution would have been to pick the most able and cost-effective operator and let them get on with it. But instead, the decision was taken to go through a full competitive tendering process, which takes an inordinate amount of time. One day, however, people suddenly found their mobiles working; a network had decided, to immense acclaim, to ignore the process and, indeed, get on with it. They were swiftly shut down, encapsulating just why things have been moving so slowly in Iraq: beauraucracy ahead of common sense.

They had it! They had one of the prizes they should have been striving for actually in their hands – and they let it slip through their fingers.

In the first years of the last century Count Peter Stolypin raced against time to enrich the Russian people fast enough to stave off revolution. The race ended with his assassination in 1911. Tough luck, Russia. What an irony if Stolypin’s counterparts in modern Iraq survive the assassins who are undoubtedly after them – only to be defeated by regulation.

11 comments to We had it, and we threw it away.

  • Damned right, Natalie.

    The Stolypin reference is interesting. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once advanced his conviction that the single most important gunshot of the entire 20th century was fired into the chest of Pyotr Stolypin at the Bolshoi Ballet in 1911. That’s because he represented the last serious hope of heading-off the Bolshevik Revolution.

    It’s an intriguing and, I think, compelling case.

    Anyway, it’s a curious thing: how history can turn on a moment. This whole Iraqi deal could be rife with those sorts of moments, and I am not convinced that this administration is at all in shape to look out for them.

  • S. Weasel

    Huh. No kidding. Stephen Pollard can’t spell “bureaucracy”?

  • Has anyone seen an original source on the mobile phone network story? This seems just too bizarre even for the State Department.

  • Guy Herbert

    By the magic of Google: You couldn’t make it up.

    Worldwide bureaucratic culture is so deeply embedded that this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Just look at the ads in any edition of the Economist or another international newspaper for invitations to tender for privatisations and government projects.

    Maybe it is better than crony-capitalism, but I’ve no doubt not in every case–and maybe not even in most cases. Certainly competitive tendering run by bureaucrats has the unfortunate effect of giving contracts to those who are best at filling in forms and showing themselves congenial to bureacratic norms…. It may not always get the best contractor for the job, as the job would be understood by practical people. And it is idiocy when you need action in a hurry.

  • This seems just too bizarre even for the State Department.

    No it doesn’t. It’s very dumb though, and I thought they would be smarter in this instance.

  • lucklucky

    I think most of the problems thats are going on in Iraq is “peace” approach of State Department
    making things like in time of peace is a recipe to not get things done in a emergency and Iraq is an emergency situation.

    If theres isnt a cultural break in State Department things can go wrong. That is already showing up with the “Road Map” .

  • Dave

    Reading some industry coverage of the story the connections were pretty unstable but that’s not to say they couldn’t come to an arrange quickly to put a network in place from Kuwait or some such. Its not hard, but it might be flaky.

  • I think that “a little flaky” is pretty much what you expect at first, particularly in a place like Iraq. “A little flaky” is very much better than nothing, and you then work on improving it.

  • Charles Copeland

    re bureaucracy in Iraq.

    Pollard writes:

    “Take the mobile phone network. The sensible solution would have been to pick the most able and cost-effective operator and let them get on with it. But instead, the decision was taken to go through a full competitive tendering process, which takes an inordinate amount of time. ”

    How true. But the problem is that when bureaucrats make rapid, sensible decisions they are often accused of paving the way to ‘corruption’ (often by the Right Wing press itself), e.g. by choosing their friends and relatives rather than the most talented applicant. Whereas if they opt for the ‘full competitive tendering process’ they are no longer accused of corruption, but (quite rightly) of inefficiency.

    Here’s a minor example from the European Commission. In the good old days, the Translation Service used to get freelance work done in a very informal manner — the boss of a translation unit would simply phone up external translators he knew personally, and they would do the job. Administration costs: virtually zero.

    But then you get the — otherwise admirable — Daily Telegraph accusing the Commission of ‘rampant corruption’. Result: the Translation
    Service sets up an ‘External Translation’ department, publishes ‘invitations to tender’, goes through the whole ‘competitive process’ time and again.

    Unbelievable:
    Administration costs per page – approx 50 euro
    (much the same as the fee paid to the translation company per page).

    Then the Commission doesn’t get accused of corruption, but it does get accused of ‘red tapism’.

    You can’t have it both ways. No doubt the ideal solution would be to eliminate all bureaucracy where possible, but where bureaucracy is almost inevitable (as it is in any major organisation) you have to make a trade off between efficiency and sleaze.

    So libertarians should take care not to bang on too much about ‘corruption’ in the civil service. They should focus more on efficiency. Otherwise, their criticism of bureaucracy may even make things worse, as bureaucrats scurry to shelter behind the protective wall of the ‘competitive process’.

    On the other hand, if a civil servant’s work is basically that of an arsonist, the less efficient he is the better, because the less he will burn down.

  • Charles Copeland: So libertarians should take care not to bang on too much about ‘corruption’ in the civil service. They should focus more on efficiency. Otherwise, their criticism of bureaucracy may even make things worse, as bureaucrats scurry to shelter behind the protective wall of the ‘competitive process’.

    State bureaucracies are corrupt by their very nature… I care nothing for making them more efficient or less corrupt: the only thing that matters is that less State bureaucracies exist in the first place. I do want there to be an EU at all therefore how efficient or not the EU’s translation service is does not matter a damn to me. Therefore to get drawn into a discussion over making parts of the EU work makes little sense to this particular libertarian… and the same logic applies to the apparatus of state in Iraq.

  • Charles Copeland

    Perry de Havilland writes:

    “State bureaucracies are corrupt by their very nature… I care nothing for making them more efficient or less corrupt: the only thing that matters is that less State bureaucracies exist in the first place. ”

    I agree, but I think you missed my point (or perhaps I didn’t explain myself properly).

    Let’s assume (for the sake of argument) that all state bureaucrats are firemen-arsonists, i.e. the taxpayer both has to pay their salaries AND suffer the consequences of their arsonist activities.

    MODEL 1:
    Assume all EU officials are firemen-arsonists, receiving a total annual pay of 1 million ‘eurinals’ and damaging property having a total value of 2 million ‘eurinals’ (‘eurinal’ being the Euroskeptic’s imaginary currency).

    Total annual cost of EU: 3 million eurinals

    MODEL 2:
    Now let’s assume the firemen-arsonists suddenly become far more ‘efficient’ and damage property having a total value of 10 million eurinals per annum.

    Total annual cost of EU: 11 million eurinals.

    Clearly, that isn’t the kind of ‘efficiency’ one wants.

    But now let’s try another model.

    MODEL 3:
    Let’s assume the EU decides to ‘privatise’ the firemen-arsonist employees, hence reducing wage costs by at least 50% (EU civil servants earn at least twice what they would earn in the private sector — indeed some earn infinitely more than they would in the private sector, being completely incapable of work of any kind. I speak from personal experience). Let’s assume it is also decided that there is a ‘ceiling’ of 2 million eurinals on the value of the property they may burn down. Let’s assume that, in the private sector, the firemen arsonists now earn only 0.5 million eurinals, as opposed to the 1 million eurinals in the golden days before privatisation.

    Total cost of EU: 2.5 million eurinals.

    Clearly, while efficiency a la Model 2 is a bad thing, efficiency a la Model 3 is a good thing (i.e. efficiency in terms of lower wage costs), even in libertarian terms – half a loaf being better than no bread.

    MODEL 4:
    No doubt, in an ideal world, we would also have model 4, where firemen-arsonists receive 0 eurinals in pay and burn down 0 eurinals worth of property per annum.

    Total annual cost of EU: 0 eurinals.

    I presume that that is PDH’s ideal world (it’s also mine, provided — in view of my ‘legitimate expectations’ — it doesn’t begin until after my retirement).

    Hence:
    Model 4 is better than Models 1,2 and 3
    Model 3 is better than Model 1 and 2
    Model 1 is better than Model 2

    Unfortunately. Model 4 is unlikely to be realised in the short term.

    But Model 3 (privatisation of certain EU activities) IS in fact not all that unrealistic in the short term. That’s really the point I was trying to make about efficiency — assuming that the EU’s arsonists are only allowed to destroy a fixed amount of property each year, it is STILL less costly to pay them half of what they are earning than to pay them their full, EU salary. Or would you not object if all our EU salaries were doubled? Would you say it’s all the same what we earn? I doubt it.

    That’s why it’s also important not to bullshit on about ‘corruption’ when the chief effect of such bullshitting is to raise the cost of state bureaucracy, to make things even worse! If more red tape resulting from more media criticism means you have to double the number of arsonists needed to burn down the same amount of property, you’ve managed to shoot yourself in your libertarian foot.

    That’s also why Natalie Solent’s point is spot on. The media bullshit artists have been banging away about the need for more ‘transparency’ in the bureaucratic system to such an extent that, as a result, bureaucrats spend more time preparing public invitations to tender and examining the applications submitted by hundreds of candidates than they do in providing any kind of ‘end product’ -at all – whether that ‘end product’ is a burnt-down house or, in the case of Iraq, a mobile phone system that works.