ABSTRACT
This study was in part an attempt to evaluate the usefulness of the totalitarianism paradigm for understanding the history of Ba‘thist Iraq, based on a comparative reading of methods and questions guiding the historiography of other regimes commonly perceived as totalitarian dictatorships, particularly Nazi Germany. A mixed account emerges from this endeavour. While there is convergence in some respects, most notably regarding the centrality of the dictator, the regime’s militarism and the Anfal campaign, the totalitarianism paradigm proves only partly useful in understanding the history of Iraq under Saddam Husayn. For Makiya, the collapse of the Iraqi state after the invasion of 2003 was an “unfortunate validation” of his argument in Republic of Fear.1 Yet, this interpretation explains neither the functionality of the polycratic governing system set up by Saddam Husayn nor its inherent self-destructive tendencies.2
Scholarly accounts of Iraq’s recent history spend time and energy describing the regime’s narrowing power base and the contraction of the state after 1991, all the while highlighting its continued oppressiveness. Rarely did scholars focus on the regime’s more subtle governing techniques and on the functionality of its survival strategies under the circumstances imposed on the country during this period. Nor did they evaluate the impact of these policies on the governing apparatus and on the relationship between the regime and the Iraqi population.3 In acknowledging the central role of the dictator for shaping and sustaining the system, the study agrees in principle with an ‘intentionalist’ view of Ba’thist Iraq, but criticises its reductionist tendencies. The totalitarianism paradigm does not account for the complexity and vitality, but also the morbidity of the Iraqi system, for Saddam Husayn’s ability to integrate an increasingly fluid and ambiguous system of rule. Numerous clear indicators pointed towards an erosion of the Iraqi system to a degree that anticipated the failed state Iraq turned out to be in 2003. These indicators were not sufficiently taken into account by most researchers and politicians in favour of invading Iraq. They would miscalculate the effects of removing the dictator, who had hitherto managed to prevent the country’s slide into open chaos as much as he had been at the root of this tendency in the first place.
