The Instability that Hinders Order

Policing Iraq: Protecting Iraqis from Criminal Violence
By Robert Perito June 2006
http://www.usip.org/pubs/usipeace_briefings/2006/0629_policing_iraq.html

“Reducing criminal violence would advance stability in Iraq, increase popular support for Iraq's new government, and improve police-community relations. This would require focusing the Iraqi Police Service (the street cops) on fighting crime and protecting Iraqi citizens. It would involve improved training in conducting investigations and community-oriented policing, and new equipment to give the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) the ability to fight crime and to improve relations with Iraqi citizens. Doing this would pay dividends in the war against the insurgency, because citizens would be more likely to assist the police in tracking down insurgents. At the same time, the United States must make a concerted effort to reform the Shiite-dominated units in the Iraqi National Police. This can best be done by pressing the new Minister of Interior to reform his ministry through an effective program of U.S.-supported institutional development, something that was done by the United States in previous peace operations, but not, thus far, in Iraq.”

The problem with Perito’s analysis, as Hobbes and Locke long ago identified, is that the people must first agree to stability for there to viably exist institutions for maintaining order. Without that stability, none of these institutions can exist. It might be the case that the average Iraqi desires stability more than anything. Desire alone is not enough for there to viably exist such institutions, though. Only real stability provides the foundation for order. If law, police, and courts are the institutions for maintaining order, and no order exists in parts of Iraq, then in those parts there cannot exist law, police, or courts. Furthermore, if terrorism and insurgency prevents that order from existing, then terrorism and insurgency must be first rooted out for there to exist law, police, and courts. As long as terrorism and insurgency continues in areas of Iraq, no law, no police force, and no court will succeed in those areas. Perito's premise is, therefore, backward in that it suggest there must be order for there to exist stability when there must first exist stability for there to be order.