Until the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 Moscow was Iraq’s biggest supporter. Those ties were developed under the Bakr government and the Soviet Union in the late-1960s. Oles and Bettie Smolanky’s The USSR And Iraq, The Soviet Quest For Influence studies this relationship from the 1950s to the end of the Iran-Iraq War. They refute the common Cold War belief that the Soviets created clientist states like Iraq. Instead the two had common interests that created an alliance between them. The Smolankys argue that Baghdad was able to follow its own national interests without threatening that relationship.
During the Cold War conventional wisdom in the West was that the USSR set up patron-client relationships around the world with states like Iraq. The book wanted to analyze whether the Soviets were able to build influence in Baghdad by studying several case studies including the nationalization of Iraq’s oil, dealing with the Kurds and the Iraqi Communist Party, Iraq-Persian Gulf relations and the Iran-Iraq War. They found that didn’t happen.
Iraq and the USSR seemed like natural allies because they were both opposed to imperialism and the West. The case studies showed that was about all they had in common.
Moscow backed the Bakr government’s successful effort to nationalize the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) which was set up by the British and other Western interests when Iraq was formed in 1920. The USSR provided money and know how that allowed Baghdad to develop its own oil fields and then eventually take over the IPC. The Soviets believed this was a blow to the West during the Cold War. The corporations was seen as a legacy of British colonialism in Iraq and determined the future of the country which was oil dependent. This helped prove the author’s thesis that Iraq and the USSR had common interests that allowed them to work together.
After that the two were more often than not on opposite sides. The Soviets for example supported Kurdish autonomy. They pushed for the Iraqi Communist Party to form a coalition government with the ruling Baath Party. They were against the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 and pushed for a resolution of the conflict. The Bakr and Hussein governments were against all of these. For instance Baghdad offered Kurdish rights and a role in the regime for both the Kurds and the Communists in the 1970s but never gave them any power. After the regime’s first major goal was achieved the nationalization of the IPC it moved against both of them. It put down the Kurdish revolt with a deal with Iran and drove the Communists underground using repression. The Soviets voiced objections to both but was unwilling to jeopardize its alliance with Iraq to cut relations. Having access to a country that was a leader in the Arab world and in the Persian Gulf with its oil wealth was far more important to Moscow than even their fellow communists. The Smolanskys found the same pattern with the Iran-Iraq War.
The USSR And Iraq is a very in depth look into the Soviet-Iraq relationship. Sometimes it goes into too many details. For instance it often starts with a case study, states what the position of Baghdad and Moscow were and then continues for pages more because it wants to be thorough and finish the time period covered in the book. On the other hand, its conclusion is very interesting because the authors argue that Iraq would’ve been anti-imperialist and anti-Western given its history with England even if the Soviets hadn’t offered it millions in military and economic aid. It questions whether the investment was worthwhile especially since the two often disagreed on most issues. The two needed each other in the end despite that which is what kept them together after the fall of the USSR and up to the overthrow of Saddam in 2003.
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