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State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity
Marc Lynch
1999
8. Abandoning Iraq?
Jordan’s behavior toward Iraq after the Gulf War presents an important challenge to constructivism. Between 1991 and 1995 Jordan shifted from Iraq’s closest ally to one of its most outspoken critics. For the rationalist, this reversal poses little obvious challenge. As power relations, threats, and incentives shift, states change alliances. After the destruction of Iraqi power, Jordan had little choice but to rebuild its relations with the United States and Israel. Because ties with Iraq proved to be an obstacle to this, Jordan made a rational decision to change sides. For the constructivist, on the other hand, the reversal poses serious challenges. What happened to the constitutive norms and shared identity that led Jordan to side with Iraq in 1990–91? Did popular opinion cease to inform Jordanian behavior? Was a new conception of interests articulated?
In this chapter, I argue that the changes in Jordan’s policy toward Iraq followed from the comprehensive redefinition of state identity and interests in the peace process. Peace involved an attempt to redefine Jordan’s identity and interests, linking Jordanian policy to a transformation of regional institutions and order. Abandoning the Iraqi regime, which had been demonized by the United States and banished from the Arab order, became necessary in order to manifest this new state identity. Iraq had not become more threatening, nor had its material assets become less valuable. In terms of Jordan’s attempt to redefine its international identity, however, Iraqi friendship became a burden rather than an asset. This shift set regime policy in direct opposition to the Arabist consensus secured during the Gulf crisis. Regime and opposition alike recognized that abandoning Iraq signaled a new state identity. The opposition’s commitment to Iraq symbolized its mandate to preserve Jordan’s Arab identity. The course of events was also deeply shaped by changes in public sphere structure. Rationalist approaches accurately describe Jordanian behavior in this period precisely because the state exerted considerable repressive power in order to insulate itself from the domestic public sphere and thereby pursue interests defined in terms of the international system. The attempt to exogenize interests generated considerable opposition: the new frame hostile to Iraq and the refusal to discuss it in the public sphere led to opposition and instability.
Mending Fences, 1991–1994
In the early 1990s, the Jordanian public sphere enjoyed efficacy, normative primacy, and a relative freedom unique in its history. The Arabist public sphere, fragmented by the Gulf war, had yet to be reformulated. Beyond the bitter resentments between states on the opposite sides of the war, the crisis affected the very existence of the Arabist order as a realm of justification. Jordan’s calls for the Arab order to move beyond the ruptures caused by the war received little response. The international public sphere remained hostile because of Jordanian behavior in the Gulf War, although Jordanian participation in the Madrid peace process did begin to rehabilitate Jordan’s image. Finally, the Gulf War produced an unprecedented consensus on Jordanian policy within the Jordanian public sphere which was widely credited with having influenced state behavior, which built confidence in the efficacy of public deliberation. Because Palestinians and Jordanians had agreed on Gulf War policy, it served as an important frame promoting national unity. Changes in public sphere structure, as the Jordanian public sphere opened while the international and Arab public spheres closed, shape Jordanian behavior in this period.
Government and opposition alike recognized the heavy economic and political price Jordan had paid for its Gulf War positions, but they disagreed over the appropriate response. The tension between the desire of state policymakers to restore Jordan’s position with its traditional Western and Gulf allies and the strong normative commitment to Iraq became more important as Jordan moved to reestablish a place in the American camp. The contradiction manifested itself in the diametrically opposed public stances demanded by the Jordanian and the international public sphere. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait demanded a full Jordanian apology, a confession that its support of Iraq had been politically and even morally wrong. On the other hand, the regime’s domestic legitimacy rested in no small part upon its Gulf War policies. The crisis had unified the population around a shared identity, no small achievement for Jordan’s traditionally fragmented political society. The regime made much of the hardships Jordan had suffered for its principles, and sought to frame other policies from within this consensus. Jordanian policy rested upon a normative consensus that could not be lightly reversed: Jordan, unlike most other Arab states, had done the right thing during the Gulf crisis. The newly secured Jordanian identity rested upon this defining moment of unity and shared sacrifice. This consensus was reinforced in the press and in the discourse of almost every political party. Maintaining the legitimacy achieved in the Gulf crisis meant maintaining relative alignment between public opinion and foreign policy toward Iraq. Iraq policy therefore served as a leading indicator of Jordan’s identity in international, Arab, and domestic public spheres. Maintaining support for Iraq signaled an Arabist identity, while reducing support for Iraq signaled motion toward a “Peace Camp” identity.
Between 1991 and 1995, the Jordanian government tried to reconcile this normative consensus with Western and Gulf demands. Throughout, Jordanian policy adhered to a set of consistently articulated principles: a commitment to maintaining the unity and integrity of the Iraqi state; nonintervention in Iraqi affairs; and humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people. Each of these norms combined interest and principle. Concern for Iraqi unity expressed a real normative commitment to sovereignty, but it also protected Jordan: “We worry about the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq because we shudder to think about the consequences of its dismemberment and the kind of black hole this would produce.” 1 All states neighboring Iraq shared this general fear of the chaos that might follow an Iraqi collapse, as well as the increased Iranian power in the Gulf which would ensue. 2 Even after the turn against Iraq, King Hussein continued to emphasize Jordan’s interest in Iraqi unity and territorial integrity. 3 Nonintervention in Iraqi affairs also followed a longstanding Jordanian norm, based on its struggles with the intervention of other Arab states in its internal affairs. Humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people was reinforced by the large numbers of impoverished Iraqi refugees and visitors in Amman, as well as comprehensive media coverage of the deterioration of Iraqi living standards. Norms and interest reinforced each other: security fears from an Iraqi collapse; avoiding a precedent of intervention; material economic interests. This should not obscure that these interests were articulated within a normative frame, which linked Jordanian and Iraqi identity, emphasized shared suffering, and increasingly focused on the injustice of seemingly endless international sanctions. This normative consensus, communicatively secured in the Jordanian public sphere, set the boundaries for Jordanian maneuver in the state’s efforts to win back Western and Gulf support.
The normative dimension constituted the power and meaning of the interpretive frame justifying support for Iraq. Three issues in particular stand out. First, many Jordanians saw the human misery in Iraq caused by the sanctions as a moral issue. Outraged by the starvation, disease, and poverty caused by the American sanctions, Jordanians set aside personal economic concerns in solidarity with the Iraqi people. Even when Iraq took actions directly harming Jordan, such as its April 1993 declaration that 25 Iraqi Dinar notes would no longer be honored, wiping out $100 million of Iraqi currency held in Jordan, the sanctions frame directed popular anger toward the West and not toward Iraq. 4 Growing disenchantment with Saddam Hussein did not necessarily translate into a diminished identification with the suffering of the Iraqi people or the disappearance of support for Iraq as a normative focus for Arabist and Jordanian identity. The importance of the moral dimension, the outrage at the injustice of Iraqi suffering, should not be minimized; nor should the identification of Jordanians with the suffering Iraqis. Second, most Jordanians saw a double standard in this unprecedented sanctions regime. The fevered efforts to enforce these international resolutions, while dozens of United Nations resolutions related to Israel and the Palestinians remained unenforced, enhanced the “injustice” frame. Third, the blockade of the port of Aqaba struck most Jordanians as an unjustifiable infringement of Jordan’s sovereignty, which unfairly singled Jordan out for punishment. Finally, the economic problems Jordan experienced due to the sanctions and the influx of refugees allowed the articulation of a frame linking Iraqi and Jordanian suffering.
Jordan generally complied with the sanctions despite popular opposition and severe costs to its own economy, estimated at $3 billion by the summer of 1998. 5 While the government determined that it could not afford to further antagonize the Americans, its compliance is explained more by compulsion than by persuasion of the normative correctness of the sanctions. 6 The sanctions never enjoyed legitimacy among the Jordanian public. American maneuverings to frustrate the easing the sanctions provided an endless source of outrage for Jordanian writers. In its attempt to balance these demands, the government adhered to the letter of UN resolutions and resisted unilateral American demands. 7 Nevertheless, in June 1993, the Congressional General Accounting Office released a report accusing Jordan of widespread violations of the sanctions, shortly before King Hussein was scheduled to meet President Clinton; the report prevented Clinton from approving the release of sequestered funds for Jordan. 8
King Hussein expressed frustration at the application of sanctions to Jordan, calling the criteria for certification of compliance “vague” and noting that other neighboring countries faced far less rigid monitoring regimes. Jordanians regarded the intrusive inspection regime at the Port of Aqaba as a particular insult to Jordanian sovereignty. While resentful that their government was compelled to honor a blockade they considered unjust, Jordanians were even more outraged that Jordan was singled out as a violator of sanctions. The Aqaba inspections were seen more as punitive toward Jordan than as an instrument to increase the effectiveness of sanctions. Hussein maintained that “the blockade of Aqaba... from the beginning was meant to damage Jordan’s credibility.” 9 Writers raged that Jordan should not engage in peace talks as long as the Jordanian port remained blockaded. Aqaba became framed as “a matter of sovereignty” distinct from the question of sanctions compliance. 10
The regime made a number of attempts to distance itself from the Iraqi regime and find a place within the international consensus without departing from these norms. In November 1992, King Hussein expressed frustration with Saddam and suggested that the time had come for Iraqis to achieve democracy. 11 While expressing dismay at developments in Iraq, he did not call for the overthrow of the Iraqi regime. In early 1993 he suggested that Saddam Hussein’s “relentless grip on power” had become a burden on the Iraqi people and hinted that he personally would step down if he ever became such a burden. The distinction increasingly drawn between the Iraqi regime and the Iraqi people lay the foundations for justifying a future turn against Saddam. These moves foundered upon the reticence of the Gulf states, which did not respond to Jordanian overtures, and the ability of Saddam Hussein’s regime to stay in power. Shortly after his November 1992 remarks, Hussein lashed out in frustration at the Kuwaitis and Saudis to remarkably strong public applause, which only reinforced the limited societal interest in Gulf reconciliation compared to societal concern with Iraqi suffering. 12 As long as Jordanian policy remained within the bounds of its normative consensus, it could not satisfy its Arab and international critics.
As Brand (1994) would suggest, state policymakers placed far more emphasis on the need for Gulf financial support and American approval than did most of the public. The public consensus rejected sacrificing Iraq as the price for Gulf reconciliation. As a leading Jordanian columnist put it, “the benefits which might come to Jordan from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait do not justify desecrating our country’s policies in the war.” 13 Kuwait and Saudi Arabia demanded a clear and unequivocal Jordanian admission that it had been wrong before full relations could be restored. Jordanian political society was intensely proud of Jordan’s stance in the Gulf crisis and fiercely opposed any apology. At stake was not material interest but a normative stance. The “magic words” of apology would have likely brought a direct monetary reward. For the Jordanian public, however, such an apology meant a repudiation of precisely the normative consensus that had constituted the new political system. Until the upheaval brought on by the Jordan-Israeli peace treaty, the Jordanian public sphere enjoyed sufficient efficacy to prevent the government from making these symbolic concessions in the international public sphere, even had it wanted to. Officials found themselves on the defensive, forced to reassure the public that Jordanian-Iraqi relations remained strong. 14 The public valued Jordanian norms and its pride in Jordanian honor and courage more than it valued the potential budget subsidies from the Gulf states, to the consternation of those state officials who preferred to pursue material gain over normative values.
The divergence between the public consensus and the international orientations of state policymakers became sharper in 1994. As the peace process advanced toward a Jordanian-Israeli treaty, all other political activity, including relations with Iraq, came to be recast within that frame. Societal actors framed Iraq as the Arabist alternative to Israel and demanded support for Iraq as a signal that the peace process would not cost Jordan its Arab identity. Policymakers resented the efficacy of public opinion in binding its options on Iraq as much as they were infuriated by popular resistance to the movements to peace with Israel. This anger manifested itself in state complaints about the abuse of “responsible” press freedoms. Prime Minister Majali repeatedly “blamed the Jordanian media for continued strains in relations between the Kingdom and the Gulf states,” noting that every time relations warmed, an article in the Jordanian press would set off a new crisis. 15 Officials questioned whether “it is a coincidence that just as Jordan tries to improve its relations with a Gulf country, one of our papers publishes a story offensive to it?” 16 After the peace treaty, this criticism escalated into repression, as editors began to be charged with the crime of “insulting a friendly head of state” for publishing articles critical of Gulf monarchies. 17 The strong public reaction to moves related to Iraq and the Gulf clearly revealed the existence of competing conceptions of Jordanian interests. As the peace process sharply polarized Jordanian political society, Iraq policy was invoked in both domestic and foreign policy framing. In addition to the choice between Arab identity and the “Peace Camp,” Iraq policy signaled a choice between democracy, defined in terms of the government acting on publicly expressed societal preferences, and authoritarianism, defined in terms of the government acting against these societal preferences. By 1994, a semi-permanent coalition of Arab nationalists, leftists, Islamists, and “old guard” Jordanian nationalists had formed in opposition to Jordan’s move to peace and to the attendant crackdown on public freedoms. Where the Gulf crisis forged a powerful state-society consensus, the peace process generated public opposition to the state: “since independence I don’t remember a time when there was such complete divergence between regime policies and popular opinion.” 18 From 1990–1994, the regime and the opposition engaged within the bounds of the Gulf crisis consensus. After 1994, the consensus broke down, replaced by a broad opposition between societal and state interpretations of Jordanian interests, as manifested in policy toward Israel and Iraq.
The Reversal: 1995–1996
Realism offers a straightforward rationalist explanation of the Jordanian reversal: Jordan bandwagoned with the ascendant Israeli-American pole. Jordan was not balancing against an Iraqi threat or Iraqi power by moving closer to Israel; incremental shifts in Iraqi power were only marginally relevant for Jordanian policy. The growing conviction that the blockade on Iraq would never be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power facilitated the decision by reducing the expected benefits of the pro-Iraqi policy. More importantly, as the peace process developed, the payoffs of aligning with the Israeli-American coalition seemed to outweigh the dangers of the policy change. The strategic decision to align with Israel, based on a rational calculation of Jordanian interests in a changing regional and international environment, came first. Abandoning Iraq stood as the price of admission. The goals of Jordanian policy were widely understood in three terms: as a move to cement Jordan’s position with Israel and the United States and to secure a reconciliation with the Gulf states.
Jordanian policymakers clearly understood important private benefits for the Jordanian state in the new policy. Ties to the Iraqi economy, however lucrative, stood in sharp tension with conceptions of a Middle East market in which Jordan mediated between Israel and the Arab world, and developed a Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli economic zone. The government came to view economic and political ties to Iraq as a constraint and as a threat, rather than as a benefit. Security, in this new strategic vision, would be achieved through the United States and Israel, against threats posed by Iraq and Syria. Crucially, however, the government could not, and did not, publicly justify its policy in these terms. On the contrary, Jordanian officials framed the new policy in terms of Jordan’s concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people and the conviction that Saddam Hussein’s regime no longer served their interests. Jordanian discourse also highlighted Iraqi behavior which revealed a lack of concern for Jordanian interests. The reason for this disjuncture between private interest and public discourse lies in the public sphere. Securing Jordan’s role in a new regional order required a reformulation of state identity, which meant persuading the Jordanian public with convincing arguments. Official discourse therefore attempted to persuade Jordanians that the Iraqi regime no longer merited Jordanian or Arab support, and that the new policy in fact best served the real interests of the Iraqi people. Much of the Jordanian public rejected these arguments, arguing that Jordan’s interests were better served by continued ties with Iraq and a commitment to Arab identity.
The turn against Iraq formed a major part of Jordan’s bid to redefine its identity in the international public sphere. The rearticulation of Jordan’s identity and interests proved far more successful there than in the Jordanian public sphere, where it remained highly controversial. Abandoning Iraq provided a costly signal of Jordan’s real commitment to the peace process and to its alignment with the United States; indeed, the public opposition to the new Iraq policy could be interpreted as increasing the impact of the Jordanian move in the international public sphere, since it demonstrated the regime’s commitment even in the face of high domestic costs (Fearon 1994). The success of these efforts can be seen in the appreciative analysis of The New Republic: “The King has well atoned for his sin [of supporting Saddam].” 19 By “atoning for his sin,” the King, and his Kingdom, could now presumably be allowed back into the company of the righteous, and fit once again within the American frame.
Unable to convince the Jordanian public of its new foreign policies in Israel and Iraq, the regime moved to drastically curtail the Jordanian public sphere. The years after the peace treaty witnessed a sharp decrease of state tolerance of public criticism. The more that international society celebrated Jordanian behavior, the more alienated the Jordanian public became. Hussein complained bitterly about this disjuncture in a heated address to the nation in November 1995. He questioned the value of a public sphere in which critical voices “undermine national unity and blow up everything of value, tarnishing every achievement of this country.” Denouncing the public sphere, he said: “I do not feel that there are any media in this country that identify with this country.” Blanket denunciations of the Jordanian press by the King, Prime Ministers, and Cabinet officials became a regular feature of Jordanian discourse after 1995. The repressive press laws of 1997 and 1998 demonstrated the regime’s determination to reclaim control of the public sphere.
The reversal of Jordanian policy crystallized around the acceptance of two Iraqi defectors on August 11, 1995. To that point Jordan had only tentatively distanced itself from the Iraqi regime. When Hussein welcomed the defectors into Jordan, allowing Saddam’s son-in-law Hussein Kamil to hold a dramatic press conference from the Royal Palace, he launched an aggressive campaign to reposition Jordan in the Western camp on the Iraqi issue. Speaking to the Israeli press on August 15, Hussein declared that “the time is now for change in Iraq,” a claim he would repeat often in the next few months. The use of the Royal Palace for Kamil’s press conference seemed to signal Jordanian support for a campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. 20
On August 23, 1995, Hussein delivered an extraordinary speech to the nation amounting to a manifesto of a new Jordanian policy hostile to the Iraqi regime: “a second White Book... rewriting the history of Jordanian-Iraqi relations... [and] banishing all the norms of Jordanian discourse.” 21 After reviewing Jordanian-Iraqi ties over the years, Hussein slammed the Iraqi leadership for repeatedly ignoring his advice and breaking explicit promises by invading Kuwait. He complained that Iraq had consistently disregarded Jordanian interests, during the Gulf war and after, especially by launching SCUD missiles through Jordanian airspace and exposing Jordan to the danger of Israeli retaliation. The next day, a senior Jordanian official confirmed that “the break with Baghdad is now sealed, totally and brutally.” 22 An effusion of cables of support followed, a Jordanian political tradition reserved for unpopular policy decisions. After the reversal, the King regularly attacked Iraqi behavior as deliberately harmful to Jordanian interests, in a concerted effort to disassociate Jordanian and Iraqi identity and interests and to undercut the positive identification between the two states. While always emphasizing his deep concern for the suffering of the Iraqi people, Hussein argued that the interests of the Iraqi people were no longer served by their leadership.
The United States guaranteed Jordanian security against Iraqi retaliation for this breaking of relations. This display of American deterrence bore little relation to the behavior of Iraq, which publicly and privately assured Jordan that it had no intention of attacking in revenge. 23 Tariq Aziz, the senior Iraqi diplomat, insisted that “the claims of Iraqi threats to Jordan are an American invention.” Dependent on Jordan for food and medicine, and weakened by sanctions and the inspection regime, Iraq posed no real threat to Jordan. Constructing such an Iraqi threat helped to justify a closer United States-Israel-Jordan alignment, however. The Jordanian public expressed extreme skepticism, asserting that they felt no threat from Iraq and would not accept efforts at constructing such a threat. 24 The difficulty the regime faced in convincing public opinion of this threat has interesting implications for rationalist models of threat balancing; based on divergent conceptions of state identity and the social meaning of relations with Iraq, the government and the public expressed profoundly different perceptions of threat. In fact, the threat perceived by many Jordanians was that Jordan would get drawn in to an American plot to destabilize Iraq. In other words, Jordanians showed more concern that Jordan might threaten Iraq than that Iraq threatened Jordan!
The Americans pushed Jordan to go even farther, suggesting that Jordan cut economic ties with Iraq and become a base for operations aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Jordan rejected these suggestions, but still decisively moved into an anti-Iraqi position. 25 The Jordanian reversal sharply improved American-Jordanian relations, already strong in the wake of the Israel treaty. Clinton Administration officials argued that “King Hussein is demonstrating great courage as he takes a stalwart stand against the regime of Saddam Hussein... [he has] initiated a series of actions... that have decisively distanced Jordan from the Iraqi dictator.” 26 Based on Jordan’s new policies, Congress approved long-withheld arms sales (including F-16 fighter planes), and military and intelligence cooperation escalated dramatically. 27 Commentators in the international press agreed that the turn against Iraq, along with Hussein’s embrace of a warm peace with Israel, had secured Jordan a more central role in American strategy. In 1997, Jordan became an American “major non-NATO ally,” the first Arab country to enjoy such status. American aid increased to $225 million a year, in recognition of Jordan’s importance as a dependable ally within America’s generally crumbling Middle East policy. The United States encouraged Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to restore relations with Jordan, albeit still with limited success. Jordan allowed U.S. warplanes to be based in southern Jordan in order to train Jordanian pilots, although the government denied that there would be a permanent U.S. presence or that the planes would be used to monitor southern Iraq. 28 In April 1996, Jordanian and American forces conducted well-publicized joint maneuvers, which the public found particularly distressing because they coincided with the Israeli assault on Lebanon.
The Jordanian government took numerous practical steps to back up its new discourse. Border controls with Iraq were tightened, along with stricter enforcement of residence visa regulations for the tens of thousands of Iraqis who had sought refuge in Amman. Jordanian customs agents seized several shipments of parts allegedly intended for missiles and chemical weapons and turned them over to UN inspectors. Trade with Iraq was slashed in half, to the consternation of Jordanian business sectors. The government also took measures to “reduce Iraqi influence,” including the expulsion of embassy staff and a campaign against pro-Iraq journalists.
Economic relations could not be severed as cleanly as political relations, however. Jordan’s economic relations with Iraq went beyond the trade networks that bound many societal actors to the Iraqi market. State actors hoped to reduce the centrality of the Iraqi market for the Jordanian economy, but could not easily live without the oil Iraq provided at half the world market price. In August 1995, a Jordanian official claimed that Jordan had many alternatives to Iraqi oil, and over the next few weeks both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia floated proposals to replace the Iraqi supply. The Jordanian Energy Minister then pointedly canceled a planned visit to Baghdad to extend the oil protocol. Iraq reportedly made a better offer, though, and the Gulf countries proved hesitant to follow through. By late September, despite American reservations, the oil deal was quietly signed. 29 Such gambits to replace Iraqi oil recurred regularly over the next few years, often around the time of the renegotiation of the Jordanian-Iraqi oil protocols. All failed, and Jordanian-Iraqi oil relations continued.
In November 1995, Hussein met with Iraqi opposition leaders in London, and offered Jordan as a base for political (but not military) activities. Several prominent Iraqi defectors took up residence in Amman, establishing political and information offices. 30 The Iraqi National Accord [al-Wifaq] set up a radio station broadcasting violent denunciations of Saddam Hussein into Iraq. While the government insisted that no armed activities would be permitted, most observers felt that a line had been crossed and that Jordan was now actively involved in the effort to topple Saddam Hussein. 31 Press reports indicated Jordanian involvement in a failed CIA sponsored coup attempt based in the Kurdish autonomous zones. On the other hand, press reports also regularly surfaced of Iraqi attempts to subvert Jordanian stability, with Iraq being accused for virtually every unsettling incident in the Kingdom.
In September 1995, Hussein called on the Iraqi people to unite, “restore democracy,” and end their suffering. In November 1995, a flurry of activity whirled around Hussein’s proposal, later disavowed, to turn Iraq into a federation of its Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurdish components with a weak central government. The proposal was interpreted in part as a bid for a Hashemite restoration, appealed to nobody in particular, and was dropped. Speculation about Jordanian ambitions in Iraq, whether through a Hashemite restoration or through a territorial partition of Iraq, circulated widely despite Jordanian denials. 32 In December 1995, Hussein noted that “I cannot see any ray of hope... because the [Iraqi] leadership will not enter into a dialogue which would help us lift the blockade.” King Hussein stepped up his attacks on Saddam after Kamil’s return to Baghdad and brutal murder in February 1996. Jordan remained within fairly clear limits, despite this heightened campaign: focusing its attacks on the Iraqi regime, justifying its opposition to Saddam Hussein on the basis of its concern for the Iraqi people, and opposing any outside intervention or partition of Iraq.
King Hussein tried to rally Arab leaders in support of an activist policy to bring about change in Iraq. These Jordanian initiatives soon foundered, however. Syria and Egypt, who both wanted Iraq to be constrained but not destroyed, issued a strong joint warning to Jordan against intervening in Iraqi affairs. Hostile media campaigns followed, reminiscent of Egyptian-Jordanian media wars over the Gulf War, until a “media ceasefire” in September 1995. 33 In February 1996, Mubarak secured a commitment from King Hussein to not intervene in Iraq. After a mini-summit convened by Egypt in May 1996, Jordan backed farther away from its calls for change in Iraq, as the Arab states looked to close ranks in the face of Israeli behavior. 34 An Arab consensus gradually emerged welcoming Jordan’s denunciation of the Iraqi regime but rejecting any active efforts to bring down Saddam Hussein. Egypt seemed most worried that King Hussein’s increasingly prominent role in American and Israeli strategy could come at the expense of Egyptian influence. This concern predated the Iraq reversal: Mubarak had brought together Syria and Saudi Arabia, pointedly excluding Hussein, as early as January 1995 in Alexandria to demonstrate Egyptian displeasure with the Western rehabilitation of Jordan. Syria feared the disruptive effects of upheaval in Iraq and worried about the emergence of a pro-American, anti-Syrian regime in Baghdad. Furthermore, Syria saw the American-Jordan embrace as a move to increase pressure in the Israeli-Syrian peace talks; relations between Syria and Jordan were often extremely tense in this period. Only in the Cairo Summit (June 1996) did Asad and King Hussein meet and calm the tensions, putting a temporary end to hostile media campaigns and Jordanian accusations of Syrian subversive activities in Jordan. The Syrian-Iraqi decision to open borders in the summer of 1997 alarmed Jordan, which feared for both economic and political interests in such a reconciliation.
The Gulf states still proved unresponsive to the Jordanian gambit. Kuwait proved intransigent in its refusal to normalize relations with Jordan, sparking fierce resentment among Jordanians who saw the sacrifice of ties with Iraq going in vain. 35 Each time relations seemed to improve, some rift would reappear, usually instigated by Kuwaiti politicians or media figures whose hostility to “Iraqi allies” in the war was as normatively central to postwar Kuwaiti policy as Jordanian sympathy for Iraq was normatively central to Jordan. In September 1995, attempts at rapprochement were interrupted by sharp Kuwaiti criticism. Occasional signs of warming relations, such as the release of Jordanian prisoners or mid-level official visits, failed to bring about a general normalization between the two states. In February 1996, when Kabariti became Prime Minister, there seemed to be some progress, but it quickly faded; King Hussein announced confidently that Jordanian-Kuwaiti normalization had begun and would not stop. By June 1996, the Jordanian press was lambasting Kabariti for his embarrassingly futile efforts to win over the Kuwaitis. 36 A poll published in Kuwait’s al-Watan in September 1995 found that Kuwaitis opposed normal relations with Jordan by a 51%-32% margin. 37 The Kuwaiti press and Parliament regularly aired harsh criticisms of Jordan that hindered the willingness of some decisionmakers to even consider reconciliation.
The emergence of an Arab consensus against external interference in Iraqi internal affairs reined in Jordanian activity. Jordan was forced to defend itself in the Arab public sphere, and ultimately adjusted its positions and its behavior in order to fit into the Arab consensus. Because of its interest in rehabilitation in the Arabist public sphere in order to restore relations with the Gulf, and because of its consistently expressed interest in restoring Arab dialogue, Jordan could not ignore the demands of Arabist argumentation. Jordan could neither ignore nor carry the Arab debates over its turn against Iraq. This is ironic, because in many ways the Jordanian reversal put it in line with rather than outside the Arab consensus. The inability of Jordanian discourse to establish its own authoritative interpretation was partly due to the counter-interpretations of others, but was also caused by its own inconsistencies. Insisting that Jordan’s policy had not fundamentally changed—both to placate domestic critics and to reinterpret Jordan’s past behavior—undermined the new frame. 38
The primary source of the redefinition of Jordanian identity and interests was the international, especially American and Israeli, public sphere. Jordan engaged with the Arabist public sphere, and attempted to place its new position within the Arabist consensus, but its policy emerged from the developing peace camp identity. Its moderation of its hostility toward Iraq coincided with the collapse of the peace process and its vision of transformed regional order and the revival of inter-Arab cooperation. After the election of Netanyahu and the crisis of the peace process, an Arab order began to reemerge. In June 1996, the first Arab summit since the Gulf Crisis convened in Cairo to discuss the implications of the change in Israeli leadership. Iraq was not invited to the summit, indicating its continuing isolation from the Arab order, but Jordan participated enthusiastically. In the summer of 1997, Syrian–Iraqi rapprochement indicated the possibility of the reincorporation of Iraq into an Egyptian-Syrian-Gulf regional order; this did not immediately happen, but speculation in the Arab media continued. During the November 1997 showdown between the United States and Iraq over the inspection of weapons production sites, no Arab state expressed willingness to join American military activity. This wholesale refusal signaled the death of Arab support for a coalition against Iraq, despite continuing hostility toward and fear of Saddam’s regime. The coincidence of the Iraq crisis and the general Arab boycott of the Doha MENA economic conference with Israel demonstrated the linkage between the two arenas.
As the Arab order began to reappear, Jordan tentatively renewed contacts with the Iraqi leadership, albeit at lower levels of intimacy. Iraq’s acceptance of UN Resolution 986 (“Oil for Food”) made it seem less likely that Saddam’s fall was nigh, as Hussein had gambled. The recognition of shared interests demanded functional cooperation, oddly reminiscent of Jordanian-Israeli relations in the past, without a return to any articulation of shared identity. Jordan’s relations with Israel and close ties to the United States now represented the boundaries on its action. King Hussein attempted to use this position to mediate between Iraq and the United States, meeting with President Clinton and calling for direct American-Iraqi dialogue. In the November 1997 and the January 1998 crises, Hussein actively worked for a diplomatic solution. Jordanian officials emphasized that King Hussein was not a mediator between the two sides, since “we have no interest in it, and we have our own differences with Iraq.” 39 King Hussein met with a number of high-level Iraqi officials and exchanged several letters with Saddam Hussein in this period. Even as Jordan worked to prevent the renewal of military hostilities and to bring about such a dialogue, however, it continued to work against Jordanian-Iraqi positive identification, banning pro-Iraqi rallies, arresting pro-Iraqi activists, and maintaining its discourse of distrust for the Iraqi regime. King Hussein continued to refer to Iraqi disregard for Jordanian interests, and continued to justify Jordanian behavior in terms of concern for the Iraqi people, not for the Iraqi regime.
Jordanian Public Sphere
The Jordanian public sphere seized on the reversal as not simply a decision with questionable implications for state interests but as one with profound implications for state identity. As a prominent Islamist writer noted, “this is a retreat from all declared Jordanian political norms... to the extent that even discussing these norms is seen as provocative!” 40 The opposition brought their objections into the public sphere and forced the government to articulate and defend its new policies: “The Jordanian public must raise their voices and repeat what they say in their private conversations.... The government knows that as long as the opposition continues to whisper, then the field is open for it alone to make the necessary changes by reversing the nation’s constant principles, beliefs, and cultural identity.” 41 Objections were framed in terms of generalizable Jordanian interests. By framing the reversal as the inevitable consequence of the peace treaty, the opposition successfully linked the two issues in the political arena. The opposition coalition regularly called for an end to the sanctions on Iraq and denounced policies hostile to Iraq almost as frequently as it denounced normalization with Israel. In this frame, Iraq stood as the leading symbol of the Arab identity abandoned by the regime in its pursuit of cooperation with Israel.
The new policy caused a split within the ruling elite, much of which had built personal, political and business ties to Iraq during the long years of close alliance. 42 Hussein’s appointment of Kabariti’s “White Revolution” government in February 1996 seems to have been a pointed step toward the removal of the “old guard,” viewed as too closely tied to Iraq and too closed-minded with regard to relations with Israel. Kabariti, the architect of the Iraq reversal as Foreign Minister, was seen as hostile to the Iraqi regime, close to King Hussein, and well-placed to execute Hussein’s vision of Jordanian interests. Kabariti’s appointment was interpreted as a major departure in Jordanian politics, intimately bound to the new foreign policy and to the domestic stalemate in the struggle over foreign policy. The spokesman of the Islamic Action Front made identity his primary concern after the dismissal of Sharif Zayd’s government: “We want a government that understands the identity of the umma [nation] and preserves this identity.” 43 Kabariti’s appointment, by contrast, signaled a concerted struggle for a changed conception of Jordan’s identity and interests. The Parliamentary confidence debate and press discussion of the new Prime Minister focused debate on Jordan’s Arab identity.
The extent of elite dissatisfaction shows the degree to which the reinterpretation of Jordanian interests came from the very top levels alone and the regime’s failure to persuade the public of its strategic vision. Jordanian policymakers, increasingly oriented to the international system and hostile to the dominant trends expressed in the Jordanian public sphere, derived their conceptions of Jordan’s interests from the international sphere. By 1997, especially after Abd al-Salam al-Majali replaced Kabariti, Jordanians complained that the government seemed intent on rejecting anything the public demanded, whether in foreign or domestic policy. The regime had come to view the Jordanian public sphere as a hostile entity, to be engaged in strategic battle, rather than as a partner in deliberation. The desire to forge closer ties with the United States and Israel took priority over the interest in nurturing a Jordanian consensus. The Jordanian public sphere continued to serve as a primary source of norms, identity, and interests for most Jordanians, however. The conflict over foreign policy therefore reflected a deeper struggle over the place of the public sphere and over Jordan’s identity.
Opposition to the reversal considered both interests and identity. First, commentators asked what Jordanian interest was served by fomenting instability in Iraq, especially since the Jordanian government had often publicly asserted a Jordanian interest in maintaining Iraqi unity and territorial integrity. Second, the opposition cast the reversal in terms of Jordan’s Arab identity, claiming that the new policy replaced Iraq with Israel and foolishly severed Jordan from its true Arab identity. The opposition reiterated the Gulf Crisis frame which defined Arab identity in terms of Iraq. Third, the opposition pointed to potential economic losses from any fallout with Iraq. Finally, the opposition asked for evidence of any positive benefits from the decision, pointing specifically to Kuwaiti and Saudi behavior as indicative.
The resistance to the reversal on Iraq encompassed virtually all sectors of public opinion, bridging most political differences: “while every salon has a different dangerous scenario, all agree that Jordan faces serious danger.” 44 By positing the reversal as the logical and inevitable consequence of the peace treaty, the opposition expanded its coalition and further embedded its interpretive frame. The weekly press served as the most important channel for the expression of opinion, demanding explanations of official policy and expressing normative outrage over every deviation from the popular consensus in support of Iraq.
Civil society organizations played an important role in expressing public opinion. The Professional Associations, cultural associations, women’s organizations and political parties were outspoken in their condemnation of state policy toward Iraq. Even the normally apolitical Chamber of Commerce joined in the criticism. The coalition of opposition political parties released regular statements challenging official policies and questioning their justifications, while affirming that the Jordanian public continued to adhere to its normative commitment to Iraq. In June 1996 a “Popular Jordanian Delegation” toured Iraq to express Jordanian solidarity. The Delegation, which included over seventy leading political figures from these civil society institutions, declared that it “represented most sectors of society and expressed the position of the majority of the Jordanian people.” 45 Explicitly claiming that official Jordanian positions were not those of the Jordanian people, the Delegation made a powerful bid to contest state primacy in the articulation of state identity and interests. In the summer of 1998, a broad coalition of opposition forces made a central plank of their draft national charter an appeal to redirect Jordanian foreign policy away from the United States and Israel and back toward Iraq and the Arab order. 46
Parliament, with a pro-government majority, was unable to check government decisions. It did provide a platform for heated debate, however, which forced the government to clearly articulate and defend its policies. In August 1995, Prime Minister Zaid bin Shakir explained government policy to a contentious Parliament; public sphere discussion of this session clearly indicated his failure to convince many Jordanians with his arguments. During Kabariti’s confidence vote, Iraq policy occupied a central position in the debate. 47 Liberal MP Taher al-Masri warned passionately against cutting Jordan off from its Arab community. According to Masri, adhering to Jordanian norms of nonintervention and support for Iraqi unity served Jordanian security and stability: “any call to change Jordan’s strategic and economic ties from Arab to Middle Eastern threatens to isolate Jordan from its Arab identity and community.” 48 Islamist MP Bisam al-Amoush responded forcefully to Kabariti’s definition of Jordanian interests, asserting that “we stand against this... and we represent the pulse of the Jordanian street, which rejects these developments toward Iraq.” In an unprecedented joint statement by 53 deputies during the confidence debate over a new Prime Minister in October 1998, a Parliamentary majority demanded that the government step back from its relations with Israel and restore its relations with Iraq. Shortly thereafter, 46 MPs issued a resolution demanding specifically that Jordan end the sanctions against Iraq and work to restore Jordan’s Arab relations. Such exchanges forced the government to publicly articulate and defend its conceptions of Jordan’s foreign policy interests, even if they could not compel the government to alter its policies.
From the political economy perspective, the domestic conflict might be interpreted in terms of a contradiction between the trade interests of Jordanian businessmen in Iraq against the budget-subsidy—seeking state (Brand 1994). The behavior of the state could plausibly be interpreted as rent-seeking behavior, with state actors preferring Gulf and American subsidies to the Iraqi market. Economic sectors with interests in the Iraqi market naturally cared more for maintaining the Iraqi market than about the Gulf. There is substantial evidence of such a conflicting understanding of economic interests. Jordanian businessmen feared that the anti-Iraq policy would cost them the privileged position in a reopened Iraqi market for which they had so patiently waited. As noted above, however, the Jordanian state also had considerable economic interests in relations with Iraq, notably the access to Iraqi oil. This complicates any direct inference of state preferences. The state budget could not easily live without the oil Iraq provided at half the world market price. While Jordanian officials claimed that Jordan had many alternatives to Iraqi oil, and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia floated proposals to replace the Iraqi supply, none materialized and Jordan maintained its oil deal with Iraq. 49
The sanctions had a mixed impact on the Jordanian economy. On the one hand, the sanctions cost Jordan some 25 percent of its foreign markets in 1991 alone. 50 Despite the problems caused by the war and the mass return of expatriates, however, the Jordanian economy in many ways boomed in the early 1990s. The returnees placed great strain on housing and services, but at the same time brought substantial capital and skills with them. Their demand for housing set off a boom in construction which transformed Amman. Furthermore, the sanctions distorted the economy, especially among those sectors geared toward the Iraqi market, by the artificial monopoly access to Iraq created by the sanctions. A report prepared by the Amman Chamber of Commerce in January 1996 documented the development of Iraq as a valuable trading partner, even under the weight of the sanctions. According to this report, in the first eight months of 1995 no less than 50 percent of Jordanian manufactured exports went to the Iraqi market. 51 Despite the sanctions, Iraq remained Jordan’s largest trading partner into 1997 despite official slashing of trade protocols over Iraqi nonpayment of debt. 52
While trade created profits for some businesses, state decisionmakers had reservations about whether it constituted a viable foundation for Jordan’s political economy. The conflict over the meaning of Jordanian-Iraqi relations extended to a reinterpretation of the value of Jordanian-Iraqi economic relations. Businessmen, who amassed considerable profits from trade with Iraq even under sanctions, had a rather different perspective than state policymakers, who expressed increasing doubts about the merits of the Iraqi market. Even in the 1980s, trade with Iraq depended on Jordan’s provision of export credits, on which Iraq had amassed a billion dollar debt (Brand 1994: 223–25). While businesses prospered, the state was losing money, actively subsidizing the private sector profits. While this provides a material basis for the state-society differences over Jordanian interests, this should not be taken too far. The state also profited from the Iraqi connection through discounted Iraqi oil, bartered at prices less than half of the world market price. Therefore, a direct inference that Jordanian economic interests as interpreted by the state drove the abandonment of Iraq is difficult to sustain.
The economic dimension of the relationship with Iraq involved political and normative framing. The Jordanian-Iraqi trade relationship was both an expression of and a force in creating the shared identity of the two states: “the organic ties have formed this class into Iraqi allies who oppose any move to reorient the Jordanian economy,” regardless of potential profits elsewhere. 53 Writers heaped scorn on the idea that “our brotherly relations with Iraq are based on trade or oil deals and that they will end if the trade or oil stops.” 54 For these Jordanians, a common identity bound Iraq and Jordan together, rather than self-interest. In other words, economic interests took on political meaning through the process of interpretation within a master frame of shared identity.
As the struggle over state identity escalated in 1995, economic interests in Iraq took on new meaning, as the regime came to interpret economic ties to Iraq as a threat and a constraint rather than as a benefit. The search for new markets to replace the Iraqi market reflected the new identity frame, which identified Jordan’s interests in building an economy oriented toward Israel and Palestine. This conception of Jordan’s economic interests followed from the new positions on identity, not from overwhelming economic analysis or evidence. Ties to the Iraqi economy stood in sharp tension with the visions of an emergent Middle East market in which Jordan mediated between Israel and the Arab states and developed Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli integration. The conflict over Jordan’s economic future reflected the political struggle over Jordanian identity: Arab or Middle Eastern? Iraq or Israel?
Jordanian policymakers faced a strategic choice about the future of the Jordanian political economy, crudely summarized as a choice between facing east or facing west. The tight Jordanian-Iraqi interconnections bound the Jordanian economy to certain kinds of production and left it dependent on a single market. With the peace treaty, Jordanian planners—notably Prince Hassan—envisioned a Jordan at the center of a rapidly developing Middle Eastern regional market. “[For these] ambitions of becoming a center of regional economic activities.... Jordanian relations with Saddam Hussein are a major obstacle.” 55 It is highly suggestive that Jordan’s break with Iraq came two months before the Amman Economic Summit, heralded in Jordanian official discourse as the foundation of the Middle East market. In other words, the break with Iraq had an economic dimension, but as mediated through identity.
In August 1996, Jordan’s south erupted in riots reminiscent of 1989, sparked by the government’s IMF-mandated decision to remove bread subsidies. While the army controlled the riots and restored stability, the events struck deep into the political and social system. King Hussein blamed Iraqi agents for igniting the conflict, to the extreme skepticism of virtually all observers and participants. 56 Others classified the riots as a typical reaction to IMF demands. A more convincing explanation lay in the combination of escalating economic hardship, exacerbated by the closing of the Iraqi market, and the increasing repression of the public sphere. The level of political frustration over the peace treaty with Israel, the turn against Iraq, the impotence of Parliament and the harassment of press and civil society, was evident to everyone. Faced with decreasing opportunities for both economic survival and political expression, Jordanians took to the streets. It is intriguing that the government chose to frame the unrest in terms of Iraq, in order to discredit the protesters as well as to further drive a wedge between Jordan and Iraq. Iraq denied involvement, accusing Jordan of “trying to blame Iraq for its internal problems,” and leaders of the protests framed their demands almost entirely in terms of domestic policy.
The relationship between the Jordanian government’s commitment to new regional structures and its policies toward Iraq is demonstrated by the impact of the deterioration of the peace process on Jordan’s Iraq policy. As the international consensus on the sanctions regime frayed, and the United States and Iraq engaged in a series of tense military showdowns, Jordan began to renew its calls for an end to the sanctions and for an American-Iraqi dialogue. Relations between Jordan and Iraq remained tense, despite Jordan’s diplomatic efforts in this regard, as Jordanian officials sought to prevent a resurgence of positive identification between the two states. In December 1997, the Iraqi execution of four Jordanian students for smuggling aroused considerable furor in Jordan. The government gleefully exploited the crisis, attempting to whip up popular hostility to Iraq to muster popular support for its policy. Despite the claim by an Iraqi defector that the executions were in fact in retaliation for Jordanian involvement in a foiled coup attempt, public anger did indeed mount. Several weeks later, an Iraqi diplomat and three others were murdered in spectacular fashion, in what many observers interpreted as a sign that “internal Iraqi battles are being waged on the streets of Amman.” 57
In January 1998, the Iraqi government directly appealed to the Jordanian public by releasing all Jordanians in Iraqi prisons “because of its deep respect for the Jordanian people.” Rather than release the prisoners to a representative of the Jordanian government, the Iraqi government chose Layth Shubaylat, an outspoken critic of Jordanian foreign policy. While the official media could not ignore the release of prisoners, it downplayed Shubaylat’s role and tried to minimize the significance of the Iraqi action. 58
The difficulties of abandoning Iraq, and the importance of public sphere argumentation, can be seen in Jordanian policy during the U.S.-Iraqi crisis of February 1998. During this crisis, Jordan again tried to play a mediating role, warning against the use of military force and calling for a diplomatic solution. As in 1990, Jordan feared the consequences of a military confrontation, sealing the border to prevent refugee flows and working for a diplomatic solution. Unlike 1990, where the government allowed free expression to public opinion, however, in 1998 the government now tightly controlled popular mobilization. On February 11, the government announced that all rallies, under any slogan and for any purpose, would be banned. Security forces broke up a massive pro-Iraq rally at the Husayni Mosque in Amman on February 14. On February 16, Ma’an and other Jordanian cities erupted in violent uprisings which were put down by the army. Mass arrests and a round-the-clock curfew were imposed on the cities. Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Nasour again blamed Iraq for the growing unrest in Jordan. 59 This restrictive policy denied the right of opposition groups to rally public opinion in support of Iraq as they had in 1990.
The February 1998 crisis showed the sharp divergence between popular and official positions toward Iraq, but it also suggested that completely abandoning Iraq might be beyond the capabilities of Jordanian policy. In November 1997, the linkage between the American confrontation with Iraq and the collapsing Arab-Israeli peace process demonstrated the need to reformulate policies on both fronts. Jordan’s turn against Iraq depended on the peace process and the construction of new regional economic and security structures; the collapse of those efforts undermined Jordan’s Iraq policy. King Hussein lobbied the United States to rethink its policies toward Iraq, appealing for a direct American-Iraqi dialogue. Given the failure to bring about a change in Iraq’s regime, and the ongoing importance of Iraq to the Jordanian economy, Jordan moderated its overt hostility. The near collapse in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process pushed Jordan back to an Arabist policy. As the peace process collapsed, so did the main justification for the new policy toward Iraq.
Rationalist and Constructivist Explanations
While the rationalist perspective can explain the broad contours of the strategic realignment, it neglects important dimensions of the Iraqi-Jordanian relationship and its role in Jordanian politics. Jordan’s relations with Iraq extended deeply into the political identity of Jordanians and into the norms and structures of the Jordanian polity. Support for Iraq involved an expression of the Arab identity which structured Jordanian political discourse, as well as economic and civil society institutions built around the principle of Iraqi-Jordanian cooperation and unity. These ties transcended a convergence of interests.
Relations with Iraq stood symbolically for the Arabist identity threatened by the move to peace with Israel and the calls for a Middle Eastern identity. The Gulf crisis transformed the alliance with Iraq into a central dimension of Jordan’s self-interpretation of its Arab identity. Jordan’s decision to stand by Iraq consolidated the Jordanian public, giving meaning to an Arab identity even as the Arab order collapsed. Enjoying virtual consensus and universally interpreted as the expression of the popular will, the policy bound the public together. Rallies of solidarity with the Iraqi people and calls to lift the UN embargo could always be counted on to unite a public deeply divided over many issues. Support for Iraq in the war served as a foundation myth for Jordanian democracy, a moment of unity which overpowered the potent Jordanian-Palestinian, urban-tribal, or state-society cleavages that had always informed competing interpretations of the Jordanian polity. In this myth—and calling it a myth does not imply that it was not largely true, but only describes its function as a normative locus in the public sphere—the Jordanian people were revealed as a unified whole by the consensus decision to stand by its Arabist identity and principles. Shared economic and political suffering only confirmed this identity-securing myth.
Shifting these alliances involved more than changes in the balance of power. The shift away from Iraq and toward Israel represented a bid to alter the foundations of Jordanian identity. Without winning public consensus on these new identity claims, the Jordanian government could not guarantee stability. The challenge of Jordanian politics in this period has been the struggle to find a workable consensus on Jordanian identity and interests that could legitimate the international alliances chosen by King Hussein in response to American hegemony. The fundamental question for the Jordanian polity is whether such a consensus could be reached through public sphere debate, or whether the state would have to exert power to restrict or even shut down the public sphere. The latter route, while within the short-term power of the state, would shatter the normative unity and the public sphere legitimacy gained in the first half of the decade.
The rationalist explanation of the reversal of Iraq policy specifies the shifting incentives in the international and regional system, and correctly suggests the strategic motivations behind state decisions. This explanation remains seriously incomplete, however, if it fails to consider the nature of the public contestation of the policy and the impact on the Jordanian polity of these debates. Far from representing the self-interested action of a unified Jordan, the reversal attempted to restructure dominant interpretations of Jordanian identity and interests within the Jordanian public sphere. This interpretation, by locating the dynamic of change within public sphere struggles, opens the way to considering the relative weight of multiple public spheres, in this case primarily the Jordanian and the international. In 1994, with the signing of the peace treaty, state policymakers made a clear decision to grant primacy to the international public sphere as a source of interests. The reversal of positions on Iraq continued this logic, with state decisionmakers primarily oriented toward international public spheres. In the intense struggles that followed, the Jordanian public demanded recognition of its competing definition of interests. The state chose to repress the Jordanian public sphere rather than submit its policies to public deliberation. This decision, and the ability of the state to implement it in the short term, explains why rationalist models are useful in this case.
While the rationalist perspective can explain Jordan’s strategic realignment, it neglects important dimensions of the Iraqi-Jordanian relationship and its role in Jordanian politics. Positions toward Iraq and Israel extended deep into the political identity of Jordanians and into the norms and structures of the Jordanian polity. Enmity to Israel and affinity with Iraq went beyond the calculation of interests, power or threat, constituting Jordanian identities, world views, and interpretation of interests. The master frame in which these norms and identities were embedded underlay the decisions concerning the economy, the political system, and civil society. The peace treaty and the turn against Iraq failed to generate and institutionalize a new consensus. The failure of this project of transformation, along with the failure to achieve the desired international results, prevented enmity to Iraq from being institutionalized.
Endnotes
Note 1: Foreign Minister Kamal Abu Jabir, interviewed in Middle East Policy 1992. Back.
Note 2: Considerable evidence suggests that similar American fears led to the decision not to invade Baghdad or to support the Shi’a and Kurdish rebellions; see Baker 1995 and Telhami 1993. Back.
Note 3: King Hussein speech, December 21, 1995 (FBIS-NES-95&-;249, pp. 22–26). Back.
Note 4: George Hawatmeh, Middle East International April 14, 1993 for details. Back.
Note 5: Reported in Jordan Times, July 18, 1998. Back.
Note 6: Layth Shubaylat, Yaqoub Qirsh and Mansour Murad, joint statement, text in al-Ufuq July 22, 1992. Back.
Note 7: Middle East International July 24, 1992. Back.
Note 8: Middle East International June 25, 1993. Marwan Mu’asher, then head of the Jordanian Information Office in Washington, objected in a letter to the New York Times (June 23, 1993) that there was nothing new in the report, and that it only been released only in order to harm Jordan in the eyes of the new Administration. Back.
Note 9: Jordan TV press conference, April 16, 1994 (FBIS-NES-94–075). Back.
Note 10: Tareq Masarweh’s lead editorials in al-Ufuq: April 29, 1992, June 17, 1992, March 22, 1994, March 30, 1994, April 20, 1994, and June 15, 1994. Also see Toujan Faisal, “A question of sovereignty,” al-Bilad April 1994. Back.
Note 11: Yousif Ibrahim, “Jordan’s King Urges Iraqis to Put an End to the Hussein Era,” New York Times November 8, 1992 and December 31, 1992; Mariam Shahin, “The King Lashes Out,” Middle East International December 4, 1992, pp. 3–4. Back.
Note 12: Shahin, “The King Lashes Out,” Middle East International December 4, 1992, pp. 3–4. Back.
Note 13: Tareq Masarweh, “Relations with the Gulf and Arab Interests,” al-Ufuq 119, September 14, 1994. Back.
Note 14: Middle East International July 9, 1993. Back.
Note 15: Abd al-Salam al-Majali, January 11, 1994 (FBIS-NES-94–007). Majali made similar, and more strenuous, complaints in April 1994. Back.
Note 16: Abd al-Raouf al-Rawabdeh in al-Sharq al-Awsat December 4, 1995. Back.
Note 17: Fahd Rimawi of al-Majd became the first editor to be charged under this obscure law in January 1996; reported in Star January 4, 1996; and Human Rights Watch (1996, 1997). Back.
Note 18: Mohammed al-Qadah, “When cohesion... when opposition?” al-Majd November 7, 1994. Back.
Note 19: “Jordan and the peace,” The New Republic October 16, 1995. Back.
Note 20: For examples of this skepticism, see Mohammed al-Subayhi, ‘Arib al-Rentawi and Taher al-Udwan in al-Dustur February 24, 1996; also Rentawi and Udwan, August 12, 1995. Back.
Note 21: ‘Arib al-Rentawi, “The Second White Book,” al-Dustur August 27, 1995; also see Mohammed al-Subayhi, “Readking Hussein’s Speech,” al-Dustur August 26, 1995 Back.
Note 22: In FBIS-NES-95–164. Al-Hayat’s op-ed, September 28, 1995– “There is no controversy that Hussein has a new position on Iraq and Saddam Hussein.” Back.
Note 23: On Iraqi reassurances to Jordan, see “Iraq Emphasizes Its Close Relations to Jordan,” al-Hayat August 29, 1995; “Iraqi Letter to Prince Hassan,” al-Hayat September 9, 1995. Tariq Aziz, quoted in al-Dustur, August 12, 1995, calls the Iraqi threat “an American invention.” Back.
Note 24: Al-Hayat, August 20, 1995, noted that Jordanian writers were “not hiding their anger at how the US was exploiting the defection.” See Taher al-Udwan, “Iraqi threat?” al-Dustur August 13, 1995; Mohammed Ka’oush, “America and the Arabs and us,” al-Dustur August 18, 1995. Back.
Note 25: Al-Hayat August 19, 1995 and September 30, 1995. Back.
Note 26: Bruce Riedel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asia, testimony during Hearing and Business Meeting of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 2nd Session, March 13, 1996, p. 4. Back.
Note 27: Robert Pelletrau, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Statement before the House Appropriations Committee, Washington DC, March 6, 1996, explains the American decision to sell F-16s in terms of Jordan’s commitment to peace with Israel and the increased threat posed by Iraq in the wake of the reversal. Back.
Note 28: Al-Sharq al-Awsat May 3, 1996. Back.
Note 29: These events as reported in al-Hayat August 17, 1995, August 27, 1995, September 1, 1995, September 3, 1995, and September 18, 1995. Back.
Note 30: Minister of Information Marwan Mu’asher in al-Sharq al-Awsat May 6, 1996 revealed that Jordan had received 23 requests from Iraqi opposition groups to open offices in Jordan. Back.
Note 31: Prime Minister Kabariti quoted in al-Hayat March 28, 1996. Back.
Note 32: The ideas floated in the Western and Arab press about the possibility of a Hashemite restoration in Iraq received a remarkably negative response in Jordan; see the coverage in al-Majellah January 7, 1996 (FBIS-NES-96–080). Among many denials of Jordanian ambitions, Foreign Minister Kabariti, January 4, 1996, and King Hussein on December 21, 1995 (both published in al-Dustur. Back.
Note 33: See report in al-Hayat September 19, 1995, on talks between Kabariti and Amru Musa. Examples of the media war include unusually prominent commentaries by Mohammed al-Subayhi (August 29), Arib Rentawi (August 30), and Ahmed Hasban (August 31) in al-Dustur. Back.
Note 34: Al-Sharq al-Awsat May 5, 1996. Back.
Note 35: For example, see Shihan’s “Prime Minister’s Office” of June 30, 1996. Back.
Note 36: On the brief reconciliation, see al-Dustur February 17, 1995 and February 20, 1995; al-Hayat February 16, 1995. On the breakdown see Shihan “Prime Minister’s Office” June 30, 1996. Back.
Note 37: Reuters wire report, September 29, 1995. For examples of the Kuwaiti debate see FBIS-NES-95–236, 95–231. Back.
Note 38: For example, see Kabariti statements in al-Hayat September 4, 1995. Back.
Note 39: Al-Hayat March 19, 1998. Back.
Note 40: Hilmi al-Asmar, “Norms,” al-Sabil August 29, 1995. Back.
Note 41: Layth Shubaylat, statement published in al-Ahali September 7, 1995 [FBIS-NES-95–175]. Back.
Note 42: Samih al-Mayateh, “Power centers” al-Sabil March 1996; Saleh al-Qullab, “Tensions grow in the White Revolution,” al-Sharq al-Awsat July 13, 1996; and Salim Nassar, “Kabiriti’s Cabinet Changes the Style of Government,” al-Hayat February 10, 1996 on the resistance to Kabariti in “old power centers.” Back.
Note 43: Hamza Mansour, “The government we want,” al-Sabil February 5, 1996. Also see “The meaning of the change,” al-Hayat February 11, 1996. Back.
Note 44: Hilmi al-Asmar, “Norms,” al-Sabil August 29, 1995. Back.
Note 45: Hilmi al-Asmar, “Norms,” al-Sabil August 29, 1995. Back.
Note 46: As reported in Jordan Times, July 15, 1998 and July 19, 1998. Back.
Note 47: Al-Hayat March 5, 1996. Parliamentary debates as published in al-Dustur. The 57 votes were the most received by any Prime Minister since the return of Parliament in 1989. On the other hand, victory was secured by placing an unprecedented 23 MPs in the Cabinet. Back.
Note 48: Taher al-Masri speech reported in al-Hayat March 3, 1996 and the debate recounted in detail in al-Sabil March 26, 1996. Back.
Note 49: As reported in al-Hayat, August 17, 1995, August 27, 1995, September 1, 1995, September 3, 1995, and September 18, 1995. Back.
Note 50: Amman Chamber of Commerce report, published in al-Ufuq 12, July 22, 1992. Back.
Note 51: Amman Chamber of Commerce report, in al-Dustur September 4, 1995. Back.
Note 52: Al-Hayat June 10, 1998 and January 8, 1996. Back.
Note 53: Salim Nassar, “Kabiriti’s Cabinet Changes the Style of Government,” al-Hayat February 10, 1996. Back.
Note 54: Mohammed Ka’oush, “Us and Iraq and America,” al-Dustur August 15, 1995. Back.
Note 55: Sami Shoush, “Change in Policy and Practice,” al-Hayat September 9, 1995; also see al-Hayat op-ed, “Jordan’s reliance on Iraq shackles economy,” February 11, 1996. Back.
Note 56: Hussein speech, August 18, 1996, published in al-Dustur. Back.
Note 57: Patrick Cockburn, “Jordan at risk of becoming cockpit for proxy wars,” The Independent, January 24, 1998. Back.
Note 58: Layth Shubaylat, interviewed in Shihan, January 26, 1998. Back.
Note 59: Nasour’s remarks reported in al-Rai, February 12, 1998. For the opposition’s insistence on the right to hold public rallies, see al-Sabil February 11, 1998, especially comments by Sulayman Arar, President of the National Committee to Support Iraq. Back.
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