by Robert Looney, Strategic Insights, Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Monterey, USA
June 2, 2003
Robert Looney, professor of National Security Affairs, and Associate Chairman of Instruction, Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, examines Iraq’s fiscal challenges and possible financial strategies. “Establishing the right of a country such as Iraq to write off odious debt would have potentially huge benefits, not the least by discouraging banks from lending to similar tyrants that might one day be overthrown,” argues Mr. Looney. He says, “using the odious debt doctrine … Iraq could easily build a good moral and probably legal case that the population should not be burdened for wars they had no say in but were forced to participate in.”