Dear Colleagues:

Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed a ground-breaking idea for the reform of Iraq put forth by my colleague Steve Clemons, Executive Vice President of the New America Foundation and Co-Director of the American Strategy Project.

In the April 9th edition of the New York Times, Steve suggested that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which provides a share of state oil revenues directly to Alaskan citizens, could be a model for a similar program adopted by a new Iraqi government chosen by the Iraqi people. As Iraq's society recovers from decades of dictatorship and the death and devastation caused by war and occupation, a program to provide dividends from oil assets to every Iraqi citizen could provide significant benefits.

Empowering individual Iraqi citizens in this way would expand the number of middle class Iraqis with a stake in sustainable economic growth based on the rule of law and widely shared prosperity. A fund inspired by the Alaska Permanent Fund would reduce the danger that Iraq's oil wealth will be monopolized by an elite of kleptocratic "robber barons" who gain from corrupt relationships with those in charge of the production and export of Iraqi oil. Finally, the adoption by a democratic Iraqi government of such a plan would reduce fears that the long-suffering people of Iraq would benefit less from the restoration of Iraqi oil production than the powerful few and favored foreign corporations.

The United States has no legal or moral right to determine either the policies or the composition of a post-Baathist government in Iraq. However, by advocating reforms that are in the interest of ordinary Iraqis like citizen-based oil revenue-sharing, Secretary Powell and other administration officials can begin to alleviate suspicions about America's intentions in Iraq, the Middle East and the World.

Secretary Powell's endorsement of the Alaska Permanent Fund as a model in Iraq is found in Warren Vieth's report in the Los Angeles Times, posted below. For your interest, I am also attaching an article by Fareed Zakaria, "Waging the Peace," which ran as a Newsweek cover story and references the Clemons proposal. Other discussion of this concept can be found in Michael Barone's April 14th article in U.S. News and World Report, Scott Pardee's April 13th article in the Washington Post, and articles in the Economist, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

I've been pleased to see the traction that this idea, originating at the New America Foundation, has obtained in a short period of time. I hope that, after the briefest possible interval of U.S. military occupation, a representative government in Baghdad will decide to implement Steve's visionary idea and inspire similar countries to do the same.

Michael Lind
Director, American Strategy Project
Whitehead Senior Fellow
New America Foundation
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