Iraq’s post-invasion orders instituted a full neoliberal restructuring of the economy.

Evidence

In 2003, months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, Paul Bremer, the American-appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, declared Iraq “open for business” and spelled out a set of 100 orders that came to be known as the Bremer Orders. These mandated selling off several hundred state-run enterprises, permitting full ownership rights of Iraqi businesses by foreign firms and full repatriation of profits to foreign firms, opening Iraq’s banks to foreign ownership and control, and eliminating tariffs — in short, making Iraq a new playground of world finance and investment. At the same time, the Bremer Orders restricted labor and throttled back public goods and services. They outlawed strikes and eliminated the right to unionize in most sectors, mandated a regressive flat tax on income, lowered the corporate rate to a flat 15 percent, and eliminated taxes on profits repatriated to foreign-owned businesses. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Naomi Klein’s ‘shock doctrine’ thesis and to the reader’s reading of austerity/neoliberalism as political rationality. — connects to: Neoliberal structural adjustment replaced postwar modernization as imperial policy; Some neoliberals explicitly embraced empire as a model for global economic order. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 858

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal structural adjustment replaced postwar modernization as imperial policy #exemplifies (0.82)
• Some neoliberals explicitly embraced empire as a model for global economic order. #corroborates (0.75) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 858