Iraq
Foreign Policy offers the odds on six new states achieving independence:
1. Kosovo
Odds — “strong”: driven by US and EU support, it has a good shot at full independence from Serbia
2. South Sudan
Odds — “not great”: a 2011 “referendum will probably happen; and it will probably come out in favor of independence; and Khartoum will almost certainly find a way around the results.”
3. Somaliland
Odds — “very good”: effectively independent from Somalia since 1991, it already has its own government, army, and currency; international organizations will attend to the disastrous state of the rest of Somalia first, however
4. Iraqi Kurdistan
Odds — “fair”: Turkey’s strong opposition may be overruled by facts on the ground if Iraq disintegrates
5. Palestine
Odds — “good”: “details” in the way of a two-state solution will eventually overcome the objections of “the extreme radical wings” on both sides
6. Taiwan
Odds — “poor”: China is getting stronger and stronger, and Taiwan “will accept autonomous status” under China
In the July Atlantic, 39 American foreign policy experts were polled about Saudi Arabia’s roll.
Q — “What will Saudi Arabia’s growing role as a regional leader mean for the Middle East?”
- 55% “Very little, the Sunni Arab states will prove ineffective as counterweights to Iran”
- 23% “The containment of Iranian influence throughout the Middle East”
- 16% “Increased sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shia, particularly in Iraq”
- 5% “A heightened possibility of conventional war between Iran and the Sunni Arab states”
- 2% “The containment of Iranian influence in Iraq”
One of the 23% foreseeing containment had this to say:
Saudi Arabia, even if it succeeds in increasing its regional influence, will have little impact on developments in Iraq. It should, however, be somewhat more effective in countering Shiite radicalism in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
Q — “How friendly to U.S. interests will Saudi Arabia be over the next five years?”
- 69% “Friendly enough”
- 31% “Not very friendly”
A respondent among the 31% said that “Saudi Arabia will be increasingly pressured by the Wahhabi clerics and jihadists to provide more financial and political support [to opponents of] Israel and the U.S.”
Source: “Saudi Arabia’s Rise?”, The Atlantic, July 2007, 34.
Senator Joseph Lieberman called today for consideration of US military action against Iran, including a ground attack:
“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran.”
Such a course of action would likely have substantial negative effects on the US position in Iraq:
- As discussed previously in this blog, Iran is in a better position than the US to escalate in a confrontation.
- This would not reduce killing of Americans; more likely would be the reverse, and Iran could greatly increase its support for insurgents.
- Iran and the US have had support for the Iraqi government in common; a US-Iranian confrontation could force the government to choose sides, and either choice would likely make its future, and the US project in Iraq, more precarious.
- An attack on Iran would tend to escalate toward a large-scale military confrontation, which Iran is more likely to “win” at the strategic level than the US.
Writing in the NYT, two supporters of the war, Peter W. Rodman and William Shawcross, offer these forecasts:
As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee.
The new strategy of the coalition and the Iraqis, ably directed by Gen. David Petraeus, offers the best prospect of reversing the direction of events — provided that we show staying power.
American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East. Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran.
Analysis
- Large numbers of Iraqis are already in danger, and millions have fled. Even more could be placed in danger if the US precipitously withdraws and fighting intensifies.
- The authors do not address the fact that by most accounts the “new strategy” is not working, and American “staying power” continues to drain away. That continuing a fight might be useful on some levels is not sufficient, if no plausible strategy or goal is in view.
- American defeat would indeed energize radicals. But the continued occupation of Iraq also has that effect, and could contribute to destabilization of governments in the region, as veterans of jihad return to their homelands.
- It should also be noted that these arguments were good reasons to have stayed out of Iraq in the first place: they are arguing for saving ourselves from the consequences of our own actions; prudent policymaking would have avoided these dangers entirely, and not placed American credibility in what is substantially a lose-lose position.
The Bush administration has begun to discuss long-term basing of American troops in Iraq, along the lines of the 50-year garrisoning of South Korea, the NYT reports.
Secretary of Defense Gates described the concept as “more a model of a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence but under the consent of both parties and under certain conditions.”
Administration officials and top military leaders declined to talk on the record about their long-term plans in Iraq. But when speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared. They would include the base at Al Asad in Anbar Province, Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and Tallil Air Base in the south.
Critics have found fault with the comparison.
“It’s not that Iraq isn’t vital,” said Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council of Foreign Relations, and one of the many experts organized by groups opposing Mr. Bush’s Iraq strategy to shoot back in the analogy war. “It’s just that Korea bears no resemblance to Iraq. There’s no strategy that can create victory.”
The problems with the model are numerous:
- The American presence seems to be a dominant issue for various insurgent factions, and they may simply keep up their attacks until the US leaves.
- The guerrillas continue to grow stronger and more adept, while American enthusiasm for the war continues to decline; if the war continues until someone gives up, it will likely be the Americans, so war can’t be a condition of remaining.
- Iraqis overwhelmingly favor a US departure, if not an immediate one, and a popular Iraqi government will have difficulty saying yes to something that so many oppose.
Perhaps more plausible is a long-term presence in an essentially independent Kurdistan. But that also would create problems:
- It would inspire hostility from Arab Iraq, perhaps fully reversing relations to those of the Hussein years.
- It would alarm Turkey, not to mention Iran, straining the US-Turkish relationship.
A sign of likely future directions in Iraq: a majority of Iraq’s legislators have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for an American withdrawal, the Washington Post reports.
It is, as the article puts it, a sign that “Iraq’s lawmakers are moving further away from the views of the government, particularly on the basic issue of the American presence in their country.”
It is a gradual movement: many Iraqis, including some who signed the bill, want the US to stay long enough to train Iraqi security forces, and many powerful political parties oppose setting a timetable for an American departure.
Last week the Washington Post detailed the efforts of Iraq’s Kurds to build links to the US, separate from the American relationship to Iraq.
Kurdistan’s representative in Washington is quoted as saying that the Kurds are seeking the same kind of “’strategic and institutional relationship’ that Israel and Taiwan have with the United States. ‘We are seeking the same protection.’”
The Kurdish efforts have several potential future impacts:
- “Some senior U.S. officials contend that yielding to Kurdish demands for increased autonomy could break up Iraq and destabilize Turkey, a NATO ally that is fighting a guerrilla war with Kurdish separatists.”
- The Kurds have brought in Israelis and members of the Israeli lobby to work on their behalf in Washington. This suggests a potential Israeli-Kurdish alliance that could flank the core of the Arab world but could also serve as another long-term irritant in Arab-Israeli relations.
- The pro-war organization Move America Forward and parents of American soldiers who have died in Iraq have called for ‘developing and maintaining a major U.S. military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan’ after being brought into the cause by Evangelical Christians. This tilt toward the Kurds would deeply undercut the American mission in Iraq and make it more likely that an actively hostile government or governments would emerge there — particularly ironic given that, according to a consultant involved with these efforts, the parents see Kurdistan as “a validation that their child didn’t die in vain.”
The Post offers credible evidence of an increasing split between Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The local insurgents have tactical, strategic, and even moral issues with the al-Qaeda approach, and clashes between the groups have grown.
This suggests increased likelihood for two outcomes:
- By peeling off the Islamist and global goals of al-Qaeda, it leaves the insurgents more focused on one goal: getting the US to leave. That makes it more possible to end the war with an American departure.
- It lowers the stakes for the US: some level of insurgent success — for instance, Sunni Arabs in charge of some or most of Iraq — is less likely to go hand in hand with al-Qaeda success, and result in a safe haven for Islamic terrorism. An insurgent leader in the article expressly blames al-Qaeda for provoking the occupation of Iraq via September 11th; his concern is clearly his own nation and people, not Caliphatist fantasies.
However, the insurgents are highly fragmented, and a Sunni politician notes that this reduces their ability to counter al-Qaeda. He warns, “If they do not unite, they will be weakened. Then al-Qaeda will manage to make their Islamic state in Iraq, and it will be a sad day for the country and the world.”
As the war in Iraq begins its fourth year, it is worth revisiting some of the views of France, which was one of the more vocal skeptics in the runup to the US invasion.
In this Washington Post article from February 11, 2003, Jacques Beltran, a French foreign policy expert, suggested that French President Jacques Chirac “believes a war is extremely dangerous. There’s a risk of destabilizing Iraq and the whole region, as well as Israel.”
A French official noted that “We are not pacifists. But we honestly think it is a mistake to go to war … You will pay the price in terms of terrorism, in terms of the Arab world versus the Western world.”
The Washington Post reports today on the effect of the Iraq war on the other end of the Arab world, Morocco.
The most salient points:
- Moroccans are being recruited to go off to Iraq by terrorist groups. Extremist recruiters look for men who are particularly outraged by events there and in Palestine.
- Extremist groups across North Africa, from Morocco to Tunisia are finding common cause, partly based on events in Iraq.
- According to a Moroccan expert, “Al-Qaeda has the same strategy as the United States: it wants to win in Iraq so it can transform the whole region. They are fixated on Iraq.”
So al-Qaeda benefits from continued American presence in Iraq. It might also benefit from a withdrawal, if the “few thousand” foreign fighters can play a meaningful role in the aftermath of such a withdrawal.
Either way, every Arab country will be dealing with returning militants who have been trained by the Iraq war, potentially adding to instability.