Mesopotamia

 In his speech on August 2, President Obama affirmed that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.  That is a welcome stance, given that he has been under increasing pressure to keep American forces in Iraq to maintain order after that deadline.  Last week, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari of the Iraqi army suggested the United States must remain until 2020.

Ironically, some of the same people who argue that a continued U.S. military presence is essential also contend that the United States “won” in Iraq, and especially that the Bush administration’s surge strategy succeeded.

From the July/August 2009 issue of The National Interest. Please click here to see the full table of contents. 

Adeed Dawisha, Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 408 pp., $29.95.

Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation

IRAQ HAS never been left alone. The late British travel writer and Arabist Freya Stark writes: "While Egypt lies parallel and peaceful to the routes of human traffic, Iraq is from earliest times a frontier province, right-angled and obnoxious to the predestined paths of man."¹ For Mesopotamia cut across one of history's bloodiest migration routes. It was the subject of foreign invasions and the by-product of ethnic conflicts.

Whether Iraq is being attacked from the Syrian Desert in the west or the plateau of Elam in Iran to the east, this is a country constant victim to occupation. From as early as the third millennium BC, the ancient peoples of the Near East fought over control of Mesopotamia. From the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes who ruled Babylon, to the Mongol hordes that later swept down to overrun the land, to the long-running Ottoman rule that ended with the First World War, Iraq's is a tragic history.

MOST DISCUSSIONS about newly liberated states, such as Iraq, Kosovo or Afghanistan, start with what outsiders consider a preferred end product-a multi-ethnic, united, democratic, rights-respecting nation-state and one that is receptive to U.S. security interests. The question is then asked: How can the United States and its allies bring about these desiderata in these countries? Often, despite considerable human and economic costs caused by such overly ambitious designs, foreign powers continue to persist in their pursuit of utopian goals.

Discourse on Iraq in particular tends to vastly overestimate what foreign powers can accomplish, even if there was better planning, more boots on the ground and so on. Furthermore, such discussions too often assume that the players involved are unitary, sovereign nations, when in reality they are increasingly non-state actors. The real power players are various ethnic militias, tribal organizations and religious sects-in short, communities.

Recent developments in Iraq (as well as those in Afghanistan) suggest that one must initially work with forces loyal to local ethnic and confessional communities rather than the nation-state. Indeed, it is useful to remember, as Peter Galbraith notes, that:

Iraq has never been a voluntary union of its peoples. Winston Churchill, as Britain's colonial secretary, created Iraq from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire in 1921. . . .Churchill later described Iraq's forced unity as one of his biggest mistakes.

But because there is a compelling interest in maintaining the frame of an Iraqi state (not the least of which is to ensure the territorial integrity of all the neighboring states of the region), the disappearance outright of an entity called "Iraq" would not allow us to recover from the initial mistake of putting Iraq together in the first place.

"Democratization in combat boots" has been a glib but accurate way to describe President Bush's foreign policy. But when the history books a hundred years hence are written, the invasion of Iraq will go down as an old-fashioned balancing-of-power success for U.S. policy. Henry Kissinger should be proud.

By creating a Shi‘a Iraq, Bush has superseded the Arab-Israeli balance of power with the Sunni-Shi‘a balance of power, to America's ultimate advantage. Iraq's important characteristic now is that it is Shi‘a; not necessarily democratic, or liberal, but Shi‘a. And through Iraq, Bush will have reconciled all the American national interests in the Middle East for the first time since 1948.

Why is that? Well, since then, the United States has had three policy objectives in the region. In no order, these were 1) support of Israel, 2) access to oil and 3) democratization. Of these, the United States could choose only two.

If America wanted to help Israel and still buy oil, it had to support rulers who did not represent the popular Arab hatred towards Israel and America. If the United States wanted democratic, oil-friendly states, it couldn't support Israel. And if it wanted to support both Israel and Arab democracy, it wouldn't receive oil from elected anti-Israel Arabs.

This was the Gordian knot. Not anymore.

Bush's war transformed Iraq into a Shi‘a-run country. To that end, Iraq's enormous military and economic power have evened the odds between Sunnis and Shi‘a, making the Sunni-Shi‘a sectarian balance of power in the Middle East roughly equal for the first time in history. In this rebalancing, the traditional Sunnis and the Shi‘a finally have to contend with a more immediate threat than Tel Aviv: each other.

Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 288 pp., $25.95.

"Can you tell a Sunni from a Shi‘a?" Many people cannot describe the differences between these two major Muslim traditions. However, battles between Sunnis and Shi‘a dominate news from Iraq, and Sunni-Shi‘a relations are critical to the future of that country. In Lebanon, a major Shi‘a organization, Hizballah, plays a significant role in politics and, as the Israeli-Hizballah battles during the summer of 2006 show, this Shi‘a group has an impact on regional and global politics. In addition, Sunni and Shi‘a characteristics are important to the self-identification of competing major states like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

As a result, it is startling when people in important planning positions dealing with U.S. policy toward the Muslim world and with counter-terrorism admit that they do not know the differences between Sunni and Shi‘a Muslims.[1]Shi‘a are an increasingly visible and important force in the contemporary Middle East. Ignorance about Shi‘i Islam and about Sunni-Shi‘a relations can be dangerous for the interests of anyone in business, government and humanitarian work in the Middle East (and globally).

The media has been shouting (e.g. here) strategies for making peace in Iraq.  These plans leave out the most viable route to peace: negotiating with one of the two rival factions of the insurgents.

CNN reported (available here) this week on a video from Iraq's Islamic Army inviting negotiations.  The CNN report confirms what I wrote in this space last month: the Ba‘athi (Saddam loyalists or "dead enders") are willing to extend a "golden bridge" for the United States to draw back from Iraq. Let me explain how this would work and why it could be the best scenario for ending the war.

The first thing to understand is something the Bush Administration for political reasons has obscured since before the war even started: the Arab nationalists (Ba‘athi, Islamic Army et al.) and Al-Qaeda cordially detest each other and have for a generation. The Bush Administration, wishing to link its Iraq war to 9/11, has insisted on linking Al- Qaeda with the Saddam regime. It was the U.S. invasion that thrust the two into a strategic alliance-but one that has always been fragile. The Ba‘athi do not want an Iraq, or a part of Iraq, harboring jihadists. The recent mujaheddin declaration (available here) of an embryonic "Islamic State" in Iraq makes its strange bedfellow even more restless.

To What End Democratization?

As the Maliki government struggles to exert order, even over Baghdad, the undeniable truth is that we are out of free-election benchmarks by which to judge progress in Iraq. Saddam was deposed. De-Baathification was undertaken successfully, in the sense that the Baath party in Iraq is now finished. A constitution was designed and approved. A government was duly elected. Another government took its place. Now what?

Now, the last landmark on the horizon is a new round of talks on federalism. There is little room for maneuver. The Bush administration has adjusted to the idea that an Iraq of strongly autonomous regions may be a political necessity-and not (only) on American terms. After all: if federalization isn't a decision for Iraqis to make, whose decision is it?

The endgame question, separate from military considerations, must be asked: when has the mission of Iraqi democracy been accomplished? What else is there for America to do in this regard? Since that burden was taken on, an answer is owed; and the answer appears to be nothing. Federalization is as much a part of self-determination as any other aspect of democratic government. Secession, in our tradition, is not. But secession seems as unlikely in Iraq as federal government seems likely.

Consider the Stakes

There is no national popular will in Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr's early signs of nationalism have not translated into broad-based, intrasectional support. This is one of the key signs of inadequately decentralized government.

Yet, at the same time, not one of Iraq's three factions is of much good on its own. The Kurds, though self-sufficient in most key respects, stand much more to gain as the highly autonomous Iraqi unit they already are than as an isolated, landlocked state, ringed by unsympathetic nations home themselves to diaspora populations of aggrieved Kurds.

OVER THE last few years, due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many commentators have discerned the emergence of a new American empire. Some critics blame the Bush Administration, arguing that, but for Bush, there would be no crisis over American "unilateralism" or "hegemony." Others blame the end of the Cold War for "unleashing" America on the world.

Actually, American pre-eminence extends much further back--to World War II or before. It really continues a British primacy that dated back at least to 1815. During the 20th century, Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia challenged the Anglo ascendancy, but they were turned back. So today the world order bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Victorian era. Now as then, the world is globalizing, and English is its lingua franca. The United States has merely supplanted Britain as the leading power.

American primacy is not an accident of this or that administration. It reflects the special capacity of English-speaking countries to lead the world order. These "Anglo nations", or the "Anglos" as I will call them, include Britain and the chief territories that were settled initially from Britain--pre-eminently the United States but also Australia, Canada and New Zealand. What makes a country Anglo is that its original settler population came mainly from Britain. So even though a minority of Americans today have British roots, they inherit a political culture initially formed by the British. Some other countries that Britain ruled, such as India or South Africa, are not Anglo in this sense because British settlers never formed the bulk of their populations. They may be English-speaking, and their public institutions have British roots, but British culture did not form the society as it did in the Anglo countries.

Coming up to the first anniversary of President Bush declaring "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, U.S. Iraqi policy has degenerated into a series of confusing flip-flops.

First, Coalition Provisional Authority chief administrator L. Paul Bremer III was adamant that U.S. troops were going to arrest firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Now, they are not.

Second, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were adamant that the United States was not going to the United Nations to seek more support in Iraq at the expense of delegating any authority there. But in his nationally televised press conference last week, the president took pains to praise the mission of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and emphasize his determination to back it to the hilt.

Indeed, on Monday Bush named Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte as his first ambassador to an at least titular independent Iraq after the scheduled handover of sovereignty on June 30. This move has also been widely taken as a sign that eschewing previous Pentagon-run policies, Bush is finally prepared to let the world body have more of a say in helping restore Iraq.

Third, in his 2002 State of the Union speech, Bush boldly condemned Iran along with Iraq as a fellow member of the so-called "axis of evil." Yet now, Bush is eagerly courting Iran as a key facilitator in negotiations with the Shiite rebels in Iraq. Washington has sought Iran's good graces to get hostages released in Iraq and to reach a compromise consensus in dealing with the militias in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

 With the Pentagon announcement that "major military operations" are winding down, the war in Iraq has been won.  The challenge is now to win the peace--to shape the international environment on American terms. 

The United States identified Saddam Hussein as a threat to regional and international security--citing the nexus between Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, its support for terrorism and Hussein's own reckless disregard for complying with the 1991 ceasefire requirements--and placed its blood and treasure on the line to effect regime change when it believed no other option could work to achieve these goals.  The victory in Iraq creates new opportunities for the United States to pressure other regimes around the world that engage in roguish behavior--of which the most insidious is the apparent ease of the military solution--state sponsorship of terrorism or pursuit of weapons of mass destruction--to cease and desist.  And it is appropriate for America to capitalize on fears in Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus that "they might be next" as a way to change behavior. 

At the same time, however, the ease of victory generates a dangerous temptation--the illusion that American military force, applied in sufficient quantity, can "solve" any problem.  Realists, in contrast, understand that power has limitations and must be skillfully exercised.  Knowing "when to stop" is part of that management.  It is not in American interests to recklessly apply force in the region, creating a momentum of instability that eventually would harm rather than promote key U.S. interests.  

This is why care needs to be exercised to ensure that the United States does not stumble into an armed confrontation with Syria--certainly not when the North Korean crisis remains unresolved.  War is not weeding a garden, where it makes sense to concentrate on clearing one patch before moving on to another section.