Unable to take a neutral role, the United States will again be caught in a commitment trap, this time backing the Shi‘a; but it will resemble previous traps that engendered unfortunate estrangement from China, the support of successive dictators in Vietnam, the rise of Marcos and the blind commitment to the Shah of Iran. If the base of the Sunni insurgency widens, a secure secular state is not possible. Trapped into supporting a Shi‘a government that eschews compromise, the United States may end up facing a region-wide insurgency, which could produce even broader U.S. military involvement in the region. And the insurgency, having acquired deep roots among the civilian population, will poison relations with America for years to come. As it did in Vietnam, the United States will extract political defeat from military victory.

As doubts about the wisdom of intervening in Iraq spread, the debate in the United States will veer toward the question of who lost Iraq. Such a debate may restrain future interventions in the short run, but a comprehensive assessment of Cold War lessons might offer a variety of perspectives from which to frame future debates about overseas interventions. A shared set of convictions about social change and the value of democracy led supporters from all parts of the political spectrum to support the invasion of Iraq. The failure of Iraq's democracy to improve the quality of life, provide security or induce cooperation has debased its value for Iraqi citizens.

There is one final historical analogy to consider: Despite the victories of U.S.-backed forces during the Vietnam War, both sides understood that America had a short time horizon and that the warring forces in the north could wait out external actors. For this reason, the institutions created by the United States in Vietnam had little credibility. Both southerners and northerners understood that the institutions of power were not born of an internal consensus, but rather external support, and therefore had doubtful durability.

There is only one definitive way for the United States to extricate itself from future commitment traps, and that is for the White House and the incumbent administration to break ranks with the military view of conflict and accept that this perspective fundamentally mischaracterizes the complexity of social change in emerging nations. Throughout the Cold War, the military and the civilian bureaucracy fought over policy, with the military frequently supporting the status quo. The fear of failure, in either case, led both parties to do too much, never too little. "Too much" usually means that American administrations put too much effort into buttressing regimes. This latest chapter of U.S. military involvement resembles the other failures in which, regardless of the political landscape, military advisors concluded that training of and assistance for the nascent army was the key missing ingredient for victory. A more plausible assessment must combine military with political, social and economic analysis in which other areas of expertise are fully engaged. Such a change would require reconfiguring the entire structure of policymaking that currently informs the president's decisions.

Unconditional support of the Maliki government will only fan sectarian violence and push the Sunnis into greater collaboration with Al-Qaeda. Helping Maliki crush the Sunni insurgency without insisting on federalism, increased employment levels, a revenue-sharing compromise, moderated de-Ba‘athification and curtailment of the Shi‘a militias' abuses, the Bush Administration is being suckered into a commitment trap just like its Cold War predecessors. Inadvertently fueling Sunni resistance, it pushes Iraq closer to all-out civil war and sets the stage for the game-winning moves to occur politically-not on the battlefield, where U.S. forces have overwhelming superiority. Hoodwinked again by its own rhetoric into not crediting the opponent with anticipatory skill, U.S. policy-planners will again cede political victory to an insurgency.

Hilton L. Root, a senior Treasury Department official during the first term of George W. Bush's administration, is professor of public policy at George Mason University's School of Public Policy and author of Capital and Collusion: the Political Logic of Global Economic Development, Princeton University Press, 2006.

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