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The case for complacency in Iraq
By Spengler
"As usual, I find things there amiably awful!" Mephisto retorts when God chides him for caviling about evil circumstances on Earth. After two years of predicting civil war in Iraq, Mephisto's words come to mind now that civil war has arrived. God helps drunks, small children, and the United States of America, the old saying goes. Someone is helping the United States in Iraq, although here it might not be God but rather the other fellow.
One reads dire predictions everywhere that civil conflict in Iraq might lead to regional war. That is true, but no one fears this more
than the government of Iran. Iran sent its cat's paw, the sectarian butcher Muqtada al-Sadr, running home from Lebanon last weekend with a message of religious brotherhood. Iran has only one military objective, namely to own nuclear weapons. Without them its military is an ill-equipped rabble; with them, it is the dominant regional power. For Tehran, anything else is a distraction.
"I call upon all believers, Sunnis and Shi'ites, to unite. All Iraqis should be brothers to each other," said Muqtada on Sunday, after prayer services on Friday at which 20,000 of his followers prayed for Sunni-Shi'ite unity, and after a set of violent attacks upon Sunnis during the weekend. In this case Muqtada is a paragon of sincerity. His supporters in Tehran count on the threat of a Shi'ite rising as an instrument of strategic blackmail against the United States, for the Shi'ite militias can ruin Washington's dream of a unified and democratic Iraq. If Washington's soap-bubble pops, down goes Iran's ability to intimidate Washington.
More wishful thinking has been wasted on the notion of regime change in Iran than on the lottery. The Ahmadinejad regime represents the majority of Iranians, poorly educated people with few prospects in the modern world. Whom are such people supposed to choose as an alternative? Iran's regime cannot be subverted, unless, of course, it becomes embroiled in a foreign military adventure in which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's supporters come to dislike their role as cannon fodder.
That is why Tehran's policy all along has been to support US efforts on behalf of constitutional government in Iraq to bring that country's Shi'ite majority into power by peaceful means (see A Syriajevo in the making?, October 25, 2005). Despite Iranian efforts to build up the capabilities of Shi'ite irregulars inside Iraq, the capabilities of the Sunni military caste remain formidable even after the dissolution of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the outcome of full-fledged civil war would be uncertain. Power within Iraq now is balanced the way the British intended it to be when they stitched together this Frankenstein monster of a country after World War I.
In fact, the worst outcome from the vantage point of Washington's interest would be a stable constitutional government in Iraq. Once Shi'ite elements controlled leading ministries, Iran would have unlimited means to meddle in the classic Middle Eastern style of infiltration, bribery and intimidation. Middle Eastern governments, after all, are not governments in the Western sense, but rather hotels in which different factions rent rooms. With footholds inside the Iraqi government, Iran could develop forces on the ground in depth and at leisure.
Full-scale civil war, however, would make it difficult for Iran to stand by while Shi'ites were slaughtered, yet open intervention in Iraq would give Washington the opportunity to make a horrible example of the Islamic Republic, with or without the issue of nuclear weapons.
Resistance to gradual Iranization comes from the Sunni military caste, not from foreign infiltrators, whose numbers and military capabilities both are overrated (see Will Iraq survive the Iraqi resistance?, December 23, 2003). The Sunnis already have shown themselves willing to employ suicide attacks on a scale larger than Japan's World War II kamikazes, and cannot be defeated except by bloody attrition (see Why Sunnis blow themselves up, June 14, 2005). But they cannot attain victory either. After a millennium of martyr status, the Shi'ites are prepared to sacrifice themselves in frightful numbers to achieve the potential of their historic moment (see The blood is the life, Mr Rumsfeld!, October 12, 2005).
The Iraqi Kurds, meanwhile, have established a quasi-independent province. They have all the benefits of partition without the liabilities, such as fending off outraged and humiliated Turks.
America's military already has repositioned to the periphery of cities; there will not be another siege of Fallujah. Although the proximate cause of this redeployment was reduction of US casualties, it has two other effects. One is to allow both Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias freedom to assemble military forces capable of inflicting large-scale atrocities on each other. The second is to prevent either side from massing sufficient forces to launch a full-scale civil war.
The result will be a low-intensity civil war that can persist more or less indefinitely. Populations caught in the middle will do what such populations normally do, that is, migrate to areas of sectarian control that offer greater protection. It will not be necessary to announce a partition. The Iraqis will partition themselves with household items piled into pickup trucks.
Two years ago I speculated that the United States might steer events in Iraq toward this outcome (The devil and L Paul Bremer, January 20, 2004). But there is not a speck of evidence that Washington has done anything but stumble into a position that is as advantageous for US interests as it is miserable for the Iraqis. Father Joseph du Tremblay, Cardinal Richelieu's 17th-century intelligence chief, did this sort of thing as he perpetuated the Thirty Years' War (see The sacred heart of darkness, February 11, 2003). But there is no Gray Eminence in today's Washington; the contemporary world is incapable of producing personalities of this sort.
Instability favors the side with the greatest strategic flexibility, and that is the United States. The Russian Federation, not an enemy but at least a competitor of the United States, wants to reduce US flexibility. That is why Russian diplomacy is attempting to deflect the US from confronting Iran over the issue of nuclear-weapons development. Washington's best move on the chessboard would be quietly to agree to forget about "color revolutions" in the remains of the Soviet Union, in return for Moscow's solidarity with its efforts to rein in Tehran.
That leaves the issue of Saudi Arabia, where a car-bomb attack on the country's largest oil facility on Friday cast in relief the kingdom's potential weakness. Any country in which foreigners hold 90% of the jobs and most young men live off government dole will produce a small army of fanatics. But the Saudi business is less complicated than it looks. If al-Qaeda can cajole and threaten Saudi officials, so can Washington.
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Give Civil War a Chance
By James H. Joyner Jr. 27 Feb 2006
iraqi-soldiers
Blogger and TCS contributor Stephen Green argues that civil war in Iraq might not be such a bad thing, noting that, "A civil war is the nastiest way to get a good result." He cites several examples, notably the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, and the American war between the states of where internecine conflict settled major disputes and paved the way for a much brighter future for all concerned.
Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Edward Luttwak made a similar argument in a controversial piece for the July/August 1999 edition of Foreign Affairs entitled "Give War a Chance." He noted that, "although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached."
Luttwak and Green are doubtless correct. Wars, even bloody internal wars, are sometimes the only way to solve conflicts on issues where neither side feels it can compromise. They come at a terrible price, however, and resentments can live on for decades, even centuries. Just ask a Bosnian Muslim or an American Southerner with a "Forget, Hell!" bumper sticker on his F-150. Further, as Lee Harris explained in a recent piece for TCS Daily, "Once a society has lapsed back into tribal anarchy, a vicious cycle sets in, one in which each of the feuding tribes will be egged on, by their own members, to perpetrate more and more ruthless acts against the enemy tribe."
Fortunately, all but the most extreme elements in Iraq seem to understand this. Sunni and Shiite leaders alike are calling for calm and the cycle of violence seems to have eased, at least for now. The events of last week could be provide the type of wake-up call that the Cuban Missile Crisis did for both sides during the Cold War, permanently keeping everyone from the brink of disaster. But there are no guarantees. Indeed, al Qaeda may well decide that exploiting sectarian fears is their best hope for victory.
In these pages in December 2004, I argued that civil war could be avoided in Iraq if a reasonable amount of security was established and legitimate elections went forth as scheduled. The latter happened beyond my expectations but, sadly, the former has not. Still, as long as major factional leaders continue to view a peaceful, unified Iraq as the most desirable endstate, civil war may be averted.
But what if it is not? Green argues that, if there is civil war in Iraq, the United States must "choose a side right the now, and stick to it until the bloody end" and "increase our troop strength in-theater ASAP, so that the bloody end comes sooner rather than later." If civil war erupts in Iraq and we decide it in our interest to engage, that's absolutely right. Columbia political scientist Richard Betts described "The Delusion of Impartial Intervention" in the November/December 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs.
"Limited intervention may end a war if the intervener takes sides, tilts the local balance of power, and helps one of the rivals to win - that is, if it is not impartial. Impartial intervention may end a war if the outsiders take complete command of the situation, overawe all the local competitors, and impose a peace settlement - that is, if it is not limited. Trying to have it both ways usually blocks peace by doing enough to keep either belligerent from defeating the other, but not enough to make them stop trying. And the attempt to have it both ways has brought the United Nations and the United States - and those whom they sought to help - to varying degrees of grief in Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti.
"Wars have many causes, and each war is unique and complicated, but the root issue is always the same: Who rules when the fighting stops? In wars between countries, the issue may be sovereignty over disputed territory, or suzerainty over third parties, or influence over international transactions. In wars within countries the issue may be which group will control the government, or how the country should be divided so that adversaries can have separate governments. When political groups resort to war, it is because they cannot agree on who gets to call the tune in peace."
Discussing the means by which the United States should engage in an Iraqi civil war, however, prompts the question: Should the United States engage an Iraqi civil war at all?
Despite Luttwak's enthusiasm for war as a means of achieving clarity, he adamantly opposes the intervention of foreigners: "Policy elites should actively resist the emotional impulse to intervene in other peoples' wars -- not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it and want to facilitate the advent of peace." Still, he was talking about a Bosnia-type intervention where the goal was peace rather than the quick, decisive victory of one party.
Other scholars reached similar conclusions. Cato Institute foreign policy analyst Barbara Conry argued in a widely-cited 1994 study that,
"Intervening powers are at a disadvantage because their stake in the outcome is usually far smaller than that of the primary combatants. In the former Yugoslavia, for example, Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs are fighting out of nationalism, which they perceive as closely related to their very existence as states (or as distinct cultures). Nationalism in that case is an ideal for which many people are prepared to kill and die. Outside parties that become involved for essentially altruistic reasons are not prepared to fight with the same intensity or endurance. Altruism and nationalism simply do not inspire equal determination.
"Moreover, the American public is renowned for its unwillingness to sustain heavy casualties in remote regional wars. American support for military action abroad tends to decline dramatically at the prospect of an extended occupation that will entail significant U.S. casualties. The erosion of public support usually leads to the erosion of congressional support, resulting in serious divisions within the government that is supposed to be directing the intervention. With leadership divided, there is little chance for success. The military, already operating under handicaps inherent to intervention, is virtually assured of failure. As political scientist Richard Falk has commented, "It is not that intervention can never work but that it will almost never succeed unless a costly, prolonged occupation is an ingredient of the commitment."
Indeed, much of that has already happened in Iraq, despite fighting that has been only sporadic and fewer American dead in three years (2,292) sustained on D-Day (about 2,500) much less Gettysburg (7,058).
So long as the fight remains one of the Coalition and the forces of Iraqi democracy on one side and jihadist terrorists and the forces of instability on the other, the United States has a stake in the outcome and even a duty to remain engaged. If, however, it devolves into an Iraqi factional conflict over the internal control of the country, the cause is lost and the United States must leave.
Not only are there no angels in such a fight but there is no way for the United States to win it. Presumably, we would side with the Shi'a majority. While a sectarian Shiite government sympathetic to Iran is a possible outcome of a democratic process, and thus one we could live with, it would be unacceptable to install such a regime through the force of American arms. But, surely, putting the minority Sunnis back in power, let alone the Kurds, would be unthinkable. Regardless, the factions that were routed with the help of American forces -- presuming that they did not simply go underground and continue to fight as guerrillas -- would remain our enemies for generations.
We owe it to the Iraqi people to do everything we can to help avert a civil war and give their fledgling democracy a chance. Saving them from themselves, however, is both beyond our power and responsibility. If they decide civil war is the only way to settle their longstanding disputes, we must stand aside and let them fight it and then try to salvage a relationship with the eventual victors. While that would be a bitter pill, indeed, after coming so close to achieving the incredibly ambitious vision of the neo-cons, it would nonetheless be preferable to the other alternatives.
James H. Joyner, Jr., Ph.D. is Managing Editor of Strategic Insights, the journal of the Naval Postgraduate School. He writes about national security policy at the Outside the Beltway weblog.
Diplomacy Helped To Calm the Chaos
U.S.-Kurdish Campaign Sought to Steer Sunnis, Shiites From Brink of Civil War
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006; A11
BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 -- In the days that followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine, Iraq seemed within a hair's breadth of civil war. But an aggressive U.S. and Kurdish diplomatic campaign appears for now to have coaxed the country back from open conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, according to Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats speaking in interviews on Monday.
"Localized difficulties also persist, but I think, at the strategic level, this crisis -- a mosque attack leading to civil war -- is over," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in a telephone interview. "It was a serious crisis. I believe that Iraq came to the brink and came back."
Khalilzad and others sounded upbeat on Monday, as authorities lifted a three-day ban on vehicle traffic and life in Baghdad returned to a state of uneasy normalcy after five days of bloodletting. The ambassador, another Western diplomat and Iraqi politicians described the behind-the-scenes political negotiations that helped stem the violence.
The crisis began Wednesday with the destruction of the golden-domed Askariya shrine in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Although no one was killed in the bombing, the mosque is so important as a symbol that within hours the country appeared heading toward chaos. As Shiite and Sunni leaders called for peace by day, their followers waged war by night on one another and civilian bystanders in a campaign of raids, bombings, arson and assassinations. More than 1,300 Iraqis have been killed in the past five days, according to workers in the Baghdad morgue.
As fighting raged, Khalilzad and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, pushed the factions toward a rapprochement. On Saturday, after a whirlwind of telephone calls and meetings, they managed to bring leaders from every important political faction in Iraq together in an unusual bid for peace that seems to have quelled the violence and stopped the slide toward civil war.
But for four days, the situation often threatened to spin out of control. In the hours after the attack, infuriated Shiite leaders compared the bombing of the mosque to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Khalilzad said.
The Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, took to the streets seeking vengeance almost immediately, despite calls for peaceful demonstrations by other Shiite politicians and by Sadr himself. Dressed in black, the militiamen machine-gunned Sunni mosques in drive-by attacks, occupied them or set them ablaze. Sunni leaders accused the Shiites of kidnapping and killing Sunnis in raids while the predominantly Shiite police force looked away.
Sunnis retaliated with their own attacks, and by Thursday afternoon -- the bloodiest day of the crisis -- they announced that they would boycott meetings on the formation of a new government. They also refused to attend a lunch meeting of Shiite and Kurdish political factions that Talabani had painstakingly organized, instead presenting a list of 10 demands to be met before they would rejoin talks.
"I would not say that it engendered a warm reaction," said a Western diplomat familiar with the negotiations, who provided a background interview on the condition that he not be named.
Among those most upset by the Sunni boycott threat was Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who was able to take a central role in the negotiations because he was perceived as a neutral party.
Ironically, the Kurds stood to gain the most from a civil conflict. They have long wanted an independent state, and revolted against Saddam Hussein in 1991 only to be brutally repressed. But Talabani was deeply troubled by the Samarra crisis, said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who was in contact with Talabani throughout the crisis.
"I've known President Jalal Talabani for over 20 years," Galbraith said. "It is the most pessimistic I've seen him, and that includes being in Iraq the night the uprising collapsed and we were fleeing for our lives. Here, he was profoundly disturbed about the future of Iraq."
As it turned out, the Sunni leaders' concrete demands -- for an immediate curfew, for a denunciation of the violence and for the return of mosques occupied by Shiite militiamen -- were acceptable, Khalilzad said. The curfew began at 8 p.m. Thursday and continued into daytime the next day. The level of violence plummeted on Friday, giving the politicians time to work out their differences.
Among the continuing problems was the role of Sadr's militiamen in causing chaos. "Militias are the infrastructure of civil war, and the basis of warlordism," Khalilzad said.
The other Western diplomat was more blunt with respect to Sadr. "He cannot play a credible role in the political process, where he engenders confidence and trust, until his militia demobilizes," he said.
By Saturday morning, the crisis had reached a turning point. After discussions at the White House and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, President Bush called leaders from each faction to give them the final push toward an accommodation, Khalilzad said.
After the call, the Sunni leaders announced their willingness to rejoin the talks, and later that evening they met with various representatives. At the end of that meeting, just before midnight on Saturday, the Iraqi prime minister, flanked by the leaders of the major political parties, solemnly announced at a news conference that the country would not have a civil war -- a moment of "terrific political symbolism," the Western diplomat said.
The diplomat said that the outside pressure helped but that the Sunni decision to seek an agreement was also made from a cold calculation of what could happen if they fought it out.
"I think these guys don't just react to pressure," the diplomat said. "They measure their own interests. And they understood that staying out of the political process put them back to where they were a year ago," when they had largely boycotted Iraq's first election and found themselves with almost no political power.
Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni leader who attended the talks Saturday, put it more bluntly: "I think this is a lesson for the Sunnis," he said. "Next time they will try to buy weapons to face these kinds of developments."
Khalilzad agreed that there would likely be a next time, noting that "efforts to provoke a civil war are likely to continue." But he was hopeful that this crisis would be a key moment in the history of Iraq.
"I give credit to Iraqi leaders for rising to the occasion," Khalilzad said. "Going to the brink, of course, but more importantly, pulling back. I am gratified that the decisive crisis caused by the attacks did not lead to an all-out civil war. The Iraqi people, I hope, will learn from this to use this as an opportunity for a new nationalism."
"Great crises such as this can fragment, polarize people or pull them together," he said. "I hope in 10 years, in 15 years, in 20 years, people will look at this crisis as a turning point in getting Iraqis to come together against a common enemy."
"I give credit to Iraqi leaders for rising to the occasion," Khalilzad said. "Going to the brink, of course, but more importantly, pulling back. I am gratified that the decisive crisis caused by the attacks did not lead to an all-out civil war. The Iraqi people, I hope, will learn from this to use this as an opportunity for a new nationalism."
Just what we were all waiting for, the words from the 'all wise one...' Enlighten us oh emperor!dilloduck said:Something needs to pull em together.It might be all for naught if there is a global war on Isalm.
Kathianne said:Just what we were all waiting for, the words from the 'all wise one...' Enlighten us oh emperor!
What mockery? Following the lead is all.dilloduck said:You know ?---If you have a point here somewhere why don't you just make it and lose the mockery.
oh ya--everyone can see that's exactly what you're doing.Kathianne said:What mockery? Following the lead is all.
I suppose for the same reason you persist in deluging us with your prejudices.dilloduck said:oh ya--everyone can see that's exactly what you're doing.
Why do you persist with the personal pot shots?
And what's that?Kathianne said:I suppose for the same reason you persist in deluging us with your prejudices.
Around the mulberry bush, nah thanks.dilloduck said:And what's that?
Kathianne said:Around the mulberry bush, nah thanks.
