Iraq

This week the New Republic devotes its entire issue to a symposium addressing the question, "Iraq: What Next?" Their panel of distinguished experts helpfully narrows down our options to the following: give politics a chance, threaten to leave, save whomever we can, admit it's over, bring the troops home, send more troops, divide Iraq, keep it whole, force everyone to the table, deal with the Sunnis, crush the Sunnis, ally with the Sunnis, bribe the insurgents, talk talk talk, ignore James Baker, and try anything.

And the winner is: Anne-Marie Slaughter (Princeton University), who nails it on the head with the obervation that:

"It's time to make a virtue of necessity in Iraq. The country is sliding into full-blown civil war... If we accept this reality and plan accordingly, suddenly the tables turn. If we pull out, Iran has a civil war on its borders, as do Syria and Saudi Arabia. All have good reasons to fear this scenario. Suddenly, instead of the United States being tied down in Iraq and thus unable to play a broader role in the region, Iran would find itself tide down in Iraq and thus unable to play a broader role in the region, while the United States could go back to being a regional power broker... The United States should announce that we are pulling out unless all parties within and outside Iraq come to the table and hammer out an enforceable peace settlement... We and the European Union... should organize an Iraqi peace conference, inviting representatives of the Shia, Kurdish, and Sunni communities within Iraq, as well as Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some of the Gulf states... The most important task for the United States is to make unequivocally clear that this is the last chance for all parties to negotiate while U.S. troops are still in Iraq."

Dr. Slaughter wins by virtue of her observation that Iraq's neighbors have a great deal to fear from a U.S. withdrawal. An all-out civil war would send refugees streaming across the borders into Syria, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda would take advantage of the chaos to take on the role of champion of the world's Sunnis against the infidel Shia; no country, Shiite or Sunni, would welcome this development. The Kurds would almost certainly declare independence, inspiring Kurds in Iran and Turkey to do the same. Iran and Syria are quite content with the status quo, since it's the U.S. that's stuck trying to keep the lid on the pot of boiling water. What fears them most (or ought to fear them most) is if the U.S. up and leaves. The commentators we hear on the cable networks these days who speculate about what price the U.S. would have to pay Iran and Syria to bring them to the negotiating table have it exactly wrong: if we promise to leave, Iran and Syria will now have to seek our help.

Dr. Slaughter's proposal for action, however, is a cop out. The U.S. should not threaten to pull out unless a peace agreement is reached; we should announce that we will pull out in say six months regardless of whether there's peace or not. There's no need for the U.S. to sponsor the international conference; the European Union, UN, or Arab League would do just fine, and the US could participate if asked. Within a year we should have all troops out of Iraq, save perhaps a small number of special forces in Kurdistan to give us the ability to launch operations against al Qaeda if necessary, and a token protection force in Kuwait.

What becomes of Iraq in our absence? Well, the happy scenario is that some arrangement - division, power sharing, democracy, relatively non-malevolent dictatorship, whatever - is arrived at that ends the civil conflict, prevents a regional war, and keeps Iran from dominating Iraq. A bonus would be that in the process the countries of the Middle East make some progress towards peacefully resolving regional conflicts while forging an implicit alliance against al Qaeda. The sad scenario is civil war, etc. But I think by now we all recognize that the U.S. cannot dictate events in Iraq. We've demonstrated that we aren't competent in managing Iraq's affairs, and we certainly have no legitimacy as an occupying power. Everyone agrees that the only solution is a political one - so let's get out of the way and let the countries of the region come up with one.