By George Friedman
The Bush administration let it be known last week that it is
prepared to start reducing the number of troops in Iraq, indicating
that three brigades out of 15 might be withdrawn before Inauguration
Day in 2009. There are many dimensions to the announcements, some
political and some strategic. But perhaps the single most important
aspect of the development was the fairly casual way the report was
greeted. It was neither praised nor derided. Instead, it was noted and
ignored as the public focused on more immediate issues.
In the public mind, Iraq is clearly no longer an immediate issue.
The troops remain there, still fighting and taking casualties, and
there is deep division over the wisdom of the invasion in the first
place. But the urgency of the issue has passed. This doesn’t mean the
issue isn’t urgent. It simply means the American public — and indeed
most of the world — have moved on to other obsessions, as is their
eccentric wont. The shift nevertheless warrants careful consideration.
Obviously, there is a significant political dimension to the
announcement. It occurred shortly after Sen. Barack Obama began to
shift his position on Iraq
from what appeared to be a demand for a rapid withdrawal to a more
cautious, nuanced position. As we have pointed out on several
occasions, while Obama’s public posture was for withdrawal with all due
haste, his actual position as represented in his position papers was
always more complex and ambiguous. He was for a withdrawal by the
summer of 2010 unless circumstances dictated otherwise. Rhetorically,
Obama aligned himself with the left wing of the Democratic Party, but
his position on the record was actually much closer to Sen. John
McCain’s than he would admit prior to his nomination. Therefore, his
recent statements were not inconsistent with items written on his
behalf before the nomination — they merely appeared s o.
The Bush administration was undoubtedly delighted to take advantage
of Obama’s apparent shift by flanking him. Consideration of the troop
withdrawal has been under way for some time, but the timing of the leak
to The New York Times detailing it must have been driven by Obama’s
shift. As Obama became more cautious, the administration became more
optimistic and less intransigent. The intent was clearly to cause
disruption in Obama’s base. If so, it failed precisely because the
public took the administration’s announcement so casually. To the
extent that the announcement was political, it failed because even the
Democratic left is now less concerned about the war in Iraq.
Politically speaking, the move was a maneuver into a vacuum.
But the announcement was still significant in other, more important ways. Politics aside, the administration is planning withdrawals because the time has come.
First, the politico-military situation on the ground in Iraq has
stabilized dramatically. The reason for this is the troop surge —
although not in the way it is normally thought of. It was not the
military consequences of an additional 30,000 troops that made the
difference, although the addition and changes in tactics undoubtedly
made an impact.
What was important about the surge is that it happened at all. In
the fall of 2006, when the Democrats won both houses of Congress, it
appeared a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Iraq was inevitable. If Bush
wouldn’t order it, Congress would force it. All of the factions in
Iraq, as well as in neighboring states, calculated that the U.S.
presence in Iraq would shortly start to decline and in due course
disappear. Bush’s order to increase U.S. forces stunned all the
regional players and forced a fundamental recalculation. The assumption
had been that Bush’s hands were tied and that the United States was no
longer a factor. What Bush did — and this was more important than
numbers or tactics — was demonstrate that his hands were not tied and
that the United States could not be discounted.
The realization that the Americans were not going anywhere caused
the Sunnis, for example, to reconsider their position. Trapped between
foreign jihadists and the Shia, the Americans suddenly appeared to be a
stable and long-term ally. The Sunni leadership turned on the jihadists
and aligned with the United States, breaking the jihadists’ backs.
Suddenly facing a U.S.-Sunni-Kurdish alliance, the Shia lashed out,
hoping to break the alliance. But they also split between their own
factions, with some afraid of being trapped as Iranian satellites and
others viewing the Iranians as the solution to their problem. The
result was a civil war not between the Sunnis and Shia, but among the
Shia themselves.
Tehran performed the most important recalculation. The Iranians’
expectation had been that the United States would withdraw from Iraq
unilaterally, and that when it did, Iran would fill the vacuum it left.
This would lead to the creation of an Iranian-dominated Iraqi Shiite
government that would suppress the Sunnis and Kurds, allowing Iran to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region. It was a heady vision, and not an unreasonable one — if the United States had begun to withdraw in the winter of 2006-2007.
When the surge made it clear that the Americans weren’t leaving, the
Iranians also recalculated. They understood that they were no longer
going to be able to create a puppet government in Iraq, and the danger
now was that the United States would somehow create a viable puppet
government of its own. The Iranians understood that continued
resistance, if it failed, might lead to this outcome. They lowered
their sights from dominating Iraq to creating a neutral buffer state in
which they had influence. As a result, Tehran acted to restrain the
Shiite militias, focusing instead on maximizing its influence with the
Shia participating in the Iraqi government, including Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
A space was created between the Americans and Iranians, and
al-Maliki filled it. He is not simply a pawn of Iran — and he uses the
Americans to prevent himself from being reduced to that — but neither
is he a pawn of the Americans. Recent negotiations between the United
States and the al-Maliki government on the status of U.S. forces have
demonstrated this. In some sense, the United States has created what it
said it wanted: a strong Iraqi government. But it has not achieved what
it really wanted, which was a strong, pro-American Iraqi government.
Like Iran, the United States has been forced to settle for less than it
originally aimed for, but more than most expected it could achieve in
2006.
This still leaves the question of what exactly the invasion of Iraq
achieved. When the Americans invaded, they occupied what was clearly
the most strategic country in the Middle East, bordering Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Without resistance, the
occupation would have provided the United States with a geopolitical
platform from which to pressure and influence the region. The fact that
there was resistance absorbed the United States, therefore negating the
advantage. The United States was so busy hanging on in Iraq that it had
no opportunity to take advantage of the terrain.
That is why the critical question for the United States is how many
troops it can retain in Iraq, for how long and in what locations. This
is a complex issue. From the Sunni standpoint, a continued U.S.
presence is essential to protect Sunnis from the Shia. From the Shiite
standpoint, the U.S. presence is needed to prevent Iran from
overwhelming the Shia. From the standpoint of the Kurds, a U.S.
presence guarantees Kurdish safety from everyone else. It is an oddity
of history that no major faction in Iraq now wants a precipitous U.S.
withdrawal — and some don’t want a withdrawal at all.
For the United States, the historical moment for its geopolitical
coup seems to have passed. Had there been no resistance after the fall
of Baghdad in 2003, the U.S. occupation of Iraq would have made
Washington a colossus astride the region. But after five years of
fighting, the United States is exhausted and has little appetite for
power projection in the region. For all its bravado against Iran, no
one has ever suggested an invasion, only airstrikes. Therefore, the
continued occupation of Iraq simply doesn’t have the same effect as it
did in 2003.
But the United States can’t simply leave. The Iraqi government is
not all that stable, and other regional powers, particularly the
Saudis, don’t want to see a U.S. withdrawal. The reason is simple: If
the United States withdraws before the Baghdad government is cohesive
enough, strong enough and inclined enough to balance Iranian power,
Iran could still fill the partial vacuum of Iraq, thereby posing a
threat to Saudi Arabia. With oil at more than $140 a barrel, this is
not something the Saudis want to see, nor something the United States
wants to see.
Internal Iraqi factions want the Americans to stay, and regional
powers want the Americans to stay. The Iranians and pro-Iranian Iraqis
are resigned to an ongoing presence, but they ultimately want the
Americans to leave, sooner rather than later. Thus, the Americans won’t
leave. The question now under negotiation is simply how many U.S.
troops will remain, how long they will stay, where they will be based
and what their mission will be. Given where the United States was in
2006, this is a remarkable evolution.
The Americans have pulled something from the jaws of defeat, but what
that something is and what they plan to do with it is not altogether
clear.
The United States obviously does not want to leave a massive force
in Iraq. First, its more ambitious mission has evaporated; that moment
is gone. Second, the U.S. Army and Marines are exhausted from five
years of multidivisional warfare with a force not substantially
increased from peacetime status. The Bush administration’s decision not
to dramatically increase the Army was rooted in a fundamental error:
namely, the administration did not think the insurgency would be so
sustained and effective. They kept believing the United States would
turn a corner. The result is that Washington simply can’t maintain the
current force in Iraq under any circumstances, and to do so would be
strategically dangerous. The United States has no strategic ground
reserve at present, opening itself to dangers outside of Iraq.
Therefore, if the United States is not going to get to play colossus of
the Middle East, it needs to reduce its forces dramatically to recreate
a strategic reserv e. Its interests, the interests of the al-Maliki
government — and interestingly, Iran’s interests — are not wildly out
of sync. Washington wants to rapidly trim down to a residual force of a
few brigades, and the other two players want that as well.
The United States has another pressing reason to do this: It has another major war under way in Afghanistan,
and it is not winning there. It remains unclear if the United States
can win that war, with the Taliban operating widely in Afghanistan and
controlling a great deal of the countryside. The Taliban are
increasingly aggressive against a NATO force substantially smaller than
the conceivable minimum needed to pacify Afghanistan. We know the
Soviets couldn’t do it with nearly 120,000 troops. And we know the
United States and NATO don’t have as many troops to deploy in
Afghanistan as the Soviets did. It is also clear that, at the moment,
there is no exit strategy. Forces in Iraq must be transferred to
Afghanistan to stabilize the U.S. position while the new head of U.S.
Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus — the architect of the political
and military strategy in Iraq — f igures out what, if anything, is
going to change.
Interestingly, the Iranians want the Americans in Afghanistan.
They supported the invasion in 2001 for the simple reason that they do
not want to see an Afghanistan united under the Taliban. The Iranians
almost went to war with Afghanistan in 1998 and were delighted to see
the United States force the Taliban from the cities. The specter of a
Taliban victory in Afghanistan unnerves the Iranians. Rhetoric aside, a
drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq and a transfer to Afghanistan is what
the Iranians would like to see.
To complicate matters, the Taliban situation is not simply an Afghan issue
— it is also a Pakistani issue. The Taliban draw supplies, recruits and
support from Pakistan, where Taliban support stretches into the army
and the intelligence service, which helped create the group in the
1990s while working with the Americans. There is no conceivable
solution to the Taliban problem without a willing and effective
government in Pakistan participating in the war, and that sort of
government simply is not there. Indeed, the economic and security
situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate.
Therefore, the Bush administration’s desire to withdraw troops from
Iraq makes sense on every level. It is a necessary and logical step.
But it does not address what should now become the burning issue: What
exactly is the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan? As in Iraq before the
surge, the current strategy appears to be to hang on and hope for the
best. Petraeus’ job is to craft a new strategy.
But in Iraq, for better or worse, the United States faced an apparently
implacable enemy — Iran — which in fact pursued a shrewd, rational and
manageable policy. In Afghanistan, the United States is facing a state
that appears friendly — Pakistan — but is actually confused, divided
and unmanageable by itself or others.
Petraeus’ success in Iraq had a great deal to do with Tehran’s
calculations of its self-interest. In Pakistan, by contrast, it is
unclear at the moment whether anyone is in a position to even define
the national self-interest, let alone pursue it. And this means that
every additional U.S. soldier sent to Afghanistan raises the stakes in
Pakistan. It will be interesting to see how Afghanistan and Pakistan
play out in the U.S. presidential election. This is not a theater of
operations that lends itself to political soundbites.
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