Iraq

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Balance and Modesty

Matthew E. Valkovic and Brian M. Burton pen a Small Wars Journal op-ed that pushes back a bit against Andrew Bacevich's recent Atlantic piece on the Army's internal "COIN vs. Conventional" doctrinal debates. You have to gather some momentum in order to influence an institution as massive and resistant to change as the U.S. Army, especially in the immediate aftermath of the violently imposed transformation of the Rumsfeld era. Add the immediacy, very eloquently expressed by Abu Muqawama, of watching your fellow soldiers die and I think the conviction of the COIN "crusaders," as Bacevich characterizes them, becomes very understandable.

Now that the COIN approach has won its bona fides in Iraq, a consensus -- and it strikes me as a reasonable one -- is emerging, expressed by Bob Gates in the speech I flagged yesterday, and echoed by Valkovic and Burton. According to that consensus, we need COIN because that's what we're doing at the moment, and it's very likely we'll be called on to do it in the future. That doesn't mean we'll abandon our conventional capacity, which is why Gates, Valkovic and Burton, emphasize balance. But it makes no sense to lose the war you're fighting in order to win one you might fight in the future.

But perhaps more importantly, nor does it mean that we'll go actively looking for places to apply our new COIN capacity, which is why Gates emphasized modesty, and Valkovic and Burton concur with Bacevich's notion of "strategic choice." I didn't flag the Gates passage on modesty, but Tom Barnett did, and it's worth a read (as is Barnett's inimitable commentary that follows). I also interpret Gen. David Petraeus' recent comments about the limited applicability to Afghanistan of what's been learned in Iraq as an implicit endorsement of this notion of modesty.

I'm reassured by the "Gates Consensus" and hope it solidifies, because I take the risk of COIN-toxication (by which I mean the same kind of over-confident interventionism that led to the Bush-Rumsfeld Iraq fiasco, only directed towards stability and reconstruction operations) seriously. COIN-centered operations -- especially as formulated by Gen. Petraeus' field manual and incarnated by his multidisciplinary, interdepartmental approach -- are a tempting vision of the military instrument as something other than a warfighting tool. It's a vision that has a special appeal to the left, with its liberal/humanitarian interventionist impulse, and to the right, with its forward defense mentality.

Which makes the kind of modesty that Gates articulated all the more essential. Because COIN is still war, and war is still hell. And I say that confidently, as a civilian who's never witnessed it. That's not to say that war isn't sometimes necessary. But when it isn't, it should be avoided.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

COIN and the Limits of Nation-Building

Janine Davidson at Intel Dump cites a Tom Johnson and M. Chris Mason piece in the Atlantic, All Counterinsurgency is Local, before discussing the tension between the tactics of counterinsurgency, which emphasize engaging with governance and authority at the most immediate (ie. local) level, and the strategy of counterinsurgency, which emphasizes shoring up governance and authority at the national level:

[T]he question we need to examine is about tradeoffs. What are we sacrificing from a national or international security perspective when we focus on human security at the local level, as Johnson and Mason suggest? What might an international system with weaker nation-states look like?

Do we have to choose between strengthening the local over the national level systems? Is it possible to have both? And can we help build both simultaneously, or should we focus on the local level and then eventually aggregate efforts up to a national level?

It's a point I alluded to here, in discussing the ways in which targeting the faultlines of the Westphalian order is increasingly becoming a feature not only of asymmetric non-state actors, but of great power geopolitics as well. It's also a point that I was planning to develop today, even before reading Davidson's post. Preventing failed and failing states from becoming vectors of regional and global security threats -- whether through terrorism, organized crime (human slavery, money laundering), or drug trafficking -- has become the foundational logic of America's national security posture, as reflected in the U.S. military's doctrinal shift towards a counterinsurgency emphasis.

But the tactical-strategic paradox that Davidson flags, between COIN on the one hand and nation-building on the other, reflects a broader historical context that risks getting clouded by the need for practical solutions to the operational challenges of two wars. Because in ways that vary from Iraq to Afghanistan to the Pakistani tribal areas, America is running up against the fundamental and historically unresolved tensions between the modern Westphalian system and the traditional ethno-sectarian/tribal system. Our strategic posture amounts to a colonial crusade in defense of the Westphalian order, even as the tactical necessities demanded by that crusade identify the historical limits of that order's applicability.

We're essentially fighting a rearguard battle of the 19th century colonial wars, minus the colonies. The fact that we're engaged in this exercise at the very moment that our global dominance seems to have peaked and our financial foundation is more uncertain than at any time in several generations suggests that in ignoring history, we're condemning ourselves to repeat it.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   International Relations   Iraq   

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Tuesday, September 9, 2008

After the Surge

It's admittedly been a while since I wrote about Iraq, which is a testament to the ways in which that conflict has become a mature stabilization operation. Twenty-three U.S. soldiers dead in August is twenty-three too many. But the security gains since January 2007 are enormous and game-changing.

I was opposed to the Surge when President Bush announced it, I've been skeptical of the weight it's been given as a causal factor of the decline in violence, and I remain unconvinced that it has accomplished its ultimate strategic goal of ensuring that Iraq's ethnic, sectarian and factional conflicts are resolved through the political process as opposed to armed violence. I also don't believe President Bush's decision to send the troops was particularly courageous from a political standpoint, since his only alternative was to admit to having committed the most catastrophic strategic blunder in American history.

That said, the Surge did accomplish two things. By signalling Bush's unwavering commitment to America's military engagement, it helped convince the various Iraqi factions that whether or not they ultimately resolve their differences through bloodshed, they'd stand to gain by waiting until after we're gone to do so. And should the security gains hold until the American drawdown is complete (whenever that is), the Surge will have allowed the American military to withdraw from Iraq with its coercive reputation intact. And that's indispensable if American power, in both its soft and hard expressions, is to be credible.

Now it's official, the shift of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan will begin in January 2009. That's, of course, where the rubber will hit the road in both theaters. I'm on record as being opposed to widening the conflict in Afghanistan, not because the objectives of the Afghan War aren't desirable. They are. I'm just not sure if they're achievable. As I pointed out above, I've been wrong before. Hopefully I'll be wrong here, too.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   Iraq   

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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Coordinating Interagency Integration

If you haven't seen it on the WPR front page yet, give John Nagl's and Brian Burton's piece on the need for building civilian institutional capacity for counterinsurgency and nation-building operations a look. Obviously conflict zones are going to command a great deal of American attention and resources, and as Nagl and Burton make clear, unless civilian agencies adapt their training and institutional orientation, they will increasingly see their expertise farmed out to, or absorbed by, the military. As the article also makes clear, that won't happen until these agencies are funded and staffed to a level appropriate with their essential contributions to these efforts.

The piece emphasizes the need for more interagency "integration" of operations, but one question it leaves unanswered is who ultimately will play the overall coordinating role:

. . .The demands of large-scale counterinsurgency and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq are increasingly clear: The United States must integrate civilian reconstruction expertise with military force in conflict zones. Ad hoc measures, like the establishment of the civil-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq, were an important step towards creating this capability but are an incomplete solution. Recent State Department-led initiatives, which include the establishment of the Civilian Response Corps as well as the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (CRS) and the Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative, represent an effort to establish effective civilian control of the political, economic, and social dimensions of nation-building operations.

One of the problems identified with PRT's is that, lacking any uniform command structure, they are essentially coordinated by the agency controlling the funding stream. More often than not these days, that's the Pentagon. As Nagl and Burton put it, the State Dept. initiative is only a first step. An overarching conceptual framework of how interagency integration functions might be a useful second one.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   Foreign Policy   Iraq   

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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The Case for Iraq Withdrawal Timetables

According to this CFR backgrounder, neighboring Arab states are increasing their aid to and engagement with Iraq as a pre-emptive security investment in the event of an increasingly expected American troop withdrawal. Of course, forcing Iraq's neighbors to assume more of a burden in stabilizing the country was one of the logical underpinnings of a withdrawal timeline, along with the pressure it would place on the Iraqi political process to make progress on power sharing arrangements. So, basically, two for two.

Meanwhile, why does nobody ever mention the November 2006 midterm elections, which conclusively demonstrated that American public opinion had turned against the war, as a contributing factor to the reduction in violence in Iraq? If you take a look at this graphic from the Economist (via The Global Buzz), the peak in Iraqi civilian casualties actually corresponds to the end of 2006, before the announcement and deployment of the Surge. (I imagine the spike in American military casualties in Summer 2007 is due to the increased deployment and forward engagement of American forces in Baghdad.)

Contrary to the worst case scenarios conjured up of bloody internecine fighting, the possibility that American forces might soon be leaving Iraq seems to have a way of focusing people's attention on pulling back from the brink and finding ways to make sure things don't fall completely apart. In other words, pretty much what advocates of disengagement suggested, across the board.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Political Logic of Timetables

Kevin Drum's got a smart post on the likelihood of President Bush and Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki reaching a deal on a status of forces agreement that was recently believed to be dead in the water. Here's the key quote from the WSJ article Kevin flags:

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national-security adviser, said the recent agreement between Washington and Baghdad on a withdrawal time horizon is pushing the talks along.

"That mutual understanding has been very beneficial," he said. "Neither of us can deal with open-ended uncertainty."

The Iraqis are still pushing for a 2010 date, in line with Barack Obama's proposal, but the article suggests that a compromise date a year or two after that might salvage an agreement during the Bush administration's term. But what's interesting is that the logic used by al-Rubaie in support of a withdrawal timetable, which the Iraqis were already insisting on as early as June 2006, is the same logic used by American supporters of conditional disengagement, namely that the open-ended presence of American troops in Iraq was exacerbating factional divisions and undermining Iraqi political reconciliation.

What's happened in the meantime is that al-Sadr and the Sunnis silenced their guns, we surged five brigades into Baghdad, and Nouri Maliki flexed his muscles in Basra. Whether or not al-Sadr is beaten or just biding his time is a question we can't really answer, and the same is true of whether the Sunni insurgency will re-integrate the Iraqi political system peacefully or not.

It's also impossible to know for sure whether the American troop presence will simply postpone a return to violence, or create the conditions for a permanent political resolution of the sectarian and factional conflicts. But it's hard to think of a better way to test that proposition than by setting an actual timetable for withdrawal. In any case, an open-ended American military presence is politically untenable in Iraq, and it looks like the American political consensus is catching up to Baghdad's.

One final thought on the idea of a conditions-based timetable, where the big question no one is addressing is, Who sets the conditions? Spikes in violence might be caused by extremists bent on undermining the central government. But they might also represent resistance to a factional power grab legitimized by the mantle of American recognition. Anyone who thinks that a vague security guarantee to the Iraqi government is a good idea should take a look at France's experience in Africa, where due to outdated security agreements, French troops have been propping up regimes of varying degrees of unseemliness for decades.

Of course, to a certain degree that's what we did with Saddam Hussein so long as he functioned to contain Iran. But we did it with his army, not ours.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Quantum War, Quantum Warfare

Dr. iRack over at Abu Muqawama has emerged recently as an authoritative analyst of the Iraq War (and everything that term implies), so I recommend this rundown of the current situation that he posted over the weekend. Without getting too much into the details of his post (which is pretty comprehensive), it's reassuring to see that I'm not the only one who finds it difficult to make any meaningful sense out of the various narratives and counter-narratives that are now coming out of Iraq. Glass half-full or glass half-empty depends to a great deal on the observer.

But I'd venture to say that in many ways, some of them doctrinal and some of them practical, it no longer matters. We've entered a phase, both in the Iraq War and in the theory of warfare in general, that I'd characterize as quantum, where every tactical action has a multiplicity of possible significances and outcomes. And it's only the final strategic outcome that will eventually determine which particular meaning, in retrospect, was the correct one. In this case, the final outcome of a stable, pro-Western Iraq will signal strategic success, and anything else failure. That in turn will allow us to determine which events along the way were decisive and which anecdotal. But progress can no longer be measured with certainty along the way.

The implications for policy are obvious. Interventions must be very carefully weighed from the outset and the desired outcome very clearly identified, because once engaged, they become not only military quagmires, but political ones as well. Victory or defeat will always be just beyond the next car-bombing or IED attack, depending on one's point of view, and the arguments for pressing onward or withdrawing subject to second-guessing. Those conditions were obviously not met with regards to this war. But if we fail to recognize the nature of the changes taking place in warfare itself, it's unlikely that they'll be met with regards to the next one either.

Update: Very good schematic of the Iraqi political landscape by a guest poster over at the other Abu (Aardvark). Again, little in the way of answers, but the questions are noteworthy.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

To the Fallen, and the Standing

I would have liked to post this on Monday, but I was in NY with my son on a surprise visit for my Dad's 80th, and between jet lag and family time, I didn't get a chance to. That morning, me and the Lil' Feller had about an hour to kill before meeting up with everyone, since we were both waking up on Paris time. All weekend, there'd been a steady stream of Navy personnel in town for Fleet Week, and it occurred to me there might be some fun events programmed for a seven year-old. Sure enough, the USS Kearsarge was docked at Pier 90, a straight shot down to the water from the hotel, and it was open to the public. So we hopped in a Yellow cab and within ten minutes we were wandering around the various military vehicles -- a tank, an Armored Personnel Carrier, an amphibious landing craft -- stored in the hold.

I asked one of the Marine hosts, not even half my age, how many people rode in the back of the APC, which looked like an oversized oven fitted down the middle with two back-to-back benches about the width of a car seat. "Eight," he replied, before pointing out that by eight, he meant fully armed and equipped. "You don't want to be in there for more than five minutes," he assured me. Toss in the fact that as often as not an APC is transporting its passengers in a war zone, and I think it's safe to say that you don't want to be in there, period.

I was moved by the sight of all the young men and women in uniform in a way that I've never been before. I come from a family with a long history of pacifism and, yes, anti-militarism. Among the earliest photos of me in the family album is one, circa 1969, sitting in my stroller with a wool pennant reading "Bring the GI's home" draped across the front. In our family culture, though, hostility to the military was limited to the generals who sent young men into needless wars. The young men themselves were always regarded with a mixture of respect and regret.

This was the first time I'd ever really been surrounded by American soldiers during wartime. That it was also the first time I was face to face with the American military since my increased professional interest in national security and military issues probably also played a part in my heightened sense of appreciation. Clearly I was the target of a very effective info ops campaign, but I wanted to find some way of expressing to them my respect, my admiration, my emotion, not for their mission, which I find regrettable, but for their service, which I find heroic. The fact that it was Memorial Day, in the middle of a lightning visit back to my hometown, only reinforced the urgency of the sentiment. But as much as I wanted to say something, it would have felt silly to say it to only one of them, and impossible to say it to them all. I thought about trying to find an officer to use as a collective conduit, but the idea struck me as grandiose.

But more significantly, I felt curiously ashamed of expressing my appreciation, because to recognize the enormity of their service is also to recognize the normality of my own life. Unlike World War Two, where every segment of the population was mobilized into the war effort, or the Vietnam War, where the draft served to distribute the nightmare, if not equally, at least more widely, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have remained largely private wars: On the one hand, a mobilized military bearing an enormous burden; on the other, a demobilized citizenry bearing little to none.

So instead I explained to my son how moved I was, because these young people were serving at a time of war. And when we got to the transport helicopter fitted with medical stretchers up on the flag deck, I made it clear to him that these courageous men and women fly out every day knowing that they might be flying back strapped into one of them. War, I explained to him, is not a game. I hope to God he understood.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   Iraq   

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Sons of Iraq

If you haven't already, give David Ucko's piece on the Sons of Iraq a read. I'm probably guilty of dismissing that particular aspect of the improved security situation too quickly. As Ucko makes clear, it's risky and far from conclusively resolved. But it can't be reduced to an effort to buy off guns to get them pointed in another direction, and doing so only ignores the significant opportunities it offers for real progress.

The catch, as always when it comes to progress in Iraq, is consolidating it into something that resembles a cohesive national government. Ucko puts his hopes in the upcoming provincial elections in October, followed by national elections in December 2009. In a way that makes sense. The Sunnis by and large boycotted the last elections, so this will really be their first go at the new Iraqi political process. But a lot still depends on the Shiites' willingness to accomodate them. And the proof of the pudding will have to wait for the first time political power in Iraq changes hands from one faction to another, to find out whether that transfer ends up being a peaceful one or not.

I remain largely skeptical about the longterm durability of the progress in Iraq, and pessimistic about the chances that all of the broken bones will set in time for Iraq to be able to bear its own weight anytime soon. But now would seem to be the wrong time to precipitously remove the plaster cast (namely, American troops) that's holding it in place. I fear that we're chaperoning a failed policy towards its ultimate demise. But I'm willing to admit to my own pessimism, and hope that it's ultimately proven wrong.

Update: Behind the gimmick of comparing the SoI to the Sopranos, this LA Times story suggests that internal power struggles are already surfacing among the Sunnis as the American-Sunni partnerships (and the advantages they bestow) solidify. This doesn't at all contradict the significance of the strategy that Ucko identifies, but it points out yet another potential faultline that must be navigated.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Big Picture on the Long War

Amidst the signs of progress in Iraq, two cautionary notes: despite the Maliki government's solidification of its hold on power by military means, very few of the major political challenges to national reconciliation have been addressed, let alone solved; and the security gains of the past year have now exerted a "push me-pull you" pressure on Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes, which have either been appropriated or walled off behind sectarian lines. In other words, having returned the security situation to what resembles a frozen civil war (or a tenuous and sporadically violated ceasefire), we're now confronted with the difficult, costly and lengthy challenges of nation-building.

Which brings us to Andrew Bacevich's LA Times op-ed (via AM's Dr. iRack), which calls into question the broader context of the "Long War." In essence, Bacevich argues that in setting out to change the world, we've weakened ourselves from within. Now, if we don't rein in our own profligacy and hubris, we'll no longer have the luxury to engage in nation-building abroad. It's a convincing argument, if only for the fact that we're better at national renewal than we are at international transformation. And it's one worth considering, given that somehow the Iraq War seems to have had little impact on the instinctive reflex in some circles to reach for American military power when faced with a thorny problem, whether it be Iran's nuclear program or humanitarian crises in Burma and Darfur. Add to that the fact that the U.S. Army is retooling in the image of a counterinsurgency force adapted to stabilization and reconstruction operations, and the implications of Bacevich's assessment become pretty dire.

In the aftermath of 9/11, America understandably confused a security threat with a national security threat; a threat to Americans was mistaken for a threat to America. But it also confused the calculus of the terrorist threat for a zero sum game. The impact of the Iraq War (which having been wrongly folded into the "Long War" narrative must now be included in its assessment) has demonstrated that America can both weaken al-Qaida and itself at the same time. That is, in the War on Terrorism, both we and the terrorists can lose.

That Iraq also demonstrates the limits of America's ability to mold societies in our own image is even more reason for a sober reassessment of the interventionist urge. The way things are shaping up around the world, there will be plenty of situations where we'll be tempted (perhaps even required) to apply the military lessons we've learned in Iraq in other countries, under other circumstances. But unless we integrate the political lessons we've learned in Iraq first, we're likely to meet with the same frustrating results.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Iraq   

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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Al-Sadr Flips a COIN

It's not often you get to read a full, English-language interview with Moqtada al-Sadr's official spokesman, which is why I'm linking to this one, even if it is a week old. Sure, it's with PressTV, the Iranian version of Fox News, but hey, the Bush administration has got Michael Gordon to push its talking points, so what the heck.

The two things that stand out to me from Sheikh Salah Obeidi's version of events (major caveat there) are the lengths to which the Sadrists have gone, and are going, to try to walk the intra-Shiite power struggle back from a shooting war. From calling a ceasefire at the outset of the Surge, to holding their fire in the face of Maliki provocations after the Basra truce, to meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani last week, the Sadrists have made it clear that while they won't turn over their weapons (whether Iranian-furnished or not), they're willing to put them on ice.

The second was Obeidi's explanation for the Basra assault. The American press has primarily linked the attempt to crush the Sadrists to October's municipal elections.Obeidi does, too, but also mentions the fact that among Iraqi political parties, the Sadrists are the most likely to oppose the status of forces agreement currently being negotiated by the Iraqi government with the Bush administration. Which adds more urgency to getting them out of the way now.

The recent emphasis on crushing the Sadrists seems odd, though, given the Army's new COIN tactics. Al-Sadr is one of the few figures in Iraq who lead not just a constituency or a militia, but a movement. It might not be a movement that serves our interests, but according to Gen. Petraeus' very own COIN manual, that's not something that you crush, especially when, as Spencer Ackerman points out, al-Sadr is filling more governmental roles for his followers than the Iraqi government is able to. Saddam Hussein, using far more brutal methods, never managed to, and that was before the Sadrists had a militia to defend themselves. So I don't see how the Iraqi Security Forces are going to, even with our help.

What's more, we're going after the one Iraqi Shiite whose legitimacy doesn't depend on our, or the Iranians', support. The logic of counterinsurgency, though, assumes that the counterinsurgents are defending a legitimate government in the face of an illegitimate armed challenge. Otherwise what you have is puppet theater. And as all failed counterinsurgents eventually find out, puppets don't hold up very well in a warzone.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Business Never Personal

A few weeks back, I wrote that the real danger of Gen. Petraeus being promoted to CENTCOM is not so much that his regional strategy might be weighted towards Iraq to the detriment of Afghanistan, although that's certainly a risk. The real problem is that Gen. Petraeus' view of the Iranians is colored by the fact that he's been engaged in a low-level proxy war with them for the past year and a half.

But as this Dr. iRack post over at Abu Muqawama demonstrates, Petraeus isn't alone. Here's the good doctor discussing one possible reason why American policy-makers dismissed Iranian overtures for broad, regional negotiations following the recent fighting in Basra:

In recent weeks, Dr. iRack has been at a number of events with very senior U.S. officials discussing Iran's lethal involvement in Iraq. To a man, these officials have, over the past month, been rocketed by weapons made in Iran (although direct links to the regime remain murky). Dr. iRack is no psychologist, but key U.S. figures on the ground in Baghdad just don't seem to be in the mood to talk to folks with American blood an their hands while they're being shelled.

This, of course, is why it's not a good idea to put people who have been deeply engaged in-theater in broader regional policy positions. Again, the point is not that the Iranians are angels, or that their overture was necessarily credible. The point is that sometimes negotiating with the bad guys gets you a better result than fighting them, and personal animosities have a way of interfering with the judgment necessarily to make that sort of call.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq   

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Thursday, May 1, 2008

The Moqtada Paradox

For the past month, the Bush administration has been furiously rolling out the Iran-Sadr connection. Now Moqtada al-Sadr has begun to push back with the Iran-America connection:

Al Sadr Bloc spokesman in Najaf City Sheikh Salah Al Ubaidi accused Iran of working with the United Sates to share powers in Iraq.

That strikes me as a pretty smart play on al-Sadr's part, since it's looking more and more like he's the odd man out in Baghdad, Washington and Tehran. It also strikes me as the most accurate reading of what's going on, since at this point that's the only scenario that could possibly result in a stable Iraq.

Al-Sadr always seems to be most dangerous (or perhaps most agile) when everyone's busy counting him out, and something tells me this time's no different. Because if he's the odd man out, he's got no choice but to fight or strike a deal. And the idea that he's going to somehow settle for a deal with Maliki and SCII seems farfetched, since he already tried that and it didn't pan out so well for him.

The irony is that al-Sadr's vision for Iraq is by far the most compatible with our own, and in some alternate reality where we were watching this conflict from the sidelines or where we were not so heavily invested in taking him out, we would almost certainly be taking his side right now. In fact the only thing that kept us from doing so in the first place was our pipedream of a secular Iraqi democracy, and his mildly irritating habit of calling on his followers to drive out the infidel occupier, by which, curiously enough, he meant us.

We've obviously gotten over the Jeffersonian democracy kick, and in the case of the Sunnis we've managed to make nice with guys who initially weren't too keen on us sticking around. So I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up recognizing some of Moqtada's more lovable qualities before this whole thing is over. The question, though, is whether he'll learn to love us back.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The PRT's Over

By all accounts, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq are pretty popular. Everyone -- be it military and civil service team members on the ground, Washington policy-makers on the Hill and in the Executive branch, or the media -- just loves them. In a conference call with PRT members a few months back, President Bush even went so far as to suggest that he envied them for what he, like many, perceived as the exotic adventure they're experiencing in the farflung corners of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And for good reason. After years of disheartening news in both theaters of operations, the PRT's seemed to capture the public's imagination with their combination of American ingenuity, resolve and industriousness, but also with their frontier-style independence. To be sure, they operate in dangerous theaters at great personal risk. But they're also such a novelty that, for the most part, they function as a sort of free electron in the military hierarchy's periodic chart. Often financed by discretionary Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds as improvised responses to conditions on the ground, the PRT's resemble a post-9/11 expression of the pre-Vietnam Peace Corps ethic, with a touch of 90's NGO euphoria thrown in for good measure: rogue units taking advantage of the chaos of a war to wage peace.

But all that's likely to change soon, since the freewheeling nature of the PRT's that makes them such a popular feelgood story also makes them a nightmare to government oversight committees. The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight, in particular, just published its first report on the PRT's, and not surprisingly focused on the need for clearly defined missions, doctrine, operating procedures, goals, and metrics to measure their success. In other words, all the institutionalized standardization that will almost certainly make PRT's more "effective" while sucking all of the life out of them.

The PRT's are a significant and innovative part of the Army's new approach to counterinsurgency, which with its emphasis on a "human-culture-society" approach to COIN resembles an art as much as a military doctrine. With the promotion of Gen. Petraeus to CENTCOM commander and the apparent ascendancy of the Army's COIN faction, that approach has now assumed the position of the "dominant narrative" within the culture of the Army. Which means that in its own way, it too will be increasingly institutionalized and formatted as it moves further from its origins as an improvised response to conditions on the ground and closer to a law of science, frozen in a textbook and captured in the vacuum of certainty.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   Iraq   

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Friday, April 25, 2008

Playing the Petraeus Card

It looks like I'm the only one who's underwhelmed by the Petraeus appointment to CENTCOM commander, but what the heck. In for a penny, in for pound. So here's another thorny question that I've yet to see directly addressed. (Hampton, make sure you've had your morning cup of Joe before reading any further.)

I mentioned that by using his direct lines of communication with the Oval Office to leapfrog Adm. Fallon, Petraeus had already been serving as de facto CENTCOM commander. But in thinking about it, the leapfrog actually went much further than that, because President Bush made it clear that he would follow Petraeus' lead in Iraq, and not the other way around. 

Now, if you're a cynic like me, you might think that was a political ploy to use the persuasive authority of the Iraq theater commander to implement military tactics in Baghdad that serve Bush's political purposes in Washington. (All the better if they've been responsible for the improved security situation, but the causal connection remains disputable, and subject to developments on the ground.) But if you're not, it means that Petraeus was exercising a command that far exceeded the bailiwick of MNF-I or CENTCOM, for that matter. Petraeus was calling the shots for the Commander-in-Chief, and not the other way around.

Of course, so long as Petraeus' strategic vision is consistent with President Bush's political agenda, there's little reason to believe the relationship will suffer from his assumption of CENTCOM duties. But what happens when Petreaus decides that Bush's political line jeopardizes our regional strategic position? Well, it turns out we have a recent example of what happens to a CENTCOM commander who isn't in lockstep with the Bush administration's Middle East policy. It's called early retirement.

Now call me cynical, call me cranky, call me contrarian (just, please, don't call me punctilious). But to my eyes this looks like the latest installment of the Bush administration's politicization of the officer corps, and I suspect that anyone who expects Petraeus to suddenly start thinking differently about the big regional picture than he did about the Iraq theater is in for a disappointment. Petraeus will ask Bush for what Bush wants to give him, and Bush will then give it to him under the pretense that it's what his military commander asked for. And if Petraeus upsets the apple cart between now and January 20, 2009, he'll be joining Fox Fallon on the motivational speaking tour.

The problem isn't that the President calls the shots in time of war. That's how it should be. The problem is that the Petraeus-Bush relationship is a closed feedback loop, hermetically impervious to disproof and driven by a political agenda whose ideological foundation Bush has pragmatically sidelined but never explicitly renounced. And it's about to go regional.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   Politics   The Middle East   

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Petraeus Principle

What's clear so far about the Petraeus CENTCOM announcement is that all anyone can do right now is speculate on what impact this will all have. But while answers will only come with time, the fundamental questions are shaping up pretty quickly. According to Abu Muqawama they boil down to how Gen. Petraeus' experiences in Iraq are going to influence his regional vision in general, his approach to Iran in particular, and his ability to make detached decisions about how to distribute scarce resources between the two theaters of war now under his command. Tom Barnett, on the other hand, flips the formulation a bit and wonders how the added regional perspective will impact Gen. Petraeus' approach to Iraq and Iran, although he worries about the fact that the DoD is now pretty much all "bad cop," up and down the line, when it comes to Iran.

One thing that's implied in AM's remarks about Petraeus' regional vision being shaped by the prism of Iraq, but that I'd draw out even more explicitly, is that his vision of the Iranians has been shaped by the prism of what amounts to a proxy war there. So whatever broader regional approach to Tehran he adopts can't help but be conditioned by the fact that he has already been engaged in low-intensity warfare with them for the past year and a half. To use the language of Petraeus' own COIN manual, his Iran narrative has begun as a war story. So either he's capable of making a very significant pivot, or else the plotline is about to be expanded to a regional level (which, as Tom Barnett points out, does not necessarily mean a decisive attack on Iran but logically suggests one).

Meanwhile, some questions are being raised (Phil Carter here and Charlie from AM here) about Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno's fit as commander of MNF-I. But I'm surprised that, so far, no one's had the temerity to point out that compared to his CENTCOM predecessors, Gen. Petraeus' credentials are underwhelming for such a strategically vital regional command. Admiral Fallon's prior regional command experience was too deep to count. Gen. Abizaid did prior staff tours in the Office of the Army Chief of Staff, the Southern European Task Force, and the U.S. Army Europe HQ. Gen. Franks commanded the 3rd Army for three years prior to taking over CENTCOM, and Gen. Zinni was CENTCOM Deputy C-i-C for nine months before assuming the top spot.

The bulk of Petraeus' experience, meanwhile, has been in operations and training (which is what you'd expect for someone who has demonstrated such tactical brilliance). Challenging as it is, Commander MNF-I is his broadest command to date. Now it could be that Petraeus is, in addition to being a tactical genius, a strategic genius as well. But a case could be made for the argument that, in leapfrogging Adm. Fallon through his personal relationship with President Bush, Petraeus has essentially served as de facto Commander of CENTCOM for the past year and a half. And in that time he has put the Iraq theater ahead of our broader regional interests, and according to many, ahead of the health of the Army.

Again, only time will tell. But so far, the only real qualification Petraeus seems to have for the job is to have offered President Bush a fortuitous tactical approach that coincided perfectly with Bush's political needs.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   Politics   

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

The War That Never Was

The NY Times story detailing how the Pentagon used "military analysts" to spread administration talking points on the Iraq War is sure to dominate the news cycle, and rightly so. The story reveals the fundamental role Information Operations (IO) play in the Pentagon's strategic vision, as I noted here, and as confirmed by this October 2003 report (.pdf) titled Information Operations Roadmap, personally approved by Donald Rumsfeld and kept secret until January 2006, when the National Security Archive at George Washington University obtained it through a FOIA request. While far from a smoking gun, the report makes for interesting reading, especially the passages that recognize the difficulty of maintaining boundaries between foreign and domestic audiences in the contemporary media landscape.

A lot of discussion of the story's revelations is almost certain to center around the Smith-Mundt Act, but significantly, nothing that took place violated its prohibitions, which are on the domestic dissemination of public diplomacy "propaganda" targeting foreign media markets. The same talking points echoed by the "analysts" were being distributed for domestic consumption by official DoD and White House spokespeople. The fact that the "analysts," who were under no direct orders, were not identified as official Pentagon mouthpieces is a matter of personal integrity (or lack thereof) and their network employers' lack of rigor in vetting them.

That's not to say that the operation isn't alarming and repugnant, both from the point of view of the Pentagon and the "analysts." It is. But it's also not very surprising, and falls short, in its flagrant contempt of press objectivity, of this administration's other abuses, mentioned in passing in the article. The major systemic failure, to my mind, was not in the "analysts," who were led astray by human nature and misplaced institutional loyalty, or in the Pentagon, which was faithful to its institutional nature, but in the media which, by failing to vet the "analysts" for independence of viewpoint, betrayed one of its central functions.

To the extent that the operation was successful, it illustrates the Pentagon's savvy appreciation of contemporary media. The "analysts" were "paid by the hit" by the networks, which meant that, like Debka and Drudge, their privileged media positions were dependent on access to their sources more than veracity of their information. The identification of "analysts," as opposed to reporters, as key opinion shapers also demonstrates an understanding that in an age of media saturation, those who frame narratives are more important than those who gather facts.

But insomuch as the information they were peddling was demonstrably false, the operation reveals the extent to which the DoD has failed to integrate the lessons of Vietnam, which it has identified as the media filter slanting public opinion, as opposed to the dissonance between the Department's official line and the reality on the ground. It also leaves the Pentagon wide open to what amounts to a devastating counter-op targeting the very assets (the "analysts" themselves) it would normally deploy to defend itself. As such, the Times story should probably be understood as part of an internal DoD battle for control of the Iraq War "narrative," and the cameo appearances by Gen. Petraeus, in this context, are hardly surprising.

The demonstrable falsehood of the talking points will also ultimately determine whether the DoD crossed whatever statutory lines might apply, since it is forbidden from domestic use of Psychological Operations (Psy Ops) both by executive order and department regulation. For an in-depth treatment of some of the ways IO and Psy Ops have already been employed during the Iraq War, as well as how the lines between foreign and domestic consumption have been blurred and/or exploited, Daniel Schulman's Columbia Journalism Review piece from back in March 2006 is must reading.

Ultimately, the story really drives home the degree to which the Iraq War has existed mainly as a battle between competing narratives, whose defining feature is the fading centrality of fact, and whose defining historical figure may end up being neither George W. Bush nor Saddam Hussein, but Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information who declared America's military defeat even as U.S. forces occupied Baghdad. Launched in response to an imaginary threat, planned to facilitate an imaginary liberation, waged to secure an imaginary peace, and now extended to achieve imaginary outcomes, the administration's version of the Iraq War has from start to finish replaced reality with denial, analysis with wishful thinking, and factual assessments with fairy tales. Indeed, were it not for the deaths of 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that make such an idea obscene, you could almost say that the Iraq War has never really existed at all.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   Media Coverage   

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Failure of the Al-Qaida Model

Funny how for months we've been picking apart the Anbar Awakening from a tactical point of view, all the while failing to take into account its single most significant strategic implication. Namely, that al-Qaida's blueprint for Islamic revolution does not work.

The Military Review article I wrote up in an earlier post offered more evidence of what's become the consensus explanation for the turning of the Sunni tribes: their disgust with al-Qaida Iraq's murderous tactics and their resentment at the AQI "foreigners" trying to impose an internationalist jihadi ideology on what was essentially a nationalist insurgency. But al-Qaida, as a globalized, multi-national suicide bombing outfit, has no other operational doctrine and no native land to call its own. Which means its experience in Iraq is almost certain to be reproduced everywhere it goes.

Think about that for a second. At a time when eighty percent of the Arab world views America unfavorably, and in a war that a majority of Americans (let alone Iraqis) disapprove of, al-Qaida failed to establish a sustainable bridgehead. That's not the mark of an organization that represents a strategic, existential threat to the United States.

By their nature, Al-Qaida in particular and terrorism in general pose very real threats to the lives and safety of American civilians, threats that need to be addressed firmly, resolutely and effectively. But anyone claiming they are anything more than that has not been paying close enough attention to the evidence of the Iraq War, of which they are usually the most vocal supporters.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Iraq   

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

COIN and Combat Tours

When President Bush announced that Iraq and Afghanistan combat tours would be cut back to twelve months from their current fifteen, Phil Carter and Kevin Drum had an interesting back and forth and back about tour lengths and counterinsurgency best practices. The upshot of the exchange was that even though counterinsurgency demands familiarity with the area of operations, there's a point of diminishing returns beyond which the human toll of longer tours interferes with units' ability to be effective. Here's Carter:

[T]here's a finite limit to the amount of combat that men and women can endure. So we must balance combat effectiveness, and the needs of an all-volunteer force (and its families), against the steep learning curve of counterinsurgency, which demands longer deployments.

Today the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, weighed in from "his heavily fortified headquarters" in Kabul. McNeill argued that the fifteen month tours ". . .are critical to making progress in the war against Afghanistan's Taliban and other insurgents. . ." and that ". . .the greatest gains in the war have come from Soldiers serving the long tours." He did, however, recognize that they are not feasible:

"It's not something I advocate we stay on forever," McNeill said. "We've got to ease up on the force a little bit. It's especially an issue for the families."

But he said the most successful units have been U.S. Army troops who have "established relationships with the terrain, with the indigenous people and with the enemy, and have had a good amount of time to exploit those relationships and use them to their advantage."

This does seem to be a wrinkle that needs to be ironed out. Basing a significant operational component of Army doctrine on a tactical approach that is based on a fundamentally irreconciliable dilemma presents obvious problems. Carter suggested using the Marine Corps model of seven-month tours combined with rotating units back into previous areas of operation, thereby providing needed rest along with continuity. Hopefully this will be addressed whenever Gen. Petraeus' highly praised COIN manual comes up for a revision.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Iran's Iraq Policy Mirrors Our Own

Yesterday's post about recent U.S. and Iranian restraint opening the door to possible engagement might have been premature to the extent that it downplayed the rhetoric now coming out of Washington about Iran's involvement with Iraqi militias. In particular, the events in Basra are now being used to demonstrate the amount of material and training Iran has supplied to the Sadrist militia, both "special" (ie. rogue) factions and those loyal to Moqtada. Future conflicts will certainly bring to light the operational links that Iran has established with other Shiite militias as well, including those that are integrated into Iraq's national security apparatus.

The Bush administration is portraying this influence as "malign", and insomuch as it works in opposition to our stated goals (solidifying Iraqi sovereignty) and our unstated goals (liquidating the most prominent Iraqi figure -- al-Sadr -- that isn't willing to reach a working arrangement with us), it is. But it's important to remember how arbitrary (or subjective) our definition of terms really is: we've identified the incarnation of Iraqi sovereignty as those willing to cooperate with us, from which it necessarily follows that al-Sadr -- who might very well be the most nationalist of Shiites -- and the support Tehran provides him become part of the problem. Food for thought for the next phase of intra-Shiite power consolidation: if we defined anyone who received support from Tehran as an enemy, we'd have no Shiite allies left.

What's also significant is the degree to which our Sunni policy perfectly mirrors Iran's Shiite policy, both in practice (supplying non-state militias fighting against foreign forces) and effect (undermining the government's monopoly on the legitimate use of force). For the time being, Sunnis have identified al-Qaida Iraq as their principle foreign enemy. But with AQI's strength dwindling, it's only a matter of time before they turn their attention to another foreign power with a significant presence in Iraq.

When that time comes, the Sunnis will have a choice between the two foreign powers left in Iraq: the U.S. and Iran. In the first case, we'll find the second front re-opened, in the second we'll find ourselves on the field as the full-scale Iraqi civil war breaks out. In either case, the role of guarantor of Iraqi sovereignty seems almost certain to be even less attractive than it is now.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq   

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Friday, April 11, 2008

The Limits of the Surge: Interview with Gian Gentile

You might have heard of Gian P. Gentile. He's an active duty Army lieutenant colonel whose World Politics Review article, "Misreading the Surge," brought a fierce internal debate over the Surge and its potential impact on the Army's conventional capabilities to the attention of the general public. In addition to being discussed in numerous foreign policy and national security blogs and fora, the article was also referenced in a recent Wall Street Journal article about this week's congressional hearings on the Surge.

Gentile very graciously agreed to do a follow up email interview for World Politics Review, which is up now. If you've already followed this a bit, the interview provides some further elaboration of his main arguments and concerns. If you haven't, it's a pretty thorough introduction to a debate that's certain to be central to American military doctrine for the years to come.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Iran in Iraq

Since the Senate Foreign Relations committee seems to be giving Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker a pretty tough time regarding Iran's influence in Iraq and how reasonable it is to believe we can eliminate it, now might be a good time to point out that former Iraqi Prime Minister and head of PM Noori Miliki's Dawa Party, Ibrahim Jafari, was in Tehran on Sunday, where he met with Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani:

Jafari. . .highlighted the Islamic Republic of Iran’s role in solving his country’s problems and said, "Iran seeks to establish peace, security and stability in the region."

Maybe the timing's just a coincidence. Or maybe it has to do with ironing out the wrinkles in the Basra deal. Still, it's hard to believe that Jafari and Maliki don't understand the importance of the Petraeus Report. The appearances of this are radioactive, but I wonder if anyone in Washington noticed.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Update: After reading this from Kevin Drum, it looks like this meeting could be another sign that Iran is increasingly taking Maliki's side in his standoff with al-Sadr. As for how Moqtada's doing, as the title of Kevin's post wonders, I'd just point out that every time someone counts al-Sadr out, he manages to get back up from the canvas in better shape than before.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq   

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Consolidating the Surge's Gains

I'm not able to watch the hearings here in Paris, so I've only been able to read their prepared statements which are up now on the Senate Armed Services Committee website(Amb. Crocker here, Gen. Petraeus here). But based on that, I've got to agree with Andrew Sullivan: both Gen. Petraeus' and Ambassador Crocker's testimony seem to reflect an effort at intellectual honesty that surpasses that of most of the shrill din surrounding them.

There's still the possibility that a few days of high-pressure questioning might produce the kind of political theater that definitively shifts public opinion, but besides that, I'm not sure what these hearings can really accomplish. Again, I'm across the pond here in Paris, but from afar, it seems that between the two extremes of "Iraq forever" and "Get out now" lies the vast majority of Americans who are simply trying to make sense of a situation that seems increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves from by the day. Unlike forty years ago, when we were a nation divided, today we are a nation increasingly hemmed in.

There's nothing unreasonable about Gen. Petraeus' recommendations -- a 45-day freeze following the final Surge brigade drawdown to consolidate the "reversible gains" already made -- were it not for the fact that those gains seem too ephemeral to ever really consolidate. Which means six months from now, we're likely to find ourselves locked on the horns of this very same dilemma: if we stay, things are unlikely to get better, and if we go they're likely to get worse.

There's also nothing unreasonable about Ambassador Crocker's emphasis on establishing a longterm status of forces arrangement with the Iraqi government for when the current U.N. mandate expires in December. Crocker stipulated that the agreement would be non-binding on a future American president. And yet, the status quo has a measure of inertial weight that sometimes becomes hard to displace.

Crocker made reference to a diplomatic surge over the course of the past year, but frankly, it seems to have passed under the radar. If there's one thing missing from the mainstream debate that was present in most of the expert testimony presented to Congress, it's the need to widen the diplomatic fora for stabilizing Iraq. We need to bring in some fresh air, not to feed the fire, but to clear our thoughts. We've been locked into the illogic of our Iraq policy for so long now that we've lost sight of the fact that you can't solve a problem that you've become part of. That's the only way I can see to make the "recommendations" (if we were honest with ourselves, we'd call them what they are: policy decisions) Gen. Petraeus made today palatable.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Sunday, April 6, 2008

Iraq 2012

If you're interested in what a non-alarmist view of American withdrawal from Iraq might look like, click through and read Dr. F. Gregory Gause's testimony (.pdf) from last Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing titled, "Iraq 2012: What Can It Look Like, How Do We Get There?" Gause, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, offered his analysis as part of the committee's lineup of hearings meant to put next week's Petraeus/Crocker appearances into a broader strategic context.

While he acknowledged that withdrawal would result in Iraqi violence, both sectarian and factional, he argued that even if it results in all-out civil war (not necessarily inevitable) the chances of a worst-case scenario (regional destabilization, armed intervention of neighboring states and a resurgent al-Qaida) are not as great as proponents of an extended American military presence suggest.

Gause discounts the likelihood of armed intervention of neighboring states leading to a regional conflagration, for the simple reason that Iraq's neighbors either don't need to (Iran), don't want to (Turkey) or don't have the ability to (Saudi Arabia) invade the country in the event of an all-out civil war:

The Iranians already have what they want in Iraq -- substantial influence both with the Baghdad government and with major actors in border regions to the south and the north. The Turks do not want to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan or annex it. The Saudi army is hardly capable of serious cross-border operations. Foreigners will play in Iraqi politics as long as Iraq is weak and Iraqi parties seek foreign support. They are doing it now, with the American military there. They will continue to do it. But they do not appear to have the desire (in some cases, like Turkey and Iran) or the means (Saudi Arabia) to intervene in a direct, sustained military way that could lead to a wider regional war. (p. 7)

In other words, the American military presence creates moral hazard not only for Iraqi factions, but for outside powers (Iran, Saudi Arabia) as well, who can meddle in Iraq's domestic affairs knowing that U.S. forces are there to contain the fallout.

As for the possibility that American withdrawal would embolden al-Qaida, Gause's reasoning is pretty compeling:

Undoubtedly, al-Qaeda will claim victory with an American withdrawal. But making that fact, over which we have no control, the reason to maintain our presence in Iraq gives Usama bin Laden a veto over American policy. . . Bin Laden can claim what he wants; people in the region will see the results on the ground. (p. 7)

But if a worst-case scenario is far from a foregone conclusion, so too is an optimistic one, since any long-term stabilization of Iraq can only take place in the context of the Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry. According to Gause, the Saudis consider the Maliki government an Iranian client state (something to consider next time the question of air support for the ISF comes up), and are convinced that grouping the southern Shiite provinces into a regional government along the lines of the Kurdish KRG would be the first step towards the eventual dissolution of Iraq. Significantly, the creation of a southern "Shia-stan" -- supported by Maliki ally, ISCI -- is strongly opposed by the nationalist Sadrist faction (something else to consider next time the question of air support for the ISF comes up).

Gause also identifies an indirect consequence of the Anbar Awakening that I've yet to see mentioned elsewhere, namely that by re-directing the Sunni insurgency away from American forces, the Awakening has resulted in the creation of Sunni clients that the Saudis can support without jeopardizing Saudi-U.S. bi-lateral relations. The Sunni groups can't be considered Saudi proxies, since Riyadh doesn't exert any control over them. But by providing the Saudis with the political cover necessary for financing and supplying Iraq's Sunni tribes, the Awakening strategy has created one of the pre-conditions for the kind of Saudi-Iranian proxy war that figures prominently in so many doomsday scenarios of the impact of an American withdrawal.

Finally, Gause points out that we can't broker a resolution of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry so long as we are participants in it. Which is why he believes that a U.S.-Iranian bi-lateral engagement, if not a pre-requisite for a regional approach, will dramatically increase its chance of success.

Carole O'Leary's testimony is also worth a read for the way in which it illustrates how, by reducing the narrative of Iraq's internal faultlines to broad regional, ethnic and sectarian identities, we impoverish our ability to find creative solutions to the political problems of Iraqi reconstruction. As an example, in talking about a federalist solution, she observes that based on her research, ". . .Arab Iraqis who are open to federalism are without doubt more likely to think in terms of at least five federal regions, not three." In particular, O'Leary believes we should take advantage of tribal identity, which in many cases straddles sectarian and ethnic divides, as a way to foster a federal model along the lines of the United Arab Emirates:

. . .[A]n Arab state which espoused federalism as a model for governance precisely because it offered a pathway toward holding the country together and distributing the oil resources fairly in a tribal context. The UAE is an example of a pluralistic society in which the pluralism stems from tribalism, not ethnicity. This of course is an important point for Arab Iraqis who reject what they see as a Kurdish insistence on ethnic federalism. (pp. 5-6).

The media narrative on Iraq is increasingly reduced to the Surge, with an emphasis on the tactical metrics (casualty figures and "political benchmarks") that were formulated to justify it. So hats off to Joe Biden for getting this kind of context into the Congressional record. It would be nice if the press paid some attention to it. But at least it's there for people who are interested.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Fighting in Basra

Magical thinking is no substitute for strategy.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Nabucco in Jeopardy, Again

Turkish President Abdullah Gul met with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov yesterday, and while both leaders expressed their ". . .mutual will for improving bilateral economic and commercial relations between the two countries," no agreement was announced on whether or not Turkmeni gas will feed the proposed Nabucco pipeline that would make Turkey a gas hub connecting Central Asia with Southern and Central Europe. For Today's Zaman (Turkey), that meant the two countries "agree to boost economic cooperation." For RIA Novosti, citing a Turkish-language paper, that meant "Nabucco trans-Caspian gas pipeline in jeopardy."

WPR contributing editor John Rosenthal recently wrote about the fact that the logic of the Nabucco pipeline, designed to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian gas, doesn't stand up without Iranian reserves feeding it. Which makes the U.S. State Dept's sudden support for the project surprising, and its criticism of other countries for signing energy deals with Iran somewhat hypocritical.

I suppose it could be argued that participation in Nabucco could function as a carrot to try to lure Iran into adopting a more responsible regional posture. But the thing about offering carrots is that they work best when you're not absilutely dependent on the other party to accept them.

I suppose it's also worth noting that Iraq's Oil Ministry has just announced a tender for a pipeline to Iran, designed to transport Iraqi crude to Iran and Iranian refined products back into Iraq. Something to think about the next time someone argues we invaded for the oil.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  European Union   Iran   Iraq   Turkey   

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Kristol Klear

I have to admit, I never really understood why so many liberal bloggers bother to go after William Kristol. It always seemed like wasted effort, since the people who are going to fall for his nonsense are not susceptible to liberal arguments in the first place. But in glancing through his new Weekly Standard column that explains why the Pentagon review that found no direct links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda actually found direct links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, I finally got it: Taking Kristol apart is actually fun.

Take this tortured passage about documents linking Saddam Hussein to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad:

...Apparently whoever wrote the executive summary didn't consider the link between Saddam and al Zawahiri a "direct connection" because Egyptian Islamic Jihad had not yet, in the early 1990s, fully been incorporated into al Qaeda. Of course, by that standard, evidence of support provided to Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s might not be deemed a "direct connection" because al Qaeda as we know it today did not yet exist.

Apparently it never occurred to Mr. Kristol that by the standard he's proposing as an alternative, evidence of support provided to Osama bin Laden in the 1980s (say by, I don't know... CIA proxies?) would be deemed a "direct connection" to al Qaeda as well.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Iraq   

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Surge as Pyrrhic Victory

On the heels of the release of the Pentagon's definitive study demonstrating that there was no pre-Iraq War link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, comes this WPR feature from Bernard Finel arguing that recent progress in Iraq should not be confused with progress against the global terrorist threat:

We are slowly digging ourselves out of the hole of the Iraq war. Al-Qaida has increasingly been marginalized in Iraq, and the success of American counterinsurgency efforts has diminished the perception that we can be defeated quickly or easily. And yet, Iraq remains a net negative in the overall struggle. . . Al-Qaida is on the run in Iraq, but continues to use the war as a potent and effective recruiting tool throughout the Muslim world.

Worse, six and half years after Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida is stronger than ever. It has a safe haven in Pakistan. It has replaced revenue lost through better financial monitoring with increased ties to the drug trade. It has tightened its institutional links to jihadist organizations around the world, making deep inroads in Southeast Asia and North Africa, as well as maintaining its core of support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Finel is the author of the American Security Project's report Are We Winning?, which last September measured progress in the fight against extremist violence based on a variety of metrics. The ASP just issued a six-month update to the report today, and the results are discouraging.

To be sure, the threat of Iraq becoming a vector for the spread of radicalized and trained al-Qaida operatives can't be dismissed. Matthew Levitt, for instance, points to the similarities between a recently de-classified State Dept. assessment from 1993 of the threat posed by radicalized Afghan mujahidin and today's Iraq to make that case. And that's probably the most compelling argument as far as American public opinion goes against a precipitous withdrawal from (or a continued presence in) Iraq. (Strategically, the collapse of Iraq is probably more of a threat to our regional interests.)

Still, I can't help but wonder whether, with al-Qaida Iraq's recent reversals of fortune, the most seasoned and hardcore operatives haven't already left the burning ship to sink and begun to fan out into the other theaters of operation that have already been identified. (Western Europe and the Maghreb, for instance.) In many ways, the idea that AQI ever harbored a serious ambition to somehow conquer and govern Iraq is farfetched. More than a territory to be conquered, Iraq represented a convenient host for the extremist virus to nourish itself and spread. In that sense, it has long since served its purpose, which means that AQI can now shed the "I" with little impact on its broader strategic goals.

Which in turn means that our "victory" over the AQI threat might end up being a pyrrhic one. Metrics such as body counts are tricky when it comes to an enemy that uses suicide as a tactic. And going by the ones the ASP has come up with, the broader war is far from over.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Iraq   

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Friday, March 7, 2008

Licensing The Monopoly On Violence

If you haven't yet read Nir Rosen's Rolling Stone article, The Myth of the Surge, definitely click through and give it a look. It provides anecdotal support, but support nonetheless, for all the caveats being attached to the recent progress in Iraq, especially as concerns the Sunni Awakening. But it also anecdotally supports the image that's beginning to emerge of a low-intensity, quasi-suspended civil war under way in Iraq, ie. the exact opposite of what the Surge was designed to accomplish.

It's already clear that the American military approach to the complexities of Iraq has been to assemble a network of sub-contracted militias, from Blackwater to the Shiite-infiltrated Iraqi National Police (INP) to the Sunni Awakening's Concerned Local Citizens councils. Naturally, the result has been a jockeying for position among the rival factions. Since all of them derive their power (at least to operate openly) from their proximity to American handlers, this boils down to competing for recognition of legitimacy from the American military. In this hub and spokes model, the state, with its monopoly on the use of violence, has been replaced by the American military, which proceeds to grant licenses on the use of force to the Iraqi spokes radiating outward.

To get a sense of how unstable this kind of arrangement is, and the degree to which it pushes problems down the line instead of solving them, replace Sunni with "Bloods", Shiites with "Crips", and Baghdad with Los Angeles. Then picture them manning armed checkpoints along every major traffic artery from Silverlake to Venice Beach, and feel the chills running down your spine.

To be sure, some aspects of the new counterinsurgency tactics seem likely to be effective. Back when I was working as a gang intervention counselor in Watsonville, CA, for instance, we would have loved to have this kind of mojo:

First Lt. Shawn Spainhour, a contracting officer with the unit, asks the sheik at the mosque what help he needs. The mosque's generator has been shot up by armed Shiites, and the sheik requests $3,000 to fix it. Spainhour takes notes. "I probably can do that," he says. The sheik also asks for a Neighborhood Advisory Council to be set up in his area "so it will see our problems." The NACs, as they're known, are being created and funded by the Americans to give power to Sunnis cut out of the political process.

But if this kind of investment is being made in East Baghdad instead of East LA, chalk it off as just another opportunity cost of the Iraq War. 

Meanwhile, floating above it all is the destructive effect of the American occupation:

. . .Raids by U.S. forces have become part of the daily routine in Iraq, a systematic form of violence imposed on an entire nation. A foreign military occupation is, by its very nature, a terrifying and brutal thing, and even the most innocuous American patrols inevitably involve terrorizing innocent Iraqi civilians. . . U.S. soldiers are the only law in Iraq, and you are at their whim. Raids like this one are scenes in a long-running drama, and by now everyone knows their part by heart. . .

The grimmest aspect of Rosen's account is the Shiite officer in the INP who finds himself caught between Mahdi Army threats for doing his job too well and American pressure for not doing it well enough. All the while, his loyalty -- like that of most of the professional officer cadre -- lies with neither Shiite, Sunni or America, but Iraq. By the end of the article, he confides to Rosen his intention to quit his job, as if to show that in a civil war, the real losers are the people who, because of their higher loyalty to the nation, don't pick sides.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Real Impact Of 9/11

A month is a long time in the era of online news and opinion, but I just stumbled on a Project on Defense Alternatives monograph from back in February that's really worth a mention. Carl Conetta makes a pretty convincing argument that the major significance of 9/11 was political, not strategic, and that the true historical pivot point of our time remains the fall of the Soviet Union.

Conetta begins with the paradox of American military primacy in the post-Cold War era. This nugget is enough to make any foreign policy writer green with envy:

With Soviet collapse, America won a windfall in a currency of power that - because of Soviet collapse - was simultaneously devalued.

He also makes the good point that while the 90's saw the birth of the liberal hawk movement, the embrace of American military intervention was far from universal, and often faded soon after the initial engagement with the enemy:

The disappearance of the Soviet threat also made it difficult to form a stable US domestic consensus on overseas military activism. During the 1990s, almost every contingency operation - Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kosovo - quickly became a point of acute contention. Outside the context of the global East-West struggle, America's security stakes in many far-flung conflicts seemed attenuated. Neither the notion of "humanitarian interests" nor that of "important if not vital interests" were sufficient to quell dissent. . .

Conetta articulates a three-point plan for developing domestic political consensus for military activism abroad in the post-WWII era, one that bears a remarkable resemblance to the selling of the Iraq War:

• First, the national security stakes in foreign involvements must be perceived as real, present, and substantial;
• Second, the United States must retain freedom of action abroad. In alliance or other multinational endeavors, it must possess a distinct leadership role; and,
• Third, the modes of action must be perceived as "decisive" - that is: perceived as likely to yield clear, positive results. . . In military operations, it implies the demand for clear, invariant objectives and for using overwhelming force to win them quickly.

This gets us to the crux of Conetta's argument, namely that 9/11 changed everything not in the world, but in American public opinion:

What made a more energetic and proactive interventionary policy broadly acceptable within the United States was the 9/11 attacks - together with the initial impression that the US armed forces would be used in ways best suited to their capabilities. What has proved far less acceptable - and, indeed, has been the Bush administration's undoing - is the desultory occupation duties that followed the initial, conventional victories in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Concetta goes on to argue that the failure of the nation-building experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate the fallacy of America's post-9/11 conception of military intervention:

What the next US administration can learn from this is that the "war on terrorism" framework, together with popular fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction, can enable greater military activism, but only of a certain type: fast and decisive. An entirely different matter are protracted campaigns of occupation and those that either seem detached from clear security threats or seem to diverge from the warfghting model. It is disconcerting, then, that the American policy "center" seems to be trending away from a recognition of this lesson. Instead, it is gravitating to a putative midpoint between the Clinton and Bush administration positions.

By this he means the kinds of "peace and stability operations" (PSO's) that are now commonly referred to as nation-building. He wraps up by summarizing the true cost of not accurately assessing the failure of our recent military interventionism:

This failure points to a more fundamental one: seized by a sense of military primacy, we have failed to appreciate the difference and the distance between achieving military effects and achieving political-strategic ones.

This paragraph in particular jumped out at me, because it seems to encapsulize the national security debate embodied by an Obama-McCain presidential campaign:

In light of America's misadventure in Iraq - its great costs and poor results - it seems unlikely that the US public will be easily won [over] to attempt similar experiments on a grander scale. Not even the "war on terrorism" or the notion of a "global Islamic insurgency" seem sufficient motivators.

Clearly, McCain is running on the assumption that Iraq still satisfies the three-point checklist Connetta articulates above. Obama (and, to a lesser extent, Clinton) makes the case that the predominant challenge facing America is the political-strategic aftermath of the Iraq War, rather than the (mistaken) national security threat that lead to our invasion. The national security aspect of the campaign will boil down to which of the two competing narratives the American voters embrace.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Foreign Policy   Iraq   

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Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Can Blackwater Save Darfur?

I'm not really sure what to make of this Michael Walzer TNR piece. He begins by making a pretty good point: People who oppose the use of private military contractors (read: mercenaries) often assume that the case for their argument is so self-evident that they don't actually have to make it. So Walzer offers a corrective by going ahead and making a pretty good case against the use of mercenaries in the conduct of war. The basis of his argument is the lack of accountability that results, both for the mercenaries themselves (which has been widely criticized) but also for the government that employs them (which has gotten less attention).

Simply put, the use of military force is a political act that should be part of the political calculus by which any government is judged. By using mercenaries (and Walzer uses Bill Clinton's use of them in the Serbo-Croatian war as an example), a government gets to enjoy the benefits or suffer the consequences of the outcome, but not actually be held politically accountable by its electorate, since the actual deployment is largely invisible.

Walzer also highlights the logical inconsistency of trying to stabilize a country like Iraq (an operation which as much as anything implies reining in private militias in order to return the monopoly on the use of force to the state), through the use of... private militias.

But just when I expected Walzer to wrap up and close the deal, he pivots:

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule...

Since neither the United Nations nor NATO has any intention of deploying a military force that would actually be capable of stopping the Darfur genocide, should we send in mercenaries...?

Whatever Blackwater's motives, I won't join the "moral giants" who would rather do nothing at all than send mercenaries to Darfur... But we should acknowledge that making this exception would also be a radical indictment of the states that could do what has to be done and, instead, do nothing at all.

Now I admit that after an initial "WTF?!?" double-take, I actually considered the proposition, and wondered whether it's not, after all, the kind of bold gambit that might actually be needed, given the diplomatic gridlock that's got the world sitting on its hands while a bunch of thugs go about the business of methodically committing crimes against humanity.

But in the final analysis, to believe that Blackwater or any other mercenary outfit could somehow lock down that corner of the world, given the highly complex ethno-sectarian-politico-tribal dynamics at play, involves a willing suspension of disbelief. The truth is, Darfur -- like Baghdad -- is a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing guys with guns to operate without any accountability. Adding Blackwater to what's already a bloody and tragic mix is simply adding more of the problem and calling it a solution.

Walzer's frustration and disgust with the world's failure to act is exemplary. But I think the rule he articulates stands up better than its exception. A military intervention might very well be necesssary in Darfur. But if it happens, it should be under the flag of a nation or the flag of a collection of nations, not that of a private militia operating under cover of political invisibility.

Posted by Judah in:  International Relations   Iraq   

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The Fallacy Of The Surge

This is important, and not just for what Gian Gentile says about the mistaken credit given to the Surge for reducing violence in Iraq. It's a military truism that an army often prepares to fight the last war. So while there are a number of positive conclusions to be drawn about the U.S. Army's adoption of a more nuanced counterinsurgency posture, it's also important to remember that there is no guarantee that the next enemy the American military faces will be an insurgency.

Between the pre-invasion purges (Shinseki) and post-invasion failures (Sanchez, Casey) of the old school generals, Iraq has become a closed feedback loop selecting for new school counter-insurgency strategists (Petraeus, Odierno). Obviously Casey failed upwards, and General Fallon seems like a throwback. But the danger of the military establishment and, more likely, Congress getting seduced by "this year's model" is a real one.

Given the size of the American defense budget, though, there's no reason why the military can't be balanced, with both classic and asymmetric capacities. Especially if people like Gentile, Thomas Barnett (here and here) and Fred Kaplan (here) continue to push back against the trend towards all COIN, all the time.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Gaza Outsourcing

To get a sense of what's going on in Gaza right now, just go read Laura Rozen. She's got all the essential links and analysis. One thing, though, that I haven't seen mentioned yet among all the talk of possible local brushfires (Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, etc.) is the impact Hamas-Israel and Hezbollah-Israel conflicts might have on Iran's activity in Iraq. The Iranians have already demonstrated how much they can contribute to improving the security situation there. A three-front war between Israel, Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah would seem like the kind of scenario they would use to demonstrate how much they can contribute to worsening it.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq   The Middle East   

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Surge's Bitter Paradox

I've got a hunch that we're on the cusp of a popular Surge backlash, more widespread than what critics have suggested for the past few months. And when it does gather force, it will probably sound pretty much like what Sam Brannen, of the CSIS, says here. It's already clear that the improved security environment in Iraq has not led to increased Iraqi investment in the political process in Baghdad. Brannen points out, though, what I've yet to see mentioned, namely that it has instead led to increased American investment in the political process in Baghdad.

Increasingly, the United States has driven the Iraqi political process not just by setting benchmarks for Iraq's parliament but also by choosing winners and losers in the informal political processes that most define the country's power landscape. The United States is now the thread that binds Iraq, and it is clear that a serious unraveling of the situation would occur were this thread suddenly to be pulled away.

In other words, instead of making it easier for us to leave Iraq, the Surge has made it more difficult. And if that doesn't qualify a military tactic as a failure, I don't know what does.

But I'm beginning to think that to call the Surge a military tactic, or to speak of it as having caused some outcome or not, is a bit unfair. At some point, when we speak of the Surge, we'll be referring more to a moment in time than to a military tactic or troop count. A moment that preceded the painful realization that no matter how much ground we eventually control in Iraq, we will have little control over the outcome.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Turkey, The Kurds, And Iran

Over at WPR, I spoke with a well-informed European official about the IAEA's Iran report. On a hunch, I asked him what kind of strategic impact Turkey -- which has really stayed on the sidelines of this issue -- could make by actively siding with the West's position. Without hesitation he said it would make a huge difference. In addition to the obvious reasons (Islamic country, regional power, etc.), he explained that Turkey is one of the countries in the region he would be most worried about seeking a nuclear weapons capacity should Iran aquire a nuclear bomb. Although he did not explicitly connect the dots, I interpreted that to mean that by coming down firmly on the side of containing the Iranian program, Turkey would send a strong signal to the rest of the region of their own intentions. That in turn would shore up Western efforts to enlist other regional players to contain, rather than compete with, the Iranian program.

That's important to keep in mind for putting Turkey's Iraq incursion into context. American military commanders emphasized the difference yesterday between the U.S. receiving advance notice of the incursion and the U.S. approving the incursion. But that's a distinction very few people will find convincing, least of all the Kurds, who reminded the U.S. (in the form of a resolution by the Kurdish Regional Parliament) of its obligation to defend the territorial integrity of Iraq. (The resolution also notably called for the closure of Turkish Forward Operating Bases in Iraqi Kurdistan that date back to the 1990's.)

My source categorically refused to speculate on a potential quid pro quo. But should Turkey adopt a more vocal position in opposition to Iran's nuclear program, it would to my mind suggest a priority shift in American strategic calculations in the region, and reflect the extent to which Washington considers the Iranian program a very serious threat.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq