This is a pretty insightful analysis of the situation, I think. The only part that I think he needs to address that is left out is what will happen to Anbar province and other Sunni strongholds…I think its fairly clear that those would become a jihadist stronghold, a mini-Afghanistan, as it were. The Sunni tribes and sheiks that we have made some headway with recently would more than likely be coerced back into supporting Al Qaeda once there were no more American troops on the ground to help protect them. Al Qaeda has already proclaimed part of Iraq as an Islamic Republic…I would bet that all of Anbar would soon follow, and other Sunni majority provinces as well. So something would need to be done to try and prevent that from happening, but I think he’s got it more right than wrong. Any thoughts out there in Slowtwitch LR land?
Spot
Endgame: American Options in Iraq
Dr. George Friedman
<http://www.stratfor.com/about-stratfor/executive-team/george-friedman.p
hp?utm_source=070827-GIR&utm_content=070827-GIR-photo-george&utm_source=
070827-GIR&utm_campaign=GIR> The latest National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) summarizing the U.S. intelligence community’s view of Iraq
contains two critical findings: First, the Iraqi government is not
jelling into an effective entity. Iraq’s leaders, according to the NIE,
neither can nor want to create an effective coalition government.
Second, U.S. military operations under the surge have improved security
in some areas, but on the whole have failed to change the underlying
strategic situation. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias remain
armed, motivated and operational.
Since the Iraq insurgency began in 2003, the United States has had a
clear strategic goal: to create a pro-American coalition government in
Baghdad. The means for achieving this was the creation of a degree of
security through the use of U.S. troops. In this more secure
environment, then, a government would form, create its own security and
military forces, with the aid of the United States, and prosecute the
war with diminishing American support. This government would complete
the defeat of the insurgents and would then govern Iraq democratically.
What the NIE is saying is that, more than four years after the war
began, the strategic goal has not been achieved – and there is little
evidence that it will be achieved. Security has not increased
significantly in Iraq, despite some localized improvement. In other
words, the NIE is saying that the United States has failed and there is
no strong evidence that it will succeed in the future.
We must be careful with pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence
community, but in this case it appears to be stating the obvious.
Moreover, given past accusations of skewed intelligence to suit the
administration, it is hard to imagine many in the intelligence community
risking their reputations and careers to distort findings in favor of an
administration with 18 months to go. We think the NIE is reasonable.
Therefore, the question is: What is to be done?
For a long time, we have seen U.S.-Iranian negotiations on Iraq as a
viable and even likely endgame. We no longer believe that to be the
case. For these negotiations to have been successful, each side needed
to fear a certain outcome. The Americans had to fear that an ongoing war
would drain U.S. resources indefinitely. The Iranians had to fear that
the United States would be able to create a viable coalition government
in Baghdad or impose a U.S.-backed regime dominated by their historical
Sunni rivals.
Following the Republican defeat in Congress in November, U.S. President
George W. Bush surprised Iran by increasing U.S. forces in Iraq rather
than beginning withdrawals. This created a window of a few months during
which Tehran, weighing the risks and rewards, was sufficiently uncertain
that it might have opted for an agreement thrusting the Shiites behind a
coalition government. That moment has passed. As the NIE points out, the
probability of forming any viable government in Baghdad is extremely
low. Iran no longer is facing its worst-case scenario. It has no
motivation to bail the United States out.
What, then, is the United States to do? In general, three options are
available. The first is to maintain the current strategy. This is the
administration’s point of view. The second is to start a phased
withdrawal, beginning sometime in the next few months and concluding
when circumstances allow. This is the consensus among most centrist
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans. The third is a rapid
withdrawal of forces, a position held by a fairly small group mostly but
not exclusively on the left. All three conventional options, however,
suffer from fatal defects.
Bush’s plan to stay the course would appear to make relatively little
sense. Having pursued a strategic goal with relatively fixed means for
more than four years, it is unclear what would be achieved in years five
or six. As the old saw goes, the definition of insanity is doing the
same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome. Unless Bush
seriously disagrees with the NIE, it is difficult to make a case for
continuing the current course.
Looking at it differently, however, there are these arguments to be made
for maintaining the current strategy: Whatever mistakes might have been
made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq
would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran.
Alternatively, Iraq could become a jihadist haven, focusing attention
not only on Iraq but also on targets outside Iraq. After all, a jihadist
safe-haven with abundant resources in the heart of the Arab world
outweighs the strategic locale of Afghanistan. Therefore, continuing the
U.S. presence in Iraq, at the cost of 1,000-2,000 American lives a year,
prevents both outcomes, even if Washington no longer has any hope of
achieving the original goal.
In other words, the argument is that the operation should continue
indefinitely in order to prevent a more dangerous outcome. The problem
with this reasoning, as we have said, is that it consumes available
ground forces
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=294335 ,
leaving the United States at risk in other parts of the world. The cost
of this decision would be a massive increase of the U.S. Army and
Marines, by several divisions at least. This would take several years to
achieve and might not be attainable without a draft. In addition, it
assumes the insurgents and militias will not themselves grow in size and
sophistication, imposing greater and greater casualties on the
Americans. The weakness of this argument is that it assumes the United
States already is facing the worst its enemies can dish out. The cost
could rapidly grow to more than a couple of thousand dead a year.
The second strategy is a phased withdrawal. That appears to be one of
the most reasonable, moderate proposals. But consider this: If the
mission remains the same – fight the jihadists and militias in order to
increase security – then a phased withdrawal puts U.S. forces in the
position of carrying out the same mission with fewer troops. If the
withdrawal is phased over a year or more, as most proposals suggest, it
creates a situation in which U.S. forces are fighting an undiminished
enemy with a diminished force, without any hope of achieving the
strategic goal.
The staged withdrawal would appear to be the worst of all worlds. It
continues the war while reducing the already slim chance of success and
subjects U.S. forces to increasingly unfavorable correlations of forces.
Phased withdrawal would make sense in the context of increasingly
effective Iraqi forces under a functional Iraqi government, but that
assumes either of these things exists. It assumes the NIE is wrong.
The only context in which phased withdrawal makes sense is with a
redefined strategic goal. If the United States begins withdrawing
forces, it must accept that the goal of a pro-American government is not
going to be reached. Therefore, the troops must have a mission. And the
weakness of the phased withdrawal proposals is that they each extend the
period of time of the withdrawal without clearly defining the mission of
the remaining forces. Without a redefinition, troop levels are reduced
over time, but the fighters who remain still are targets – and still
take casualties. The moderate case, then, is the least defensible.
The third option is an immediate withdrawal. Immediate withdrawal is a
relative concept, of course, since it is impossible to withdraw 150,000
troops at once. Still, what this would consist of is an immediate
cessation of offensive operations and the rapid withdrawal of personnel
and equipment. Theoretically, it would be possible to pull out the
troops but leave the equipment behind. In practical terms, the process
would take about three to six months from the date the order was given.
If withdrawal is the plan, this scenario is more attractive than the
phased process. It might increase the level of chaos in Iraq, but that
is not certain, nor is it clear whether that is any longer an issue
involving the U.S. national interest. Its virtue is that it leads to the
same end as phased withdrawal without the continued loss of American
lives.
The weakness of this strategy is that it opens the door for Iran to
dominate Iraq. Unless the Turks wanted to fight the Iranians, there is
no regional force that could stop Iran from moving in, whether covertly,
through the infiltration of forces, or overtly. Remember that Iran and
Iraq fought a long, vicious war – in which Iran suffered about a
million casualties. This, then, simply would be the culmination of that
war in some ways. Certainly the Iranians would face bitter resistance
from the Sunnis and Kurds, and even from some Shia. But the Iranians
have much higher stakes in this game than the Americans, and they are
far less casualty-averse, as the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated. Their pain
threshold is set much higher than the Americans’ and their willingness
to brutally suppress their enemies also is greater.
The fate of Iraq would not be the most important issue. Rather, it would
be the future of the Arabian Peninsula. If Iran were to dominate Iraq,
its forces could deploy along the Saudi border. With the United States
withdrawn from the region – and only a residual U.S. force remaining in
Kuwait – the United States would have few ways to protect the Saudis,
and a limited appetite for more war. Also, the Saudis themselves would
not want to come under U.S. protection. Most important, all of the
forces in the Arabian Peninsula could not match the Iranian force.
The Iranians would be facing an extraordinary opportunity. At the very
least, they could dominate their historical enemy, Iraq. At the next
level, they could force the Saudis into a political relationship in
which the Saudis had to follow the Iranian lead – in a way, become a
junior partner to Iran. At the next level, the Iranians could seize the
Saudi oil fields. And at the most extreme level, the Iranians could
conquer Mecca and Medina for the Shia. If the United States has simply
withdrawn from the region, these are not farfetched ideas. Who is to
stop the Iranians if not the United States? Certainly no native power
could do so. And if the United States were to intervene in Saudi Arabia,
then what was the point of withdrawal in the first place?
All three conventional options, therefore, contain serious flaws.
Continuing the current strategy pursues an unattainable goal. Staged
withdrawal exposes fewer U.S. troops to more aggressive enemy action.
Rapid withdrawal quickly opens the door for possible Iranian hegemony –
and lays a large part of the world’s oil reserves at Iran’s feet.
The solution is to be found in redefining the mission, the strategic
goal. If the goal of creating a stable, pro-American Iraq no longer is
possible, then what is the U.S. national interest? That national
interest is to limit the expansion of Iranian power, particularly the
Iranian threat to the Arabian Peninsula. This war was not about oil, as
some have claimed, although a war in Saudi Arabia certainly would be
about oil. At the extreme, the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by Iran
would give Iran control of a huge portion of global energy reserves.
That would be a much more potent threat than Iranian nuclear weapons
ever could be.
The new U.S. mission, therefore, must be to block Iran in the aftermath
of the Iraq war. The United States cannot impose a government on Iraq;
the fate of Iraq’s heavily populated regions cannot be controlled by the
United States. But the United States remains an outstanding military
force, particularly against conventional forces. It is not very good at
counterinsurgency and never has been. The threat to the Arabian
Peninsula from Iran would be primarily a conventional threat –
supplemented possibly by instability among Shia on the peninsula.
The mission would be to position forces in such a way that Iran could
not think of moving south into Saudi Arabia. There are a number of ways
to achieve this. The United States could base a major force in Kuwait,
threatening the flanks of any Iranian force moving south. Alternatively,
it could create a series of bases in Iraq, in the largely uninhabited
regions
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=241687
south and west of the Euphrates. With air power and cruise missiles,
coupled with a force about the size of the U.S. force in South Korea,
the United States could pose a devastating threat to any Iranian
adventure to the south. Iran would be the dominant power in Baghdad, but
the Arabian Peninsula would be protected.
This goal could be achieved through a phased withdrawal from Iraq, along
with a rapid withdrawal from the populated areas and an immediate
cessation of aggressive operations against jihadists and militia. It
would concede what the NIE says is unattainable without conceding to
Iran the role of regional hegemon. It would reduce forces in Iraq
rapidly, while giving the remaining forces a mission they were designed
to fight – conventional war. And it would rapidly reduce the number of
casualties. Most important, it would allow the United States to rebuild
its reserves of strategic forces in the event of threats elsewhere in
the world.
This is not meant as a policy prescription. Rather, we see it as the
likely evolution of U.S. strategic thinking on Iraq. Since negotiation
is unlikely, and the three conventional options are each defective in
their own way, we see this redeployment as a reasonable alternative that
meets the basic requirements. It ends the war in Iraq in terms of
casualties, it reduces the force, it contains Iran and it frees most of
the force for other missions. Whether Bush or his successor is the
decision-maker, we think this is where it must wind up.
George
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