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What is the foreign policy community saying about Iraq behind closed doors?
by Fernando Braga | Wed, 11/15/2006 - 11:12am
What is the foreign policy community (those that make decisions, not the tongue flappers like O'Reilly) really saying about Iraq behind closed doors? Below are excerpts from one candid talk (a "luncheon briefing") from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an institution of elite government, business, and military people that helps shape a "non-partisan" US policy http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Mar2003/shoup0303.html. Basically Haass, a strategic foreign policy thinker (not simply a Bush man or neo con), says that the US cannot win in Iraq and that the era of US dominance in the middle east is over. He says the US should concentrate on how to deal with strategic decline. The most interesting thing is the summary of US options. None of them talk about withdrawing troops from the middle east completely. "Energy" and domination matter to much. Everyone (in the power elite) must figure out how to keep a presence in the middle east, while at the same time freeing up resources to project US power elsewhere. Mid-term elections don't change any of this. Haass doesn't even mention them. The anti-war movement should consider protesting the CFR (they have offices in New York City, DC, and major cities throughout the US) to show them what we think about their "options." It's better than marching in empty streets or to politicians. CFR and other "think tank" people run day to day war efforts by staffing the pentagon, state department, and white house http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1102/ijpe/pj73haass.htm. By going to the CFR we'll knock on their door and show the war pigs we know where they hide and we don't like how they smell. I don't think it'll end the war or change their minds but it'll raise the public's consciousness about who's responsible for all the shit vets went through. Fernando Braga _______________________ October 19, 2006 HAASS: A fourth era being the post-Cold War period, and I thought it was essentially—you can say it began in ‘89 when the wall came down; it began in ‘90 with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.... And I think this period—again, beginning ‘89, ‘90, was a period of American primacy...I can’t date an end. There’s not a single event that basically said when this period came to an end. I would—for me, it was roughly some time this year. You know, I’d say roughly 2006. the United States is still stronger than any other outside factor. But...other outsiders are increasingly going to go their own way...inside forces are going to have independent policies or behaviors that will have true consequences, many of these adverse Iran emergent, quite powerful—(inaudible)—serious peace process; Iraq, which we can talk about, at best messy, at worst a regional war, a growing phenomenon of militia-ization, continued terrorism; Islam increasingly filling the political and intellectual void in this part of the world, the latest “ism,” if you will, to animate not just political life, but life more broadly; top-heavy Arab regimes, uncertain how to cope with the various pressures they face; and so on. How do you [he's speaking to people who help decide what the US does-FB] deal with a Middle East that does not have within it the building blocs of stability, and that can do damage, because of what’s in the Middle East and what—because of the energy, but also because of the ability of terrorism to radiate out, that could do real damage beyond its geographical confines... how do you deal with what you might call strategic deterioration; how is it we try to contain it, deal with it, and ultimately reverse it?... but there are limits to what can be done. This will...have to run its course...we can affect the duration of the course and the depth of the course, but we can’t...prevent some of this from coming to pass; it’s already coming to pass. This is a new era... think we’ve got to be judicious in future uses of military force. Obviously, I have Iran in mind. I think we’ve got to be more realistic about the promotion of democracy, about its prospects and its promises in that part of the world... even if we do all the things I would recommend...We will still end up, if you will, in an era where the United States is going to lose ground. But again, history is often about degree, and that, to me, is not—doesn’t mean you wash your hands. You can’t....there are things we can and should do to begin to hopefully shape the arc of their trajectory. There’s modest possibilities there [in the middle east]...we reached the point where...modest—even accomplishing modest objectives in the Middle East sounds pretty ambitious... it’s strategically as demanding a context as I can recall. I mean, it’s more demanding than the Cold War, because at least then, you could focus on one thing. It’s more demanding than Vietnam because it’s multiple things and, I think, actually of greater stake... I think the options range from essentially what we’re doing...performance-based reductions; i.e., you only reduce if the situation warrants it, to calendar-based reductions, which is—...selective increases, some version of John McCain’s policy. And I think those are essentially, by the way, the three principal options: performance-based, which is some version of the president’s “we’ll stand down as they stand up”; calendar-based—and the only real difference with the calendar-based options is how fast—how quick is the calendar and what’s the end state; to those who want to bring it to nothing, or those who prefer to have it, say, go from roughly 140,000, say, to 40,000, to a couple of divisions. And then, but what they haven’t really done particularly well was answered, okay, where does that residual capability go and what does it do? And so, I mean, there are those who say park it up north to prevent a Turkish-Kurdish civil war—I mean Turkish-Kurdish war. Okay, but another way of translating that is then you’re just letting—that’s letting greater Baghdad burn.. There’s a couple of other things that could figure in...here is the various schemes for power-sharing, the ideas that Joe Biden and Les Gelb and others have put forward. And I think if the goal is to have a—if by that they mean a decentralized, heavily federalized Iraq, basically weak central government, strong peripheries, lots of power sharing, lots of revenue sharing, I think it’s a desirable outcome....I just don’t believe it’s a likely outcome...I think what would be enough for the Sunnis would be too much for the Kurds and Shi’a... if one brings the Syrians in, that might help you deal with the traditional insurgency, possibly, with al Qaeda types coming across. If you bring the Iranians in, there’s at least a chance that that could help you deal with various Shi’a but also non-Shi’a militias or fighting elements. I would just say it is worth a try. people are now using the phrase “containment strategy,” and I’m trying to understand what it really means. I think what it means...that something like a civil war or sectarian conflict is allowed to play itself out. And what you basically try to say is, okay, that’s awful, but there’s nothing much we can do about it, and let’s at least try to avoid it spilling over into a regional war. Let’s try to limit how much outsiders poor fuel onto it. Let’s try to avoid it spreading to the north and south of Iraq. Let’s try to avoid it poisoning Shi’a-Sunni relations throughout the region and so forth. That seems to me what it means... the idea that you would still have tens of thousands of U.S. forces on the—“neighborhood”—I mean, in the center of Iraq—while the center of Iraq is burning that way I don’t think is a good idea. I don’t think the forces are safe. Or even if you can somehow find a giant Green Zone, I don’t like the image of U.S. forces standing there and this type of chaos happening all around them. DAVID SANGER:If you had to advise the president about how you pull back—forget for a moment where you put the troops—how do you get him from an objective of keeping this from being an al Qaeda center to this? HAASS: I think the Baker-Hamilton commission gives him something of an opportunity to do that. I mean, commissions, historically, in the United States have often played an important role, and they’ve often played an important role when the traditional body politic was unable or unwilling to come up with politically controversial or difficult proposals or solutions. And this may be one of those times. Democrats are not particularly putting forward, for the most part, creative ideas... it is going to be—it’s a setback. I mean, you can’t sugarcoat that. And I actually think we’re there now. I got criticized for saying this, but so be it. I think we’ve reached a point in Iraq where we’ve got to get real. And this is not going to be a near-term success for American foreign policy. The Iraq situation’s not winnable in any meaningful sense of the word “winnable.”... So what the United States needs to do now is look for a way to limit the losses and costs, and paying those, if you will, and in the meantime try to advance on other fronts in the region and around the world... So I think the argument that because we would suffer a strategic..., I think that’s exaggerated. History doesn’t support it. And we have to be careful we don’t kind of talk ourselves into it. I just think we need to take a deep breath and say, “Okay. We’ve got a lot of other things going for ourselves as a country. We’ve got a lot of other instruments of power we can bring to bear. There’s opportunities elsewhere and so forth.” I don’t think we should talk ourselves into that we’ve got to stay with Iraq, no matter what the cost for all time, or else we’re not longer an effective player on the world stage. At some point, the United States has to be able to limit costs and free itself up to act elsewhere. |