Responses to "What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable"

Web Exclusive (posted July 17, 2006)

by Stephen Biddle

Stephen Biddle is a Senior Fellow in Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Military Power.

I find myself again pleased to be able to agree with a fine panel on the diagnosis of Iraq's problems. We generally concur that the Iraq conflict is already a communal civil war and not primarily a nationalist struggle or a classical insurgency built around competing ideologies for governance. We also generally agree that strategies for responding to nationalist resistance or classical insurgency are ill-suited to today's low-intensity civil war.

But diagnosis, of course, is often easier than prescription. And prescription is certainly a difficult challenge for Iraq. None of the panelists are happy with my recommendation — that the United States use its military leverage to increase pressure for a compromise power-sharing government in Iraq. But neither are they very happy with the prescriptions offered by Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Leslie Gelb, or Chaim Kaufmann. For that matter, they are not too thrilled with each other's prescriptions either. Kevin Drum calls for withdrawal, presumably quickly. Christopher Hitchens would stay as long as necessary to inflict "a battlefield defeat on the combined forces of the Baath Party and al Qaeda," among other aims. Fred Kaplan favors parts of James Dobbins' and Chaim Kaufmann's programs, but mainly because they seem the least ambitious approaches to a conflict that Kaplan appears to be mostly fatalistic about. And in his first post, at least, Marc Lynch chooses discretion as the better part of valor and declines to raise his head above the parapet with a specific proposal.

This dissensus should not be surprising. There are no good options for Iraq. I have yet to hear a proposal that does not have serious flaws and shortcomings — my own included. Certainly I have never claimed to have found a silver bullet; my original article enumerated a long list of difficulties with my proposal that included most of those presented in the current panel (Lynch's concerns on the likely role of spoilers in Iraq were left out but are valid and I share them). I thus mainly agree with the panelists: yes, successful use of military leverage in Iraq might indeed be beyond the skills of our diplomats or the vision of Iraqi leaders; yes, it could require endurance beyond the patience of American voters or the limits of the U.S. military; and yes, it would certainly be much more effective if pursued with larger forces than the United States has at its disposal.

But the other possibilities are even more flawed. Early withdrawal would surely lead to a rapid escalation in the violence and could easily turn an internal conflict into a regional interstate war. The ensuing chaos could engulf states with active weapons of mass destruction programs (and perhaps even real nuclear weapons), provide major recruitment and basing opportunities to al Qaeda, and disrupt global energy markets for years to come. The United States may ultimately be forced to withdraw from Iraq, but at this point it would generate more problems than it would solve.

As for inflicting a "battlefield defeat" on Iraqi guerillas, this is possible only in the narrowest tactical sense. U.S. forces routinely prevail in firefights, but the opposition in Iraq cannot be annihilated by American firepower. Military force may be a helpful lever in securing a political settlement, but not by imposing a battlefield victory on an enemy army.

For my part, I remain persuaded that Washington must try to use its military power in ways that increase the odds of a power sharing deal among Iraq's communal rivals, rather than decreasing those odds as current U.S. strategy does. My position stems from my view that a lack of leverage is the key problem confounding Ambassador Khalilzad's current efforts to midwife a compromise, that current U.S. military policy undermines that leverage, and that some way of increasing it is the only way out short of withdrawal. For this reason I also favor regional diplomacy (like James Dobbins), multilateral initiatives (like Larry Diamond), and any other way anyone can find to increase U.S. bargaining power.

One or all of these means may indeed prove beyond America's abilities, and some, such as the use of military leverage, may even leave things worse off if they ultimately fail. But the time for fastidiousness is rapidly passing. Time is not on America's side in Iraq — public tolerance in the United States for the current course is fading, Iraqi patience in the face of a mounting death toll surely has its limits, and sooner or later the violence really will escalate beyond control. If the pace of intercommunal compromise does not pick up soon, it may be overtaken by events and Iraq will then descend into an all-out version of today's low-grade civil war. Holding out for some perfect, pristine, low-cost, low-risk solution to the problem, or persisting in modest initiatives that are not getting real traction, risks letting the conflict slip beyond anyone's control. Patience and caution in the face of a burning building are not always the safest course.

It is true that the United States could just let the building burn down and hope the surroundings do not go with it. After all, even the worst-case outcome in Iraq would still not end American democracy; the stakes here are not literally existential for Americans. But the consequences of failure in Iraq are grave nonetheless. And failure is a real possibility — at this point, it may even be the likeliest result regardless of the course Washington adopts. But I do not yet think failure is a certainty. And given the stakes, it is worth accepting some risk now to try to prevent the worst case before it becomes a reality.