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

Web Exclusive (posted July 11, 2006)

by Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan is the "War Stories" columnist for Slate and the author of The Wizards of Armageddon.

There's an old joke about a physicist, an engineer, and an economist stranded on a desert island with a case of canned food. The physicist studies the can to determine how much pressure it might take to open it. The engineer scavenges for materials to make can-opening tools. The economist says, "Assume a can opener." Much of the discussion in this roundtable about what to do in Iraq assumes that we have a can opener — that the United States has the military power, diplomatic leverage, and political sagacity to implement various schemes or to pressure the Iraqis into doing so.

Stephen Biddle's otherwise excellent analysis goes astray when he calls on the U.S. to "manipulate the military balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to coerce them to negotiate." This is far-fetched not just for the reason Larry Diamond cites — that the insurgency is nationalist as well as sectarian — but for three other reasons. First, we aren't clever enough to pull off such fine-tuned manipulations (by "we," I mean not just the Bush administration but almost any conceivable president or perhaps any modern democracy). Second, the situation is so complex that, even if we suddenly got so clever, it's not clear what steps would coerce the three factions in which direction. Third, this sort of Machiavellian side-switching would more likely alienate the factions than win them over.

Leslie Gelb's solution — to decentralize Iraq (a ramshackle nation-state from its creation) into "three strong regions with a limited but effective central government" — begs more questions than it answers. For starters, how will this limited central government be made "effective"? One of its tasks, according to Gelb, would be to divvy up oil and gas revenue, but this issue is a key source of the current conflict. (He proposes giving the Sunnis "a constitutionally guaranteed share of oil revenues," but it's unlikely the Shiite majority will go along.) The central government would also have to "make special security arrangements" for the big cities such as Baghdad and Kirkuk, which have mixed populations, but these are the sites of the most turbulent violence. How is a limited government — which, again, would be controlled by Shiites, whatever its powers — supposed to impose a solution?

Another of Gelb's ideas is to protect minority and women's rights "by linking U.S. aid" to the provision of these rights. Nice thought, but Washington provides so little aid now that its withholding would be unlikely to compel sectarian leaders into abandoning a lifetime of prejudice. As for his proposal of a "regional non-aggression pact," the United States lacks the leverage with the major neighboring countries — Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia — to impose such a pact. Nor is it at all clear that these countries would be interested in a pact, hoping instead to profit from Iraq's breakup.

In short, Iraq may eventually go the way that Gelb proposes, but I see such a course less as a solution than as a road to more problems. A case could be made that the U.S., with the cooperation of other countries and international bodies, should lay the groundwork for a smooth transition. But as long as neither the Sunnis nor the Shiites desire this end-state, and as long as the neighbors have predatory interests in the matter, it's hard to see where the groundwork can start.

I'm inclined to side with James Dobbins and Chaim Kaufmann, if just for their minimalist approaches: Dobbins scaling back U.S. goals from spreading democracy throughout the region to averting civil war, and Kaufmann proposing the use of U.S. forces to protect Iraqis wishing to relocate. These notions are hardly visionary, nor do they advance a comprehensive solution to the problems at hand. But at least they recognize the limits of what, at this point, can be done.