Eliot Cohen lays out six alternatives for a Plan B in Iraq. Eliot Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He’s also a major neo-conservative. He was a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and an original signatory to the Project for the New American Century’s founding document. Let’s go through Cohen’s options.
• Getting by with help from your enemies. It is bruited about in Washington that the Iraq Study Group, a collection of worthies commissioned by Congress that has spent several days in Iraq, chiefly in the Green Zone, will recommend turning to Iran and Syria to, in effect, bail out the U.S. To think that either state, with remarkable records of violence, duplicity and hostility to the U.S., will rescue us bespeaks a certain willful blindness. And to think that the Sunni states of the Arab world, much less Iraq’s Sunni population, would welcome such a deal is more incredible yet. Syria is, as the Lebanon war and its earlier defense treaty with Iran demonstrated, now a client state of Iran. This option would in effect mean conceding dominance in the northern Gulf to that country; it would pave the way for more wars, and in no way guarantee us a clean exit.
First Cohen dismisses the Iraq Study Group by pointing out that they have only “spent several days in Iraq, chiefly in the Green Zone.” I’m sure Cohen knows it, but he ignores that Syria is a 74% Sunni country (according to the CIA). Yes, they are ruled by an Alawite elite, but Alawites are schismatic sect that are not recognized by either Sunnis or Shi’ites. The important point is that Syria is not a Shi’a nation, nor are they “a client state of Iran.” Their closeness to Iran is best explained by their isolation from America, and their isolation from America is best explained by their refusal, unlike Egypt or Jordan, to make peace with Israel. The best option for preventing Iranian dominance of the northern gulf is to hammer out a peace agreement between Israel and Syria and then start building commercial and military relationships with them. Obviously, that is easier said than done. A starting point is talking to Syria and feeling them out.
• Wash your hands. Simple withdrawal, with or without a timetable and surely under fire — although American forces could probably cope with that — would have the disadvantages of the first option, without the putative benefits. Iraq would almost surely become even more violent, with massacres of scores or even hundreds being replaced by massacres of thousands, and various regional powers straining to secure their own buffers and clients.
I’d like to know what the Turks, Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians have to say about a simple withdrawal. I’m sure we can sit down with them and consult about how best to prevent or minimize a humanitarian disaster and potential spill-over and refugee problems. Talking to Iran and Syria would help too. Perhaps Cohen should combine elements of one and two and see what he gets.
• Double your bets. Conversely, the U.S. could react by reasserting its strength in Iraq — sending an additional 30,000 or 40,000 troops to secure Baghdad and its environs, and making a far more strenuous effort than it has thus far to take control of the civilian ministries that are now merely fronts for political parties and their militias. But could American public opinion sustain this? More importantly, where would the soldiers come from? And has the strain on Iraqis’ sense of national identity become so great that those institutions could be built?
This is the John McCain solution. The answer is that the American public opinion WILL NOT sustain such an effort and it is as simple as that. Plus, even if we would sustain it, it won’t work.
• Hunker down and let the fires burn. The U.S. military, at its current strength or something less, could, conceivably, simply retreat to its forward operating bases, do its best to train a neutral and effective military and police force, and allow communal violence to take its course. Over time, new demographic realities would emerge, as Sunnis and Shiites separate into different neighborhoods, while some minorities — Christians, most notably — simply flee the country. But would there be anything left once the massacres had stopped? And would they stop?
This is the Bush plan plus a retreat to forward operating bases. It’s kind of a Bush/Murtha hybrid, actually. It’s moronic and immoral. And it won’t work.
• Back to counterinsurgency. One school has it that the U.S. should never have engaged directly in combat with Iraqi insurgents. Instead, it should have focused overwhelmingly on the training mission, retaining only enough combat units to rescue Iraqi forces (and their U.S. advisers) if they get in over their heads. To some extent this is already going on; but some have suggested much more radical reductions in the U.S. presence, down to 40,000 or 50,000 soldiers. The question is whether the levels of violence are so high, and the competence of the Iraqi forces so limited, that this has a chance of success. And what would be Plan C if it were to fail?
This is another variation of the Murtha plan. It involves more troops than Murtha advocates, but the principles are much the same. This is at least something that could be attempted, with Plan C being a simple withdrawal. Perhaps a reduction of American presence would focus the minds of the Iraqis in the current government. Perhaps it would diminish the violence somewhat. We could try it and see what happens.
• – Let the generals have it. The Iraqi government is incompetent. Its ministries are viewed not as national institutions but as the playthings of competing parties and their bands of thugs. Yet Iraqi nationalism is real, and it is found where nationalism often is — in the armed forces. A junta of military modernizers might be the only hope of a country whose democratic culture is weak, whose politicians are either corrupt or incapable. But what would then become of the American goal of democratization? And could the generals suppress the militias that have backing from abroad, and support in local communities?
Forget about democracy. When democracy becomes our first priority in nuclear-armed Pakistan I will consider making it our first priority in Iraq. Obviously the military is the only hope for holding the country together. Whether they can operate under the command of the elected government or they have to go their own way, they will be the ones to settle what happens in Iraq. If they want equipment and replacement parts, they will have to listen to what we have to say. We can exert some modicum of control this way, if containing Iran is really worth our time and effort.
• – Break it up. This option would have us concede the end of Iraq as a nation state. The precedents in the Middle East — with the exceptions of Egypt and Iran, a collection of artificial entities produced by the highly fallible imaginations of British and French diplomats at the end of World War I — are chilling. Presumably, population transfers on a large scale would be needed, although the problem of multiconfessional Baghdad would be particularly difficult. But it is hard to imagine that a formally independent Kurdistan would last long in the face of the hostility of all of its neighbors, or that the oil-deprived and landlocked Sunni state of western Iraq would be tranquil, or that the southern Shiastan would be able to resist Iranian penetration.
This is the Biden plan. It’s a plan, it’s well-intentioned but it is basically an endorsement for a major ethnic/sectarian cleansing campaign. It’s also not for us to decide. At best, we can be a player in arbitrating such a deal. I wouldn’t totally dismiss this as a solution for Iraq’s internal problems sometime down the road. But it’s not a Plan B and doesn’t belong on the list.
All of the options for Plan B are either wretched to contemplate or based on fantasy; the most plausible (the sixth option, a coup which we quietly endorse) would involve a substantial repast of crow that this administration will be deeply unwilling to eat. But it is not only the administration that can, and should, feel uncomfortable about the choices that lie ahead.
This is the Premier Ngo Dinh Diem option. We quietly allow Maliki to get a bullet in the back of his head and then rally around some strongman. It’s not much different from the ‘let the Generals have it’ option. My advice? Don’t quietly advocate any such thing. It’s likely to happen even without any quiet prodding. Why get our fingers dirty and give people even less reason to trust and work with us?
Cohen does a decent job of laying out the options, although he makes them look a little worse than they really are by refusing to allow for a mix of different options. Anyway you slice it, though, our options are terrible and getting worse.
What is our bottom line? We do not want Iraq to become a failed state that fosters anti-American jihadis? Too late. We don’t want them to get really “great” training like that supplied at bin-Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan? Well, we can always go in and disrupt such camps. There’s no reason to keep 140,000 troops there to keep them from having barracks.
What about the oil? Someone will pump it and we’ll buy it on the open market. I know that makes a lot of very important people nervous, but as Cohen has pointed out, public opinion will not sustain an indefinite occupation of Iraq.
