For a long time I have resisted the temptation to offer strategic advice to the Bush administration for the specific reason that I consider it worse than wasted breath. Offering up constructive advice for Iraq is, in effect, offering up an excuse for the continued occupation of the country. Knowing that my advice will not be heeded, I find it more constructive to advocate a complete pull-out. I have often mocked Tom Friedman for not understanding this. How many times has Friedman, even prior to the invasion, made recommendations with caveats attached that Iraq will be a disaster if his advice is ignored? For Friedman, there is always another six months in which we might turn things around if the Bush/Cheney administration will just change course and implement his advice. And at the end of each six month interval things are worse. When will Friedman learn that his advice (much of which was solid) is not going to be heeded, and that therefore we should stop investing in a doomed enterprise?
But we have reached a new stage in Iraq and the Middle East more generally. We should now be in full panic mode.
We have seen so much uninformed rhetoric over the last several years, and it is time for adults to step in. So, let me lay out some principles.
We are in a new stage in the Middle East. The Bush Doctrine is now a dead letter. The attempt to stir a democratic revolution throughout the Middle East by establishing a repesentative government in Iraq has failed miserably. Reforms have been limited and where elections have occurred (in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Bahrain, and Iraq) they have resulted in anti-American and destabilizing results. If there is any doubt that the effort has failed, revelations that Cheney’s office is considering a genocidal solution to stabilizing Iraq should put those doubts to rest. Democracy is no longer our goal. Stabilization is our goal.
There were some lofty ideals (at least on the surface) in Bush’s pro-democracy rhetoric.
Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today, and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. In many nations of the Middle East — countries of great strategic importance — democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.
How does that rhetoric stack up with Cheney’s latest thoughts?
The Darwin Principle, Beltway version, basically says that Washington should stop trying to get Sunnis and Shiites to get along and instead just back the Shiites, since there are more of them anyway and they’re likely to win in a fight to the death. After all, the proposal goes, Iraq is 65 percent Shiite and only 20 percent Sunni.
Sorry, Sunnis.
Setting aside the deeply immoral prospect of America assisting one religious sect in a ‘fight to the death’ with another religious sect, the debate of the Darwin Principle shows that the Bush administration recognizes that our goals have shifted from democracy spreading to re-stablization. This will remain true no matter what tactics America chooses or what changes we have in leadership. The reason for this is that the invasion of Iraq has metastasized into a regional sectarian conflagration between Sunnis and Shi’ites. We can pull out all our troops and Iraq will remain a battleground and a humanitarian disaster. It will draw in its neighbors. And the rest of the world, that is so dependent on the uninterrupted flow of energy resources from the Persian Gulf, will not be able to remain indifferent. At a minimum, the United States will have to work with the United Nations to negotiate peace, handle refugee problems, and try to stem the violence. Our military will be forced to draw up (and possibly implement) contingency plans to occupy oil fields and clear the Persian Gulf for the safe passage of shipping.
So, the first principle is that we need to drop all this talk of democracy and admit that our immediate and long-term task is re-stabilization.
Here is the next principle. The United States has no inherent preference between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. We do not have a theological preference. But we do have to deal with some demographic realities. Our traditional allies in the region are Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey. They are all Sunni dominated countries. We cannot ignore their affinity for the beseiged Sunnis in Iraq. In fact, this is the most central conundrum that we face. Iran is a Shi’ite nation. Iraq’s government is dominated by Shi’ites. We cannot back the Iraq government in a crackdown on the Sunnis without alienating our own allies. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it is as if we were trying to defeat the Nazis while simultaneously protecting Mussolini from the Brits and Free French forces. It’s a totally untenable position. The first signs of this untenability are already here, with the Saudi ambassador abruptly and unceremoniously quitting his post last week.
So, the second principle is that we cannot take the Iraqi government’s side in a sectarian war, even though ‘there are more of them anyway and they’re likely to win in a fight to the death’.
Now I want to make another point. There is no denying that a lot of our policy is aimed at protecting Israel’s interests. There is a sectarian divide here, too. Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt are Sunni nations. They also have diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel are strained, but there is no prospect of war between them. It is among the Shi’a that we have been unable to gain an acceptance of Israel’s existence. The Shi’a of Lebanon, led by Hizbollah, remain at war with Israel. They are backed by Syria’s schismatic Shi’ite Alawite government and Iran’s Shi’a mullahs. If Israel is ever to live in peace they will have to reach some kind of agreement with the Shi’a. This is a remarkable fact, since the vast majority of Palestinians are Sunni, but nothing is simple in the Middle East. Keep these facts in mind while we consider Condi Rice’s plan:
Make no mistake, the Rice way is a long shot as well. It’s a catchall of a plan that has something for everyone. Its goal — if peace and victory can’t be had — is at least to give a moderate Shiite government the backbone necessary to stand up to radicals like Moktada al-Sadr through new alliances with moderate Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
In this plan, America’s Sunni Arab allies would press centrist Iraqi Sunnis to support a moderate Shiite government. Outside Baghdad, Sunni leaders would be left alone to run Sunni towns. Radical Shiites, no longer needed for the coalition that keeps the national government afloat, would be marginalized. So would Iran and Syria. To buy off the Sunni Arab countries, the United States would push forward on a comprehensive peace plan in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
There is a lot of wishful thinking involved in Rice’s plan. Chief among the pollyannish assumptions is the idea that Iraqi Sunnis will care more about the lives of Palestinians than they care about their own. But, at least this strategy avoids pitting us against our allies in the region.
The most important piece of this is the last piece. Getting a comprehensive peace plan in Israel and the Palestinian territories is the single most important thing we can do in any re-stablization effort. The key will be to get an agreement that satisfies Syria. If Syria signs a peace agreement with Israel it is almost assured that Saudi Arabia will as well. And that will mean that Israel will be at peace with all its neighbors with the possible exception of Hizbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. Yet, without Syrian support and with the Palestinian question settled, Hizbollah will be a managable problem and might mutate into a purely political movement.
There is another possible strategy and it is probably looking attractive to pro-Israeli hardliners. Syria today is almost a negative image of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. While Iraq is 65% Shi’ite and 20% Sunni Arab, Syria is nearly the opposite. If Syria were to hold elections, the Sunnis would dominate and they would end Syria’s close relationship with both Iran and Hizbollah. Rather than having an uninterrupted Shi’a crescent from Teheran across Iraq, Syria, southern Lebanon to Israel’s border, there would be a Sunni bulwark.
The only thing that could possibly restore a balance in the region without repudiating Bush’s pro-democracy rhetoric would be free elections in Syria. That would be an insane policy to pursue because of the deep uncertainty about how it would all pan out, but it would still be better than the Darwin Principle or staying the course in Iraq.