Iraq : The Logic Of Disengagement

[Cyrus]

Edward Luttwak is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- and certainly not a dove. His article on Iraq, in Foreign Affairs magazine, offers his argument and proposal for America disengaging from the quagmire.

Here's a sample (with emphases added), which one would be advised to read carefully :

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Given all that has happened in Iraq to date, the best strategy for the United States is disengagement.
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The endless sequence of major acts of violence proves that U.S. military forces are unable to fulfill their security role.
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While the U.S. armed forces are formidable against enemies assembled in massed formation, they are least effective at fighting insurgents. Insurgents strive to be especially elusive, and as targets diminish, so does the value of American firepower. This wasm demonstrated in Vietnam in many different ways over many years and is unnecessarily being proven all over again in Iraq, damaging the reputation of the United States, wasting vast amounts of money, inflicting added suffering on Iraqis at large, and taking the lives of young Americans, whose sacrifice, one fears, will soon be deemed futile.
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A withdrawl, however, would not leave the insurgents vitcorious : Even if the official Iraqi army and police remain as ineffectual as they now are, the Shi'a and Kurdish militias are far larger and better armed than the insurgents, and would crush them soon enough.
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Disengagement would call for the careful planning and scheduling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from much of the country--while making due provisions for sharp punitive strikes against any attempt to harass the withdrawing forces.
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But it would primarily require an intense diplomatic effort, to prepare and conduct parallel negotiations with several parties inside Iraq and out. All have much to lose or gain depending on exactly how the U.S. withdrawal is carried out, and this would give Washington a great deal of leverage that could be used to advance U.S. interests.
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The United States cannot threaten to unleash anarchy in Iraq in order to obtain concessions from others, nor can it make transparently conflicting promises about the country's future to different parties.
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But once it has declared its firm commitment to withdraw--or perhaps, given the widespread conviction that the United States entered Iraq to exploit its resources, once visible physical preparations for an evacuation have begun--the calculus of other parties will change.
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In a reversal of the usual sequence, the U.S. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal, and Washington may well be able to lay the groundwork for a reasonably stable Iraq. Nevertheless, if key Iraqi factions or Iraq's neighbors are too shortsighted or blinded by resentment to cooperate in their own best interests, the withdrawal should still proceed, with the United States making such favorable or unfavorable arrangements for each party as will most enhance the future credibility of U.S. diplomacy.
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The United States has now abridged its vastly ambitious project of creating a veritable Iraqi democracy to pursue the much more realistic aim of conducting some sort of general election. In the meantime, however, it has persisted in futile combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. A strategy of disengagement would require bold, risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much diplomatic competence in its execution.
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But it would be soundly based on the most fundamental of realities: geography that alone ensures all other parties are far more exposed to the dangers of an anarchical Iraq than is the United States itself.


[/ QUOTE ]

The man makes sense.

[Cyrus]

A lot of people who support America's policy in Iraq argue that the U.S. is bringing to the occupied country a better regime and hope for the future (an argument which Edward Luttwak does not dispute at all), as opposed to the nationalist/religious insurgents who want to take the country back to its old, anachronistic ways.

But Luttwak is a pragmatist -- and knows his History.

And History offers a lot of conclusive examples to the opposite effect, and most notably the way the very term "guerilla" was first created. Luttwak, in the same article, pointedly makes note of it:

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The word "guerilla" acquired its present meaning from a ferocious insurgency against would-be liberators.
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On July 6, 1808, King Joseph of Spain, who was the brother of Emperor Napoleon and had been placed on the Spanish throne by French troops, presented a draft constitution that for the first time in Spain's history offered an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the abolition of the feudal privileges of the aristocracy and the Church.
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Ecclesiastical overlords still owned at the time thousands of towns and villages, throughout Spain, inhabited by some of Europe's most wretched tenants.
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Far from demanding the immediate implementation of the new constitution, however, the peasants obeyed the priests who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader and occupier.

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[Darryl_P]

What do you say to someone who argues that democracy was in adolescence in 1806 but now it is somewhere between middle age and old age? If this is true, then the parallel doesn't work so well.

[Cyrus]

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What do you say to someone who argues that democracy was in adolescence in [1808] but now it is somewhere between middle age and old age? If this is true, then the parallel doesn't work so well.

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Whether or not democracy was a regime that had already been tried in the United States (or even neighoring France) was obviously irrelevant to the Spaniards resisting Napoleonic modernisation. The Spaniards were offered tangibly better social and political conditions than those they had to endure under the monarchy and the Church -- yet the Spaniards denounced and refused the lot.

Their refusal had little, if anything, to do with "their lack of familiarity" with democratic concepts or with democracy's "young age". It had everything to do with the fact that those "better conditions" were offered by a foreigner, who was an invader and occupier to boot. End of story.

Notably, some years after this episode, the Spaniards did rebel against the autocratic and harsh regime of the (Spanish) King Ferdinand VII. But, this time, the rebellion was led by another Spaniard, the King's brother -- and a civil war ensued which lasted seven years.

[ACPlayer]

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It had everything to do with the fact that those "better conditions" were offered by a foreigner, who was an invader and occupier to boot. End of story.

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But than those who think they know what is good for another human being are almost invariably wrong and almost invariably never able to learn from history. I think this is part of the Libertarian philosophy -- is it not?

[bobman0330]

[ QUOTE ]
Their refusal had little, if anything, to do with "their lack of familiarity" with democratic concepts or with democracy's "young age". It had everything to do with the fact that those "better conditions" were offered by a foreigner, who was an invader and occupier to boot. End of story.

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This is one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. You think Napoleon was offering democracy? Napoleon?? Emperor Napoleon the ruthless warlord who overthrew the First Republic in France??? Yeah, those provincial Spanish, can't even recognize a liberator when they see one.

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
But it would primarily require an intense diplomatic effort, to prepare and conduct parallel negotiations with several parties inside Iraq and out. All have much to lose or gain depending on exactly how the U.S. withdrawal is carried out, and this would give Washington a great deal of leverage that could be used to advance U.S. interests.

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This is just so vague. The issue is whether the country will stick together. The US will never withdraw so long as they think there is a reasonable possibility of the country fracturing and the Sunni territories becoming independent entities in which Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups might train and operate freely (I know, it's already almost like that anyway...). The problem is that the Shias and, especially, the Kurds are not necessary opposed to dividing the country, since they would be left with the oil. The Iranians might not be opposed either, since it would be relatively easy to draw a smaller Shia Iraq into their sphere of influence.

So exactly what are you going to do diplomatically to prevent this outcome?

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A strategy of disengagement would require bold, risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much diplomatic competence in its execution.

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This is the other problem, of course. Even if this kind of diplomatic maneuvering was possible, which I am skeptical about, the Bush administration has never offered any evidence that it is remotely capable of diplomatic competence.

[lehighguy]

What about just putting Saddam back in power. I'm all for it at this point (not joking).

He is secular, he can maintain order and prevent civil war, and as an added bonus we can claim that we left the country exactely as we found it.

[ QUOTE ]
What about just putting Saddam back in power. I'm all for it at this point (not joking).

He is secular, he can maintain order and prevent civil war, and as an added bonus we can claim that we left the country exactely as we found it.

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That is exactly what I was thinking (I'm not joking either). Things were so much better for us and the Iraqis when Saddam was in power. Saddam didn't have any WMDs so he was no threat to the U.S., but he did have plenty of power in his own country which he could use to keep all these little terrorist groups in line.

Now, we're likely to see a big free-for-all when we leave and whichever regime takes power will likely leave the U.S. and the Iraqis worse off.

[superleeds]

I suggest you read a book about Napoleons life and deeds rather than belief how some people have interperated Nostradamus.