[I've been mulling over this post for about a week now, but it's still unsatisfactory. Might as well post it, though, in case some wise reader can nudge me in the right direction in the comments section. I find this an incredibly hard question, and you'll see my answer to it is ambivalent and conditional.]
A while ago, Rodger Payne had another really solid post outlining some considerations against pulling out of Iraq. A great deal is at stake - much more, even, than when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam and let the North overrun the South. I haven't bothered to put in the hyperlinks, but this is what Payne writes:
I don't really agree with Kerry on every point, but I think this is a very difficult issue and his position is rational and sincerely held. His concerns about the aftermath of withdrawal -- civil war and the creation of a new failed state host of terror -- are real and deserve serious attention.(My only reservation is that while I think the Bush administration's "democracy-building" is pie-in-the-sky, the dream of democratizing the Middle East isn't itself pie-in-the-sky. But I think that Payne's target here is the former rather than the latter.)If the US were to withdraw from Iraq, there's a pretty good chance the country could disintegrate into civil war. If we're lucky, the result would be separate (and stable) Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions.
More likely, the parties would divide roughly into mini-state regions and those mini-states would be constantly contested. That is, fighting would be continuous and nasty. If nothing else, the parties would bicker over the oil reserves, which are not evenly dispersed throughout Iraq. The Sunni regions of Iraq have very little oil.
There's also a high risk that the Shiite majority would either align openly with Iran or form its own version of theocracy.
None of this is desirable from the US perspective and I think it explains why Kerry thinks the US has to remain in Iraq to finish Bush's botched job.
Say what you want about Saddam Hussein, but he was not in bed with Islamic terrorists and he was not aligned with Iran.
In some ways, the potential outcomes are far worse than they were in Vietnam. There, if the US withdrew, the worst-case consequences were clear: The North would win, the entire country would fall under the Soviet orbit, and neighbouring states might be threatened. The US would likely have to bolster neighbouring states like Thailand.
Given that the "cold war" was, after all, cold, this was an unpleasant prospect, but the US ultimately could live with it. The conflict was far away from the US (and Europe, for that matter), so it would be a reasonable loss. Major regional friends like South Korea and Japan would not be directly or immediately threatened.
In the Iraq scenarios, however, the consequences for the US are much worse. First, a failed state might be hospitable to al Qaeda, which has proven it can and will strike the US. Think Afghanistan, with better infrastructure and technicians.
Second, Iraq has the second largest supply of proven oil reserves. As was demonstrated during the Iranian revolution, oil prices and western economies can be vulnerable to regional unrest. This is actually something I didn't mention when blogging about Carter's foreign policy. The US suffered both high unemployment and high inflation during this time. It wasn't really Carter's fault, but the numbers don't lie: inflation was over 11% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980. During each year of the Carter administration, unemployment dropped from 6.9 to 6.0 to 5.8 -- until 1980 when it zoomed up to 7.0%. This was widely blamed on crude oil prices:
The Iranian revolution resulted in the loss of 2 to 2.5 million barrels of oil per day between November of 1978 and June of 1979. In 1980 Iraq's crude oil production fell 2.7MMBPD and Iran's production by 600,000 barrels per day during the Iran/Iraq War. The combination of these two events resulted in crude oil prices more than doubling from $14 in 1978 to $35 per barrel in 1981.The image of Carter's "impotent" and "disastrous" foreign policy result from these events.It is very important to keep in mind that Kerry is primarily worried about security issues in Iraq -- not pie in the sky dreams of democratizing the Middle East. Presumably, he'll remove American forces as soon as he thinks it is possible to do so.
That might come after Iraqi elections, or after US troops are provided some relief by NATO forces, or troops from other states. It might come after significant numbers of Iraqi security forces have been trained to do their job.
Frankly, it might come if another "strongman" leader consolidates the country. Iraq in some ways is like Yugoslavia after the death of Tito. Can any individual keep it together?
So, you might ask, why in the world would the U.S. leave? How could it leave responsibly? I think the key here is to remember that, in addition to the good results the U.S. might achieve in Iraq by staying, there are many harms that it will inevitably do by staying as well. As I've said repeatedly, the U.S. very much wants long-term bases in Iraq. No Iraqi government which permits them will be considered legitimate. No Iraqi government which lacks legitimacy can stand without continued U.S. support. Proxies rarely win popularity contests. As long as the U.S. is in Iraq, there will be a need for the U.S. to remain in Iraq, for its presence will never stop generating further reasons for a continued presence. And the longer it stays, the more difficult it will be to abandon increasingly unpopular proxies without being accused of unreliability, for those proxies will be people who have staked everything on American promises. And American foreign policy makers are no different from any other power in world history in this respect: They are never more likely to act murderously than when they feel their credibility is at stake.
This is the dynamic of occupation - occupation, that is, which lacks fixed limits and is guided partly by long-term ambitions fundamentally at odds with the political wishes of the population which is occupied.
So here is my position: The more firmly the U.S. renounces these unhealthy long-term ambitions and - relatedly - is successful in internationalizing the occupation, the more favorably I will look on the occupation. But even in the best circumstances, there will be no excuse for American troops - any American troops - in Iraq in a year or so. But since the U.S. is a long way from renouncing these long-term ambitions, staying will do no good, at least on balance. And I don't think anyone will be happy if U.S. troops are still in Iraq a year from now and nothing has improved except bin Laden's recruiting videos.
Kerry might be a bit better here - I certainly hope he will - but we should never forget that the imperatives of empire are imperatives that will constrict the next President whoever he is. Notice, just for example, that the U.S. has just pulled out of its bases in Saudi Arabia. (Though the new base in Qatar is a nice consolation prize.)
My first choice is to see a wiser occupation which loudly and publicly renounces the incentives it might have to meddle harmfully in Iraq's affairs for the next generation. Such an occupation might provide just enough stability for the country to totter on to the point where we can begin to worry about a full scale civil war between the main regions of the country instead of our current minor civil war pitting insurgents against occupiers' proxies. But without a wiser occupation we're likely to see the former transition to the latter without so much as a pause to catch our breaths.
Posted by Chris at August 8, 2004 06:30 PM