That USIP session on US troop presence in Iraq

I live-blogged the session just briefly here, yesterday; and Marc Lynch gave his somewhat longer– and later– “first take” on the discussion, here. We can hope that USIP’s own audio (MP3) recording of the session will be at this page on their website soon.

(Update Tuesday: the audio is here. Video promised soon.)

The set-up of the discussion turned out to be that there were two relative outliers– Kim Kagan, a perky and very tightly scripted neocon (and ardent ‘surge’ defender) at one end of the spectrum, and Charles Knight of the Project for Defense Alternatives and the Boston-based Commonwealth Institute at the other. Holding down “the middle” were Colin Kahl of the aggressively “realist” but also blessedly paleocon “Center for a New American Security”, and– here was the surprise– Rend al-Rahim (formerly Rend Rahim Francke), who through 2002-2003 was an ardent ally of Ahmad Chalabi’s, working tirelessly in Washington to gin up support for the 2003 invasion.
I recall that on January 13, 2003, Rahim Francke told a WaPo reporter that she hoped to be “on the first US tank” going to Baghdad. By October 2005, however, she was starting to express unease with Washington’s conduct of its project in Iraq… The fact that her political sponsors in Baghdad never followed through on earlier plans to make her ambassador to Washington may have had something to do with that. (Or maybe they’d fallen out of power in the interim. I forget.) Probably, though, she would be an interesting person to interview.
As I wrote yesterday, all the panelists except Knight expressed– or reflected– the crucial judgment that the US government is politically stronger than the Iraqi government, and can therefore exert leverage over it.
The more I think about it, the more I think that judgment is flawed. It strikes me that some time over the past two months, the balance of political forces between Washington and Baghdad shifted in favor of Baghdad. This, due to a number of factors:

1. George Bush’s presidency is anyway winding down; and in many fields of action he is acting like a lame duck a lot earlier than most two-term presidents do;
2. The momentum of public opinion inside the US has also been shifting noticeably from a focus on Iraq to a focus on Afghanistan. This has been reflected at many levels of society. We could say that the “Dannatt moment” I’ve been writing about for 21 months has now kind of snuck up on us already. (It’s true that we all– including, certainly, me– need to do a lot more thinking about Afghanistan than simply going along with the current near-consensus that what’s needed is only “more US-NATO troops.” I see Brzezinski’s been one of the clearest thinkers on this issue, already.) But regarding the US commitment to Iraq, the arrival of the US’s “Dannatt moment” alters the political calculus between Washington and Baghdad considerably.
3. Inside Iraq, PM Maliki– a man whose main political talent is that of pliability– seems to have made the judgment that going along with the national consensus there on the issue of US troops leaving is better for him than continuing to kowtow to Washington. This doesn’t look like a crazy judgment, given the consolidation of a new nationalist consensus within most of Iraq.

Of course, if you see Washington’s negotiating hand as being stronger, then you would think that Washington could “extract concessions” from Baghdad, or “impose conditions” on it. If you see Baghdad’s as stronger, then that calculus shifts.
Kim Kagan said things like the following:

Whether we as US are able to fulfill our objectives in Iraq depends mainly on what we do…
We as the US have the choice to stay and see that the post-election period is successful. [I believe she was referring to the period after Iraq’s provincial elections, which may have to be delayed till early 2009. Later in the year there will be national elections.] Or we could send the very wrong message that we aren’t in fact committed to the Iraqis’ success and we would signal to all opponents that their time is coming.
This depends on us!
We need to keep our forces there through the spring, at the earliest, to see if the post-election process has worked.

Note in this both– as Lynch noted– the completely “imperial” insistence that the Iraqis would have no meaningful input into the decisionmaking, as well as Kagan’s resurrection of the old “just wait for one more purple finger moment” ploy to try to sell Americans on the idea of maintaining at its present level a troop deployment that is costing US taxpayers $300 million per day.
… From his very different perspective, Charles Knight then gave an excellent presentation of the basic arguments in the “Necessary Steps” report that he and a number of others issued last month, which calls on Washington to announce a firm deadline by which it will have withdrawn all its troops from Iraq, and describes what other steps need to accompany that announcement.
(Alert readers of JWN might be interested to know that, on the ‘Acknowledgments’ page of the currently available online versions of the NS report, its authors have now expressed some acknowledgment of the inspiration my work provided for them, and they’ve inserted two of my own earlier works on hoiw to withdraw from Iraq into the report’s Bibliography. That, after I called them out on their abominably exploitative treatment of me in this June 25 blog post. Now, we are all engaged in discussions of ways to move forward together in a more respectful and inclusive way.)
At yesterday’s session, Knight described some of the broad dimensions of the socio-political crisis the Iraqis are still experiencing, and the costs this has imposed on the US’s standing and capabilities all around the world.
He said,

We need a new basis for our policy there: One that puts Iraqis at the center; and rallies the international community to our side.
We should start by defining a realistic and short timeline for withdrawal. This is necessary in order to draw further Iraqi oppositionists into the political process there and to catalyze international support. But on its own it’s not enough.
We need to recognize that the US presence and actions have been part of the problem in Iraq, not part of the the solution. We’ve been handicapped by being seen there as an alien power… We have also worn our sense of privilege on our sleeve there– including with the administration’s insistence, in the security negotiations, on keeping immunity from Iraqi prosecution for US citizens
Iraqis need to take charge of their own longterm development. Yes, they might need international help but not in same US-dominated model we have used until now…

He urged the following complements to the announcement of the date for withdrawal:

1. The formation of an International Support Group that would include Iraq, all its neighbors, the UN, the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, and other bodies… Including, as part of that, that the US must re-engage Syria and Iran in respectful diplomacy…
2. As we demand that other states respect the principle of non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs, the US must demonstrate the same commitment as well.

Altogether an excellent and well-argued presentation. My only quibble would be that I think it’s important to spell out that it should be the UN that is asked to convene the various negotiations that will be required– both within Iraq and among a range of international actors– if the withdrawal is to have the maximal chance of being carried out in an orderly fashion and leaving behind an Iraq in which the big political questions are well on their way to resolution.
Knight had started his time at the podium by invoking Monty Python’s iconic “And now for something completely different…” The third one up to speak was Colin Kahl, who started by saying that after hearing the earlier two speakers, he wanted to present what he called “the Goldilocks position– neither too hot, nor too cold, but somewhere in between.”
His presentation was based on a report that his outfit, the Center for a New American Security, issued last month under the title “Shaping the Iraqi Inheritance“. (I’m not sure how I feel about that imagery. I’m not quite prepared to see the US as the benign Aunty who leaves a wonderful inheritance to her niece; and nor do I think that Iraq ever in any sense “belonged” to the US, which would be the only context in which the US could “bequeath” it to the Iraqi people. On the other hand, the idea of an inheritance does strongly imply that dear old Aunty will have gone, exited, kaput, and left the scene… )
Kahl was a co-author of that report, quite possibly its principal co-author. He described the concept of “conditional engagement” that, he said, lies at the heart of their approach.
He noted (imho correctly) that, “Our presence in Iraq undermines our deterrent posture against Iran.” He added,

The war has been devastating to both our hard power and our soft power. But we need to make sure that the way we disengage doesn’t do the same– that it doesn’t lead to a failed state, as Charles’s path would..

He defined the US’s goal in Iraq as being the achievement of ‘sustainable stability’, and helpfully noted that “the passing of a law with the name of a benchmark is not the same as achieving the benchmark!”
Indeed.
Kahl had evidently been working hard to attain the efficient, self-confident affect of an ambitious young wannabe government official. (Indeed, he said he had already served one year in the defense Department; he didn’t say under what auspices.) So he had a number of Power Point slides, most of which were– given the size of the room– completely unreadable from even halfway back in it. Anyway, if you go to the PDF text of the “Iraqi Inheritance” report, on p. 34 of the PDF (32 of the paper version) you can find one of the graphics he displayed, and on p. 44 of the PDF (42 of the paper) you can find another.
The first of those graphics is a simple 2 x 2 matrix summarizing four different policy approaches, plotting the presence or absence of conditionality exerted by the US towards Iraq against whether the basic stance is one of maintaining or ending the US’s “military engagement in Iraq”
He characterized the Bush administration’s approach as one of “unconditional engagement”, whereas he favored the stance of “conditional engagement.”
Whether the US is, actually, capable of credibly imposing political “conditions” on the Baghdad government– including being willing and able to impose sanctions for Baghdad’s failure to meet the conditions– is where I disagree with Kahl.
Here was an interesting point, though. At the end of his presentation, he admitted that the whole goal of being able to impose (and enforce) the US’s “conditions” on Baghdad might not be attainable. He said, “If the ‘conditional’ part of it doesn’t work, then we could go back to what Charles advocates. But that would have to be as Plan B, not Plan A.”
Interesting.
My suggestion to Kahl: Bag your Plan A because it’s not workable. Just deal with developing the very best Plan B that you can. And no, the “fixed timetable for a full withdrawal” approach would not lead unstoppably to state failure in Iraq, as you claimed. There are many, many ways to minimize the probability of that outcome, as I and others have demonstrated. So that accusation you voiced against Charles Knight was an ill-considered cheap shot.
(Anyway, talking of state failure in Iraq, what was the result of Bremerism there? Iraqis have now proven that they can– with great difficulty– overcome the effects of the complete and deliberate destruction of their state’s governing institutions that was achieved by Viceroy Bremer. So why on earth would Colin Kahl or anyone else think they would be prepared to lapse easily back into a situation of state failure once again?)
So if you have time, go look at the second one of those graphics in the PDF of the CNAS report. It nicely sums up the excessively managerialist (i.e. imperialistic, ‘technocratic’) approach that is Kahl’s Plan A.
He also said things like this:

Most Iraqi leaders want some form of US ‘overwatch’. But most don’t want a continuing US presence, except the Kurdish leaders.

Unclear what the exact bottom line from that remark is?
And this:

The Iraqi want a lot of things from us, including military and diplomatic help… But we should extract a price for these things.

Again, I’m not sure he sees the balance of political power question there quite correctly…
So that then brings us to Rend Rahim’s presentation. She announced her policy preference upfront: “I find myself in large agreement with Kahl’s view.”
And from then on, you saw the intriguing sight of this very controlled, and quite intelligent woman agonizing in public over how best to articulate both her diagnosis of the situation and her policy prescriptions. The POV from which she was speaking seemed very ambiguous. On a large number of occasions she spoke about “we”, in a context where she seemed to be referring to the actions of the Bush administration., But she is not a US government official, and I’m not even sure if she’s a US citizen. Maybe she was referring to the “we” of all those– Iraqis and Americans–who had conspired together to work for, and then implemented, the invasion of Iraq? Unclear.
On other occasions, she seemed to be speaking more as an Iraqi.
So here, with those POV issues unresolved, is a digest of more or less what she said:

The presence of US troops is a constant irritant; but the attitudes of the Iraqi leaders and population towards it are ery. conflicted…. We have seen a reversal, where earlier it was the Sunnis wanted us to leave and Shiites wanted us to stay, but now it’s the other way around…
The Iraqis may do things we don’t approve of… and there might be private remonstrances from US leaders. But as Colin said, you never see any public declarations from the Bush administration about this….
We’ve made a number of mistakes, I admit. In the rebuilding of the Iraqi army we’ve concentrated on quantity rather than quality. “We” have trained for combat but not for command and control; “we” have completely ignored the very important question of of the loyalty of the army to the state, as Colin mentioned.
The army has to be constituted on a different basis if we are to have ‘sustainable stability’ in Iraq…
About all the negotiations over a security agreement, I would say that Iraq is still very vulnerable as a state, and most Iraqis still see need for external alliance. The US is seen as the best partner for this.
But trying to get this security agreement in a year that’s an election year in both the US and Iraq– whose idea was that? There are so many complex issues around that negotiation that simply can’t be discussed in Washington in an election year– and similarly, in Iraq…
Maliki now wears the Sadrists’ nationalist mantle and he can’t take it off.
The SOFA was presented as defining conditions for the US troops staying in Iraq– but it should have been framed as defining conditions for troops leaving Iraq. That would have been a much easier sell in both the US & Iraq…
Now, Maliki is looking at getting out from the current UN mandate to the US-led coalition which is under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, and which obliges him to accede to the coalition’s decisions, to having it be under Chapter 6, where the coalition forces would be there at the invitation of the Iraqis… And they are talking about this being a six- or 12-month agreement from when the current resolution expires, which is on December 31
I think an unconditional withdrawal as suggested by Charles would be very worrying. But I also disagree with Kim’s view. Yes, the situation is a lot better than it was previously. But all is not well in Iraq. There is a huge concern that all the relative stability we see is very fragile. The gains on the political level have been very small.
The army is still made up mainly of partisan, militia-based or sectarian units (ISCI; Sahwa, etc.) There is a problem of the chain of command: who do they report to?
The situation is even worse in police. But even in the army we still don’t have it as a national institution.
The constitutional review undertaken last summer (’07) didn’t even address two of the most crucial issues. And even then, the recommendations the review committee made haven’t even been taken up by parliament. We still have a big problem with the constitution, a big problem with the amnesty question, a big problem with Debaaathification, and with the integration integration of the Sahwas and the ‘Sons of Iraq.’
Regarding the latter, the original agreement was to take 20% of them into army and police. But not even that was met. And then, what about the other 80%? If they don’t feel integrated we could see a huge relapse of people back into the ranks of the insurgency.
Also, the issue of displacement is not just a humanitarian issue but also a political question. We’ve had a serious loss of Sunnis, who have been the main group displaced; and in places like Baghdad, Diyala, etc, the political balance has been direly affected.
There is a big problem with the independence of the judiciary…
Finally, we have the elections coming up… What happens in the elections will depend on money, power, and access to weapons. The election season which will take up most of 2009 could be very destabilizing.
Regarding the drawdown of the US troops, we need to have time limitations and time markers for withdrawal… But they must be tied to markers inside Iraq that ensure sustainable stability.
Some people say “the US has no levers”… But I don’t think that’s the case: the US has many levers of influence that it can use. Remember the diplomatic gifts (especially in winning the agreement of various other governments to reschedule or cancel Iraq’s external debts) that we have given to Iraq.
We haven’t done a good job of looking at tools to dangle carrots and so on before the Iraqi government, to establish firm conditionality…

In the Q&A period that followed, here were the most interesting points made:
Kim Kagan– perhaps sensing the US national zeitgeist and eager to find a way to remain relevant to it?– said she does see some possibility for some withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. But she stressed that this should not be before next spring and the post-provincial-election period in Iraq.
Rend al-Rahim warned more about what she described as “the real prospect of violence throughout the election year in Iraq– that is, throughout the whole of 2009– with the highest probability of this being in Anbar Province.”
Colin Kahl admitted that, “The challenge for next president will be to manage our increasing irrelevance in Iraq.”
Indeed.
And then– conceptually related to that– there was the very percipient question that the discussion’s moderator, Dan Serwer, asked, as I noted yesterday, when he pointed out that if the US imposes “conditionality”, then it should have the readiness to withhold promised political goodies from the Baghdad government if those conditions are not met…
An excellent question, that I never heard satisfactorily answered. Okay, maybe that was because I was taking advantage of USIP’s generously offered wireless internet there to live-blog the event right then.
But really, given the way I analyze the balance of forces between Baghdad and Washington these days– regarding matters Iraqi– I’m not sure there is a satisfactory answer to Serwer’s question…