The L.A. Times‘s Ned Parker has a great piece of reporting from Baghdad in today’s paper, charting the main dimensions of the recent collapse of the US’s influence in Iraq.
He leads with this:
- Once dependent on American support to keep his job, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has consolidated power and is asserting his independence, sharply reducing Washington’s influence over the future of Iraq.
Iraq’s police and army now operate virtually on their own, and with Washington’s mandate from the United Nations to provide security here expiring in less than four months, Maliki is insisting on imposing severe limits on the long-term U.S. military role, including the withdrawal of American forces from all cities by June.
America’s eroded leverage has left Iran, with its burgeoning trade and political ties, in a better position to affect Iraqi government policies.
It also means that whichever U.S. presidential candidate is elected … will have less ability to sway Baghdad than did the Bush administration.
I have been arguing since early June (e.g., here, here, and here) that the balance of real power between the Bush and Maliki governments, regarding developments in Iraq, has now shifted in the Iraqi’s favor. This, to the point that he now has more ability to influence the Americans’ behavior in Iraq than the other way round. I am glad that Ned Parker has now published this additional batch of evidence that further confirms that judgment.
Many in DC still talk about the ability of Washington to “place conditions on” the financial and security aid that it still gives to the Baghdad government.This, though Maliki has shrugged off and/or avoided meeting all of the stated conditions until now, including enacting an oil law, or holding provincial elections, or conducting the Kirkuk referendum, or… or… or..
Parker quotes one long-time DC-based “conditionalizer”, Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security. Kahl says the US still has some ability to influence the Malili government, but that “leverage” is now diminishing.
Parker quotes him as saying:
- “If the next president waits too long, our diminishing leverage will likely disappear altogether, leaving us with two strategic options: resign ourselves to ‘ride the tiger’ — that is, accept that we have to simply accept what the Iraqi government does and, at most, mitigate or help buffer the consequences — or jump off the tiger altogether.”
I guess this latter option would mean leaving Iraq altogether?
Note that Kahl, like the vast majority of other DC analysts, looks at the Iraq issue as either a strictly bilateral (US-Iraq) issue, or a trilateral (US-Iraqi-Iranian) issue. Most DC “insiders” pay far too little heed to the idea that there are numerous other actors who can and should be involved in the search for a durable political outcome in Iraq. These include the Arab League, the United Nations, China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, at a bare minimum.
Remembering that these other stakeholders exist, have non-trivial powers, and can help Iraqis and Americans to extricate themselves from the fateful embrace of military occupation in a way that does not involve Iraq splintering into mutually conflicted fragments, is a really helpful thing to do. Involving all these other parties seriously in the diplomacy of the Iraqi end-game– or rather, having the UN involve all of them plus the US and Iraqi governments– is, as I have long argued, the best way to arrive at a “responsible”, that is, non-catastrophic, US pullout from Iraq. It will also very helpfully remind Americans that no, we are not the center of the universe any more.
I guess this latter option would mean leaving Iraq altogether?
Oh yah write!
Whom are you trying to fool Helena?
Colin Kahl is hardly a reliable analyst; he just repeats the briefings he receives in the Green Zone, and doesn’t read Arabic.
The fact that he has moved on from where he was in June-July suggests that even US officials in the GZ may now be facing up to the fact that they read Maliki’s attitude quite wrong, and continued to think until a week or two ago that Maliki was just playing chicken over the SOFA negotiations, and would sign when he had the best deal.
Parker’s piece seems to me to signal a degree of US official rethinking. What the results of that rethinking might be, I don’t know. Simply that the US position is quite weak, having just spent again the costs of the Iraq war on shoring up the various financial institutions who have just benefitted from US public largesse.
With the US economy imploding, how can the next President possibly pay much attention to Iraq? The trump cards are all ending up in the hands of the suppliers of energy and debt.
After printing money to buy AIG (swapping T-bills for worthless assets), where will the next President get the money to continue the fight? US budget deficits are spiraling. Our financiers, China, Japan, Russia and the petro-states, are seeing their source of excess cash (export surpluses) dwindling, so they don’t need to buy US as much government debt as before. So, again where will the money come from?
The federal government has some serious downsizing to do if it wants to stay in business (keep its credit rating). It needs to start with “defense” budgets which are roughly equal to the entire operating budget deficit. Social Security is still more than paying its way, so it would be an outrage to start cutting “entitlements” to fund the bloated, profligate military.
Bush intends to kick this down the road to the next President, but this strategy may be overtaken by events.
After printing money to buy AIG (swapping T-bills for worthless assets),
Bush copied Saddam money printing to survivals 13 years of sanction lead US /UK to rush for the war of invasion sovereign country with NOW or NEVER(Tony Blair Words) opportunity.
There is very funny statement that said by Hussein Kamil (Saddam’s Son in law)
He Said: We rebuilt Iraqi after 1991 war by one REEM of paper!! As that time Iraq printing money notes locally.
In an odd way, though, something like that is precisely what US was looking to make happen (in a manner of speaking): an Iraqi regime that could fend for itself did emerge from the aftermath of the Surge. Of course, what US was looking for was something that was a nonstarter–an “autonomous” Iraqi entity that would continue to serve US interests…
Anybody here noticed an American mainstream wandering around looking lost?
“[T]here are many truths about the war in Iraq. But to say America fought an ill-advised war that was both a lost cause and a total loss is surely not one of them.
“Unfortunately, the American mainstream hasn’t sufficiently found itself on this war yet. There has been no coalescence around a coherent set of facts. Public opinion may be free in America, but sometimes it is shaped by subtle intimidation. Given all the loud rhetoric of defeat and despair, most Americans haven’t felt secure enough to look at the war as it is rather than what they have been told to believe.
“There is nothing wrong with establishing timetables for our departure — as long as we are equally prepared to accept the accolades of our hard-won struggle. Leaving Iraq, whenever that date may be, should be done not from a position of defeat and disgust, but rather with the pride and gratitude that our troops deserve for a job well done.”
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Neocomrade T. Rosenbaum, writin’ in today’s Wall Street Jingo , is rather an encouraging sign. Did you realise that we humble are capable of “subtle intimidation”?
Of course it’s not true, yet so kind a thought ought to count for something.
Happy days.
House gives go-ahead to sue Iraq over torture
Oh yeah, What hypocrisy is, two or three US pilots downed by Iraqi Air Defense Systems parachuted and caught by Iraqi villagers who handed them to Iraqi government questioned them, they appeared on Iraqi TV with some cuts on their faces no clue from where these cuts, at a time US and all the MSM media UN and Human rights condemned putting POW on TV and its humiliations of humanity!!
Ohhhhh yah, 25 millions bombed by MAD Ox with jubilation under the name “Shock & Awe ” not a problem is regime change, its freedom its democracy its war on terror
More and more putting tens of thousands in camps under the sun of Iraq1 “60C” without basic rights and service more over torturing humiliate them in inhuman ways that ever done by those who proud of liberty statue of liberty on their land.
For sex years Iraqi living and humiliating on their land by foreign power in name of freedom that brought them to misery and chaos they call it ethnics and sectarians chaos as if these poor Iraq like to do so with themselves.
What hypocrisy world we line in and what hypocrisy people are around talking analyzing on cost of human disaster and lies.
Just waiting what compensation will be asked from Iraq I expected millions for lies of torture but for Iraqi killed and tortured some get $1000 or for Dead $2500 what hypocrisy is.