Modalities of imperial retreat

The Bush administration’s rush toward repositioning itself as pursuing a policy in Iraq that is both “responsible” and one that involves a certain amount of troop withrawal has been amazingly speedy.
I suspect the main outlines of this move were most likely decided when Amb. Zal Khalilzad was in Washington around three weeks ago. But over the past few days there has been a torrent of reports from various US sources– in the Pentagon and in Iraq– about the nature of the newly emerging policy. Like this one, in today’s Newsweek, or this one, in today’s Time magazine.
The Newsweek piece describes the new plan in these terms:

The new approach is the result of long negotiations between Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. George Casey, commander of the Multinational Forces. Their overall strategy: on the military side, “clear, hold and build” while training up Iraqi forces; on the political side, wean Sunni leaders from their support of the insurgency, buying them off with incentives tribe by tribe and village by village; and on the U.S. domestic front, appease rising outcries for withdrawal by reducing the U.S. presence in Iraq to under 100,000 troops—hopefully by midterm Election Day 2006.
… Success or failure in Iraq … could well turn into a race between U.S. public opinion, which is increasingly impatient to see the bloody adventure over with, and a grand strategy that’s just getting ponderously off the ground. Is the political will going to be there to see the strategy through, especially when it is likely to cost many more U.S. casualties than the 2,108 dead and 15,804 wounded so far?

Good question.
Over at the New York Times, meanwhile, today’s “Week in review” section there carried this interesting piece by James Glanz, in which he looks at the difficult art, for imperial powers, of trying to effect a withdrawal-under-pressure as “gracefully” as possible– and crucially, while losing as little general political credibility as possible on the global scene.
He describes the challenge as being to look for “a dignified way out of a messy and often unpopular foreign conflict.” He then examines a number of possible historical precedents. Among them,

the wrenching French pullout from Algeria, the ill-fated French and American adventures in Vietnam, the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan and the disastrous American interventions in Beirut and Somalia.
Still, there are a few stories of inconclusive wars that left the United States in a more dignified position, including the continuing American presence in South Korea and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. But even those stand in stark contrast to the happier legacy of total victory during World War II.

Bosnia, as a relative success story? I am certainly not sure about that… Just last week we had the tenth anniversary of the Dayton “peace” accords– an occasion that served to underline just how fragile and unsatisfactory the Dayton agreement has proved to be. (See, for example, here and here.)
Still, Glanz describes the current attitude of much of the US political elite with respect to Iraq fairly well when he writes: “The highly qualified optimism of these experts about what may still happen in Iraq – let’s call it something just this side of hopelessness – has been born of many factors, including greatly reduced expectations of what might constitute not-defeat there.” I love that use of the term “not-defeat”, since everyone is rapidly coming to the conclusion that the word “victory” will not be at all applicable.
Glanz is hilariously funny when he writes in an apparently dead-pan way about a history professor called William Stueck who seems to think that the “Iraqification” strategy might work if given enough time…

Korea reveals how easy it is to dismiss the effectiveness of local security forces prematurely, Mr. Stueck said. In 1951, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway felt deep frustration when Chinese offensives broke through parts of the line defended by poorly led South Korean troops.
But by the summer of 1952, with intensive training, the South Koreans were fighting more effectively, Mr. Stueck said. “Now, they needed backup” by Americans, he said. By 1972, he said, South Korean troops were responsible for 70 percent of the front line.

Aha! So all the US needs in order to “win” with Iraqification at this point would be a further 21 years in which to pursue it?
One of the historical examples that Glanz uses that has a clearly “de-colonializing” story-line is that of the French retreat from Algeria. He quotes another historian, Matthew Connelly, as saying that, “Over the long run, history treated de Gaulle kindly for reversing course and agreeing to withdraw… De Gaulle loses the war but he wins in the realm of history: he gave Algeria its independence… How you frame defeat, that can sometimes give you a victory.”
H’mm. I’m not so sure about that. It may have made De Gaulle look masterful, statesmanlike, and “modern”. But the loss of Algeria was nonethless part of a worldwide retraction of French imperial power. Britain’s worldwide empire was also very busy indeed retreating in those days. Both those formerly sizeable global powers were losing global power at a rapid clip between 1950 and 1970, and it is important to remember that.
Now, the same kind of erosion of global power is happening, to some degree, to the United States’ globe-girdling military behemoth. And all of us who seek a world that is not dominated by military force and that is not structured to provide privilege to the US citizenry over and above everyone else in the world should be very clear about that fact, and should welcome it.
In fact, as I wrote here a couple of days ago (and have written on JWN before that, too), even a complete withdrawal of the US military from Iraq will not be enough to build the basis for the kind of just, nonviolent, and egalitarian global system that the 96 percent of the world’s people who are not US citizens so desperately need. And especially not if the (nuclear-armed) US military continues to dominate the entire Gulf region from its fleets inthe Gulf and all their supporting Gulf-side bases.
There was one bit of significant and generally welcome news in the Newsweek story, I should add. This came towards the end of this page of the story:

Khalilzad revealed to NEWSWEEK that he has received explicit permission from Bush to begin a diplomatic dialogue with Iran… “I’ve been authorized by the president to engage the Iranians as I engaged them in Afghanistan directly,” says Khalilzad. “There will be meetings, and that’s also a departure and an adjustment.”

Okay, so we may all have grave reservations and worries about the role that Iran is playing inside Iraq today. But still, as Winston Churchill so memorably said, “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”. (It sounds better in English-English than it does in US “English”, by the way.) If the US is going to be talking to Iran about its concerns regarding Iraq, that is far, far better than the situation two years ago when it was threatening to invade it.

Next stop, a resumption of talks with Syria, I hope?
But beyond all this, I think it’s time for people in the peace movement here in the US– while we continue working on the need for a rapid and total US withdfrawal from Iraq– to start also thinking more broadly about the kind of relationship we want our country to have with the rest of the world, say ten or 20 years from now.
What we most certainly don‘t want to see at that point is a country that– having “recovered” from its little setback back there in Iraq in 2006 or so– is willing and able to launch some similar kind of a catastrophe on another country someplace else.
We have to recognize that our country has some very dangerous forces in it… and we need to find ways to prevent them from acting out their sick fantasies on the world stage (and also, here inside the US) ever again.
How can we do that?
One first strategy must be to give them serious punishment at the polls. In 2006, and again in 2008, 2010, 2012, and so on.
Another must be to relentlessly continue the investigations into just how, through outright manipulatipon and lies, they were able to visit their sick fantasies on so many member of Congress back in 2002.
Another must be to pass strong legislation that will bind the executive branch to a full respect of the global Convention Against Torture– and while we’re about it, also the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and especially Article 6 of the NPT…
So, there’s a long road ahead– both on Iraq, and beyond Iraq. We can still only start to glimpse the full dimensions of that road. But still, though I know things are still really horrendous for the people of Iraq, and probably continue to be so for some time– still, at least now we can start to see that there might be a better world for everyone somewhere ahead… Because finally, the US empire is being forced into a significant and long overdue retreat.