On getting the hell out of Iraq, or not

1. "Iraq Is Not Winnable"
What happens next in the Middle East? SPIEGEL spoke to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, to find out. A widely respected foreign policy expert, Haass warns that the Middle East could become dangerous for years to come.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Haass, were the election results a message from the voters to President George W. Bush that it's time for US troops to be pulled out of Iraq?

Haass: The mid-term election is a signal of widespread popular dissatisfaction with the course of the Iraq war. But it should not be read as a signal of support for a particular alternative. Nor will it lead most Democrats in Congress to call for a quick and complete withdrawal of US forces. Instead, it will reinforce the likelihood that American policy will be adjusted. We can anticipate force reductions and redeployments and possibly a greater emphasis on diplomacy, both within Iraq and with Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria.

SPIEGEL: Meaning that the Bush Era has come to an end?

Haass: There is something to what you say, in that Iraq was a war of choice that proved to be much more difficult and expensive than Americans bargained for. As a result, the public is pushing back. However, it is not just premature but wrong to say the Bush era is over. The president will be president for another 800 days. He will be able to take initiatives, especially in foreign policy given that our system favors executive leadership. He also may have a better chance to fashion a consensus on immigration reform. And unanticipated crises almost always provide a president with the opportunity to do dramatic things.

SPIEGEL : Can you remember a time when US foreign policy was confronted with so many challenges and difficulties?

Haass : The short answer is: No. During the Cold War, the United States faced a single challenge that was greater than any we face now. But I can't think of a time when the United States has faced so many difficult challenges at once. What makes it worse is we are facing them at a time when we are increasingly stretched militarily. We are divided politically. We are stretched also economically, and there is a good deal of anti-Americanism in the world. It's a very bad combination.

SPIEGEL : Almost five years ago Bush grouped Iraq, North Korea and Iran together in the now-notorious "Axis of Evil." Now the US is faced with considerable crises in all three countries. What to do?

Haass : We have allowed ourselves to get into three very difficult situations. As the United States has learned to its great cost in Iraq, military force is no panacea. Any option that would be heavily reliant on the Army is not a realistic option, because the only Army we have is busy right now.

SPIEGEL : But diplomacy is still an underused tool.

Haass : In the case of Iran and North Korea, I would be willing to have the United States engage in diplomacy directly with them, essentially offering them whatever mix of political and economic and security benefits in exchange for demanding a package of behavior changes. We need to get away from the idea that diplomatic interaction is a value judgment. History suggests that isolation reinforces hardliners.

SPIEGEL : But it seems as if the Bush administration is still debating whether regime change or diplomacy is the best way to deal with them.

Haass : For quite a few years, there was very little diplomacy, and the emphasis was on regime change which, in my view, was never going to happen. Now you are seeing a bit more diplomacy, but not as much as I would like there to be. I'm not sitting here confident that diplomacy will work, but I think it is worth trying, simply because the alternatives are not terribly attractive. Diplomacy may work; if not, we should demonstrate that we did everything possible to reach a fair and reasonable diplomatic outcome and we couldn't, not because of our policy, but because of theirs. The Bush administration will learn that that puts them in a better position to manage the domestic and international politics of escalation.

SPIEGEL : You just invited Iran's President Ahmadinejad for a discussion in New York. Did you get the impression that he is interested in any kind of deal?

Haass : There was very little, if anything, in that two-hour meeting that was reassuring about his interest in finding any common ground on reasonable terms with the United States. His tactic is to answer questions with questions. At one point, someone raised questions about Iran's internal situation, democracy and human rights, and within 30 seconds, he was talking about what he saw as the imperfections of American democracy. His argument was that Iran was more democratic because it had more candidates for president than the United States.

SPIEGEL : The Israeli ambassador criticized you heavily, saying this was worse then inviting Adolf Hitler for talks.

Haass : I disagree. Meeting with somebody like Mr. Ahmadinejad doesn't mean we approve or endorse him. It's nothing else than accepting that he is the President of Iran and in that position, he matters.

SPIEGEL : Bush's comments on North Korea's nuclear tests seem to indicate that it is no longer the possession of nuclear weapons, but the passing along of nuclear technology to terrorists or hostile states that America is opposed to. Is this a new nuclear doctrine?

Haass : Here, at least, the administration has moved from what you might call non-proliferation to managing proliferation. But I would hope that doesn't become the new status quo. I'm not comfortable living in a world in which an aggressive, hostile, poor and potentially desperate North Korea is sitting on a mountain of nuclear material. That does not fill me with anything except extraordinary alarm.

SPIEGEL : And then there are Iraq and the Middle East. You just published an article in the journal Foreign Affairs in which you say that the situation is enough "to make one nostalgic for the old Middle East."

Haass : The old Middle East -- an era which I believe has only recently ended -- was one in which the United States enjoyed tremendous dominance and freedom of maneuver. Oil was available at fairly low prices, the region was largely at peace. I believe largely because of the American decision to go to war in Iraq and how it has been carried out, as well as the emphasis on promoting democracy and a lack of any serious energy policy, the Middle East has considerably grown worse. It's one of history's ironies that the first war in Iraq, a war of necessity, marked the beginning of the American era in the Middle East and the second Iraq war, a war of choice, has precipitated its end.

SPIEGEL : So what will become of the region?

REUTERS

Iran will become a "classical imperial power" in the Middle East, according to Richard Haass.
Haass : Visions of a new Middle East that is peaceful, prosperous and democratic will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself and the world. Iran will be a powerful state in the region, a classical imperial power. No viable peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is likely for the foreseeable future. Militias will emerge throughout the region, terrorism will grow in sophistication, tensions between Sunni and Shia will increase, causing problems in countries with divided societies, such as Bahrain, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Islam will fill the political and intellectual vacuum. Iraq at best will remain messy for years to come, with a weak central government, a divided society and sectarian violence. At worst, it will become a failed state racked by all-out civil war that will draw in its neighbors.

SPIEGEL : How long will this dangerous period last?

Haass : I don't know if this will last for five or 50 years, but it's going to be an incredibly difficult era. Together with managing a dynamic Asia it will be the primary challenge for US foreign policy.

SPIEGEL : But the Bush administration still seems hopeful, seeing in all this violence only the "birth pangs" of this wonderful New Middle East.

Haass : I hope that they are right. I would love to see them right and me wrong. But I'm afraid they are not.

SPIEGEL : Is Iraq still winnable for the United States?

Haass : We've reached a point in Iraq where we've got to get real. And this is not going to be a near-term success for American foreign policy. The Iraq situation is not winnable in any meaningful sense of the word "winnable." So what we need to do now is look for a way to limit the losses and costs, try to advance on other fronts in the region and try to limit the fallout of Iraq. That's what you have to do sometimes when you're a global power.

SPIEGEL : A special commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker will soon present a study on how to go forward in Iraq. Will this be the excuse for Bush to withdraw the troops?

Haass : The commission gives him something of an opportunity to change course. Historically, commissions have often played an important role when the traditional body politic was unable or unwilling to come up with politically controversial but necessary proposals. We see a tipping point not only on the ground in Iraq but also in the political debate in the United States. I believe more and more people in and around the administration are coming to the conclusion that six or nine more months of the same will not bring us anywhere. The US hasn't done well handling any of the members of the "Axis of Evil."

SPIEGEL : The disaster of the last years leads many Americans to doubt the military strength and moral superiority of the nation. Is this country on the verge of a new isolationist phase?

Haass : The danger is an Iraq syndrome. The war is one the American people weren't quite prepared for: They had not been told it was going to be that difficult and expensive. After the military battlefield phase, they thought it was going to be easy. So this has proven shocking. Nearly 3,000 Americans have lost their lives. Maybe 15,000 - 20,000 Americans have been wounded. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. It has been disruptive on many levels. The danger is that the United States now will be weary of intervening elsewhere, like the cat that once sat on a hot stove and will never sit on any stove again.

SPIEGEL : How long could such a period last?

Haass : It is quite possible that this generation of Americans will be as affected by Iraq as the previous generation was by Vietnam.

SPIEGEL : The world doesn't need the "little sheriff," but it needs a strong America.

Haass : Exactly right. There is no doubt that the world needs the United States. We need to stay active in the world, not as a favor to others, but as a favor to ourselves. We cannot turn inward in an age of globalization. Bad things will happen in the world if we are not trying to manage them. The balance of power in Asia, human issues like Darfur, global climate change -- these are problems that are not going to get solved if the United States doesn't participate actively.

SPIEGEL : Isolationism would be quite a legacy for someone like Bush.

Haass : It would be somewhere between ironic and tragic because this administration has in some ways, like Iraq, been extraordinarily interventionist.

SPIEGEL : What could Europe do?

Haass : The one-word answer is: More. One wants Europe to have more capacity, so it could do more in Afghanistan, or maybe in places like Darfur. One wants Europe to be more internationally oriented. If you could make a criticism that the United States has under-used the diplomatic tool, Europeans often under-use other tools. In many cases, even if anti-Americanism were to fade, there is still a certain lack of preparedness and capability to act. What Europeans have control over is not American foreign policy. What they have control over is their own capacity and willingness to act -- and that is what they ought to focus on.

SPIEGEL : Will Bush leave the world with more problems than he found when he came into office?

Haass : Most likely. That said, the administration still has two years to go, so it is too early to judge. All you can say is that it's sobering where we are. As of now, you would have to say the world is not a safer place.

(Interview conducted by Georg Mascolo)


2. Panel May Have Few Good Options to Offer
Bipartisan Group's Plan Expected in Dec.
By Michael Abramowitz and Thomas E. Ricks/Washington Post

After meeting with President Bush tomorrow, a panel of prestigious Americans will begin deliberations to chart a new course on Iraq, with the goal of stabilizing the country with a different U.S. strategy and possibly the withdrawal of troops.

Tuesday's dramatic election results, widely seen as a repudiation of the Bush Iraq policy, has thrust the 10-member, bipartisan Iraq Study Group into the kind of special role played by the Sept. 11 commission. This panel, led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D), might play a decisive role in reshaping the U.S. position in Iraq, according to lawmakers and administration officials.

Those familiar with the panel's work predict that the ultimate recommendations will not appear novel and that there are few, if any, good options left facing the country. Many of the ideas reportedly being considered -- more aggressive regional diplomacy with Syria and Iran , greater emphasis on training Iraqi troops, or focusing on a new political deal between warring Shiites and Sunni -- have either been tried or have limited chances of success, in the view of many experts on Iraq. Baker is also exploring whether a broader U.S. initiative in tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict is needed to help stabilize the region.

Given the grave predicament the group faces, its focus is now as much on finding a political solution for the United States as on a plan that would bring peace to Iraq. With Republicans and Democrats so bitterly divided over the war, Baker and Hamilton believe that it is key that their group produce a consensus plan, according to those who have spoken with them.

That could appeal to both parties. Democrats would have something to support after a campaign in which they criticized Bush's Iraq policy without offering many specifics of their own. And with support for its Iraq policy fast evaporating even within its own party, the White House might find in the group's plan either a politically acceptable exit strategy or a cover for a continued effort to prop up the new democratically-elected government in Baghdad.

"Baker's objectives for the Iraq Study Group are grounded in his conviction that Iraq is the central foreign policy issue confronting the United States, and that the only way to address that issue successfully is to first build a bipartisan consensus," said Arnold Kanter, who served as undersecretary of state under Baker during George H.W. Bush's administration.

But the midterm elections may have made the job even tougher by emboldening panel Democrats, said people familiar with the panel's deliberations. The elections "sent a huge signal," said one of these sources, who added that the panel is trying to come to grips with whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has the capacity to solve the country's problems.

While Baker has been testing the waters for some time to determine how much change in Iraq policy will be tolerated by the White House, Hamilton perhaps faces the now even-more-difficult challenge of cajoling Democrats such as former Clinton administration chief of staff Leon E. Panetta and power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to sign on to a plan that falls short of a phased troop withdrawal, the position of many congressional Democrats.

In a brief interview, Hamilton conceded the obstacles ahead and emphasized that no decisions have been made. "We need to get [the report] drafted, number one," Hamilton said. "We need to reach agreement, and that may not be possible."

When it was formed in the spring by Congress, the Iraq Study Group was little known beyond the elite circles of the U.S. foreign policy world. Now its work has become perhaps the most eagerly awaited Washington report in many years -- recommendations are expected in early December -- with many lawmakers of both parties saying they are looking for answers to the troubled U.S. mission in Iraq.

"I can only be hopeful that they'll have a positive solution," Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), who is likely to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Friday. Asked if he thought it was possible for the panel to please both the president and congressional Democrats, Skelton turned the question around, saying: "I wonder if the White House will not use them as a face-saving device."

Indeed, the White House, which had been skeptical that the group will have much new to say, has notably been more receptive since the elections. "If these recommendations help bring greater consensus for Republicans and Democrats, I think that could be very helpful," said Dan Bartlett, counselor to Bush. But he added: "If there were a rifle-shot solution, we would have already pulled the trigger."

Bush, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley will meet with members of the commission tomorrow. During three days of deliberations, the panel will also hear, via video link, from British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who, one source said, has been anxious to talk to the panel -- as well as consult with members of the Democratic shadow foreign-policy cabinet, including former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, former ambassador to the United Nations Richard C. Holbrooke and former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger.

While Hamilton's role may be growing as a result of Tuesday's elections, it is Baker who has been the dominant force in the panel's work so far, according to people involved. And it is Baker whose special connection to the Bush family -- he was the closest political associate of then-President George H. W. Bush -- has invited fevered speculation that he is maneuvering to save the Bush presidency from the disaster unfolding in Iraq.

Baker, who did not respond to an interview request, has publicly expressed skepticism about George W. Bush's ambition of transforming Iraq into a democratic beacon of change for the entire Middle East. Speaking at Princeton University, his alma mater, in April, shortly after the study group was formed, Baker said, "We ought not to think we're going to see a flowering of Jeffersonian democracy along the banks of the Euphrates," according to the Daily Princetonian.

Baker has offered other pointed critiques of the Bush administration's Iraq policy in recent months, during appearances aimed partly at selling his new memoir. In television and other interviews, Baker has made clear his desire to chart a middle road between the Bush administration's policy and what he regards as premature withdrawal from Iraq. "He's a pragmatist, a realist," said a Baker colleague, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the insistence on secrecy surrounding the panel's work. "He believes in America's moral values, but he also believes in trying to keep an essential balance with national security interests. When the pendulum swings too much one way or the other, we get into trouble."

Though Hamilton had a hand in selecting the Democrats on the group, its makeup reflects Baker's pragmatic, centrist approach to foreign policy. Few of its 10 members are true foreign policy experts. Rather, it is a classic Washington blue-ribbon commission, a group of "old hands" steeped in the ways of the capital -- two former secretaries of state (Baker and Lawrence S. Eagleburger), two former senators (Republican Alan K. Simpson and Democrat Charles S. Robb), a former defense secretary (William J. Perry) and a former Supreme Court justice, (Sandra Day O'Connor).

Within the panel, staffers and expert consultants have waged warfare by memo as idealists argue with pragmatists over particulars: Retired CIA officer Ray Close complained in one such memo that the deliberations "had degenerated into petty squabbling" and accused "obstinate neocon diehards" of trying to fashion a "stay the course" strategy.

With the assistance of the U.S. Institute of Peace and other Washington think tanks, panel members have heard testimony from a wide range of administration officials and outside experts, and have traveled to Iraq for several days of interviews with senior U.S. diplomats and military officials, as well as Iraqi leaders. Baker, who seems intrigued by the idea of gaining greater assistance in Iraq from U.S. adversaries, had a three-hour dinner in New York with Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. Zarif hosted the dinner at his elegant ambassador's residence.

Baker made clear that he was not negotiating for the United States but that the commission wanted Iran's input and suggestions. He specifically asked about the possibilities for cooperation between Tehran and Washington on Iraq, according to Iranian sources.

Such contacts have invited skepticism from some of the prominent neoconservatives who strongly pushed the invasion of Iraq but have come to be critical of the administration for not aggressively striving for military victory. They said the notion that Iran would help the United States out of its troubles in Iraq is ludicrous.

"There's no doubt that the majority of the people in this group, either as advisers or principals, either opposed the war or forgot that they were in favor of it," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who was one of several dozen official expert advisers to the Baker-Hamilton group.

However, Gerecht and William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, said they believe their views received a respectful hearing from the panel. Kristol related a curious anecdote from his September appearance before the panel to promote a plan to provide more troops for security in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Then-panel member Robert M. Gates -- who quit the group Friday after Bush nominated him as defense secretary -- asked Kristol why he thought the president was so determined to stick with Donald H. Rumsfeld as the Pentagon chief.

Kristol replied that he was mystified -- at which point, as he recalled it, Baker interjected with the comment, "Well, you can't expect the president to do anything until after the election."

(Staff writers Robin Wright, Walter Pincus, Glenn Kessler and Dan Eggen contributed to this report. Ricks, the author of "Fiasco," a book on the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, appeared before the study group at its members' request to answer questions about his book)


3. Fighting over who lost Iraq
As with Vietnam, the ugly argument over the war will ultimately have a cleansing effect on the U.S.
By Andrew J. Bacevich

WITH VARIOUS neoconservative notables acknowledging in a forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair that the Iraq war is a disaster, the debate over "who lost Iraq?" has begun in earnest. As was the case with Vietnam, this argument promises to be bitter and protracted. As with Vietnam, the outcome of the debate will have a large effect on the future course of U.S. policy.

The protagonists divide into three broad groups.

The Bush dead-enders. Although dwindling in number, President Bush's defenders will ascribe failure in Iraq to a loss of nerve, blaming media bias and liberal defeatists for sowing the erroneous impression that the war has become unwinnable. Bush loyalists will portray opposition to the war as tantamount to betraying the troops. Count on them to appropriate Ronald Reagan's description of Vietnam as "an honorable cause." Updating the "stab in the back" thesis, they will claim that a collapse of will on the home front snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Baghdad as surely as it did in Saigon.

The buck-stops-at-the-top camp. Adherents of this second view are currently in the ascendant, attributing the troubles roiling Iraq to massive incompetence in the Bush administration. In a war notable for an absence of accountability, demands for fixing accountability are becoming increasingly insistent. Parties eager to divert attention from their own culpability are pointing fingers. Senior military officers target Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Congressional Democrats who voted for the war and neoconservatives direct their fire against Rumsfeld and Bush. The theme common to all of these finger-pointers: Don't blame us; the Bush team's stupidity, stubbornness and internal dysfunction doomed the American effort.

The conspiracy theorists. Even before the United States invaded Iraq, critics on the far left and far right charged that powerful groups operating behind the scenes were promoting war for their own nefarious purposes. Big Oil, Halliburton, the military-industrial complex and Protestant evangelicals said to be keen on defending Israel all came in for criticism and even grassy-knoll-style paranoia.

None of these putative masterminds, however, attracted anything like the attention devoted to the neoconservatives. It's true that throughout the 1990s neocons clamored for a showdown with Saddam Hussein. In the eyes of their critics, neoconservatives in power, such as Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of Defense, and those inhabiting the fringes of power, such as political journalist William Kristol, conspired to hijack 9/11 in pursuit of their own obsessions. And, voila, the country landed in a quagmire.

As the endgame in Iraq approaches, the score-settling promises to get downright ugly. Those who observe this spectacle will need a strong stomach.

Still, whatever their political inclinations, Americans should welcome this debate. At a bare minimum, the eruption of blame and backstabbing will offer considerable entertainment value. To read (on the Vanity Fair website) that neoconservative David Frum, former White House speechwriter and author of a fawning tribute to Bush, has discovered that "the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas," is simply a hoot.

More substantively, the purging of political elites infesting Washington always has a cleansing effect. Figuring out "who lost Iraq?" ought to provide the occasion for throwing out more than a few rascals who hold office and discrediting others — a process that will no doubt get a kick-start with today's midterm elections. With luck, those surviving will be at least momentarily chastened, perhaps giving rise to an Iraq syndrome akin to the Vietnam syndrome, and which at least for a while will save us from another similar debacle.

We should not kid ourselves that political sniping of the sort now in evidence will yield conclusive answers. These are merely the preliminaries. But let the preliminaries begin — so that we can work our way forward to the main event. It cannot fail to involve Americans more generally and to pose fundamental questions about 21st century governance, this nation's real role in a globalized world and the illusions about American power and prerogatives that spawned the Iraq war.

(ANDREW J. BACEVICH is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His latest book is "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.")


4. The Meaning of Victory: A Conversation with General Franks

How should victory be defined?

What constitutes victory? I think that is a fundamental question, and it is good for each of us in this country to ask ourselves that from time to time.

When we try to decide whether or not we’ve been victorious, we have to think, for just a second, what the term “victory” means. Victory means the accomplishment of objectives and goals that we had in mind when we initially became involved in a particular conflict. It’s also instructive if we ask how we understood victory -- what the objectives had been -- in the past when our country became involved in one fight or another. In some cases victory has been defined as the removal of a particular threat, either to ourselves or to our friends. But we also find that in almost every case we became involved in wars in order to gain security, either for ourselves or for friends; that at the end of the conflict, as a result of treaty, or pact, or alliance, this security was guaranteed. Security for friends -- meaning both allied countries as well as for pro-American forces within a given country -- has also inevitably become a part of the objective of victory. That is how we establish the metrics of defining victory.

There are always secondary objectives. The opening and securing of lines of communication are sometimes components in defining what constitutes victory. Sometimes there are economic benefits. Sometimes victory is said to have been achieved when a particular country has been introduced (or reintroduced) into the community of nations, as happened with Germany and Japan after World War II. This may entail the establishment of the rule of law and some form of representative government. And at least in one man’s opinion, mine, components of politics on the ground in a particular country -- internationally and certainly here at home -- will always factor into our definition of victory.

And these secondary objectives also help set the bar for what it means to attain victory, establishing what victory will mean at a particular time. And if there is disagreement with what secondary objectives should constitute the standard for victory, and we want to establish a different set of metrics, then we can look from time to time and ask ourselves how we are doing in terms of coming to victory.

In Iraq, has too much emphasis been placed on achievement of secondary objectives or preferences as the benchmark for victory? After all, the primary objective -- the removal of a hostile regime -- has been achieved.

I think a lot has to do with the public perception, which in any great period of consternation will be determined in a large part by the media. Now, one can just go about bashing the media, and I think the American people believe from time to time that the media is responsible for the difficulty. However, in my mind, this is not so, and we should not allow ourselves to believe it. But when we have run into a particularly difficult time, and Iraq at this point represents a particularly difficult time, then we as Americans sit back and watch to see, “Well, how are we doing?” And if, for whatever reason, the media happens to pick up on a secondary objective as the cause celebre and as the overall objective, and begins to simply report and fill American households with a lack of progress in achieving that objective, then pretty soon that becomes the measurement of success.

Now, without a doubt, there has always been this desire to create within Afghanistan and within Iraq conditions where the people in those countries have a representative form of government, and where this government is integrated into the international community of nations. This is a worthy goal. But we have to ask ourselves, “What was it that moved us into Afghanistan in the first place? And what moved us into Iraq in the first place?” The answer is clear: to ensure the security of the people of the United States of America.

So the first question we need to ask, then, is not whether Afghanistan and Iraq are flourishing democracies, but, since 9/11, how are we doing vis-a-vis the protection of the people of the United States? And, with that as the primary objective, it seems to me that we are doing well. Now, in terms of secondary objectives, we continue to get the impression from the media that the overall objective of going into Afghanistan was to give it a pure, clean and representative form of government. That is desirable, but it is secondary to the primary goal. And the same thing could be said about Iraq.

To what extent, then, is success or failure on these secondary objectives America ‘ s responsibility?

That question reminds me of two questions that I have been asked a number of times. The two came out of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and interestingly they were the same question and they were just a year-and-a-half or two years apart. Here are the questions: “Will Afghanistan make it?” and, “Will Iraq make it?” And what I have answered consistently for several years is, “I don’t know whether Afghanistan will make it or not. And I don’t know whether Iraq will make it or not.” But I do know, in terms of the secondary objectives, both Afghanistan and Iraq now have what they have not had in quite some time -- that is, they have a chance to make it.

Again, let’s be clear: Military operations in both of those countries were designed primarily for the purpose of increasing the security of the United States by removing safe havens for terrorists. But once we have achieved that, we need to keep it that way -- to prevent both these countries from once again become sanctuaries for terrorism -- and that’s the secondary objective. And to keep it that way means encouraging the evolution within Afghanistan and Iraq of representative forms of government where the Afghan and Iraqi peoples can see the advantages of Coca-Cola, Levis, McDonald’s and apple pie. And the “keep it that way” part is what is really being questioned right now. And at some point, success depends on the indigenous people -- in this case the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. The trick is to decide how long it is necessary to keep one’s hand on the bicycle seat in either case so that our secondary desire of “keeping it that way” can remain intact. That’s the trick.

But we must avoid the blind alley of thinking that the only thing that matters, in Iraq, is the establishment of democracy at all costs. The imperative is to remove a sanctuary for those that George Bush calls the “evil-doers” before they can plot the next attack on the United States of America.

What are your thoughts on how warfare is evolving and our ability to cope with the next generation of conflicts?

One of my favorite American philosophers is Yogi Berra. Yogi says that, “Prediction is extremely difficult, especially when it has to do with the future.” So I establish the Yogi comment to say I’m not precisely sure what the future will hold. This is why in this country we will continue to spend large sums of money in order to buy a hedge against the next Battle of Kursk -- warfare conducted in the open field, with massed armies of infantry, armor and artillery. But at the same time, if we use the recent past -- the previous two decades -- as a precursor of the future, then we will certainly see a move towards decentralized warfare involving small forces and with much more sporadic rather than continuous behavior on the battlefield. That type of conflict has resembled a baseball game, you know, with consistent periods of boredom spiked by incredible adrenaline rushes.

Anytime the nature of warfare in a given period of time changes, it is necessary for the forces aggregated on the battlefield to change. The kinds of forces that we need to handle the problems that we see right now must be extremely agile, extremely flexible, and they must be forces that have as much to do with the management of media as they have to do with the management of infantry and riflemen on the battlefield. And by management of media, I do not mean manipulation of media, but understanding of media, recognition of the fact that media in this millennium is a factor of warfare that is neither good nor bad, but it is a factor that affects the battlefield nonetheless. As these forces have evolved from World War II, they have become agile, flexible and, in many cases, much lighter than we have seen, but in any case still very lethal, very well trained, very light and very responsive. That is what we see today, and our success on future battlefields -- as we perceive political objectives on those battlefields -- will be determined in large part by how well we have adapted to circumstances that exist today. Who knows what they will be in the future? But I think we’ll all have a pretty sure idea if we stop and think about what it looks like today. One needs civil affairs forces because there are political realities on the ground. One needs engineers; one needs light infantry forces. Despite our hedge, it does seem that we will need fewer artillery and armor forces.

I’m interested to ask the question: Why is it, and how is it, that we’ve evolved away from mass armies to this period of sporadic but extremely violent behavior that creates the potential for nation-to-nation conflict, but ultimately gives us group-against-nation conflict -- groups like Al-Qaeda, but also other like-minded folks around the world? First, consider the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing. That was a terrorist attack by a group against a nation. If you move from that to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia; and from there to the bombing of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998 where hundreds of people were killed; and if you move from that to the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; and then you move forward to 2001 with 9/11; one can see that these are all group-against-nation conflicts and they raise the questions: What caused that? Was that a natural evolution that was brought about by military strength? Or the lack of military strength? Or was that a condition brought about by -- what I would describe as -- poor politics?

Here’s my thesis: I believe that over the course of two decades America indicated to the world and terrorist groups that we will take no national action when we are attacked in this country. Over those twenty years the terrorists became emboldened. They began to think big and they came up with 9/11, and we see the results of that. Does that mean that I blame specific people, specifically the previous presidents of the United States, Bill Clinton and so forth, for having done something wrong over the previous two decades? No, it does not. Rather, I blame the electorate in this country. I blame myself and those just like me. You know, we live in a blessed nation where at any point in time we have precisely the government we deserve. America became more interested in the baseball tickets, the new automobile and the accumulation of wealth, and less interested in the signals that were passed over the last couple decades about this thing that we now identify everyday in our media as terror.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m pretty sure of what we’re looking at now.

(General Tommy Franks served as commander-in-chief, United States Central Command, during which he led Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. He is author of American Soldier)


5. Defining Victory and Defeat in Iraq – by Stephen Biddle

What would victory in Iraq look like?

Many now believe that victory means a friendly, prosperous, self-defending democracy, while defeat means civil war -- and the metrics that matter most are thus measures of elections held, Iraqi security forces trained, electricity generated, etc. Such a victory creates a demonstration effect in which Iraqi democracy catalyzes political change elsewhere in the region, removing the underlying cause of Islamist terrorism; a defeat, by this logic, would produce region-wide chaos that would undermine, not facilitate, the larger War on Terror.

Yet this whole analysis is deeply flawed. Iraq may or may not become a stable democracy someday -- but the demonstration effect is already lost. Complete success is thus unlikely. But total failure can still be averted.

The challenge here is not to avert civil war, however. Iraq is already in a civil war -- and has been for a long time. It is too late for prevention. The real challenge now is termination.

This means we need to shift from a strategy designed for classical counter-insurgency to one designed for terminating an ongoing civil war.

The two are very different. The standard playbook for classical counter-insurgency is to win hearts and minds with political and economic reform while building up the indigenous government’s military and handing the fighting off to them as quickly as possible. This makes sense if the enemy is an ideological, nationalist or class-based insurgency waging a violent competition for good governance with an existing regime. Vietnam was such a struggle; Malaya was another.

But Iraq is not. The underlying conflict in Iraq is not between competing ideas of legitimate government; it is between ethnic and sectarian subgroups fighting for self-interest and group survival.

In this kind of war, classical counter-insurgency strategy makes things worse, not better. In particular, the effort to hand over security to an indigenous army just throws gasoline on the fire. In a civil war there is no “national” military that all can regard as a plausible defender of their interests: the subgroup that controls the government controls the state military, but to their rival’s population they are the enemy -- the problem, not the solution. For Iraqi Sunnis, the “national” security forces look like a Shi‚Äòa-Kurdish militia with better weapons. The stronger the United States makes this force, the harder the Sunnis fight back in a struggle all sides see as existential.

By contrast, the standard approach for terminating a communal civil war is to negotiate a power-sharing deal, then to enforce this deal with neutral peacekeepers drawn from outside. The state military cannot serve this purpose, certainly not alone. The whole problem in communal civil war is that the parties do not trust one another; a large, unchecked indigenous army will look to the minority like a threat to their survival. A power-sharing deal is just a scrap of paper if the real power -- the military -- could fall under the sway of communal rivals. Hence the need for outsiders: Without a reasonably neutral force to police a deal, no deal can be stable and the prospects for settlement are slim.

In a better world, some multinational institution would broker the deal and provide the peacekeepers. This is not going to happen in Iraq. So if the civil war termination script is going to be followed here, the United States is going to have to do the heavy lifting itself.

Current U.S. policy, however, undermines our prospects for this in at least two ways. First, we have little leverage for compelling the mutual compromises needed for real power sharing. Each camp sees potentially genocidal stakes in power sharing: the downside risks if the deal fails to ensure their security could be mass violence at the hands of communal rivals. Against such enormous stakes, major leverage will be needed to convince nervous parties to accept the risks; U.S. offers of development aid or trade assistance or political recognition are trivial by comparison. And this thin gruel is getting thinner as the United States begins to cut even the modest aid we now provide -- the Marshall Plan this is not. Such weak leverage will never persuade Iraqis to take the huge risks involved in real compromise.

Second, we are apparently unwilling to play the role of long-term peacekeeping stabilizer. Though disliked by many Iraqis, in principle U.S. forces could still do this. In recent months American efforts in suppressing Shi‘a militias and our comparative sectarian evenhandedness in places such as Tal Afar and Baghdad are persuading Sunnis that we are potential defenders against Shi‘a violence. Though Shi‘a are wary of American motives, three years of U.S. combat against Sunni guerillas give us the bona fides to keep Shi‘a trust if we play our cards right. We can be neutral -- the problem is that we are not willing to stay. Who would trust a deal enforced by a peacekeeper who announces its intention to leave as soon as it can hand its job over to one of the combatants in an ongoing civil war?

Theoretically, at least, the second problem could be solved if we could create a truly national, rather than sectarian, institution in the Iraqi security forces to replace us -- a force with true intercommunal balance; with soldiers and officers who see themselves as Iraqis and not as Shi‘a, Kurds or Sunnis; that fights any rebel or protects any population regardless of sect or ethnicity; and with the competence and motivation to defeat those rebels in battle. There are a host of practical barriers to accomplishing this in objective reality, ranging from the increasing salience of subnational identity among all Iraqis since 2003, to the reticence of many Iraqi recruits to fight outside their home provinces (in practical terms, a reluctance to do something other than defend their subgroup from outsiders), to the challenge of motivating soldiers to give their lives for a government many see as corrupt or incompetent, to the difficulties of establishing modern systems of pay, leave, resupply and administration in a society which has seen little efficient public administration in the past, to many other challenges large and small.

But a more fundamental problem is perceptual. Even if the Iraqi military were, in reality, a competent, evenhanded, nonsectarian force, Sunnis do not see it that way. All polls show radical differences in trust for the national security forces across communal groups, and the Sunnis clearly do not trust the state’s instruments. This should be no surprise: Overcoming this inevitable lack of trust in an ongoing civil war is extremely difficult. This is why the civil war termination literature puts such stress on outside peacekeepers. To build trust across such divides is hard enough in a postwar peace policed by others; to believe Iraqis can do this themselves in the midst of the fighting after the only quasi-neutral force -- ours -- has departed would require tremendous optimism.

How, then, can the ongoing civil war be terminated without ruinous escalation?

There are options. James Dobbins of rand has proposed a regional diplomatic campaign to induce Iraq’s neighbors to use their influence with their Iraqi clients to compel compromise on a power-sharing deal. Given the Sunnis’ dependence on outside backers for money and supplies, and the growing Shi‚Äòa links with Iran, an agreement by neighboring states to sever this support unless their clients compromise could have real traction. Of course, this means offering neighbors such as Iran and Syria inducements that would make this worth their while; inducements sufficient to do the job could be expensive indeed, in many ways. And even if Iran and Syria cooperate, someone would still have to police the deal. But regional diplomacy could at least provide some real bargaining leverage, which we lack today.

The United States could also begin to use its own military policy in Iraq as a tool for settlement, rather than merely as a quick ticket home for U.S. troops. This would require the United States to make our presence, and our assistance, conditional on the parties’ bargaining behavior: Those who compromise must be rewarded with security guarantees, but those who refuse must be threatened with military sanction. Today, U.S. military policy is independent of Iraqis’ bargaining behavior: It is disconnected from our diplomatic strategy. In an ongoing war, military power is a potentially powerful lever, yet today the United States has left military power off the table as a reward for cooperation or a punishment for obduracy. Of course, military force is a blunt instrument: to use it as a bargaining tool could strain U.S. diplomacy beyond its capacity. An American willingness to realign militarily could destroy all sides’ confidence in U.S. guarantees if not handled deftly. And any American promise to remain in a potentially dangerous Iraq could well prove beyond the tolerance of American voters.

But unless some new source of leverage is found -- and quickly -- our chance for even an intermediate outcome in Iraq could evaporate. The best-case outcome at this point is for a negotiated ceasefire in which the Sunni insurgency -- not just the elected Sunni political leadership in Baghdad, but the insurgents and their armed leadership in the field -- agrees to peace in exchange for concessions that would surely have to include a broad-based amnesty and a role for former insurgents in the government security apparatus, among other requirements. Such a deal would require U.S. troops to oversee its terms. But it also requires at least some level of Iraqi willingness to set aside the desire for revenge in exchange for the hope of peaceful coexistence. With every passing day, however, this reservoir of tolerance is being drawn down as the sectarian body count rises. At some point, it will surely be exhausted and the chance for a negotiated settlement will be lost in an uncontrolled escalatory spiral of violence and retribution. This point of no return does not appear to have been reached yet. Although the death toll rises, it also periodically falls -- Iraqis still appear to be able to draw back from the precipice and restrain their combatants. But this will not last forever. And it may not last very much longer.

This brings me back to metrics. The analysis above implies a very different set than those most common in today’s debate. Rather than Iraqi battalions trained or hours of electricity in Baghdad, the real measures of success and failure in Iraq are threefold. First, how close are the parties to achieving a power sharing deal and associated ceasefire? Second, how willing is the American public to accept a sustained peacekeeping role sufficient to police any deal the parties may reach? And third, how rapidly is the sectarian death toll rising?

Iraq today is a race between progress toward a settlement and acceleration of inter-communal tensions fueled by sectarian killing. Success requires that a settlement precede the loss of tolerance; defeat will occur if killing outpaces compromise. And to obtain the former rather than the latter will almost certainly require that Americans be willing to accept a long-term role in policing any ceasefire.

For now, the trends in these metrics are not promising: Compromise has been slow and grudging; while the death toll occasionally falls, the overall trend is sharply upward; and Americans are displaying diminishing tolerance for the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Time is thus not on our side. Current U.S. policy is not yielding an aggressive pace of communal compromise in Baghdad; we risk letting the war slip out of control if we cannot find a means of accelerating the deal-making, and soon. And the longer the fighting goes on and the more Americans die without intercommunal accommodation or a ceasefire, the slimmer the political prospects for a significant long-term American troop presence. If a truce comes soon, trends in U.S. support for Iraqi deployments might reverse; if not, they surely will not. We still have a chance, but this window will not stay open forever. And this implies that we must aggressively seek out new forms of leverage to move this process along soon -- before it is too late.

)Stephen Biddle is senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.)