The debate on Iraq has been transformed. For months there has been a build-up of pessimism. Think-tank experts have said out loud that Iraq is a failing state. The departing British ambassador in Baghdad has warned in a confidential memo of “a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division”. The most senior British army commander has said bluntly that British troops are now part of the problem and should be withdrawn soon. And on the eve of the American elections, the Army Times, a newspaper widely read by the US military, declared: “[Donald] Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised.”
Now the American voters have had their say. The rejection of the Republicans on 7 November, swiftly followed by the resignation of Mr Rumsfeld, suggests that the prevailing view of Iraq has undergone a sea-change. No politician can ignore such a shift.
In policy terms, there is a new realism. Repeating that the goal is victory, and that victory will mean a stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq, is no longer sustainable. Expectations are being lowered, and a search is under way for a new strategy. That task has been delegated to two American elder statesmen – James Baker, Secretary of State to Mr Bush’s father, and Lee Hamilton, the former long-serving Democratic congressman. They are the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group, a high-powered bipartisan body whose report is expected in early December. Mr Baker has already ruled out a precipitate withdrawal and appears doubtful of the wisdom of partition.
The group’s challenge is to come up with a strategy which has a better chance of success and which commands bipartisan support. It might be said that its task is to rescue America from Iraq, and Iraq from America. But how? Many of the administration’s goals are widely regarded as the right ones:
getting Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security, so that US forces can assume a support role and plan for a partial withdrawal;
urging the Baghdad government to dismantle militias and reach out to the disgruntled Sunnis by reversing de-Baathification, introducing a comprehensive amnesty, and dangling the prospect of a political accommodation to end the insurgency;
prodding Iraq’s neighbours to be more helpful;
addressing some of the manifest failures of economic reconstruction.
The goals are worthy but the obstacles to achieving them are not about to disappear. What does seem likely is that Democrats and Republicans will have a common interest in finding a new strategy which they can rally round. Tempting as it will be for the Democrats to use the Iraq crisis as a stick with which to beat a weakened administration, they do not want to inherit a mess of the present magnitude (or even greater) when George Bush eventually leaves the White House. As for the Republicans, if James Baker provides them with the opportunity to change course without undue loss of face, they will seize it.
It is possible that Baker and Hamilton, with their extensive experience of the Middle East, may signal that the region’s problems have become dangerously intertwined. The problem of Iraq cannot be divorced from the problem of Iran, since the Iranians now have considerable means to interfere in Iraqi affairs. The events of the summer showed that they can make trouble in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, too.
As Richard Haass has skillfully argued in Foreign Affairs, the United States is now in a much weaker position to confront the many dangers of the “new” Middle East. Recovering the ground it has lost will take time. Solving the Iraq problem cannot be achieved in isolation from the region’s other pressing difficulties.
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