Needed: Political and Diplomatic Solutions for Iraq Posted by The Editors

This post by Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The series of bombings in Baghdad this morning and a growing political crisis inside of Iraq’s government show that Iraq remains a bitterly divided country along political, ethnic and sectarian lines –- divisions that were downplayed in America’s policy debate over the past few years. Despite all of the talk about smart power and the need to lead through civilian power with diplomatic, political and economic tools in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the simple fact of the matter is that the military and security components dominated the Iraq policy debates.

These latest events have prompted some to argue that the Obama administration should have kept troops in Iraq and ignored the deadline set by the security agreement that the Bush administration signed in 2008 with the Iraqi government. 

It is important to keep in mind Iraqi government did not want the United States to stay – as NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel reminded us this morning on the Today  Show, “We did not have a choice to stay in Iraq – the Iraqis threw us out… this is a false debate [about whether we should have stayed]. The US was leaving, the Iraqis wanted us out, and now they are fighting again over the real character of this country.”

The surge in Iraqi nationalism and desire to take back control of their affairs has existed for years now. People forget that in 2006 the Iraqi government initially opposed the surge of U.S. troops that was implemented in 2007. As Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker reported in the Washington Post, when President George W. Bush flew to Amman, Jordan, and met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki on November 30, 2006 at the Four Seasons Hotel, Maliki and his national security advisor did not want more U.S. troops, just more authority for Iraqi forces. In a PowerPoint presentation, the Iraqis asked that U.S. troops withdraw from outside of Baghdad as a devastating sectarian civil war raged in the capital city -– one that changed the sectarian composition and contributed to a major refugee and internally displaced persons crisis. This is a point worth noting once again because it says something about the intent and motivations of the leadership in the Iraqi government at that time. It also helps provide some understanding about the Iraqi government today, still led by Prime Minister Maliki.

Flash forward towards the end of 2008, when the additional U.S. surge troops started to depart –- and no doubt Iraq had become a more secure country compared to the devastating years of 2005-2007. This was largely due to the increase in Iraqi forces -– as my colleague Larry Korb and I pointed out in this article, the surge of U.S. troops amount to only a 15 percent temporary increase in U.S. troops. Whereas the surge that really mattered was the doubling of the size of the Iraqi security forces during that same period.

By the end of 2008, even though Iraq was less violent, it remained divided politically. As I wrote in this report with some colleagues analyzing Iraq’s enduring internal political divisions as U.S. troops started withdrawing under the Bush administration, “the increased security achieved over the last two years has been purchased through a number of choices that have worked against achieving meaningful political reconciliation. The reductions in violence in 2007 and 2008 have, in fact, made true political accommodation in Iraq more elusive, contrary to the central theory of the surge.”

In other words, the additional troops and money America spent in 2007-2008 in Iraq helped eliminate some very deadly security threats, but it did little to address the core political divisions that Iraq faced –- and continues to face. Instead of motivating Iraqis to deal with their political divisions, the surge ended up freezing those divisions in place.

A few years ago, there was a strong debate about what to do about those Iraqi divides -– Vice President Biden co-wrote a plan with Les Gelb that talked about decentralization and greater autonomy, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group put regional diplomacy at the core of its ideas. In reports I coauthored, including Strategic Reset, a number of recommendations about placing political reform and regional diplomacy at the core of a strategy to address Iraq’s internal divisions were a key feature. Others argued that the United States could use its military presence and assistance to shape and influence political progress in a conditional engagement strategy.

These ideas were either ignored or were tried half-heartedly, but in any case they failed to produce sustainable results. With Iraq now in the rear view mirror of most Americans, it seems there won’t be much of a debate about what’s likely to happen in Iraq over the coming months. A continued fight over power in Iraq could get even more violent in the coming months. Sending large numbers of U.S. troops back into Iraq seems unlikely -– and it wouldn’t address those core political divisions anyways. What’s been missing for years is the lack of a coherent political and diplomatic strategy for Iraq. The U.S. debate has instead focused on the surface level debate about the number of U.S. troops, rather than the broader elements of power that could shape and influence outcomes in Iraq.

The recent events in Iraq serve to highlight how weak the political and diplomatic elements of the U.S. strategy in Iraq have been -– under both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also reminds us that military success or tactical gains produced by counterinsurgency efforts do not necessarily produce sustainable political outcomes on their own, a point worth keeping in mind on Afghanistan. With U.S. troops out of the country, the Americans who remain in the largest diplomatic presence the United States has around the world face daunting challenges. On center stage is the current political crisis in Iraq. The next few months will present one of the most difficult tests of U.S. civilian agencies and the notions of smart power discussed for many years.

Photo: Flickr

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Iran is already there. It already dominates the (Shiite) south, and has a huge influence with the central government in Baghdad.A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will not increase Iran's influence because we have already turned much of the country over to the Iranians. I think Iran should be involved in Iraqi-policy making process.

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