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| Volume XV, Spring 2008, Number 1 |
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EXCERPT
Thinking Strategically about Iraq:
Report from a Symposium
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| Colin H. Kahl, Brian Katulis, Marc Lynch |
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Dr. Kahl is assistant professor, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Katulis is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
Is America now winning in Iraq? What would "victory" mean? Over the last several months,
optimism over the spread of local-level security in Iraq and the changed politics of the Iraqi Sunni
community has surged. Analysts from all sides of the political spectrum have noted the decline in
American and Iraqi casualties from their peak in the preceding year but sharply disagree about how to interpret these trends. Republican presidential candidates and the conservative media now routinely trumpet that the United States is winning. American military and diplomatic officials in Iraq themselves are notably more circumspect, routinely warning of the fragility of the current progress and the urgent need for political progress commensurate with recent security gains. Many Democratic politicians and liberal analysts have in turn focused upon the political dimension, in particular the failure of Iraqi politicians to take advantage of the security gains to achieve national political reconciliation.
Lost in much of the political argument over the success of the "surge" has been a more fundamental debate over the purpose of American strategy in Iraq. Much of the public discourse seems to have degenerated into partisan arguments about body counts, while neglecting the core political and strategic questions. Suppose that Iraq stabilizes into a condition of low-level but manageable violence, a "warlord state" composed of a patchwork of local-level deals largely ignoring a sectarian and irrelevant central state, maintained by a long-term American presence of some 100,000 troops. What American strategic interests would be served, and what opportunities forgone, with such an outcome? Such calculations depend on a whole series of crucial questions about the sustainability of current trends. Can such a patchwork lead to a stable peace in the absence of political reconciliation? Does the devolution to the local level make strategic sense, even if it reaps short-term tactical gains? Will local security eventually trickle up to reconciliation at the national level, either by changing the calculation of national elites or by cultivating an alternative elite more amenable to compromise? Towards what endpoint are the tactics leading? Do we want to see a unified Iraq with a sustainable political accord? If so, are American political and military tactics encouraging or discouraging such an outcome?
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