The United States will have to maintain a
substantial part of its current 150,000 forces in
Iraq long after President George W Bush leaves
office, concludes a study released by the
London-based think tank, International Institute
for Strategic Studies (IISS).
The
conclusion itself has been regarded as very much
part of conventional wisdom inside Washington.
Only the timing of the release of that study is
going to provide further ammunition to the
opponents of the Iraq war, especially inside the
Republican Party. There has been little
international support for America's invasion of
Iraq. Now Bush's core support for staying put in
Iraq appears to be unfastening.
The chief
problem that the United States is facing in Iraq
is that neither European countries nor Arab states
are willing to do anything to make life easy for
the Bush administration. Thus, it
has to rely on its
own military might or political capabilities to
find its way out of the Iraqi imbroglio.
The worsening security situation inside
Iraq makes America's military prowess almost an
irrelevant reality. Regarding its political
capabilities, Washington still has to look for
some help from its allies and friends, but such
help has remained a rare commodity.
Because the United States went into Iraq
largely on its own, there is little allied
enthusiasm or support for its continued presence
in that country. The United Kingdom is an
exception to that rule, even though the Iraq war
remains a highly unpopular issue inside that
country. France and Germany are no longer
interested in beating the dead horse of continued
American presence in Iraq. Besides, Germany's arch
critic of Bush, Gerhard Schroeder, is leaving
political life, and France's Jacques Chirac is
also facing retirement in the coming months. Other
European countries are eagerly watching the
political debates inside Washington and hoping
that ample pressure is built on Bush to spell out
the exit strategy from Iraq.
On October
19, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was
pressured by the powerful Senate Foreign Relations
Committee about the Bush administration's exit
strategy. Instead, she described an entirely
different "clear, hold and build strategy".
According to her, that strategy comprises "clear
areas from insurgent control, hold them securely
and build durable national Iraqi institutions".
It is becoming increasingly clear that the
Bush administration is not willing to spell out,
even in general terms, when it is willing to
withdraw troops from Iraq. Senator Paul Sarbanes
(a retiring Maryland Democrat and member of the
Foreign Relations Committee), offered Rice options
of answering whether the US troops would be out of
Iraq in five or even 10 years. Her pat answer
remained: "I don't want to speculate. I do know
that we're making progress with what the Iraqis
themselves are capable of doing." Such an exchange
offers enormous credibility to the aforementioned
study of the IISS about the long-haul presence of
American forces in Iraq.
Inside the Middle
East, there was virtually no sympathy for the US
invasion of Iraq, except for Kuwait. Other Arab
heads of states envisaged it as an ugly reality
that they could do nothing to prevent. The US
created such a ruckus about ousting Saddam Hussein
by accusing him of hoarding weapons of mass
destruction that no Arab leader was in any
position to argue against it. They did not want to
become the focus of America's wrath by sounding
critical of what they correctly determined Bush
wanted to achieve without any regard to the cost:
the removal of Saddam through the use of force.
But when the weapons of mass destruction
were not found in Iraq, the Bush administration
switched its rationale and argued that just the
removal of Saddam from power was a good enough
reason for invading Iraq. Before the Arab leaders
could position themselves in terms of responding
to that new rationale, Washington quickly started
talking about the transformation of the Middle
East through the introduction of Western secular
democracy.
The argument of transforming
the Middle East put the entire Arab leadership on
the defensive. Examining the proposition from the
Arab capitals, it was hard to determine how
proactive the Bush administration would be in its
campaign to transform the rest of the Middle East.
The America that they had known and loved to deal
with for the past several decades was known for
its commitment to the political status quo and
stability in their region. That principle was
abandoned by the Bush administration. That very
same America appeared bent on creating instability
in the name of transformation of the Middle East.
Just reading the rhetoric coming out of Washington
in the aftermath of the "shock and awe" related to
the military campaign of ousting Saddam. It was
apparent that a similar type of "rhetorical shock
and awe" would be used to transform the Middle
East.
Bush specifically named Saudi Arabia
and Egypt as countries on which his administration
would focus regarding transformation. That shift
of policy within the past four years (ie since the
September 11 terrorist attacks on the US) appeared
awfully radical to the conservative autocrats of
Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
One also have to
consider that Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been
very important allies of the United States: the
former has been a close ally since the Franklin
Delano Roosevelt administration, while the latter
emerged as a major ally since the presidency of
Jimmy Carter. For Saudi Arabia and Egypt, just the
rhetoric of transformation of their regime was
full of shock and awe. So, a decision was made at
least in the capitals of those two countries that
their best strategy is to sit tight and watch what
happens in Iraq.
Both Saudi Arabia and
Egypt did work on the cosmetic aspects of
introducing democracy as a precautionary measure.
Saudi Arabia held local elections and Egypt
created a facade of having a competitive
presidential election, knowing all along that
President Hosni Mubarak's election was a done
deal. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt knew that they
would have to become serious about promoting
democracy if Iraq were to emerge as a shining
example of it. Until that happens they were in no
mood to upset the applecart of dynastic and
autocratic rules.
More importantly, those
countries decided that they would do very little
to help the United States if the going were to get
tough in Iraq. In fact, it can be argued that the
Arab countries weren't too unhappy to see the
United States get deeply entangled in the quagmire
of Iraq. Such a situation was bound to doom all
ambitious plans of America's neo-cons to transform
and Westernize the Muslim Middle East.
As
the Arab autocrats see it, they should not even
lift a finger to help the US come out of the Iraqi
quagmire as a winner. Any semblance of victory for
the United States means it would restart its
campaign of transformation of the Middle East with
a vengeance. Let the US dig itself out of the
awesome hole it has put itself in the Middle East,
so think the Arab autocrats.
That may be
one reason no Arab country has shown much
enthusiasm about helping out the Bush
administration in Iraq at a time when it is in
dire need of high visibility presence and Arab
support.
As the Iraqis are getting ready
for the December elections the question of
increasing significance appears to be whether the
US would stay in Iraq and whether it would stay
for at least a decade or even longer. However,
within the United States the pressure will
continue to build about spelling out the exit
strategy, which is a prelude to the next round of
demands that it should get out of Iraq. When
the Bush administration insists that it cannot
spell out an exit strategy and that it plans to
stay put in Iraq, it is being realistic. At the
same time, it also knows that such a position will
become increasingly less tenable, as the next
round of Congressional elections gets closer.
Republican legislators wish to get reelected.
Their instinct for survival will force them to be
responsive to the growing public perception that
the Iraq war is not worth the endless price in
American blood and its precious resources
especially at a time when the country is reeling
under the series of hurricanes and the enormous
cost of rebuilding parts of America itself.
Electoral realities for Bush are entirely
different. To him the future is about building a
legacy, which appears quite shattered right now.
Republican legislators and Republicans in general
have entirely different political agendas, as Iraq
appears to be a very large issue in the
forthcoming Congressional elections.
As
Iraq continues to divide the Republicans, the safe
position taken by the Bush administration is to
refuse to spell out an exit strategy. That very
reality provides ample fodder for its critics, and
also provides credence to all suggestions that it
is likely to stay there well into the next decade.
No political realist thought that ruling
Iraq would be a cakewalk for the United States.
But only a few would have imagined that it would
become such a bloody mess.
Ehsan
Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst
based in Alexandria, VA, US. His columns appear
regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a
regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate.
His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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