It's March 2008. US forces in Iraq are
being maintained at "surge" levels. The government
of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been replaced
twice in the last nine months. The current
cabinet, a coalition dominated by technocrats and
secularists, includes military officers who hold
the Defense and Internal Security portfolios. Some
of them are former Ba'athists. The cabinet's hold
on power is shaky, because the sectarian militias
of the religious parties still pose a possible
security threat –a threat that
continues to roil the
politics of the Gulf and the larger Middle
East.
There is some good economic news -
oil production finally is above pre-March 2003
levels, and has shown a small but steady increase
in each of the last four months.
Meanwhile, in Iran Next door in
Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and
his inner circle have grown weary of what they see
as US stalling tactics on ending sanctions against
Tehran (the quid pro quo for Tehran's full
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy
Agency). Moreover, even though the coalition
troops are halfway through their final six-month
UN-endorsed "stability operation" in Iraq, the
United States still has not announced whether it
intends to ask the Iraqis for sites for permanent
bases there.
Sensing a possible change in
the balance of power in the Gulf as the coalition
military forces leave Iraq, the Iranians secretly
approach Saudi Arabia with a proposal to stabilize
the political-economic conditions in the Persian
Gulf – Caspian Sea oil fields.
The core of
the proposal calls for Riyadh and Tehran to
pressure Baghdad diplomatically (and with the
sectarian militias always in the background) to
reject any form of a residual US military presence
in Iraq. In return, both Iran and Saudi Arabia
would assist the redevelopment of Iraq's oil
sector, enabling the three countries to form a
powerful sub-Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries triumvirate.
Far-fetched
scenario? Such a scenario might seem
far-fetched given the history of ethnic and
religious sectarianism that Westerners ascribe to
the Gulf and the greater Middle East.
However, the revival of widespread
violence associated with the historical
Shi'ite-Sunni sectarianism is largely the result
of an inexcusable misreading of the region's
history and the subsequent mishandling of the
post-March 2003 occupation by the US-led
coalition.
Given its origin, this violence
should decline in parallel with the departure of
occupying forces. Equally, the departure of
foreign forces will elevate the Iraqi military
from its present regional (and thus essentially
tribal) security focus to the broader national
horizon, both in terms of its operations and its
national symbolism. And in this latter role, it
would re-affirm the self-identity of Iraq and
Iraqis.
Given the abject mess the US
intervention has created in the Gulf, Washington
may well find that its "help" will be rejected by
more nations more often than in the past –and even
more so in areas such as the Persian Gulf that
have resources on which the US economy depends.
While the United States cannot be excluded from
any international waters or airspace, its freedom
of action could be curtailed if a majority of
nations in a region object.
Such a stance
seems improbable, but until a few months ago, many
foreign-policy experts thought it just as
improbable that the Iranians and Saudis would open
high-level discussions and exchange high-level
visits.
Somehow, despite a huge presence
in the Gulf for years, the United States evidently
still does not understand that part of the world.
One can hope that those vying to succeed George W
Bush as president will take time to study how the
United States managed to turn Iraq into a
"catastrophic success" –as Bush described it –51
months (and counting) after the invasion as well
as look more broadly at the history of the Middle
East, a crossroads where competing cultures have
met and intertwined –and still do today.
The next president will have the
opportunity to shape the history of the Middle
East by the simple act of pulling all US military
forces from Iraq. Such an action, which he or she
could order to begin immediately after taking the
oath of office if Pentagon planners have done
their job, could be completed by the end of 2009.
Were this to happen (it seems improbable
that Bush will change course in the time remaining
in his presidency), historians of the 21st century
may look back on the mayhem in the Gulf in the
first 10 years of the century as an ending, not a
beginning.
That is, the attacks of
September 11, 2001, and the subsequent warfare in
Afghanistan and Iraq - while resting on only a
quasi-religious rationale - are the Islamic
equivalent of the 30 Years' War, which redrew the
religious boundaries between the Protestant and
Catholic realms in Europe and ended the Holy Roman
Empire.
Thereafter, Europe focused its
energies more on political-economic rather than
political-religious concerns. Once the Western
armies leave Iraq, it will also be able to put
sectarianism aside and, along with the wider
Middle East, rebuild its political-economic
sectors and rejoin the community of nations as a
fully functioning nation-state.
Dan
Smith is a military affairs analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus, a retired US Army
colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs
at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
His blog is The Quakers' Colonel.
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