With nine months left in office, the
George W Bush administration has opened
negotiations with the government of Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki that are expected to set the
parameters within which future relationships
between Iraq and the United States will be
conducted.
The end product, as presently
envisioned by Washington, will be either one
document with two major sections - security issues
and all others - or possibly two documents. The
main thrust of the security document reportedly
will be a traditional status of forces agreement
(SOFA) that defines the extent to which Iraq's
laws will apply to US personnel in Iraq. The other
agreement will cover non-security issues.
When assured of anonymity, Iraqi officials
have been more open
than
the US negotiators about their expectations. Iraqi
descriptions of the non-SOFA discussions, said to
cover economic, social, financial, trade,
political, military and environmental matters,
suggest that there may well be a series of
specialized subject-matter documents rather than
the one or two mentioned by US sources. Such an
outcome presumably would please the White House,
which has taken the position that no documents
emerging from the negotiations will rise to the
level of a treaty and thus require legislative
imprimatur.
Permanent bases
debate Understandably, the White House
has been extremely reticent and defensive about
the discussions, perhaps remembering past
subterfuge of its own. And while there are no
signs of panic - yet - negotiators are quite aware
that critical details, leaked to opponents before
the final signatures are affixed, potentially
could scuttle months of maneuvering by the Bush
administration on sensitive topics. Of these, the
most politically sensitive issue is whether US
bases being built in Iraq should be, or clearly
already are, permanent.
Ironically, the
basing debate is more of a US domestic controversy
that pits Democrats in Congress against
Republicans in Congress and the White House than
an issue between the US and Iraq.
The
current (110th) and previous (109th) congresses
enacted legislation banning the expenditure of
funds for the construction of "permanent" bases in
Iraq. Each time, Bush signed the legislation into
law. That he evidently never had any intention of
complying (as commander in chief he believes he
has virtually unlimited leeway to ignore
provisions of law pertaining to the "war on
terror"), Bush included in his signing statements
a specific reference to the anti-base provision as
one that he would interpret for its consistency
with his duties as commander in chief.
Moreover, as a harbinger of what the
administration hopes will come out of its
discussions with Baghdad, even as Bush was signing
the latest bill banning permanent bases in Iraq,
his Office of Management and Budget was compiling
the president's budget for the 2009 fiscal year -
including requests in the hundreds of millions of
taxpayer dollars destined for military
construction throughout Iraq. When challenged on
the intended use for this stream of funds, the
response, if any, comes down to improving the
security of US troops. And as it always does,
Congress rolls over when it hears this phrase and
votes to appropriate the funds requested.
So, when General David Petraeus, the
commander of US forces in Iraq, and US ambassador
to Baghdad Ryan Crocker testified before Congress
this month, both specifically denied that
permanent bases were envisioned in Iraq for US
soldiers. Spokespersons for the administration
also reiterated that the discussions with Iraq did
not include permanent bases. The question,
therefore, in light of the 2009 military
construction appropriations request from the White
House, is the meaning of "permanent".
Defining permanent
bases The administration has drawn
comparisons between the structure of bases in
post-World War II Germany and in South Korea after
1953 and its expectations for the longevity of
bases in Iraq.
Taking that as his cue, two
days after Petraeus and Crocker testified before
the Senate, Senator James Webb (Democrat-Virginia
) asked Assistant Defense Secretary Mary Beth Long
to define what, in the administration's jargon, is
a "permanent" base. When Long conceded that there
was no such definition in her department, let
alone in the administration, Webb observed that
the word described not what the bases will be but
what they won't be.
"Permanent," it now
seems, "refers more to the state of mind
contemplated by the use of the term," according to
Long, rather than a physical reality. Thus,
administration officials can testify, as they did
repeatedly during the hearing just referenced,
that the US will have no permanent bases in Iraq
because their "state of mind" is that the bases
are non-permanent. By extension, for every
negotiation involving security commitments and the
forward basing of military units (and what
authorities these units might be permitted),
defining the meaning of such terms as "permanent"
and "commitment" becomes a recurring task.
All participants in a potential agreement
have to be clear as to the connotations as well as
the denotations of the language used. Equally,
like the dog that didn't bark in the middle of the
night in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes'
mystery Silver Blaze, negotiators need to
agree on what is not meant by such words.
The
cash How does one do this if words
themselves no longer can be trusted? One way is to
heed the old saw, "Follow the money", for where
government spends thereto will be the principles
and beliefs that are its priorities.
What
turns up is a rather more expansive list of
regional bases funded by Washington than many
Americans realize. As part of the National Defense
Authorization Act for the 2008 fiscal year, signed
into law by Bush on January 28, Congress
authorized army and air force military
construction funding totaling US$425.7 million for
three bases in Afghanistan and nearly $1.9 billion
for 16 bases in Iraq.
Moreover, the law
does not require that all funds allocated actually
be spent in financial year (FY) 2008. But the most
intriguing part of the request is the $203 million
for a catch-all "various location" line item
entry, suggesting that special operations units
(military and Central Intelligence Agency) are
part of the mix under consideration. (That this
might actually be the case is mind-boggling in
light of the just completed massive $736 million
US Embassy in Baghdad - a "super base" if there
ever was one.)
Hardly had the ink dried on
FY2008 legislation when the president sent
Congress his proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal
year. This proposes worldwide military
construction spending that exceeds $21 billion,
more than triple actual spending in FY2007. Even
in a $550 billion budget, $21 billion is "real
money".
Treaty
ratification But this year, the real
fight - if there is to be one - will center on the
question of ratification, The preferred US
timeline calls for completion of discussions and
agreement with Maliki's government by the end of
July - the same timeline for the complete
withdrawal of the last brigade combat team that
went to Iraq in 2007 as part of the Bush
administration's "surge".
In his recent
testimony to the Armed Services and Foreign
Relations and Foreign Affairs committees of the US
Congress, Petraeus called for a 45-day "pause" in
troop withdrawals to consolidate and assess the
reaction to decreasing US forces to 140,000. With
Congress, as usual, in recess for all of August,
the administration undoubtedly hopes the Iraqi
parliament will approve all relevant documents
some time in July and send them to Washington for
Bush to sign while Congress is in recess and
unable to stop another instance of the "unitary
presidency".
Should this timeline not
materialize, the administration will undoubtedly
try to finesse all efforts by Congress to compel
the White House to submit any document that
emerges for Senate ratification as treaties.
Unfortunately, given the slim margins the
Democrats have in each chamber in the current
Congress, it is likely the congressional leaders
will find most of their efforts consumed by the
struggle to enact appropriations bills before
adjournment, traditionally within the first week
of October, so that lawmakers standing for
re-election can get home to campaign.
This
circumstance makes the electoral calendar the ally
of the White House, not Congress. Compounding the
administration's advantage is the large number of
Republican incumbents not seeking reelection: by
early March, Republicans constituted
three-quarters of the 40 house members who have
announced they will not seek reelection. The 40
Republicans running to replace those leaving are
unaffected by the congressional calendar.
Maliki could play a key role in the White
House calculations if the "Plan B" timeline comes
into play. All he needs to do is to hold back
submitting to the Iraqi parliament any agreements
negotiated with the US until after parliament's
August recess and the observance of the holy
Muslim month of Ramadan, which in 2008 begins
approximately on September 2. This could delay the
arrival of the agreements in the Oval Office until
mid-October with Congress adjourned.
In
fact, the only time requirement is that both the
US and Iraq complete their negotiations and sign
the relevant documents by December 31, 2008.
That's the expiration date of the current United
Nations Security Council mandate authorizing the
presence of armed foreign soldiers in Iraq to help
maintain order and to assist other national and
international agencies working to restore Iraq to
its place in the community of nations.
Some US lawmakers have suggested that a
further extension of the UN mandate may be
necessary if negotiations over the terms of the
status of forces agreement don't resolve all the
issues by December 31, 2008. Such a delay cannot
be ruled out as a number of Iraqi parliamentarians
have expressed displeasure at proposed provisions
that would allow US soldiers to arrest and detain
Iraqis in their own country. Iraqi lawmakers note
that no other SOFA permits this - but then, the US
has no SOFA with the government of a country
fighting a civil war.
Colonel Daniel
Smith, US Army (retired) 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. Email at dan@fcnl.org
or blog The Quakers' Colonel.
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