Baghdad politics and the US-Iranian balance
By George Friedman
The status of Iraq has always framed the strategic challenge of Iran. Until
2003, regional stability - such as it was - rested on the Iran-Iraq balance of
power. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 on the assumption that it could
quickly defeat and dismantle the Iraqi government and armed forces and replace
them with a cohesive and effective pro-American government and armed forces,
thereby restoring the balance of power. When that expectation proved faulty,
the United States was forced into two missions. The first was stabilizing Iraq.
The second was providing the force for countering Iran.
The United States and Iran both wanted to destroy Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath
regime, and they collaborated to some extent
during the invasion. But from there, their goals diverged. The Iranians hoped
to establish a Shi'ite regime in Baghdad that would be under Tehran's
influence. The United States wanted to establish a regime that would block the
Iranians.
The US challenge in Iraq
In retrospect, the US strategy in Iraq was incoherent. On one hand, the
American de-Ba'athification program drove the Sunni community into opposition
and insurgency. Convinced that they faced catastrophe from the Americans on one
side and the pro-Iranian government forming in Baghdad on the other, the Iraqi
Sunni Ba'athists united in resistance with foreign jihadis.
At the same time that the Americans were signaling hostility toward the Sunnis,
they also moved to prevent the formation of a pro-Iranian government. This
created a war between three factions (the Americans, the Shi'ites and the
Sunnis) that plunged Iraq into chaos, shattered the balance of power with Iran
and made the United States the only counterweight to the Iranians.
All of this turned what was intended to be a short-term operation into an
extended war from which the United States could not extract itself. The United
States could not leave because it had created a situation in which the Iranian
military was the most powerful force in the Persian Gulf region. Absent the
United States, the Iranians would dominate Iraq. They would not actually have
to invade (Iran's military has a limited ability to project force far from its
borders in any case) to extract massive political and economic concessions from
both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.
An unchecked Iran, quite apart from its not-yet-extant nuclear capability,
represents a profound strategic threat to the balance of power in the Persian
Gulf. Assuming the nuclear issue was settled tomorrow either diplomatically or
through attacks, the strategic problem would remain unchanged, as the central
problem is conventional, not nuclear.
The United States is set to complete the withdrawal of its combat forces from
Iraq this summer, leaving behind a residual force of about 50,000 support
personnel. This drawdown is according to a plan former US president George W
Bush laid down in 2008, and that US President Barack Obama has sped up only by
a few months. Therefore, this is not a political issue but one on which there
has been consensus. The reason for the withdrawal is that US forces are needed
in Afghanistan. Even more importantly, the United States has no strategic
reserve for its ground forces. It has fought a two-theater, multi-divisional
war for seven years. The army is stretched to the limit, and should another
crisis develop elsewhere in the world, the United States would lack the land
power to respond decisively.
Avoiding this situation requires drawing down US forces from Iraq. But simply
abandoning the Persian Gulf to Iranian military and political power also
represents danger for the Americans. Therefore, the United States must balance
two unacceptable realities.
The only hope the United States has of attaining this balance would be to
achieve some semblance of its expectations of 2003. This would mean creating a
cohesive Iraqi government with sufficient military and security capabilities to
enforce its will internally and to deter an attack by an Iranian force. At the
very least, the Iraqis would have to be able to hold off an Iranian attack long
enough to allow the United States to rush forces back into Iraq and to suppress
insurgent elements from all Iraqi communities, both Sunni and Shi'ite. If Iraq
could hold off until the US arrived, the Iranians likely would refrain from an
attack. Iranian rhetoric may be extreme, but the Iranians are risk-averse in
their actions. If Iraq could suppress insurgency, then Iran's preferred mode of
operations - covert subversion through proxies - would be eliminated.
The issue therefore boils down to how the United States answers the question of
whether the Iraqis can form a coherent government in Baghdad capable of making
decisions and a force capable of achieving the goals laid out above. Both the
government and the force have to exist; if either one is lacking, the other is
meaningless. But alongside this question are others. Does Iraq have any
strategic consensus whatsoever? If so, does it match American strategic
interests? Assuming the Iraqis create a government and build a significant
force, will they act as the Americans want them to?
State vs faction
The United States is a country that believes in training. It has devoted
enormous efforts to building an Iraqi military and police force able to control
Iraq. The Americans have tried to imbue Iraq's security forces with
"professionalism", which in the US context means a force fully capable of
carrying out its mission and prepared to do so if its civilian masters issue
the orders. As professionals, they are the technicians of warfare and policing.
But perhaps the fundamental question of any military force, one that comes
before training, is loyalty. In some militaries, the primary loyalty is to
oneself. In such militaries, one joins to make a living, steal what one can and
simply survive. In other militaries, the primary loyalty is not to the state,
but some faction of the country, be it religious, ethnic or geographical. No
one is going to give his life defending a state to which he is indifferent or
even hostile, no matter how carefully trained in handling his weapon or how
well-lectured he is on the question of professional responsibility. Neither of
these conditions allows for a successful military in the end. A man in it for
himself is not going to get in harm's way if he can avoid it. A man in the
military to protect his clan is not going to die to protect people to whom he
has no clan loyalty.
The US Army has trained tens of thousands of Iraqis. And Americans are great
trainers. But the problem isn't training, it is loyalty. Professionalism
doesn't imbue anyone with self-sacrifice for something alien to him.
And this is the challenge the United States faces in the Iraqi government,
which like most governments consists of many factions with diverging interests.
In viable states, however, fundamental values shared by the overwhelming
majority lie beneath the competing interests, be they a myth of country or the
moral principles of a constitution. It is simply not apparent that Iraqi
factions have a core understanding of what Iraq should be, however, nor is it
clear whether they owe their primary loyalty to the state or to some faction of
Iraq.
Saddam held the state together by a complex of benefits and terror. He became
the center of Iraq, and in a sense became Iraq. Once he was destroyed, Iraq's
factions went to war with each other and with the United States, pursuing goals
inimical to a united Iraq. Therefore Iraq's reconstituted military and security
forces, however intermixed or homogenized they may be, still owe their
individual loyalties to their factions, which will call on them to serve their
people, a subset of Iraq.
The United States plans to withdraw its combat forces by the summer. Leaving
aside how well-protected the remaining 50,000 non-combat troops will be, the
question persists on who will hold the country together. The Iranians certainly
are not eager to see the Iraqi situation resolved in favor of a government that
can block Iran's ambitions. The Iranians have longstanding relations with any
number of Iraqi Shi'ite groups, and even with some Kurdish and Sunni groups.
Iran would have every reason to do what it can to destabilize Iraq above and
beyond any indigenous destabilization of Iraq in order to help shape a
government it can dominate. Tehran has to tools to do this effectively.
The American leadership is certainly aware of this. It may hope or even believe
that a stable Iraqi government will emerge, and it will certainly not say
anything publicly that would decrease confidence in the process. But at the
same time, the American leadership must privately know that the probability of
a cohesive Iraqi government commanding a capable and loyal security force is
far from a slam dunk.
In search of a Plan B
Therefore, logic tells us that the United States must have a Plan B. This could
be a plan to halt withdrawals. The problem with that plan is that there is no
assurance that in three months or a year the core divisions of Iraq could be
solved. The United States could be left without forces for a strategic reserve
without any guarantee that time would solve the problem. A strategy of delay
calls for some clear idea of what delay would bring.
Or the United States could complete the withdrawal on the assumption that the
Iranians would not dare attack Iraq directly while the residual US force
remained. The problem with this strategy is that it is built on an assumption.
This assumption is not unreasonable, but it is still an assumption, not a
certainty. Moreover, Iran could covertly destabilize Iraq, putting US forces
without sufficient combat capability in harm's way from Iranian-supplied
forces. Finally, Iran's major audience consists of the oil powers of the
Arabian Peninsula. Tehran wants to show the Gulf Arabs that the United States
will withdraw from Iraq regardless of potential consequences to them, reducing
their confidence in the United States and forcing them to contemplate an
accommodation with Iran.
Halting the withdrawal therefore poses substantial challenges, and completing
the withdrawal poses even more. This is particularly the case if the United
States completes the withdrawal without reaching some accommodation with Iran.
But negotiating with the Iranians from a position of weakness is not an
attractive option. The Iranians' price would be higher than the United States
wants to pay. Therefore, the United States would have to make some show of
power to the Iranians that will convince the Iranians that they are at risk.
Bombing Iran's nuclear facilities could fit the bill, but it has two drawbacks.
First, the attacks might fail. Second, even if they succeeded, they would not
have addressed the conventional problem.
Washington's way forward depends upon what the American government believes the
probabilities are at this point for a viable Iraqi government and security
force able to suppress insurgencies, including those fomented by Iran. If the
Americans believe a viable Iraqi government is a possibility, they should roll
the dice and withdraw. But it is not clear from our point of view what
Washington is seeing. If it believes the probability is low, the United States
not only will have to halt the withdrawal, it will have to reverse it to
convince the Iranians that the Americans are hyper-committed to Iraq. This
might cause Tehran to recalculate, opening the door for discussion.
It is now April, meaning we are four months from the deadline for the
completion of the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq. In the balance is
not only Iraq, but also the Iranian situation. What happens next all comes down
to whether the mass of parties in Baghdad share a common foundation on which to
build a nation - and whether the police and military would be loyal enough to
this government to die for it. If not, then the entire edifice of US policy in
the region - going back to the surge - is not merely at risk, but untenable. If
it is untenable, then the United States must craft a new strategy in the
region, redefining relationships radically - beginning with Iran.
As with many things in life, it is not a matter of what the United States might
want, or what it might think to be fair. Power is like money - you either have
it or you don't. And if you don't, you can't afford to indulge your appetites.
If things in Baghdad work themselves out, all of this is moot. If things don't
work out, the Obama administration will be forced to make its first truly
difficult foreign policy decisions.
George Friedman is the chief executive officer of STRATFOR, a strategic
intelligence company.
(This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR.)
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