TigerHawk

Glenn Reynolds is running what now promises to be a multi-part blog symposium on the tactical and strategic challenges in managing Iraq and confronting Iran and Syria. Much as I would like to participate, I'm in the middle of "quarterly meetings week" at the day job, so I have no time for the thoughtful treatment that this subject deserves. For those few of you who do not also read Instapundit several times a day, do go there and read some of the linked articles.

In addition, I suggest purchasing Stratfor's special report, "U.S. Options in Iraq," which even non-subscribers can buy for less than $20 through Stratfor's main page. They will email it to you automatically, so you can get it within five minutes of now!

With that plug, I hope they will forgive my reproduction of the introduction of Stratfor's report, which I think sets the table for the wider discussion very nicely:

Most wars have two sides. A few have three. The sides in this war are nearly uncountable and shifting. The main combatant parties are the United States, the Sunni community, the Shia and the Kurds. The complexity is compounded by the fact that each of these groups is itself torn by rival factions. Thus, even the simple statement that Sunnis and Shia are at war with each other must be carefully qualified, because there is no single Sunni or Shiite position. It was not always this way: At various points there was much greater cohesion and coherence than at others. But that time is past. Now, this is less of a war than an extremely violent free-for-all. Iraq was once seen as a way for the United States to send a clear message to the Islamic world and as a base from which U.S. forces could operate in the region. The United States, however, has failed to make an example of Iraq and, instead of projecting self-confidence and power, it is now projecting doubt and weakness in the region. The United States chose to be feared more than loved, to use Machiavelli’s phrase. It is no longer feared and could never have been loved. It is in the worst of all possible worlds. It must shift its strategy.

Current U.S. Strategy

The American strategy in Iraq has been, since the emergence of the insurgency:

1. To create an Iraqi government that would be representative of all ethnic and religious groups and political tendencies within the state.

2. To establish a security environment in which this government could be formed, mature, create institutions necessary for governing and, finally, govern.

3. To transfer responsibility for security in Iraq to this government, with U.S. forces remaining in Iraq but withdrawing from direct involvement in maintaining that security.

To implement that strategy, the United States had to defeat or at least contain the insurgency. That insurgency initially involved the Sunnis primarily, but it has evolved into a much more complex situation in recent months. Therefore, the task of providing security has evolved from simply an attempt to defeat the Sunni insurgents to an attempt to control Shiite groups as well, along with the need for containing Sunni-Shiite violence and serious tensions within these groups.

Iraq is a country of about 27 million people, and Baghdad is a city of about 6 million. The United States currently has about 140,000 troops in Iraq, a fraction of which are capable of direct combat operations. The United States was unable to suppress the Sunni insurgency on its own. The likelihood of it being able to contain and suppress the current kaleidoscope of insurgencies and militias is, based on past experience, unlikely in the extreme.

With that in mind, the possibility of the Iraqi government assuming responsibility for security is even less likely. It is important to understand, from the outset, that the Iraqi government — as conceived of by the United States — cannot possibly function as a government. The American plan was a coalition government, but the factions represented in that government are engaged in a civil war with each other. The very best that can be said of some is that they are deeply suspicious of each other.

Each faction of the government sees its institutions as a means for pursuing its own interests against other factions. They see the political battle as an adjunct to the military battles being fought in the streets. The government of Iraq exists only in the most formal sense, as having ministers and ministries. But in fact, there is no functioning government — nor can there be one while the civil war is raging. The idea that the weakness of the Iraqi government lies in insufficient training or corruption or not enough advisers misses the crucial point: A state cannot function so long as its constituent parts do not agree on the nature of the state and are waging open warfare against each other.

The United States’ current position is, therefore, unsustainable. In effect, the United States is fighting the putative members of the Iraqi government in order to induce them to make the government function. And none of this takes into account the fact that the Shia in particular do not want the government to function, except on their terms; that the Sunnis cannot accept those terms; that the Kurds are making their plans without reference to the government and that U.S. forces can’t provide security anyway.

The Global Environment

If the American invasion of Iraq had gone as planned and Iraq had turned into a pacified, pro-American country, the United States would have assumed an enormously powerful position geopolitically, quite independent from the U.S.-jihadist war. Between U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the position of Israel and India, U.S. power and allies would have straddled the area from the Levant to the Hindu Kush. Syria and Iran would have faced threats from multiple directions. The Arabian Peninsula would have faced U.S. ground forces to the north and U.S. naval power on three sides. Pakistan would have been bracketed from Afghanistan and India.

An implicit U.S.-Israeli-Indian coalition would have created a strategic reality that would have placed Muslim regimes on the long-term defensive. It would have made the United States the dominant power in the region, and — given Washington’s relationships with Egypt and Morocco — would have created momentum that would have extended that power through North Africa as well. The United States would have had substantial resources at its disposal for operations in Central Asia, and that region would have been subsumed into the U.S. security system. In no sense would the United States have dominated all of the Islamic world, nor would Muslim public opinion have reviled U.S. actions any the less or hostile regimes like Iran have been eliminated. Nevertheless, the reality would have forced the region to the strategic defensive.

Quite apart from the Muslim world, this is not an outcome that would have been welcomed by other great powers. As the Franco-Russian-German bloc showed prior to 2003, the prospect of American domination in Iraq would have undermined, for a long time, any strategic interests they might have in the Middle East. Not all, but many, major powers did not want to see the United States succeed in Iraq — not because they had a deep interest in Iraq itself or because they supported Islamic radicalism, but because U.S. domination of the Middle East would have tilted the global balance of power in favor of the United States for a very long time. U.S. influence in the region would, among other things, have given the United States substantial influence over the region’s oil supplies, particularly the sizeable reserves in Iraq. With petroleum and geography added to already overwhelming American military and economic power, a victory in Iraq would have redefined the world.

This means that many countries outside the region were not unhappy to see the failure of U.S. strategy in Iraq. It also means the United States is unlikely to gain more international support to pursue its original mission. Success for the United States in Iraq would pose serious challenges to these countries.

Many European countries — including Spain, Italy and most of Eastern Europe — did side with the United States. In each case, their position was not based on any particular interest in Iraq, but on achieving a relationship with Washington for other purposes or, in the case of Eastern Europe, out of fear of the Franco-Russian-German bloc. However, as conditions in Iraq deteriorated, their inclination to increase or even maintain their fairly insignificant troop commitments declined.

The point here is that from the standpoint of Europe and much of the non-Islamic world, there are those who welcome an American defeat in Iraq and those who regret it, but not to the point of taking risks alongside the Americans. It was not true to say the United States had no international support at the time it invaded Iraq, but it is certainly the case that it lacks it now. Even among the strongest U.S. allies, the United Kingdom and Australia, for example, the appetite for the war has substantially dissipated. It is not true to say that if the United States continues the war, it does so alone. It is fair to say, however, that it cannot expect a significant infusion of forces from the outside and might well experience a decrease.

While countries allied with the United States in Iraq peel away under the pressure of failure, the United States cannot simultaneously pursue its original plan and expect increased international support. The global environment is hostile to U.S. plans in Iraq.

The Regional Environment

The non-Arab power with an overriding interest in Iraq, other than the United States, is Iran. There is a historical tension between Iraq and Iran that can be traced back to the states’ Biblical antecedents and is deeply ingrained in the regional geopolitics. Part of this tension derives from Arab/Persian rivalries, which can be clearly seen in other parts of the region as well; part of it also derives from the Sunni/Shiite confl icts that now are roiling Iraq itself.

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, the most recent manifestation of this tension was the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, which took hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives. Iranian policy since that point has been fixed: to prevent the re-emergence of any centralized power in Iraq that could pose a threat to Iranian national security. Iran must protect its flank. For Iran, the American goal of an Iraq united under a powerful central government that is aligned with the United States is its worst-case outcome. The United States would be able to use Iraq to re-establish the balance of power between Baghdad and Tehran, recreating the Iraqi threat toward Iran in a more dangerous form than it existed under Hussein. This is something Tehran must prevent, using all means possible.

Iran’s primary goal, therefore, is to turn Iraq into a reliable ally. In order to achieve this, Iraq must have a Shiite-dominated government and defense structure, with Kurds and Sunnis marginalized. Any hint of the re-emergence of Sunni power in Iraq strikes at the heart of Iranian security interests. Anything that gives the Kurds power, either regionally or in Baghdad, raises the specter of Kurdish nationalism gaining traction in Iran. Of the two threats, the most pressing are the Sunnis, who outmaneuvered the Shia in post-revolutionary Iraq and who, Iran fears, can do the same again if given freedom to maneuver. The Kurdish question is secondary: Iran and Turkey will deal with Kurdish regional autonomy in due course.

In order to achieve its primary goal, Iran not only must see the Shia overwhelmingly dominate any Iraqi government, but the Iraqi Shia must be dominated by their Iranian co-religionists. This is not as simple as it appears, since — as we shall see — the Iraqi Shia are split and since there is a degree of distrust between elements of the Iraqi Shia and Iranian Shia. There are doctrinal differences between the two sides, and ethnic tensions, but there is also the fear that Iranian domination will turn Iraq into a pawn in Tehran’s grand strategy and siphon oil profits away from Iraq toward Iran. Therefore, Iranian domination — as opposed to penetration — of Iraqi Shia is not a given.

If the Iranians cannot achieve their primary goal, there is a secondary goal that they can achieve: the partition of Iraq. If they feel they cannot guarantee their domination of a government in Baghdad, then partition achieves two purposes for Iran. First, Iraq would not be able to regain its position as peer competitor with Iran. Second, there would be a Shiite entity in southern Iraq that would be inherently dependent on Iran. A Shiite state in that location would be seen as a threat to the Saudis and would face the natural hostility of the Sunni states. Therefore, any Shiite state in the south would need Iran to guarantee its security.

This situation would prevent the United States from marshalling and supplementing Iraqi power against Iran. It would put Iran in a pre-eminent position south of Baghdad. Therefore, Iran would be in a position to project power into the Arabian Peninsula. But for U.S. forces, if they were to remain in Iraq, the Iranians would be the pre-eminent military power in the region. They would be able to threaten the Kuwaiti and Saudi military forces — as was the case immediately after the fall of the Shah — and force the Saudis to reconsider permitting an American presence in the kingdom, which is what sparked the emergence of al Qaeda in the first place.

As important, the Iranians might be able to mobilize substantial Shiite populations in the Arab Persian Gulf region. The Shia constitute a signifi cant portion of the population in many of the oil-rich Arab states: Saudi Arabia (20 percent), Kuwait (35 percent), Bahrain (70 percent), Qatar (10 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (15 percent). The Iranians maintain close links to these Arab Shia through local religious and political groups. On the whole, these groups have not threatened existing regimes. Neither economic nor political interests forced a confrontation.

But as we have seen in Iraq, the Iranians have sufficient influence among Shia in the region to potentially change this equation. If they were able to back unrest in these countries with a direct military threat, the Iranians would be in a powerful position. It was this thinking that motivated the Iranians to use their influence in Iraq to destabilize the situation in June and July 2006.

The Iranians wanted the United States to overthrow Hussein and replace his regime with a Shiite government. The Americans thought they had the option of crafting a regime to their own liking. However, they underestimated not only Sunni resistance but also Iran’s ability to destabilize the situation. The Iranians were prepared to provide support to the Americans while fighting the Sunnis. But when the Sunnis shifted toward political accommodation that could lead to an unacceptable outcome for Tehran — signaled by the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in early June and the nearly simultaneous appointment of a Sunni as Iraq’s minister of defense — the Iranians shifted their position to encourage direct civil war between Shia and Sunnis.

Had the Shia maintained what appeared to be their course politically when al-Zarqawi was killed, accommodation would seem to have been possible. But, under Iranian influence, the Shia drew back from the political process in Iraq and increased their attacks against the Sunnis. Along with this shift, Tehran encouraged its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to become more aggressive toward Israel, and provided military equipment and training for this effort. The conflict in July-August 2006 was the outcome, and it stunned both Israel and the world. For whatever reason, Israel was unable, for the first time since the founding of the modern state, to crush an enemy in war. This increased the confidence of Syria, another Iranian ally dominated by an Alawite government, to raise its pressure on Lebanon.

In short, Iran had three goals. First, it wanted to be the dominant power in Iraq. Second, it wanted to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Finally, it wanted to reclaim for the Shia the distinction of leading the Islamist renaissance — a position that had been assumed by Sunni al Qaeda. By the fall, it was on the verge of achieving this. The key was Iraq: Iran either had to create a situation that would force the Americans’ withdrawal, thus leaving Iraq to the Iranians, or failing that, a civil war that would divide the nation, allowing Iran to dominate the new, southern Shiite entity. That would give Iran the ability to begin to dominate the Persian Gulf, and would give it revolutionary primacy in the Islamic world.

The Saudis were obviously to be the loser in this game. But the Saudis had very limited options. The states of the Arabian Peninsula as a whole could not hope to block Iran militarily. For Riyadh, maintaining a robust buffer — provided either by Sunnis or external powers — between the Saudi oil fields and Iran is vital. But if the Saudis’ open dependency on the United States increased, it could destabilize the kingdom. If they pressed too hard against Iran, the region’s Shia might rise. The Saudis could provide support to the Sunnis in Iraq, but that would be a double-edged sword. For one thing, doing so could drive a wedge between Riyadh and the United States, or force the United States to withdraw from Iraq. For another, it could draw the Saudi kingdom into a conflict with the Iranians that it could not win.

The sum total of all these equations is that the United States was maneuvered into a position in which its options were limited, in which it had few allies, in which it had insufficient military power — and all of this during an election year. The Iranians understand American elections: They helped bring Jimmy Carter down by holding U.S. hostages until after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. They knew that the worse the situation was in Iraq, the worse the position of George W. Bush in the polls. All of these factors were converging to place Iran in a superb negotiating position. Add to this the American fear that Iran might develop nuclear weapons — and the dearth of U.S. military options to deal with that scenario — and the Iranians felt they had the United States on the ropes.

Most important, the United States had lost control of the internal security and political situation in Iraq. The system had fragmented, and the U.S. goal of a united state under a pro-American government in Baghdad had disappeared. How badly the situation had fragmented is something that must be understood in detail before turning to the current U.S. options.

When the history of the regional war is written -- and it is so politicized that the first genuinely honest accounting will probably be written by somebody who is in elementary school in 2006 -- we will have the benefit of many intervening descriptions of the motives of the various actors. It may be that Stratfor's construction, which is surely a useful device for thinking about the way forward, is as close to accurate as any other. Without, for the moment delving into the prescription for resolving Iraq in some way that satisfies the global chattering classes, it is obvious that there are some lessons -- and questions -- that can be learned already.

First, you can’t fight a war without taking the interests of related powers into account, and planning for their reaction. The question arises, why does it at least seem that the United States did not anticipate Iran’s menu of responses to the American invasion there? Did Iran signal that it would cooperate (as it had in Afghanistan)? Did we believe that the overwhelming victory that we expected in Iraq would deter Iran from intervening? If so, we were led (see below), or led ourselves, down the primrose path. What chance was there that Iran could allow American soldiers to surround it without striking back? This did not need to be a reason to oppose the invasion of Iraq -- it might just as easily have turned into an opportunity -- but I'm sorry to say that there is no external evidence that we had a strategy to exploit that opportunity. This seems like a specific version of the more general problem that Tommy Franks' invasion plan does not seem to have contemplated the fighting of a regional war, which in turn suggests that if the administration was consciously pursuing a regional strategy it did not filter down to the Pentagon.

Second, we need to know if we were played by Iranians or allied exile groups. It may be that the Iranians bluffed us into believing that they would be more accomodating to our invasion of Iraq than they turned out to be. Also, I have seen the claim (perhaps also from Stratfor) that leading Iraqi Shiite exiles -- including the well-known Ahmed Chalabi -- probably did not tell us everything they knew about the extent to which Iran had penetrated the Shiite community in southern Iraq in particular. Suppose that either speculation is true. It would be but another in a long line of Iranian bluffs in the last thirty years, including during the negotiations over the release of the hostages (see Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah) and in advance of Madeleine Albright's famously rejected apology. Americans should be very worried that the Iranians have repeatedly led our diplomats and intelligence officers around by the nose. We must remember that they will do it again unless we guard against it.

Third, if we are going to sustain a "forward" strategy in the regional struggle, we need to develop a more sophisticated appreciation for local politics. Josh Manchester's "go native" strategy may or may not be a useful solution for Iraq, but it is an essential requirement for engagement in the region. We need to build a large cadre of experts within and without the military who can help us navigate this world. If we're not willing to do that, we need to retreat to the frankly failed strategy of "offshore balancing," hope that the locals can take care of the extremists, and keep our fingers crossed. The problem, it seems to me, is that there are very few academic experts on the region who are genuinely sympathetic to a forward strategy. Will our univesities be willing to support this war, even if they are able?

I'm sure there are many more questions and answers, and I look forward to reading all of Glenn's links. Perhaps I will have time for more later. In the meantime, unlock the safeties and comment at will.