Salvaging the Possible: Policy Options in Iraq
Source: The Brookings Institution
Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Congo, Mozambique, Northern Ireland and countless other conflicts have shown that civil wars require a political solution. In civil wars, military forces can keep a lid on the violence to make a political solution possible, but force alone will not translate into sustainable peace. Understanding this reality gives even greater urgency to understanding Iraq as a failed state. U.S. political strategy for Iraq has amounted to setting political benchmarks demanding that a failed Iraqi nation ensnared in a sectarian civil war fix itself. That will not happen, no matter how much pressure we apply. Nor will Iraq rebuild itself under conditions of war. If the United States could not successfully disburse the $18 billion Congress appropriated for reconstruction in 2003, we should not expect a dysfunctional Iraqi state to meet President Bush’s benchmarks on reconstruction, political reconciliation, and security.
If anything has been demonstrated by the Bush administration’s surge strategy, it is that a high concentration of American troops in the relatively small area of Baghdad can nominally improve security in that area. Yet all other indicators on political reconciliation and capacity building give no sense of confidence that nominal security improvements can be extended elsewhere without a comparable American force presence, while also maintaining increased force levels in Baghdad. U.S. domestic politics and the strain on American forces make any such scenario untenable.
