State Destruction

I agree with Robert Farley that America's involvement in the "Anbar awakening" business needs to be understood as an abandonment of real state-building goals in Iraq, but I'm not sure the name "anti-state building" works. We're not, after all, building an anti-state. We're unbuilding the already barely-there Iraqi state. It's state destruction.

Looking back at it, I always thought this was the flaw in Thomas Ricks' otherwise brilliant book, Fiasco. In order to highlight the destructive nature of the policies pursued during the early phases of the war, Ricks will often shed light on some localized successes where smart commanders build sound relationships with existing actors. Counterinsurgency done right, in other words. What Ricks never gets into is the question of whether or not such approach ever had any hopes of long-term viability. I tend to have my doubts. The problem is that the local elites over here tended to have visions of Iraq that were incompatible with those of the local elites over there. Iraq's Sunni Arabs wanted -- and by all accounts still want -- Sunni supremacy. Meanwhile, Iraq's Shiite Arabs really did want far-reaching de-Baathification and other anti-Sunni measures.

At any rate, you might think I'm wrong about that counterfactual. Maybe factional feelings wouldn't have hardened as much if the whole thing had been better-organized in the first place. But I think it's a reasonable concern. And given that we didn't organize it that way in the first place, and that feelings have now hardened after years of civil conflict, I think it's a crucial one. Under the circumstances, Petraeus' strategy amounts to fueling several of Iraq's main conflicts.

Comments

Dollars to donuts not a single member of congress will make Petraeus face this issue during the hearings.

Posted by Th | September 5, 2007 11:56 AM

We're not, after all, building an anti-state. We're unbuilding the already barely-there Iraqi state. It's state destruction.

No, as the article notes, the strategy explicitly deals with the concern you and Farley raise. Gordon writes:

In effect, the American command has been moving on two parallel and possibly conflicting tracks. One represented a decentralization of power, as the American military organized Sunnis into local security forces. The second track was to centralize power in the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and to strengthen national institutions like the largely Shiite Iraqi Army. The key to squaring the circle is to establish a link between the new Sunni forces in the field and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s risk-averse government. ... Newton, the British officer who was a leader of the Force Strategic Engagement Cell, had the job of bringing the Iraqi government along. “We don’t dress it up,” he told me. “Insurgent groups fear that if they cooperate, they will be targeted by the government of Iraq, and the government fears that the insurgent groups will turn on them after Al Qaeda has been dealt with. So that is the risk. We are not minimizing it. The best way to deal with that risk is to hook these groups close to you. By doing that, you bring them under a degree of control. You have the opportunity to learn how they work, which amounts to an insurance policy of future reasonable behavior.

It is odd that Matthew just completely ignores what the Petraeus policy actually is. After all, if anyone clicks the link and reads the article, it becomes awfully clear that Matthew's commentary is precisely wrong. I might understand if Matthew thinks that the policy that Petraeus has for engaging the Sunni forces and Maliki government isn't going to work. If so, perhaps he should tell us why. But this post certainly doesn't do so.

It would be helpful if Matthew would actually discuss the policies that Petraeus, et al, are implementing, rather than with some fanciful idea of the policy that doesn't comport with reality.

Posted by Al | September 5, 2007 12:06 PM

The Petreus/Bush strategy assumes that whack-a-mole will work. It's been such a great success so far.

It's heartening that lots of Sunnis have turned against al Qaida. If all we were worried about in Iraq was al Qaida we could declare victory and go home. We're not just concerned about al Qaida, though.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 5, 2007 12:19 PM

"Iraq's Sunni Arabs wanted -- and by all accounts still want -- Sunni supremacy. "

That may be, in part, due to the belief that their choices are supremacy and irrelevancy.

Posted by Njorl | September 5, 2007 12:23 PM

I'm leaning toward Biden's three state solution. Split it up and get the heck out.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | September 5, 2007 12:32 PM

We're not, after all, building an anti-state. We're unbuilding the already barely-there Iraqi state. It's state destruction.

It's a beacon of anarcho-capitalism in the region, complete with gussied-up Petraeus Markets for all to see.

And it's good to see Al the Hack hacking away. The Petraeus Strategy is to do just enough to make things look better to visiting foreigners, and to establish security relationships so that domestic Sunni militants put off killing Americans to, well, perhaps a Friedman or so.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 5, 2007 12:33 PM

Split it up and get the heck out.

Split it up and get stuck in the middle of a 3-way war involving Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, seems more likely . . .

Posted by rea | September 5, 2007 12:35 PM

The key to squaring the circle is to establish a link between the new Sunni forces in the field and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s risk-averse government...The best way to deal with that risk is to hook these groups close to you.

I'm sure the "circle will be squared" and they'll be "hooked" and "linking up" any day now--now that we've given them some guns, those Sunnis are naturally just champing at the bit to be part of the Maliki government.

Posted by James Gary | September 5, 2007 12:39 PM

"I'm not sure the name "anti-state building" works. We're not, after all, building an anti-state. "

You need an n-dash instead of a hyphen. Ah well.

Posted by Kyle | September 5, 2007 12:54 PM

The abandonment of top-down state building is just an acknowledgement of reality, and a welcome one.

It’s far too late too worry about ‘fueling’ Iraq’s conflicts. The conflict is already here, and we can’t stop it. The only sensible policy left to us is to try to encourage a stable balance of power which will eventually lead to the various factions settling the conflict on their own. More than counterinsurgency or nation-building, it’s an old school balance of power game now. In that light the Anbar strategy makes a lot of sense to me.

Posted by RC | September 5, 2007 1:01 PM

I don't see in this month's Bush P.R. narrative about strengthening local power anything more than political theatre, procrastination and delusion.

In Opera, they have a saying: "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."

Iraq is sitting on the number 2 and number 9? oil fields in the world. Full-scale production in those fields is the fat lady singing. Iraq will not be "over" until some actor(s) have sufficient political power to secure those fields and put them into full production. That won't be a local sheik -- you can trust me on that. And, it won't be the U.S. with 35,000 troops, as the Project for a New American Century types hoped in 2002, and it won't be the U.S. with 80,000 troops, either.

The strategic objectives of Cheney-Rumsfeld were to prevent a near-term resumption of Iraqi oil production (under the sponsorship of the Russians and the French) due to the breakdown of sanctions, and to create a weak Iraqi state, which would "need" the U.S. to maintain a permanent military presence, analogous to the U.S. bases in Germany, Japan and Korea. Under that umbrella, U.S. oil interests would exploit Iraqi oil in the favorable economic climate on the lee side of peak oil, five years or ten years down the road. They succeeded in their first objective, with great benefit to the Saudis, Exxon/Mobil's and Halliburtons.

The second, longer-term objective has proven problematic, because any Iraqi state weak enough to "want" the U.S. to stay is too weak to hold the country together. The fumbling, bumbling Reconstruction, which aimed to put together a libertarian wet-dream of a weak state, succeeded altogether too well, and Iraq has been falling apart ever since.

It was a classic, fundamental strategic error: the objective of a weak Iraqi state, as a means to establish permanent U.S. military bases, proved to be destructive to that end, because a weak Iraqi state could not hold the country together or make its society and economy function even minimally. Nothing in Petraeus' COIN tactics addresses that fundamental strategic error, and, for the moment, the Bush Administration is going to pretend that the weakness of their strategy is a virtue -- a problem that originates in the weakness of the Iraqi state, social and political institutions, and economy, is going to be addressed by policies that exacerbate that weakness by strengthening the social, economic and political primitives of traditional, local clan leadership.

But, there's no political equilibrium, where Iraq remains a fractious, failed state. First of all, in the present state of affairs, more than a third of the population is in hard poverty -- near starvation, $1/day territory; it's not like anyone is going to want to quit their militia gig and return to their day job in that kind of economy. But, more importantly, at the end of the day, all of that oil is still out there, waiting. That's the prize for a strong, central government, that will be constantly calling a central power into being. The oil sings a siren's song.

And, Iraq won't be over, until the "fat lady" of some power able to take productive control of the oil, sings back.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | September 5, 2007 1:08 PM

RC: "The conflict is already here, and we can’t stop it. The only sensible policy left to us is to try to encourage a stable balance of power which will eventually lead to the various factions settling the conflict on their own."

You can't be serious. Describing this as an "old school balance of power game" is ludicrous. We're helping to midwife the birth of a Lebanon super-league: we'll give the teams uniforms, weapons and coaching, then watch 'em fight it out. Wonderful.

And when, inevitably, our Sunni allies mix it up with our Shia allies (who are already over-stretched by all the fighting they're involved in with their Shia co-religionist enemies), we'll no doubt be able to call in that "insurance policy of future reasonable behavior" Al cited, because we'll have "hooked these groups close", and brought them "under a degree of control". Please.

This is the triumph of tactics over strategy, because strategic thinking was knocked out of this game a long time ago.

To recap: "The conflict is already here, and we can’t stop it." But we can't bear to be left out, so we'll join it.

Posted by Dave L | September 5, 2007 1:21 PM

This isn't about Iraq at all. It's about Iran. The US needs a bulwark against Iran. The Sunni tribes provide at least some of that bulwark. We're arming them so that they can fight the Shia. Otherwise, Iran will eventually control Iraq and its Shia fighters. That puts the entire Arabian penninsula into play. Very bad. We've screwed it up so badly that we now have no choice but to recognize that regional conflict is inevitable.

Posted by AJR | September 5, 2007 1:59 PM

Dave, I agree that we should be extricating ourselves from the fight, not joining it. I’m just saying that we should try to ensure that it’s a fair fight before we leave. Especially since our policy of disarming the Iraqi army and police and trying to build them up again from scratch had the effect of disarming the moderate Sunnis, while arming the Shia religious militias. Just leaving the Sunnis to be slaughtered and subjugated would probably be the worst possible outcome, both from a moral and strategic standpoint.

Posted by RC | September 5, 2007 2:06 PM

What was the alternative? Letting al qaida continue to salughter peeople in Anbar? Or are we back to the "if we leave, there will be miraculous peace" argument?

Posted by Dave | September 5, 2007 3:53 PM

So we're arming the Sunnis in order to keep Iran at bay. Why did we get rid of Saddam again?

Posted by Elrod | September 5, 2007 9:57 PM