Iraq Forever

I really meant to attend this GW event with Stephen Biddle, Nora Bensahel, and Larry Corb on Friday but I wound up unable to make it. Marc Lynch was there and recounts Biddle's argument that the surge might work: "if everything goes right and if the US continues to 'hit the lottery' with the spread of local ceasefires and none of a dozen different spoilers happens, then a patchwork of local ceasefires between heavily armed, mistrustful communities could possibly hold if and only if the US keeps 80,000-100,000 troops in Iraq for the next twenty to thirty years."

I guess I agree with that. To me, it sounds like a very good reason to leave. I'm not sure where Biddle stands on that, since he's usually tended to stay a bit cagey as to what policy recommendations he would make. At any it seems clear to me that even the "optimistic" scenarios for Iraq now amount to promising to bear huge costs for a smallish chance at an unclear payoff.

Comments

Biddle made a great argument in Foreign Affairs that the war in Iraq was a communal civil war where 3 seperate ethnic groups were fighting each other for control of the country. This is back when the Bush administration was denying it was a civil war, and even before the "surge".

Biddle has argued, if memory serves, that there is no easy road in Iraq. There are so many internal problems with ethnic cleavages that thinking there will be any easy fix is wishful thinking. He was also part of the Iraq roundtable which, if you haven't read yet, shame on you. I can provide links if necessary.

Posted by freddiemac | November 19, 2007 9:09 AM

Korb, not Corb

Posted by Larry Korb | November 19, 2007 9:31 AM

That's a rather large "if" to start with.

Posted by ET | November 19, 2007 9:31 AM

Which is classic Kahneman/Tversky thinking - people accept very large continuing costs so as not to finally accept that a project has failed.

It's the obverse of normal risk aversion - loss aversion.

Posted by Andrew | November 19, 2007 9:34 AM

What a lottery that turned out to be!

Posted by shecky | November 19, 2007 9:37 AM

Not really "unclear", Matt: if you postulate that a permanent US presence in Iraq has been the basic goal all along. One, btw, which the Bush Administration has dissembled on for five+ years. That some sort of "residual" force is going to remain based in Iraq on Iraq territory looks to have been a long-term goal of OIF from the get-go. But, of course, like most of the lies that this Administration has based its ME policy on, it was never articulated openly.

Posted by Jay C | November 19, 2007 9:38 AM

It really is necessary to specify costs to whom and payoff to whom when evaluating or commenting on different proposals. It is a fundamental mistake repeated constantly that there is value in somehow evaluating a rough aggregate of costs to the "United States" or payoff to the "United States."

Posted by Doug | November 19, 2007 10:09 AM

I've never understood what we "win" when we "win" in Iraq.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 19, 2007 10:09 AM

Only illiterate teen-aged amnesiacs living on a desert island should imagine that we won't, and shouldn't, have a more or less "permanent" presence in Iraq.

We were dragged into a war there in 1991 mainly because the Persian Gulf has been a region of vital US interests at least since Carter made that official policy in the late Seventies, and probably since WWII. Minus direct involvement previously, the situation there spiraled down from the development of a militarized fascist police state, through routine hostility and aggression against Israel, to further wars of aggression and genocide costing several million lives and a couple of world recessions featuring the development and use of wmd's, the rocketing supertankers and the torching oilfields, to a standoff with the UN Security Council that undermined prospects of a rational set of enforceable international norms like nothing since the fascist aggressions of the '30's that caused the collapse of the League of Nations, and WWII.

If we pull out now, we'll only have to invade again later at much higher cost. Those who think we should just declare defeat and run away are markers for a national psychosis--candidates they support should, and probably will be, treated like the ebola virus.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 19, 2007 10:16 AM

Unless he's changed his mind, as of a few months ago, he was pretty clear about what he thought:

"If I were in the Senate and I had to cast the vote and I couldn’t be an academic, I would vote for outright withdrawal."

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13807/biddle.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F2603%2Fstephen_biddle

Posted by Chunche | November 19, 2007 10:17 AM

Unless he's changed his mind, as of a few months ago, he was pretty clear about what he thought:

"If I were in the Senate and I had to cast the vote and I couldn’t be an academic, I would vote for outright withdrawal."

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13807/biddle.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F2603%2Fstephen_biddle

Posted by Chunche | November 19, 2007 10:18 AM

Unless he's changed his mind, as of a few months ago, he was pretty clear about what he thought:

"If I were in the Senate and I had to cast the vote and I couldn’t be an academic, I would vote for outright withdrawal."

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13807/biddle.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F2603%2Fstephen_biddle

Posted by Chunche | November 19, 2007 10:19 AM

Count me among the illiterate teenage amnesiacs living on desert islands, if such is the consequence of disagreeing with raving maniac Robert Powell.

Posted by El Cid | November 19, 2007 10:23 AM

"a national psychosis"

seriously?

Posted by cha cha cha | November 19, 2007 10:26 AM

I think 20-30 year prediction period optimistic; U.S. would last 10 years at most. Under a 80,000-100,000 troop level scenario, the U.S. will continue to take casualties -- road-side bombs, rockets, mortars, snipers, etc. My estimate: 100 to 200 deaths/year plus 5 to 10 times that wounded. Cost of maintaining this troop level will be substantial: $20 to 40 billion/year minimum. In return, U.S. gets a degree of hegemony over the Persian Gulf --large bases in Iraq from which the U.S. can protect its strategic in the region. The question is, is the return worth the continued cost.

Posted by Emrys | November 19, 2007 10:28 AM

"to further wars of aggression and genocide costing several million lives"

I missed that part. Damn MSM.

Posted by BongHitForJesus | November 19, 2007 10:33 AM

Maybe Powell exchanged a tether to reality for some Carlysle & Halliburton stock. His willingness for other taxpayers to spend trillions to share his delusions is evidence of a different kind of psychosis.

Posted by tom | November 19, 2007 10:36 AM

The uneducated part of Robert Powell's claim is that there are a lot of alternative energy sources that become pretty desirable if you add the occupation of Iraq at, what $100B/year? to the price of oil.

Posted by mpowell | November 19, 2007 10:36 AM

Thank you Emrys for exemplifying why it is an error to treat the costs and benefits as accruing to the "U.S." It does not actually play out that way. Individual soldiers and families bear the cost of death and injury, the 20-40 billion year "cost" is also largely revenue to someone else. What the "U.S." gets is not enjoyed by those who bear the costs. Any benefit for yourself is worth a cost borne by someone else.

Posted by Doug | November 19, 2007 10:39 AM

Jay C has it right. The real goal of invading Iraq was to implement the PNAC program. The cowboys-and-indians idea the PNAC neocons had was to project American imperial power into the region from a base that wouldn't rely on the kindness of obviously illegitimate and probably doomed monarchs in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. So, instead of waiting for a civil war to catch us in the middle, we went looking for one.

Posted by lovable liberal | November 19, 2007 10:41 AM

20-30 years, really? Not only is that a terrible argument for staying (if that is what it's intended to be), I doubt that it's even true. Can we really predict what the situation will be like in 10 years well enough to know that, by that time, some kind of stability will not have been achieved that will allow us to remove our troops. If it hasn't happened in ten(!) years, why on earth should we expect it to happen in twenty or thirty? This whole business is madness.

Posted by John | November 19, 2007 10:43 AM

Anyone who isn't cowering in his underwear inside a refrigerator fruit drawer clearly understands that world security demands a continued occupation of Iraq for a minimum of 250 to 300 years, although the traitorous and Al Qa'ida loving Democrats are desperately trying to rush us out in a mere generation.

Posted by El Cid | November 19, 2007 10:50 AM

"but I wound up unable to make it."

Really Matt?

C'mon. You stayed home to watch the Simpsons! ;)

Posted by wwz | November 19, 2007 10:52 AM

So we don't even keep an embassy in Iraq?

If we do keep an embassy, and we will, the usual security detachment will not be sufficient and relying on local forces to provide effective security like we can in most other countries in the region, is just not realistic. We will have to have a sizable force remaining behind, much smaller footprint than now, but sizable. Cold hard facts. You can't really blame anyone but the people who either fumbled into or devised this quagmire. More like those Chinese handcuffs. You can never pull out of those.

Posted by Cold Hard Facts | November 19, 2007 11:21 AM

Cousin mp is right--as soon as we don't depend on petro from the Persian Gulf to have a world economy, we can come home. Send me an e-mail when we get within half a century of that.

El Cid-don't worry. You're already counted.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 19, 2007 11:26 AM

Seriously, El Cid.

They can't get people from state to go there now. Do you want to work in the embassy after the troops leave? Are you counting on peace to break out after we leave?

Posted by Cold Hard Facts | November 19, 2007 11:29 AM

To Robert Powell:

If by "we" you mean the country whose troops you seem to theorize are protecting access to that oil, "we" largely don't depend on oil from the Persian Gulf. "We" largely depend on oil from outside that region.

The counties most dependent on Persian Gulf supplies long ago decided this project of "ours" was an insanity. Their lack of commitment to your theory will, I'm certain, do nothing to change your mind about it though.

Posted by Earth | November 19, 2007 12:08 PM

Robert Powell, it would appear that you are fine with spending $100-200 billion / year in order to protect the ME petroleum imports valued at about $100 billion / year (at $100 / barrel.) Ignoring the human costs, as if you could do so in a war/occupation, that borders on insane particularly when scientists like Dr. Christopher Somerville indicate that we could move to a completely biofuels based economy with $250 billion per year.

Posted by z adura | November 19, 2007 12:15 PM

"If we pull out now, we'll only have to invade again later at much higher cost."

Robert Powell,

Why would we have to do this? So far in Iraq, we have accomplished our goals that actually bear on our national security. We overthrew Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, and have succeeded in turning the Sunni Iraqis against Al Qaeda. Moreover, there is no longer a militaristic, expansionist dictator in Bagdhad intent on destroying Israel, and there is no chance of Saddam returning to power to fill that niche (since we had our nominal allies the Shiites execute him). In addition, the current government in Bagdhad is not hostile to the US; it's just simply friendlier to the Iranians than we are comfortable with.

The problem that still remains in Iraq is the sectarian civil war between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. We really don't have a direct national security stake in the outcome of this civil war, since we have succeeded in turning the Sunnis against Al Qaeda. Therefore, the chance of Iraq becoming an Al Qaeda haven like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is nil.

There are concerns about averting genocide, averting a wider regional war between Sunni and Shia in the Middle East, and preventing a regime hostile to the US from taking power in Bagdhad, but these are concerns that are best addressed through diplomacy, not through an indefinite military occupation involving our troops. In fact, the longer our resented indefinite military occupation takes, the more likely it is that a hostilie regime will take power in Bagdhad, in the aftermath of the sectarian civil war. In addition, by tying up our troops in Iraq, we are neglecting the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban are in a position to regain power and provide Al Qaeda with a safe haven again. (Imagine that, two hostile regimes coming from one wrongheaded strategy.)

Therefore, there is no logic behind your assertion that if we end our occupation of Iraq now, then we will have to reinvade at higher cost later. If anything, if we stay in Iraq indefinitely, we will have to escalate our involvement there at an exponentially rising cost, in terms of money, materials, and men. Morevoer, we will to reinvade AFGHANISTAN, at much higher cost.

I ask you then, what national security concern justifies our indefinite military involvement in Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan? Why should we involve our troops in a sectarian civil war, the way Hapsburg Spain did in the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants residing in the German states?

Posted by eltoro | November 19, 2007 12:19 PM

No politician will come out publicly for a commitment to stay in Iraq for twenty to thirty years - well, except for dead ending ravers like the various mongers that pepper these comment threads about Iraq, a small minority of hyperaggressive inbreds. Instead, it is all in incremental committments. Which is why it is important to keep trying to cut the Bush administration off at the pass and keep pressing the Clinton campaign now to reverse course. This relatively more peaceful period is a perfect window in which to make the case: the commitment is over. Everything is done that the Americans can do. Do not spend 200 billion more dollars, do not distribute more arms to all and sundry. Withdraw now. It makes a lot of sense. I think the strong moral case if for the US to spend 200 billion dollars in aid in Iraq to rebuild the infrastructure, but the U.S. has never acted as a very credible moral agent on the international stage, and I can't see it doing so now.
The one danger in withdrawal now is that it would allow the warmongers more leaway to promote a war against Iran. But that is a manageable risk, one that will be offset if - as becomes increasingly likely - the U.S. economy goes into recession next year. As with Vietnam, the major driver in taking down badly thought out overseas expeditions is the sudden desire that sweeps across the American population when the economy goes down for their tax money to be spend on, well, helping Americans.

Posted by roger | November 19, 2007 12:20 PM

If we pull out now, we'll only have to invade again later at much higher cost.

And why is that? Because in 5 years, Iraq--which has virtually no infrastructure, almost no educated class remaining, and absolutely no central government whatsoever--will be fielding jet fighters and battle tanks instead of IEDs?

as soon as we don't depend on petro from the Persian Gulf to have a world economy, we can come home. Send me an e-mail when we get within half a century of that.

Are we going to get there as long as we keep throwing hundreds of billions of dollars to the winds by trying to pacify a three-way civil war? News flash: there are countries that are close to oil independence, and they didn't get there by squandering their national might on invading Mid East countries.

routine hostility and aggression against Israel

Thank goodness our conquest of Iraq has provided peace and stability for Israel.

featuring the development and use of wmd's

Which Saddam Hussein did all by himself, with no help at all from the United States.

Minus direct involvement previously, the situation there spiraled down from the development of a militarized fascist police state

Militarized fascist police states are bad! Now, let's all go out and spend all our treasury on armed conquest, suspend Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, torture, and indefinite dentention, and listen in on citizen communications without warrants. You know, to stop the terrorists from instituting militarized fascist policee states.

Posted by Notorious P.A.T. | November 19, 2007 12:23 PM

>Cousin mp is right--as soon as we don't depend on petro from the Persian Gulf to have a world economy, we can come home. Send me an e-mail when we get within half a century of that.

50 years, eh? Sure...what's your e-mail address? By my calculations we're already there, at least for Iraq. Using current estimates of Iraqi recoverable oil reserves (~112,000,000,000 barrels), estimated recovery rate (~65%) and estimated daily recovery rate (~4,000,000 barrels) the reserves should last 112,000,000,000 * .65 / 4,000,000) / 365.25 = ~49.8 years. By that time Iraq should have depleted its oil reserves to the point where it is no longer economical to extract the remaining hydrocarbons. If you doubt my numbers I have URLs for the citations.

Posted by clem | November 19, 2007 12:26 PM

It doesn't seem that maintaining 100,000 soldiers in Iraq would cost $100 billion a year: that's $1 million per soldier per year.

Posted by y81 | November 19, 2007 12:29 PM

y81, you don't put 100,000 soldiers in the field without 5 people behind the lines managing logistics, infrastructure and support. You also have to remember that the machinery of our military - and there is plenty of it - costs an incredible amount to operate and maintain.

Posted by z adura | November 19, 2007 12:42 PM

As always, we're stuck with the problem that nobody in charge has bothered to define what "success" in Iraq means.

Right now, the surge is apparently a "success" because the levels of violence are only 40% above what they were in 2005.

As long as we're chasing this ever changing definition of success we'll never fundamentally achieve anything.

If we spend a trillion dollars to end up with another stable dictatorship, will it have been worth the cost?

Posted by Jinchi | November 19, 2007 1:12 PM

It doesn't seem that maintaining 100,000 soldiers in Iraq would cost $100 billion a year: that's $1 million per soldier per year.

I think that's the kind of logic Paul Wolfowitz used when he claimed the whole war would cost less than $50 billion.

Posted by Jinchi | November 19, 2007 1:21 PM

At any it seems clear to me that even the "optimistic" scenarios for Iraq now amount to promising to bear huge costs for a smallish chance at an unclear payoff.

That has always been the scenario - including from the time before the invasion.

Posted by eRobin | November 19, 2007 2:22 PM

El Cid said, "Anyone who isn't cowering in his underwear inside a refrigerator fruit drawer clearly understands that world security demands a continued occupation of Iraq for a minimum of 250 to 300 years"

Way to go you America-hating liberal -- announcing a surrender date!

Posted by The Fool | November 19, 2007 2:34 PM

"...News flash: there are countries that are close to oil independence, and they didn't get there by squandering their national might on invading Mid East countries."

Superb!

Posted by kafka | November 19, 2007 4:26 PM

The Fool: You will note I said 250-300 years minimum. I think that we should set no maximum. If we must plan for a 10,000 year occupation in the medium term, so be it. Our manliness hangs in the balance.

Posted by El Cid | November 19, 2007 5:58 PM

Robert Powell thinks we invaded Iraq because John Bolton wanted to rescue the reputation of the U.N. (I kid you not). (He also thinks race had nothing to do with American presidential politics from 1968-1980...)

On Iraq, the strategy of working with Sunnis rather than against them has seemed to quell the operatic levels of violence somewhat, but of course now the Shi'a controlled government is quite nervous about the concomitant increase in Sunni power.

In short, damned if we do and damned if we don't, time to get the hell out of there.

Matt Y was an idiot for thinking it was a good idea to go in in the first place, but he reversed himself pretty quick...

Posted by mmathog | November 19, 2007 10:34 PM

"estimated daily recovery rate (~4,000,000 barrels"

Yeah, IF they stop blowing everything up. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, it's under two million barrels a day and not looking to go any higher soon. So that means the oil will last until the end of the century.

Of course, by then nanotech will obsolete ME oil by allowing extraction of shale oil and the sort of dirty oil Venezuela has in reserve which is estimated to be five times that of Saudi Arabia (except that Chavez hates the US so we have to invade them, too, to get it.) Or maybe obsolete oil altogether.

Actually, by then, nanotech will obsolete US troops - at least - maybe the hard way.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 19, 2007 11:53 PM

eltoro--I agree with most of what you say in your post above-we have in fact "largely accomplished our goals that bear on...national security." And I certainly don't advocate long-term, big-footprint occupation. Given that we have paid a much higher price than we would have needed to given competent leadership, we should be able to manage the situation better with decent planning in the future. But we can't do it by remote control.

A few points:

--oil is a fungible commodity. Whether we get most of the petro from the Persian Gulf or not, major disruptions there can, as they have in the past, cause major international recessions which affect us and our trading partners directly.

--perhaps the main lesson from WWII is that international organizations charged with maintaining some kind of decent international norms require a functional enforcement mechanism. John Bolton is beside the point.

--we have a major national interest in not being seen to have been defeated in a crucial geostrategic location by a few thousand nutters.

Finally, hi 'hog! I never said "race had nothing to do with... politics...". I do say that, given the heavy voting for obvious non-racists like Carter and Clinton in the South, Dems don't have to write off the region if they nominate moderates. Claiming the South is inevitably Republican because of racism is just making excuses for silly mistakes by the Democrats over the last few decades.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 3:17 AM

Mr. Powell, oil is fungible in the sense that it is a mutually compatible substitute for products that we can produce in the U.S. (biofuels) or could engineer away through higher fuel economy standards, either of which would be a less expensive and have other positive economic and environmental externalities.

If our sole purpose for remaining in Iraq is to avoid being "defeated," then "we" - assuming you are an American - lose every day by dribs and drabs.

Posted by z adura | November 20, 2007 7:33 AM

"Only illiterate teen-aged amnesiacs living on a desert island should imagine that we won't, and shouldn't, have a more or less "permanent" presence in Iraq.

posted by Robert Powell"

Robert Powell, the 'illiterate teen-aged amnesiac" is you. And your 'history' and 'analysis' is deeply flawed.

Posted by cal1942 | November 20, 2007 8:21 AM

zadura--I'm all for it. We should reduce our dependency on oil yesterday. Still, we have to actually do it rather than just talk about it. I would like to see a war surtax on petroleum-based transportation fuels to speed up the process.

Being forced to beat ourselves in Iraq by a handful of terrorists and a panicked, ill-informed public would be a big problem, but it isn't any more the only reason we need to bring this thing to a reasonable conclusion than petroleum is. The world needs a mechanism for resisting defiance of the Security Council by states that launch wars of aggression, use and proliferate wmd's, and commit genocide. That's how we got into this, and running away isn't going to solve any of our current problems. But it will create plenty of new ones.

cal1942--I would be glad to have any "flaws" in my history or analysis pointed out. I've got an open mind, and am always willing to learn something new. Since you don't do that, I can only assume that you're just uncomfortable with information that doesn't fit with your unexamined basic assumptions. It's a common problem around here.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 9:30 AM

Mr. Powell, you are being disingenuous. It can be reasonably asserted that Hussein was complying with Security Council Resolution 1441 prior to our invasion. We made a unilateral decision to invade notwithstanding. If you are trying to speak in favor of an international body with authority to use force, it exists - and can be overlooked and undercut should the right collection of nations choose to overlook it. That mere act of stupidity will in all probability cost the U.S. around $2 trillion. That still doesn't speak to the issue of what we will do about our current occupation, which you have ably overlooked by nothing but hope that a small footprint occupation will work.

Posted by z adura | November 20, 2007 12:35 PM

z adura-- what disingenuous? Iraq's obligation, as spelled out in crystal clear language, was to "disarm transparently and pro-actively". Hans Blix laboriously drew Saddam a diagram of exactly what he needed to do to avoid the invasion, held his hand through the process, and in his final report unequivocally described how Iraq had refused to comply. One doesn't need to speculate about this--it's all in the written record.

Accounting issues are problematic--we have to factor in the potential costs of an ongoing, largely unrestrained Saddam Hussein regime following the inevitable collapse of sanctions following a US surrender in 2003, among other things. In terms of "the occupation", that ended some time ago. We are currently in Iraq under a UN mandate, at the request of the freely-elected Iraqi government. Let's see what "works" as things progress, shall we?

Posted by Robert Powell | November 20, 2007 5:04 PM