Mesopotamian muddle.

• Author: Ross, Dennis
• Position: From Arabia to Zion - Essay

RARELY HAVE we faced more daunting problems in the Middle East and seemed farther away from resolving or even defusing them. There is surely no more important foreign-policy priority than finding ways to ameliorate the challenges and conflicts that confront us in the region. This won't be done with slogans or declarations or even "surges" that are disconnected from a clear political and diplomatic strategy; nor will it be done with international meetings that are not thoroughly prepared and choreographed in advance.

America's interests in the Middle East can be advanced with the application of real statecraft--not a hallmark of the Bush Administration. Good statecraft marries objectives and means. It depends on reality-based, not faith-based, assessments that make it possible to shape tangible objectives while also identifying the means available for achieving them.

Often our own available means will be insufficient to achieve the objectives we set for ourselves; we need to persuade others to join us. That means framing our objectives in ways others are likely to accept. It is far easier to get friends and non-friends, who have substantial influence or leverage over others, to cooperate when they agree with the objectives we have established. Working intensively to forge productive partnerships is a central task of statecraft.

Certainly, even the best application of statecraft will not always succeed in achieving the objectives we believe to be important. This does not mean giving up our desire to transform unacceptable realities, but it requires us to understand those realities before we try to change them.

So how well are we doing now in terms of matching our objectives and means in the Middle East today? And, if the answer is not well, what do we need to do differently?

Containment in Iraq?

FROM THE outset in Iraq, we have never matched our objectives to our means. If our objective was destroying Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, we are lucky that Iraq did not have any because we did not have sufficient troops either to seize control of all the suspected WMD sites or to prevent those materials from being smuggled out of the country. Alternatively, if the objective was stabilizing Iraq and engaging in nation-building to promote democracy, we also failed to marshal sufficient forces to carry out the essential tasks of restoring law and order and making sure that we had a monopoly on the means of violence.

What produced this mismatch between our objectives and means was a faith-based assessment that led the administration to conclude that everything would neatly fall into place when Saddam Hussein lost power. And when everything fell apart the United States and what remained of the Iraqi government lacked the strategy, the plan or the means to deal with it.

What about today? Last January, the president adopted a new approach, sending a "surge" of U.S. forces to Iraq. This was designed to create an environment in which Iraqi leaders across sectarian divides would feel secure enough to forge a new national compact. In other words, the surge has not been an objective, but a tool designed to make a political solution in Iraq possible. And that is the rub: The surge is based on the premise that Iraqi leaders aren't forging political compromises because they aren't secure enough to do so. Unfortunately, once again, we have an assessment that is basically flawed.

As bad as it is in Iraq, it could be far worse; American forces keep the lid on total chaos and make it safe enough for everyone in Iraq--and its neighbors as well--to avoid hard choices. This has to change. The prospect of a U.S. withdrawal gives us leverage with both Iraqis and the neighboring states, whose stake in containing the conflict in Iraq will go up exponentially after American troops leave--after all, the alternative is likely to suck them into an ongoing and increasingly expensive conflict.

I would redefine our objective in Iraq. We cannot produce ideal results, but we must focus on preventing the worst from taking place. Containment should thus be our essential objective now. We want to keep instability in Iraq from spilling over and affecting the region. We also want to prevent jihadists from being able to cross easily into and out of Iraq.

Nonetheless, we need to see containment for what it is: the best of the bad options available. We have to focus on what is possible, not what we would most prefer. I believe that Iraq eventually will end up having a central government with limited powers, provinces with extensive autonomy and some means for sharing revenues--much like the soft partition advocated by Les Gelb and Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE). (1) It can either reach such an outcome through exhaustion or through a managed transition. At this point, I am afraid civil war is more likely than cooperation, so I would position us to limit the consequences of civil war even while trying to head it off. This leads me to a set of policy recommendations that would employ three parallel sets of interlocking negotiations, which I term "containment plus."

First, since President Bush is already saying the surge is permitting us to draw down forces, go a step further and announce (after privately informing the Maliki government) that we will negotiate a timetable for our withdrawal with the Iraqi government. This gives Iraqis input into the timing and shape of the withdrawal and doesn't simply impose it on them. It tells them withdrawal is coming, but in a way that does not necessarily leave them in the lurch or leave them with the sole option of building up their militias. It also gives us the leverage to orchestrate the withdrawal in a way (regarding timing, location and materiel support) that benefits those who are most responsive to us.

Second, set a date for convening a national reconciliation conference and for the first time mandate that it will not disband until agreement has been reached. President Bush and General Petraeus have now essentially redefined the objective of the surge to be local empowerment rather than political compromise in Baghdad. The participants in this conference should, thus, be from the local areas and Baghdad. Use the conference to create what presently does not exist--namely, a political bridge between the local areas and the center. Success in this conference would mean greater flexibility in our approach to the withdrawal timetable, while a stalemated conference would produce the opposite. To increase the prospects of the conference working, we will need to play a mediating role first in setting the agenda of the conference and then in its ongoing negotiations.

Finally, under the aegis of the regional conference on Iraq, we should try to broker understandings among Iraq's neighbors on how they can contain the conflict. I have my doubts about whether these states will ever agree on what they want for Iraq, but they might agree on what they fear about it. From that...