realclearworld Newsletters: Mideast Memo
With the American political media once again abuzz over the possibility of Vice President Joe Biden entering the 2016 presidential race, foreign policy is very likely to take center stage. And for the vice president, one issue stands out among the rest: Iraq.
In 2006, along with Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, then-Senator Biden penned an op-ed making the case for a ethnically-based decentralization plan of Iraq; an alternative system modeled after the former Yugoslavia. Biden and Gelb:
"The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group -- Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab -- room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact."
The plan was embraced by some, but wrongly interpreted by others to be an argument for partition. Senator Biden took criticism from some foreign policy circles for the plan, so much so that he and Gelb felt compelled to publish an addendum the following year in the Washington Post:
"A federal Iraq is a united Iraq but one in which power devolves to regional governments, with a limited central government responsible for common concerns such as protecting borders and distributing oil revenue."
As with all things, appropriate context is required. In early 2006 sectarian violence was spiking across Iraq, and the country was in the early stages of an insurgency the effects of which are felt to this day. American approval of the war had plummeted, and the term ‘surge' was not yet a staple of the Washington lexicon. Iraq was and remains a country rife with problems and short on solutions, and in the minds of many U.S. policymakers and experts, it was time to think outside of the proverbial box.
We at the Mideast Memo usually prefer to leave the daily horserace to our colleagues over at RealClearPolitics, but with Mr. Biden's possible entry into the 2016 race come the ghosts of policy proposals past. The New York Times' Peter Baker explains:
"If Mr. Biden were to join the Democratic presidential race for the 2016 election, the contest between him and Mrs. Clinton would in effect put on a public stage the struggles waged in the secrecy of the Situation Room. More so than on domestic policy, where their differences are narrower, the two former compatriots reflect the competing voices that have shaped Mr. Obama's approach to the world and the poles that continue to divide the Democratic policy on national security."
[...]
"Put together, the disagreements underscore a broader philosophical schism over America's role in the world a dozen years after the invasion of Iraq."
Biden would be joining the race, however, at an equally perilous point in Mideast history, and with the sovereignty and continuity of the Iraqi state once again in question.
Meanwhile, the candidate leading the Republican pack is also bucking his party's line on Iraq. Reflecting perhaps the fissures on foreign policy in their own party, Republican candidates Jeb Bush and Donald Trump sparred over the weekend over national security and the merits of the 2003 Iraq invasion. In response to a Sunday morning talk show appearance by Gov. Bush, Mr. Trump, the eccentric billionaire and television personality, took to Twitter in retaliation:
"Jeb, why did your brother attack and destabalize [sic] the Middle East by attacking Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction? Bad info?"
That the Republican frontrunner would so boldly pin blame for the region's current woes on the 43rd president is a bit of a departure from the standard party playbook, and suggests that Americans might be in store for a much broader debate in 2016 on Iraq and American policy in the Middle East.
"Republicans know it's not popular to be for Obama's foreign policy, but they're nervous about how far to go. They're trying to find out where the public is, and trying to take the public's pulse," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, another 2016 candidate, told The New Yorker. "They're trying to figure out where the market is -- where's the sweet spot?"
Around the Region
Putin's partition plan. Unlike Vice President Biden's 2006 proposal for Iraq, there is little ambiguity to be found in Russian President Vladimir Putin's Syria strategy, argues Mideast analyst Hussein Ibish:
"Russia's unspoken but unmistakable message is that Moscow is trying one -- and perhaps the only -- way of ending the conflict by means of a Lebanese-style segregation of Syria into zones controlled by rival militias. To Washington's perennial concern in any Middle Eastern imbroglio, ‘Tell me how this ends,' Moscow responds: The Syrian conflict will be ‘resolved' on Russia's terms, even if Mr. Assad proves dispensable to the Kremlin in the long run."
The European wild card. Al-Monitor's Julian Pecquet reports on the challenges U.S. policymakers face in keeping the Western sanctions regime against Iran intact:
"For the most part, European and other countries outside the United States will be allowed to resume foreign trade with Iran on everything from oil and gas to financial services, transportation and related sectors -- about 95% of Iran's external economic activity, according to former State Department sanctions official Richard Nephew. The United States, however, will retain the ability to crack down on a number of foreign transactions with Iran, fueling the current debate over how far to turn the screws.
"Because the U.S. list of entities sanctioned for non-nuclear activities is longer than Europe's, the Treasury Department has some flexibility in how difficult it wants to make life for European firms that opt to do business with redlined Iranian firms. In addition, Congress is all but certain to try to slap new sanctions on Iran for its support for its terrorist proxies, notably in Syria."
The guns of Yemen. With so many rival sects and militias now fighting in Yemen, security in cities and villages has rapidly deteriorated. Reuters' Angus McDowall reports from Marib:
"Yemenis often say there are three guns for every person, a boast that has become an urgent concern in a country where the United Nations says the humanitarian situation is ‘critical'.
"The precise number of weapons is impossible to verify, but the profusion of arms on display in Marib makes the three-to-one claim look not far off.
[...]
"Wars in the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s and last decade, the involvement of a range of regional and international powers, the constant fighting in nearby countries like Somalia and the disintegration of the army have facilitated the influx of arms."
The security situation in the Saudi-controlled port city of Aden, now the de facto capital of the ousted Yemeni government, has become so precarious, for example, that the Arab coalition has imported Sudanese forces to help police the city's streets.
A mystery in Istanbul. And finally, BuzzFeed News correspondent Borzou Daragahi reports on the strange and sudden death of Jacqueline Sutton at Turkey's Ataturk Airport:
"According to an account disseminated in multiple Turkish press outlets, [Sutton] arrived at Ataturk Airport on a Turkish Airlines flight at shortly before 10pm on Saturday, missed her connecting flight to the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, became distraught at not being able to afford a new ticket and hung herself in the bathroom, where her body was reportedly found by several Russian tourists.
"But friends say the Turkish reports, attributed to no sources, don't add up. Sutton has been working in Iraq and other conflict zones for decades, surviving through tough circumstances in places like Kabul and Baghdad. Why would she get distraught over missing a flight, a common occurrence for those relying on air transport to get in and out of conflict zones? Why wouldn't she have a credit card to purchase another ticket, or the huge wad of hundred-dollar bills war correspondents and aid workers routinely take with them on assignments to countries with no cash machines? And how could she have hung herself undetected in one of Ataturk's women's bathrooms, typically swarming with customers and attendants?"
Feedback
Questions, comments, or complaints? Feel free to send us an email, or reach out on Twitter @kevinbsullivan.
