Daniel Serwer and Sean Kane offer some advice on how to manage Iraq:
For the time being, the 50,000 U.S. troops still provide some check on Iran's influence in Iraq as well as insurance against the unlikely events of a military coup or the outbreak of Arab-Kurdish conflict in Iraq's volatile north. But with these troops scheduled to withdraw, the U.S. should focus on putting substance in the new paradigm of a civilian-led mission by looking for complementary diplomatic tools to guarantee the continuation of Iraq's nascent democracy. It is far more important to get this right than to get a government right away.The United States has in the past extended implicit guarantees to help end conflicts and maintain stability in other countries. Washington witnessed the signing of the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia and joined the Peace Implementation Council, thus underwriting the Dayton constitution. In order not to arouse understandable Iraqi concerns on sovereignty, the approach in Iraq would necessarily be more subtle. Instead, ways have to be found to condition things Iraqis want from the U.S. on Iraqi maintenance of a representative democracy that satisfies the existential concerns of all the major communities.
There is such a mechanism available. It is based on a bi-lateral U.S.-Iraqi agreement which was an Iraqi idea and which Iraqis requested of the U.S. during the 2008 troop drawdown negotiations. The Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) aims to lay the foundation for a long-term U.S.-Iraqi relationship in the economic, cultural, political, and security arenas. Iraqis value the SFA as a means for attracting badly needed U.S. private investment and know-how.
The authors believe that the SFA can be leveraged to build a stable Iraq without obligating the U.S. to pick specific political winners and losers or mediate between Maliki and Allawi, but what's worrisome is the nagging question of what the U.S. does if this doesn't work.
Despite our best laid plans, violence could once again convulse Iraq. As the Commander of U.S. Special Forces told the Washington Post, extremists groups, while not as potent, are still alive and kicking in Iraq. So what is the Obama administration's view of Iraq's importance to U.S. security? Is the country so vital that we will not, under any circumstances, allow it to descend back into a violent maelstrom? Or is it more important to remove U.S. troops from the country, come what may?
