Joe Biden - The Only One to Offer a Detailed Plan? Posted by David Shorr

Sen. Joe Biden has offered a plan for Iraq, I want to acknowledge at the outset. He has looked deeply into the situation, made an analysis, and offered a proposal for a partition of the country into a loose federation. He and Les Gelb have made an important contribution to the debate, no question. But the extravagant claims as to the plan's uniqueness, and some of the associated swooning, have skewed the issue of what constitutes a plan, and what constitutes a viable solution.

I write about this tonight because the New York Times' Helene Cooper has a flattering Week in Review piece today about the Biden(-Gelb) plan. Cooper gives Biden credit for his prescience because Iraqis are migrating (not always voluntarily) into areas controlled by militias of their own sectarian or kinship groups. But it's a significant leap to claim that these migration patterns show that partition is the clear answer. The way I see it, Sen. Biden steps into the same trap that snared us in the first place: misjudging our ability to leverage the outcome in Iraq from the outside.

In fact, the plan itself as well as the political claim staked on it both display the same sort of hubris...

Senator Biden has branded himself as the man a with a plan. In fact, Helene Cooper's piece confirms his success in this. Let me cite a few lines from a speech last month at the School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, so we can see what Biden claims in his own words:

Every Democrat agrees that there is no purely military solution for Iraq. We need a political settlement that brings stability to Iraq. Despite that broad agreement, only two people have offered a detailed plan to produce such a settlement. I’m one of them. The other is Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations.

As I said above, Biden and Gelb are to be commended in their contribution to the Iraq discourse. More politicians and opinion leaders should be exchanging more ideas -- and should have been doing long before now, probably myself included. But, only two people?! Really?!

The way Biden scores it, I gather, the only way to qualify as presenting a plan is to specify 'what we'd leave behind,' as Biden sometimes puts it. The problem with the partition plan, though, is that we can't make it happen. The dysfunctional system of government that's in place now was created by the constitution that the US pushed through -- on 'Washington time.' It bore no organic relationship to the realities of Iraqi politics and society.

Ah, you might say, 'but the partition is the organic result of the reality that's emerging now.' But it isn't. Yes people are seeking safety with their own kind and moving into ever more homogeneous areas. But that pattern is a far cry from a specific system of governmental authorities or clearly demarcated political boundaries. I'm not convinced that a partition deal is waiting to be made, or that it can be reached on a timeline that squares with the drawdown of the US troop presence.

By the way, I am keenly aware of the analogy to Bosnia. The shamefully weak response to the carnage in Bosnia was a formative political experience for me. A lot of things could and should have been done differently. First and foremost, not waiting more than three years to confront Milosevic militarily. But the Bosnian partition cannot be extracted from the context that the fierce civil war had reached (or tragically been allowed to reach) the point of a fairly static control of territory by the various sides, upon which the Dayton Accords could be based. [Before someone points out the summer 2005 battlefield successes of the Croats and Bosnian Muslims, I would highlight the existence of fairly clear battle lines.]

Writing this post has force me to think through my own resistance to the partition plan, and in this regard, I found Senator Biden's analysis helpful. He lays out four alternative stable outcomes: a stronger US occupation, return of a strongman leader, partition, or a bloodletting that exhausts itself. I don't believe the alternative to a formal political settlement is simply allowing a bloodbath to occur. I think the smarter course is to work with the Iraqi sides, and Iraq's neighbors to keep the conlict from escalating or becoming too bloody. For the record, I support the Center for American Progress "Strategic Reset," which for my money qualifies as a plan.

Comments

[Cal]

This sounds a lot like Brookings' "soft partition" plan. O'Hanlon's idea is that we'll divide the country, let the Saudis help the Sunnis and the UN help the Shiites (in order to counter Iran's influence).

I couldn't agree with you more that this is totally unrealistic. When you lose a war you can't dictate terms.

[Dan Kervick]

David, I agree with much of the spirit of the CAP plan, especially its emphasis on recognizing the fragmentation that has already occurred in Iraq, and its understanding of the limits on the capacity of the United States and other foreign powers to determine the shape of a final resolution of Iraq's civil strife.

But I believe the report does not give sufficient weight to the role of the US-Iran standoff in exacerbating the Iraqi conflict, and spreading violence inside the country. It discusses Iran only in a very limited way, and gives far to much credence - in my view - to the sense of crisis over the "Iran threat" that has been manufactured by Washington, Jerusalem and Riyadh.

I also don't believe the idea of a redeployment to Kurdistan is a constructive step.

It it not the role of the US or anyone else outside Iraq either to take Iraq apart or to put it back together. We are all still suffering with the results of past instances of know-it-all statesmen pre-judging end results, making promises, dividing up other people's territories and drawing stupid lines on a map. In this, I agree with you about the unrealistic nature of the Biden/Gelb plan.

The approach should be to take Iraq as it actually exists now, which is a highly fragmented and war-torn place, where the only effective governance that actually exists is local, and where visions of a restored national unity look increasingly fanciful. The immediate goal is to pacify the country, and damp down the violence, so that the Iraqi people can then decide for themselves what sort of future they want, in something approaching a deliberative fashion. We shouldn't create new divisions based on the plans of officials in Washington; but we do need to recognize those divisions that already exist, and work with them, rather than pretending the divisions don't exist, pretending that the "government" in Baghdad is the actual Government of Iraq and pursuing quixotic dreams of a reunified country.

As I said, I don't think the CAP plan takes sufficient notice of the degree to which the conflict inside Iraq is exacerbated and perpetuated by antagonisms and conflicting agendas involving foreign powers, including Iraq's neighbors. More specifically, I don't believe Iraq can be pacified until we get the country out of the regional crossfire of the foolishly counterproductive US-Iran rivalry, in which some US regional allies are also participants.

We have Israelis, Americans and Saudis all using parts of Iraq to fight a proxy war against Iran, with the aim of either weakening, stressing or even toppling the Iranian government. This is turning Iraq into an international battleground for other people's wars, and promoting factionalism and rivalry based on different choices Iraqi parties make to line up with one or another foreign power, and compete for that power's material and financial support against local rivals who make their appeal to a competing foreign power.

The most important factor in a resolution of the Iraq conflict is a credible evidence of a commitment by the major external players to a common approach. The warring parties inside Iraq need to understand what assistance they can and can't expect from potential allies outside the country. Right now, it is the great uncertainty about the fluid international situation, and the continued divisions and hostilities among the key foreign players, that is most responsible for the continued fighting inside the country. The jostling of the competing factions is based on chancy expectations about whether the US is or is not going to leave, and when; about whether or not the Americans and the Saudis will or will not continue to fight to exclude Iran from a significant role in Iraq; about whether the Saudis will or will not permit volunteers for their own country to rush in to fight in a civil war following the US exist; and about who is or is not going to get the money and guns they need to organize themselves into a viable political community.

To begin moving in a better direction, we need highly visible, high level US talks with Iran, the Saudis and Iraq's other neighbors, followed by a credible joint declaration and plan from that group underwritten by the UN, and then followed by substantial and highly visible efforts at real coordination and cooperation. This would send a strong signal to those inside the country that the days of playing one external power off against another, or of hoping for some foreign savior to come in and help one particular community dominate the others, are over.

What is called for is the internationalization of what is clearly an acute global problem. That's why the US needs to make it clear it is getting out. Nobody else will want to participate, or see the need to do so, so long as the US is holding the bag. But once it is clear that the US is leaving, the natural global interest in what is clearly a global problem - insecurity in the Gulf region - and the prospects of a security vacuum, will prompt the international community to organize itself toward a solution.

Several of the redeployment plans seem to imagine the US playing some sort of peacekeeping role in a final settlement. But the US cannot play a peacekeeping role in Iraq. That is because the US is itself a combatant in the war. To end a war and stabilize a country through peacekeeping, you first need to get the combatants off the battlefield. The US is a military target in Iraq, and as long as it stays its forces will be a provocation to conflict, no matter where they are deployed.

Prior to the commitment of any other foreign forces into the country for pacification or peace keeping, something else would have to committed: money - lots of it. We need to see conditional, multilateral commitments of cash and other aid for reconstruction and development in exchange for verifiable political behavior and results inside Iraq. If the pot is sweet enough, then those who want a piece of it will do what is necessary to put extremists in the back seat. Providing money is something the US can do, but others need to step up as well.

The administration of stabilization and reconstruction should be organized at the level of provincial governments, or other sub-regional administrative units - even cities, or neighborhoods or "wards" in cities like Baghdad. The goal should be to enable and encourage local groups to establish order in their own particular areas. The preliminary establishment of administrative units should be worked out with significant consultation with the Iraqis themselves, but the final call on provisional administrative units will probably require participation from the international community, clearly headed by the regional working group.

This is not a partition. The provisional division into administrative units should not involve any pre-decisions on partition, regionalism, federalism or unified government as a final status. But any future movement in the direction of a unified state is to be determined by discussions among representatives of the administrative units, who will have the ability to deliver their people in any agreements, rather than discussions among the weak and highly unrepresentative "government" in Baghdad.

[David Shorr]

I accept all of these points. Thanks, Dan.

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