A Time of Testing
May 08, 2003
stratfor.biz
Summary
The end of the campaign in Iraq has moved the United States into a new period, in which its ensuing strategy is not fully defined. The process of definition will entail a period of probing into a series of critical nations, in an attempt both to shape their behavior and evaluate the levels of their compliance. During this time -- which will last many months -- it will appear that the United States is engaged in a gratuitous irritation of countries in the region. In fact, Washington will be probing these states to shape and understand the dynamics within each country -- and then will define its own strategy.
Analysis
With the end of the Iraq campaign, things have become complicated for the United States. This is not because the campaign was militarily trying, nor because the occupation of Iraq is proving an insuperable problem. Rather, the U.S. administration built the probability of postwar complexity into its original strategy. The Iraq campaign was designed to redefine the regional psychology and to create new strategic opportunities for the United States. A new psychology certainly is emerging, but redefining regional sensibilities does not proceed with mathematical precision. Since strategic opportunities are intimately connected with this psychological redefinition, follow-on operations will take time to emerge.
As in all wars, the conclusion of a major campaign frequently creates a sense that leaders and commanders are not altogether certain about what comes next. After the North African or Solomons campaigns in World War II, the United States had to define the follow-on operations. This required clarity as to the ultimate politico-military goal, an assessment of enemy capabilities and intentions, the generation of plans and the deployment of appropriate forces. It therefore appeared to the untrained eye to be a period of indecision, discord and uncertainty. That view wasn't unreasonable, but it was unjust. The consequences of the campaign had to be carefully evaluated before the rest of the war could be prosecuted.
The goal of this war is the defeat of al Qaeda and any possible successor organization. The U.S. strategy is one of indirection: Rather than simply assault al Qaeda directly -- a very difficult task -- Washington seeks to force nations in which al Qaeda operates to take effective steps against the network, even if that creates substantial political problems for the governments of these countries. For the United States to achieve this, these countries have to be more afraid of the consequences of not suppressing al Qaeda and its sympathizers than they are of the consequences of suppressing them.
The Iraq campaign did two things. First, it reinforced the perception of the extraordinary political power of the United States, and it drove home the fact that the United States was prepared to use that power and could not be restrained by diplomatic means. Second, the U.S. military occupation of Iraq has created an inescapable military reality. U.S. military power wasn't an abstract; it could be seen with binoculars from Syrian or Iranian border posts.
In a region where the United States was known for its indecisive or inconclusive use of military power, the past month has been a period in which the countries bordering Iraq -- and outside the region -- including allies and enemies of the United States, have had to re-evaluate their understandings of how the world works.
Syria is an excellent example. Historically, Syria has regarded itself as fairly well-insulated from U.S. power. Damascus operated on the knowledge that, in the end, it neither needed much nor had much to fear from the United States. In the closing days of the war, Syria behaved in its traditional manner, then suddenly was brought face to face with the fact that defiance of the United States could become catastrophic. Washington had demonstrated both the will and the capacity to act decisively, a fact that Damascus did not absorb instantly. The learning curve was steep, but at least some dimensions of the Syrian leadership's behavior -- certainly its rhetoric -- shifted.
But rhetoric is not reality. Everyone in the region is re-evaluating their understanding of U.S. capabilities and intentions. Once they have a firm understanding of that, they will craft their own strategies and responses. Then Washington will have to evaluate the new strategies and behaviors and craft a response. All of this sounds much neater and more process-based than it actually is or will appear to be. Nevertheless, that is what is going on. At this moment, the United States is waiting to see how others will behave.
Four countries are of particular interest to Washington:
The U.S. administration has regarded Saudi Arabia as a major source of funding and support for al Qaeda. That funding did not come from the Saudi government but from individuals, many of them influential.
The United States viewed Riyadh as unwilling to act decisively or to deal with the problem comprehensively. One of the issues was the presence of U.S. forces in the kingdom after the 1991 Persian Gulf War: The Saudi argument was that the troops' presence fed anti-American sentiment, making it much harder for authorities to control al Qaeda support. Following the Iraq campaign, U.S. defense officials announced that most of their forces would withdraw from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. view is that now that the prime irritant has been removed, Riyadh will be in a better position to act decisively against al Qaeda. The United States will be evaluating Saudi behavior in the aftermath of the withdrawal.
Iran is in many ways the origin of modern, assertive radical Islam, combining republican institutions with strict interpretation of Islamic law. The current government has been around for only about a quarter of a century, and it is governing a complex society. Iran has been an empire and has survived many empires over thousands of years. Iranian society knows how to bend to the inevitable, but it also understands that the inevitable is an enormously complex concept.
Tehran has signaled that it is prepared to cooperate with Washington. There is little doubt that Iranian clerics and leaders have enormous influence over Iraqi Shiites and that they -- if they chose -- could create chaos in parts of Iraq. They haven't done so, and the United States, for its part, has included Shiite supporters of Iran in the new governmental structures that are being created.
At the same time, there are two fundamental issues that divide the United States and Iran. One is the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which Washington wants stopped and which Tehran both denies it has and refuses to end. A second issue is the degree of transparency Iran will provide to U.S. intelligence on its handling of al Qaeda. It is not a matter of Iranian willingness to control al Qaeda operations; it is a matter of U.S. confidence in Iranian actions and Tehran's concern that too much conciliation on this score will return Iran to the conditions that existed prior to Khomeini's revolution. This, coupled with internal politics, limits Iran's cooperation. Officials in Washington will have to decide whether Iran's cooperation meets U.S. needs.
Syria was the first to confront U.S. power in the waning days of the Iraq war. We expect that part of the Syrian decision-making process had to do with a genuine failure to understand how the war was going, and part of it had to do with signaling the United States to back off -- this in addition to several private business transactions between Syrian officials and Iraqis leaving the country. The Syrian government very quickly understood the reality and adjusted.
Syria's fundamental concern is retaining control of Lebanon, which it claims both by its perceived historical right and as a critical economic prize. For Damascus, the Palestinians, Israelis and al Qaeda are meaningless compared to Lebanon. The United States already has sent hints that it wants to re-examine the status of Lebanon, particularly if Damascus is unable to assure Washington that Lebanon will not be used as a base of operations for radical Islamists. The United States will have to judge Syrian actions -- but of all of the countries in the region, for all its complexities, Syria has the simplest interests and is most likely to comply.
Pakistan is not in the Iraqi theater of operations. It represents a theater in its own right, along with Afghanistan. It is also the single most critical country in the U.S. war on al Qaeda. Al Qaeda continues to operate in Pakistan, along with a host of other radical Islamist groups. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf certainly is trying to cooperate with the United States, but his ability to do so to the extent that the United States wants and still survive is questionable. Nevertheless, from the U.S. point of view, the war on al Qaeda will not be over until the Pakistani problem is settled. Pressure now is being placed on Pakistan, in the wake of Iraq, to increase its cooperation. Washington will have to decide how hard to push and when to let go.
The point of this exercise is simply to understand the roots of the current strategic diffusion. In each of these countries, decisions are being made and policies are being developed that take into account the new politico-military reality that the United States has created. At the same time, these countries are trying to define and protect their own fundamental national and political interests. These four countries -- and others not discussed -- all are unclear themselves as to what their policies will be. In part, this is because they are not completely certain how far the United States is prepared to go with its war.
The United States, therefore, is now in the process of asserting pressure in all directions. There are two reasons for this. First, the U.S. administration wants to establish the persistence of U.S. policy -- to assert that Iraq was not an isolated incident. Second, it wants to shape the decision-making processes in these countries. Therefore, there is ongoing, low-grade friction between the United States and countries in the region. There appears to be something gratuitous in American behavior, but that isn't the case. The pressure has a clearly defined purpose: to elicit changes that Washington regards as fundamental to its national interest.
The next crisis will occur if and when a country -- probably one of the above-mentioned four -- puts itself in a position where it either resists U.S. pressure or is incapable for internal political reasons to submit to it. For example, Iran simply might not be prepared to allow the United States to oversee its nuclear program, or Pakistan might be unable to increase operations against al Qaeda.
When the U.S. administration reaches a point (sometime several months down the line) when it has found the limits of what it can achieve with low-level friction, it will make its next strategic decision over which country will be the next target -- first, of massive politico-military threat, and if that fails, of direct military intervention. We can expect, therefore, a period of low-level irritation that will look like relative quiescence -- as opposed to all-out war -- in American operations, but in fact it will be a period of probing and analysis. Out of that will grow the decisions that will shape the next stage.
In a sense, the United States is in the same position now that it faced in January 2002, after Taliban forces retreated from Afghan cities. The campaign was complete, and the issue was what the next step would be. The focus on Iraq really did not come into full force until that summer. This may take longer, since it is altogether possible that Washington can achieve its ends without a military campaign in most or all of these cases. The period of probing could be extended, but it will not be permanent. The United States will proceed with various further operations, largely without noticeable capitulation on all substantial issues by these four and other countries.
In other words, there are innings left to be played. |
