Barry Rubin is not optomistic:
The Region: Limits of US influence
By BARRY RUBIN
So what should the US do regarding Iraq? There is no satisfactory solution, but the best option depends on a simple, unpleasant but all-important premise: The US will be unable to control events in Iraq once it transfers power next month, for several reasons.
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Knowing the Americans are on their way out, radical groups and terrorists will escalate attacks so they can pretend they forced them to leave.
Even aside from this problem, however long the US stays in Iraq, tries to build democracy, arrests extremists, kills terrorists, or helps write laws is of no importance. These things will not last.
As long as US forces are there and running the country, Iraqi factions and gunmen will target America. Once the Americans are gone they will fight a power struggle among themselves.
A year ago, on May 27, 2003, I wrote in this space that the situation in Iraq was a disaster for many reasons: Inability to establish local governments or regional authorities, to get the economy going in the face of so much sabotage and violence, to end infighting between the State and Defense departments; the dissolution of Iraq's army, and – most important – the inability to choose a designated, powerful figure who would attract support and create a real governmental infrastructure.
Last November, I asked: "Why should Iraqis view [the] continued [US] presence as benefiting them? They face violent threats to their daily existence, which also sabotage prospects for higher living standards or democracy. At the same time, continued American presence offends nationalistic and Muslim sensibilities, allowing opposition movements to mobilize more support.
"The longer the United States keeps [all the ambitious individuals, interest groups and movements that want to be running the country] from getting their hands on power and loot the more likely they will consider America their enemy."
These points still hold true. It is, sadly, too late to salvage the original American goals for building democracy – if they were ever possible in the first place. Indeed, almost unnoticed, US policy itself has changed. The ambitious talk about democratizing the Middle East and pushing regimes toward change has gone.
What remains is a declaratory, pro-democracy policy – the US just says it favors reform but only promotes it in speeches, public-relations efforts, and perhaps some future small-scale money and training aid to liberal forces.
There will be no US military action against Syria or Iran, or political-economic pressure on Saudi Arabia or Egypt to change their societies or way of governing.
WHAT THEN can the US do in Iraq? The basic answer is: Turn over power during the next 12 months and leave. Aside from maintaining close relations with the Kurds, to ensure their area stays relatively stable and democratic, and giving aid as an incentive to any moderate forces to be friendly, that will about mark the limit of its influence.
Consider these points:
Any elected or appointed regime in Iraq will face tremendous opposition, to the point of civil war. Even the best coalition representing the broadest possible number of interest groups with the most honest possible officials is not going to be able to govern the country.
Does the US want to become a participant in an Iraqi civil war between Islamists and nationalists, Sunnis and Shi'ites, and among ambitious would-be tyrants?
Does it want to be the sponsor of a regime that will be overthrown and thus blamed by the victors?
Does it want to be the sponsor of a regime that survives and wins that war by ruthless repression and by killing tens of thousands of people?
No matter how the US leaves Iraq, radical Shi'ite Islamists, al-Qaida terrorists, and pro-Saddam forces will claim they threw it out. The only thing that will shut them up is the victorious side wiping them out.
Presumably Iraq's next real ruler will be a military strongman or a nationalist Shi'ite-dominated regime with some Islamic flavoring. Its attitude toward the US will depend on how much mileage the rulers think they can get by blaming America for all their problems compared to how much American help they will need for reconstruction and help against their own enemies.
The alternative is an ongoing war in which radicals unite against the US presence while American taxpayers finance an attempt to rebuild an economy for extremists to inherit.
As long as Iraq's next rulers have not been decided through trial by combat, too many people will have an incentive to wreck the country, prevent any restoration of order, hate the Americans, and murder average Iraqi citizens.
Historians will spend decades sorting out what went wrong. Some will say this outcome was inevitable, others that the US should have managed things differently, still others that too many Iraqis wanted extremism, and that only a silent minority preferred a real democratic and moderate state.
Iraq will still be an example to the Arab world which may benefit US interests, though with a message far different from the one the invasion was intended to teach: Push the US too hard, it will overthrow you, and your society will dissolve into a massive internal conflict.
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