JOURNAL: Gored by the Horns of a Dilemma

The US military is on the horns of a dilemma in Iraq. Here's why:

The top level goal of the US military's COIN (counter-insurgency) doctrine, as described in the much ballyhooed manual, is to maximize the legitimacy of the host government. Everything in the manual's doctrine is slaved to that goal. So, under this rubric, Iraqi PM Maliki's attempt to take control of Basra would be completely supported (although there might be some dispute over tactics/methods/timing).

However, the US military isn't following its published COIN doctrine. Instead, it's following the dictates of open source counter-insurgency. This doctrine, still unarticulated and very far from officially condoned by the US military (policy lags theory and theory lags practice), has a top level goal of stability, even if it at the expense of the host government's legitimacy. To achieve stability, deals or truces are made with non-state groups (formed around strong primary loyalties like tribalism, religion, ethnicity, clan, and neighborhood). The benefits of these deals and truces are clear, if they reduce violence they get a degree of autonomy and in some cases money, weapons, and training. As we have seen over the last year, it works.

Open source counter-insurgency can work indefinitely if the host government remains passive (although at the cost of a badly functioning hollow state and lots of money). However, if the host government calls the bluff (the gap between "policy" and "practice") and begins to roll back the autonomy awarded to competitive non-state groups, the entire effort will shatter. Maliki is doing this now with his excursion into Basra. As a result, US policy in Iraq is now being gored by the horns of a dilemma. The US appears to be unable to decide which bad option to select: support Maliki and the country collapses into an orgy of violence - or - let him fail and the Iraqi government loses its remaining legitimacy and cohesion.

Comments

[Fabius Maximus]

Great analysis! Which way do you expect the US government to go?

[John Robb]

Here's what I believe the non-cooperative centers of gravity in this situation are doing:

There are two centers of gravity on the US side.

Petraeus and his team would like to stay out of it as long as the Mahdi army stays in their box (to keep violence down and maintain a positive spin on the surge).

The White House is likely to support Maliki since they still believe in a classic concept of victory.

Maliki is betting that if he gets into too much trouble, he will be seen as too big to fail and the US will have to come to his support.

Everyone is hoping that Sadr might provide them an out by going on the offensive. This would allow the US and Maliki to paint him as the bad actor to domestic and global audiences. It would enable the US military to bleed his militias and force him into a weaker position. However, Sadr isn't complying and will likely stay defensive, which is a much stronger position both politically and militarily.

[Fabius Maximus]

This is a very open source war. News stories about the offensive, but nobody here noticed. Tactical surprise, at least vs. the American public.

Iraqi Troops May Move to Reclaim Basra’s Port
New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ
March 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/middleeast/13basra.htm?_r=1&oref=slogin

The final battle for Basra is near, says Iraqi general
The Independent
By Kim Sengupta in Basra
20 March 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-final-battle-for-basra-is-near-says-iraqi-general-798409.html

[adam]

John,

The British Army, who actually have responsibility for Basra, have accepted reality and are not planning to send reinforcements. British forces are providing some limited medical support and air surveillance. You'll note the word surveillance, what we are emphatically not doing is dropping explosives onto Basra. The US, on the other hand, is.

Of course whether bombing Basra to pieces, in order to save it, in best Vietnam flashback style is a good idea is another matter entirely.

The official MOD paper is a beauty of prevarication and dissembling. I simply adored reading it: "The operation was planned, implemented, and executed by the Iraqis. We will only intervene if requested by the Iraqis". In short its your problem, you caused it, we're just waiting to go home.

Meanwhile allied Badr Corps and Iraqi Army forces are now attacking Sadrist neighbourhoods (anyone else love the irony of paramilitaries and the army attacking paramilitaries on the grounds that they're paramilitaries, or it is just me?). Around 30,000 troops have been sent, because this is all the the government have that are loyal to them. Interestingly they are all Shi'ite, none of the units sent are Sunni or Kurdish.

This is now a straight Shi'ite civil war, with the winner being the one to dominate Iraq. On the one side is the nationalist (and democrat, because he'll win) al-Sadr, on the other the Iranian backed ISCI (Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) who want an Iraqi version of Iran.

Neither of these groups is one that the US wants to win, and it appears that its going to be stuck with one or other of them for the next few decades.

The particular beauty of this is that the US air support is going in on the side of the religious extremists, who worked for many years for Iran... There are times when I love the Middle East, its just so.... unexpected.

[mittelwerk]

i don't get the pessimism here. open-source COIN, what we're doing, is what we should be doing; far fewer americans are dying, and the situation in iraq is clearly stabilizing by degree.

why does one option, even a bad one, have to be "better" than the other? why does there have to be a "solution" in the old sense? increasing complexity in iraq isn't a good thing for our enemies, either, namely, iran. our policy should be increasingly to manipulate these situations and not "solve" them.

isn't this the "brave new world" you speak of?

[adam]

Mittelwerk,

The particular beauty of this is that whichever side wins the fire fights this week, Iraq loses. Its possible that the US/SCIRI will win, which means that Sadr loses, which means that the Iraqi government will be less independent of Iran. Or the Sadrists will win, which means that the US has been humiliated (again) by the people of Iraq. In neither case is this good for the Iraqi people. I suppose option 3 is a negotiated cease-fire, but this just means we'll be due for more shooty-bang later.

The fact that fewer Americans are dying is closely related to the Sadrist ceasefire. Its rather nicely graphed out in a number of DOD publications that casualties fell only after the cease-fire, not The Surge (TM). You'll note that the cease-fire has ceased, after the US and her allies attacked the Sadrists, and that the US cannot send troops to assist in Basra (or has not sent to the politically critical point of Iraq). In short the cease-fire has gone, but the US cannot risk her troops. That's indicative of a lot of things.

Its also worth noting that a lot more civilians in Iraq have been dying since The Surge (TM), its just that Americans largely don't care about the people that they are nominally there to protect. The US, you'll recall, does not count dead Iraqis and neither do the Iraqi government, if the dead are from the wrong group.

You'll note we have exact numbers for US dead, and vast ranges for Iraqis - statistically the most likely number is around 600k; equal to around 2.5 million Americans. I know the US far-right argues that this number is too high, but they really don't know what they are talking about.

Secondly the situation in Iraq is clearly not stabilising. There is no political reconciliation between Kurdish, Sunni or Shi'ite groups. In fact, right now, we have elements of the Iraqi government (as both sides are part of the government) and the majority Shi'ite group (both sides are part of the majority Shi'ite) going toe-to-toe in the most vital port that Iraq has - the one that all the oil money goes out of.

If that's stability then, to use an American example, 1st Bull Run was a prelude to some serious negotiation.

"why does there have to be a "solution" in the old sense?"

A good question. The reason that there has to be a solution is that the US is spending at least $150bn a year on Iraq, and cannot continue to do so indefinitely. All of this money is borrowed from Europe, China and the Middle East so the people of the US will be paying for this war well into their grand-kids lives. The US spends on the rest of her military around another $700bn a year. Can the US do that for another 4 years? Maybe... But the dollar is already in free-fall. Sooner or later the people making the loans are going to put some pretty hefty interest rates onto it. All of the money spent to date will not be available for the US to use to afford to do things like research, building factories, or developing new industries. This means that China will be able to, but the US will not.

This is, to the British, a well understood situation. After 1945 we were broke, flat broke and we're saying to you that a war had better be worth it. Iraq isn't, so sooner or later the US will leave. The question is simply how much cash you spend before leaving. Its rather like a Las Vegas casino, you're going to lose, its just a question of whether its a few free chips, or the kids college fund. Not really an analogy that works in the UK, we don't have college funds as such.

Look, war is expensive. It took the UK until 2005 or so to finish paying for WW2, a mere matter of some 60 years. We're now in the process of paying off the Korean war, after that comes a whole bunch of relatively cheap colonial wars, and then the Falklands. I reckon we'll have reached paying for Iraq by the time I die. And the UK spends on Iraq around $5bn a year, barely 1/30th what the US does.

In short sooner or later the money will run out for the US troops. That's why there has to be a solution. If the US cannot find it, then someone else will - and it won't be a solution the US will like.

" increasing complexity in iraq isn't a good thing for our enemies, either, namely, iran."

First, since when was Iran the US enemy in Iraq? Despite all the hoo-ha from the politicians no-one has clearly shown that Iran (as opposed to Iranian-backed Iraqis) has done anything against the US in Iraq.

What Iran did do, very early on, and very cleverly, was send back the huge numbers of Iranian exiles that it had supported for decades. These exiles became the Iraqi government (they were called SCIRI, and are now called ISCI, but I tend to call them SCIRI because of habit. They are the ones that the US is supporting). A quick note on numbers, the US managed to scrape up about 150 exiles to support its invasion, the Iranians sent - in one day - 15,000 Badr Corps people, plus additional exiles over the next few weeks.

For pure comedy one day they'll do a film about the US backed Iraqi exiles training in Hungary - the US planned for 3,000 gung-ho hard asses dedicated to overthrowing Saddam. What they got was 60-100 middle aged, chain-smoking, men who were there for the money and the promise of political power after the inevitable US victory (the US claims 600, by adding in a group of Kurds from Northern Iraq, who never went to Hungary, even so its still less than 3,000). Like many things in Iraq, its comedy gold. SCIRI on the other hand had a whole bunch of people who had spent 18 years preparing for that moment.

Iran, in reality, has some very simple foreign policy objectives in Iraq - a Shi'ite state, bordering the Kuwaiti and Saudi oilfields, with a government that supports them. This has already been achieved, and has been since the 2005 elections. Broadly speaking Iran wants the status quo to continue.

Al-Sadr represents an Iraqi nationalist response to the Iranian position - his family didn't run to Iran - they stayed, opposed Sadaam, and died. Its little noted in the US that Al-Sadr has buried his father in law, his father and 2 brothers as part of the fight against Saddam, yet never once did he betray his country by fleeing to Iran (SCIRI was founded to fight the Iraqis in the 1980s). Its a point he regularly uses to wind up the SCIRI people.

As a result Sadr represents a form of independence for Iraq from Iran, whilst SCIRI does not. Naturally the US supports SCIRI - they have very nice suits and speak good English.

In short Iranian and US interests in Iraq are currently completely aligned. That's the problem, the US is frightened by the Iranians.

Second, Iran speaks the language of the area, and her president is able to visit the Green Zone without being mortared. You work out which one has more control of the area - Americans or Iranians. The Iranians seem to be surfing the chaos quite well.

"our policy should be increasingly to manipulate these situations and not "solve" them."

First you need to understand something before you can manipulate it. Story: US diplomat goes to visit the Kurds, and he wants the to rename their Peshmerga militia, who at that stage are busy bumping off Iraqis in Kirkuk. OK says the Kurdish leader, we'll call them counter-terrorist units and Mountain Rangers. Relieved, the diplomat hops onto his helicopter and flies off. The Kurdish word for Counter Terrorist Units and Mountain Rangers? Peshmerga - so not a lot of change there.

Of course had the diplomat had anyone to hand that knew Kurdish that might have gone more the way that the US wanted. Or it might not.

[mittelwerk]

adam -

thanks for an insightful and detailed response.

five years on, i think ground-level awareness and intel have grown, and the US military is finally starting to think in iraq. and the best acknowledgment of this is that they are using different rule sets for different participants -- which seems to be the iraqi way. you bribe sunnis (the patrimonial business class) and you play footsie with shia ideology, letting them decide the proper balance between civil conflict and the need for public support.

i think the contradictory and self-serving character of recent US actions is what's best about them. i don't understand how you can criticize the US holding back for maliki/al-sadr: that's a genuine iraqi family fight, between determinable opponents. j. robb has written repeatedly about the issue of organizational thresholds that gangsters like al-sadr are going to face as they deal with the problem of winning. it is the very rare guerrilla org that is able to make the transition to bureaucracy -- contingent on overwhelming public support.

(btw, as of sunday morning, al-sadr has backed down and wants a truce. not a bad outcome at all -- let the badr org and the mahdi army establish their floating rate for murder.)

as an american, i think american political life has been degraded past resuscitation. when an american says they want the troops home NOW -- that's a cultural opinion, not based on any reasoned political belief whatsoever. likewise with the idea that we shouldn't be "bribing" iraqis, and that the war can't "go on for 30 years." why not? if there are people who choose to sign on the dotted line and a way to pay them (don't ask) and even a nominal advantage to be had, why not? "the american": a pacifist in their head -- in reality the ultimate beneficiary of the latest most brutal form of economic imperialism in history. (the form "behind" such wars in the first place!)

sadly, none of the possible incoming presidents will provide what is needed most -- a neo-realist foreign policy. i never thought i'd miss someone like brent scowcroft, but we'd do well to remember what it was like to not base our concept of friend or enemy on moral considerations.

of course, if we'd followed their advice, we'd have left hussein in power and wouldn't be in iraq at all.

[Barry]

John: "Open source counter-insurgency can work indefinitely if the host government remains passive (although at the cost of a badly functioning hollow state and lots of money). "

Depends on how one counts the money. If it's straight arithmetic, it costs nothing (i.e., less than the amount that the Pentagon can't account for in any given year). If one uses contractor arithmetic, then it costs a lot - dollars and dollars and dollars going to undeserving foreigners, rather than into the pockets of deserving administration cronies.