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Obama Won the Foreign-Policy Questions
McCain was vague and contradicted himself during the debate.
Fred Kaplan
posted Oct. 7, 2008
She Still Knows Nothing
Palin proved that she can speak in complete sentences, but not that she understands anything about foreign policy.
Fred Kaplan
posted Oct. 2, 2008
Obama Wins on Foreign Policy
He stood up to McCain, and he had a more realistic vision of the world.
Fred Kaplan
posted Sept. 27, 2008
Afghanistan Isn't Like Iraq
Why a "surge" won't work there.
Fred Kaplan
posted Sept. 19, 2008
The Sorrow and the Pity
When it comes to foreign policy, Sarah Palin doesn't know what she's talking about.
Fred Kaplan
posted Sept. 12, 2008
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war stories: Military analysis.

What Can We Still Achieve in Iraq?Reconciliation's off the table, but there are other decent ways out.

By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, at 6:30 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

2) The one area of Iraq that shows signs of stability and long-term promise is the Kurdish area in the north. This area enjoyed a decade of peace after the 1991 Gulf War, thanks to a clause of the cease-fire that guaranteed U.S. air supremacy to keep Saddam Hussein's military out. The Kurds are also the most Western-leaning ethnic group, and their security force, the peshmerga, is capable of self-defense.

It is worth the deployment of some U.S. troops to keep the Kurdish territories somewhat peaceful and secure. However, this means protecting the Kurds from themselves as well as from others. For instance, in exchange for U.S. protection, they should stop striking their own deals with foreign oil companies (which could only accelerate the dissolution of Iraq) and stop stirring trouble on the Turkish border (that could well incite a Turkish invasion, which not even the peshmerga could withstand).

3) Turkey is hardly the only border state that might feel compelled, out of self-defense or self-aggrandizement, to send its troops into an increasingly turbulent Iraq. If sectarian conflict escalates into all-out civil war, it's easy to imagine Iran going in—far more overtly than at present—to defend the Shiites; or Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan going in to bolster the Sunnis; or some states, transnational movements, or armed bandits moving into the vacuum to grab what's up for grabbing.

The United States alone cannot repair all the gashes within Iraq or maintain the various loosely stitched fixes. This would be true if the surge could be sustained for years on end; it is all the more true since the five extra brigades that constituted the surge are due to leave by this summer, and neither the U.S. Army nor the Marine Corps has any troops ready to replace them.

And, right now, the United States is pretty much alone. The "coalition of the willing," long a paltry and motley crew, is on the verge of folding. Britain, its second-largest contingent, is pulling out half of its 5,000 troops. Most of the other 23 non-U.S. members contribute only a few hundred, in some cases a few dozen, personnel; many of them are forbidden to engage in combat; most of the others are incapable of doing so.

To keep the sectarian violence from spreading beyond Iraq's borders, and possibly to keep it from doing too much harm within, the United States has no choice but to embark on a campaign of creative regional diplomacy involving all the states of the region.

I do not mean to attach lofty ambitions to a diplomatic track, at least for now. Conditions are not ripe for, nor does any outside force have the clout to impose, a regional peace or "grand bargain." The purpose of this diplomacy, in the short run, would be simply to try to keep crises from erupting or escalating, to put a check on expansionist impulses.

There could be, for instance, a permanent "contact group," so all the players have a forum for talking and meeting—a set of names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and so forth. (This can stimulate a lot of additional diplomatic activity if, until then, some of the countries have no relations at all.) This group could set up something like a "hot line," a means for heads of state to talk the moment a crisis breaks out or seems on the verge of getting out of control. Such a forum would probably have to involve more than talk. Collective-defense arrangements would have to be worked out, to deter and contain aggression. What these arrangements might be can't be outlined ahead of time; they would have to meet the approval of all participants, and so would grow out of the contact group. The United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union, NATO, and who knows what all else, might, in some guise or another, be involved.

It's unclear how much U.S. military presence this arrangement, or the pursuit of the other two interests, might require. But it's not enough for Congress or a presidential candidate to say how many troops should stay in Iraq for how long. They also have to decide just what those troops will be doing.

Obviously, none of these steps will be taken until after the 2008 elections. But something like this will have to happen, unless the next president wants to perpetuate an infinite deadlock or precipitate even deeper disaster.