British journalist Jonathan Steele has been getting a good deal of coverage for Defeat, his account of the Iraq war (if nothing else, he deserves a prize for finding an even pithier title for an Iraq book than Fiasco by Thomas Ricks). While I’m all for picking over the bones of US and UK decision-making in 2002-3, I grow more and more concerned that this sort of retrospective analysis distracts readers/voters from wondering what we should actually do in Iraq now, and what options may open up after the U.S. elections. The absence of serious debate about Iraq among the Democrats – and most Republicans bar McCain – was well-described by Noah Feldman in the NYT Magazine earlier this month:
What if the United States were at war during a presidential election — and none of the candidates wanted to talk about it? Iraq has become the great disappearing issue of the early primary season, and if nothing fundamental changes on the ground there — a probable result of current policy — the war may disappear even more completely in the new year.The reasons for Iraq’s political eclipse begin with the unfortunate fact that candidates strive to create feel-good associations, and the war is a certain downer. The film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months (”In the Valley of Elah,” anyone?), and the political image makers have apparently taken note.
“How true,” I thought on reading this over a pint of the excellent Brooklyn Winter Ale in, suitably, Brooklyn. But, after lingering by Lake Geneva for a week, I’m struck by the extent to which Iraq is now simply off the European agenda in a way that is still quite hard to imagine in the US. And that is worrying because, as Feldman acutely observes in the American context, the glimmer of stability offered by the Surge means that there is a real debate to be had about whether it’s time for another go at statebuilding in Iraq:
According to one view, the United States cannot shape the local players into a cohesive order regardless of Iraq’s level of killing. The best we can do is calm the worst of the violence, leave and let the Iraqis sort things out for themselves.An alternative view presumes that state-building has failed so far in Iraq because of the violence. Once the bloodletting has decreased and there are credible negotiators on all sides, a stable Iraq is just barely possible, even if it will never be an exemplar of democracy.
Now, that’s mainly an issue for the Iraqis and Americans, but I don’t think that EU governments (whether pro- or anti-war back in the day) can really ignore it either. As I’ve just pointed out in a new piece that’s both available from EU Observer and on the ECFR website, a renewed decline in Iraq’s fortunes would undo European efforts on Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, maybe even Palestine – so ignoring it isn’t really an option. (Charles Grant has just made a similar argument in a new CER pamphlet). Here’s the nub of my argument, which could be summed up as “start thinking really hard”:
Rather than passively wait to see who’ll be driving Middle East policy in Washington in 2009, EU governments should use the next twelve months as an opportunity to iron out their differences and develop new options on Iraq.Whoever enters the White House next year, the incoming administration will probably make charting a new course on Iraq the central priority for their first hundred days. If the EU is still trying to work out where it stands at that stage, it will find it’s irrelevant soon enough. If it has a package of ideas about what it can contribute – even if it is relatively limited – its initiative is likely to be welcomed, getting relations with the new administration off to a good start.To start outlining what such a package should look like, European governments should now agree to put their differences to one side, and appoint a senior political figure (or maybe two, one originally against the war, one for it) to lead a small “EU Options Team”: a brains-trust of European officials and experts on Iraq, tasked with laying out a menu of potential plans for coordinated EU policies from 2009 on.To ensure that these aren’t just abstract term papers, the Team should have a cell based in Iraq – in part modelled on the EU police and civilian planning teams that have been developing policy in Kosovo since 2006. And to give the Team a sense of immediate relevance, its political chief(s) should also be directly involved in trying to sort out the dysfunctions of EU aid to Iraq.
To be quite honest, even this level of hatchet-burying and deep thinking may still be beyond the EU, but hope springs eternal. My argument is also meant to be an invitation for those who still think we have some obligations and interests in Iraq to offer new ideas – if you go the ECFR version of the piece, you can add a comment, and I’d be a happy junior public intellectual if any Dashboard readers had constructive thoughts to add there.
