Here are some possible lessons to be learned from that experience.
1. Don't get involved
The first lesson of Iraq
as applied to events in Syria is a simple one: don't get involved, and
certainly not with boots on the ground. Rather than entertaining grand
illusions about making the Middle East safe for democracy, understand
the very real limitations of intervention in a region beset with
sectarian, religious and ethnic fault lines that cross, rather than
follow, borders. The nearly 168,000 U.S. troops in Iraq could only
stifle the violence, and the Pentagon has estimated that 70,000 troops
would be needed just to secure Syria's chemical weapons, so the number
needed to stand a chance of ending the bloodshed in Syria would be
daunting -- and a logistical nightmare.
President Barack Obama
put it this way in his speech in Cairo four years ago. "America has a
dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future -- and to leave
Iraq to Iraqis," he said. "We will support a secure and united Iraq as a
partner, and never as a patron."
His audience applauded.
The downside of this
lesson, according to critics of the Obama administration, is that the
United States is now afraid to lead and has been seared by the appalling
cost -- in terms of lives, dollars and reputation -- of Iraq. The wars
in both Afghanistan and Iraq became so unpopular at home that anything
more than a token intervention in Syria would be a huge political risk.
Christopher Chivvis,
senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, says that looming
large over policy toward both Libya and Syria "is the dreaded cost --
human and financial -- of yet another entanglement, yet another war and
the prospect of more American casualties."
He notes that Libya has
been left in a precarious place by a "reflexive fear of boots on the
ground, pessimism about the very concept of nation-building, and an
excessive emphasis on keeping the international presence to a minimum."
2. Know your end-game
The invasion of Iraq and
the prospect of limited strikes against Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad's military are two very different scenarios. The initial goal
in Iraq, which was to remove Saddam Hussein, was rapidly achieved. There
was a pause -- and a lot of looting by Iraqis -- before much thought
was given to what should come next. The "handover" was never really
thought through -- to whom, under what conditions? A deteriorating
security situation was exacerbated by the demobilization of the Iraqi
army. There was rivalry among U.S. departments and agencies and many of
the plans for reconstruction that had been drawn up, notably by the
State Department, were ignored.
I recall attending a
somewhat fractious inter-agency meeting inside the Green Zone, the
massive U.S. hub in the heart of Baghdad, early in 2004. The official
who was trying to revive Iraq's legal system pounded the conference
table and exclaimed "Security, security -- I can't do anything if
there's no security."
As a state, Iraq virtually collapsed.
Many observers thought
the strategy for Iraq was bedeviled by a dangerous combination of
complacency and blind ambition. The goals in Syria appear to be at the
other end of the spectrum: they are very limited; designed only to
influence a regime's behavior rather than remove it or level the
battlefield. They are much more similar to the Clinton administration's
goals with Operation Desert Fox against Iraq -- three days of cruise
missiles and airstrikes in 1998 after Saddam Hussein's regime had
obstructed U.N. weapons inspectors for the umpteenth time. Those had a
limited duration and goal: contain a dictator.
Obama, as an
up-and-coming politician in 2002, echoed this approach in his opposition
to an invasion of Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein posed no "imminent and
direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors."
Similarly, on Syria,
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday: "I want to make clear
that the options that we are considering are not about regime change."
So there doesn't need to be an exit strategy.
But what comes next? If
elements of the Syrian regime use chemical weapons again, will another
batch of cruise missiles be fired? What if Islamist militants, among the
most effective rebel groups, take advantage of the gradual erosion of
the Syrian military? Would missile strikes snuff out any lingering hopes
for a political accommodation?
Above all, after any
"punishment strikes," is the bloody stalemate in Syria allowed to
continue, with one million refugees and ongoing sectarian atrocities?
Once you begin to intervene, the dreaded mission creep too often sets
in.
"We have learned from
the past 10 years... that it is not enough to simply alter the balance
of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in
order to preserve a functioning state," Gen. Martin Dempsey, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote to U.S. senators last
month.
"Should the (Syrian)
regime's institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we
could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical
weapons we seek to control," the general warned.
As Dempsey intimated,
Iraq has shown that al Qaeda thrives in a vacuum and, once entrenched,
can be exceptionally difficult to flush out. By 2006, al Qaeda was well
established in Iraq under the murderous leadership of Abu Musab al
Zarqawi. Only the U.S. troop surge and the Awakening Movement, a bargain
struck between Gen. David Petraeus and Sunni tribal chiefs to work
against al Qaeda, turned the tide.
In their book "Endgame,"
about the war in Iraq, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor recount a
meeting between then-Sen. Obama and Petraeus in Baghdad in July 2008.
"Obama returned to his
main theme," they write, "the need to expedite the withdrawal from Iraq
to free up more forces for Afghanistan."
"Obama said:
'Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terror.' Petraeus
challenged the argument. 'Actually, senator, Iraq is what al Qaeda says
is the central front.'"
The experience of both
Iraq and Syria (as well as Yemen and Libya and increasingly, Egypt) is
that al Qaeda sees new hunting grounds across the Arab world. And Syria,
at the heart of a very volatile region, is perhaps the most dangerous,
because groups associated with al Qaeda such as the al Nusra Front are
already well organized.
3. Be prepared for the aftermath
The importance of a
"functioning state" is all the more important because neither Iraq nor
Syria are "natural" countries. They were arbitrarily created by British
and French diplomats in the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916,
which carved up the Middle East into spheres of influence and created
grab-bags of very different tribes and religious affiliations that
crossed borders rather than followed them. The 20th century history of
these countries was one of weak government and instability intermixed
with ruthless dictatorships. Power was invariably transferred by
assassination, never by meaningful elections.
So another lesson of
Iraq might be this: If you want to remove a ruthless dictator, be
prepared for the violent explosion of pent-up hatreds and fears. That
happened in Iraq, and is still going on. July was the deadliest month in
Iraq in the past five years since the peak of sectarian violence in
2006 and 2007; increasingly the Sunni minority talk in terms of armed
resistance against an overbearing Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.
In Syria, al-Assad's gradual loss of control has led to enclaves of
Alawites, Sunnis and Kurds, while other minorities, the Christians and
Shia, fear for their very existence.
Very much part of this
lesson: it is virtually impossible for foreigners to broker political
solutions in these complex societies of ancient and overlapping
loyalties and divisions. U.S. officials in Iraq failed to understand the
importance of the tribes and the nuances of inter-communal
relationships for years. Frequently, officers were on their second or
third tours before they began to understand local allegiances.
Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in Benghazi nearly a year ago,
was one of the few non-Libyans to understand the subtlety and intricacy
of the country's regional differences.
4. Don't count only on military action
The most obvious lesson
of Iraq is that boots on the ground -- or any other form of military
intervention -- may change the battlefield or topple a dictatorship, but
they will not create the conditions for a political settlement. This is
also the lesson of Libya, where a NATO no-fly zone and substantial
weapons shipments to the rebels eventually tipped the balance against
Moammar Gadhafi. But a country that had known no form of civic society
in 40 years was left bereft of leadership and expertise. Tearing down a
statue of Saddam Hussein, a Gadhafi compound or the headquarters of the
Syrian Army's Fourth Division is a whole lot simpler than building
something sustainable in its place.
The invasion of Iraq
also showed that acting without a genuine international coalition soon
undermines the credibility of the mission. It was clear from the
arguments at the United Nations on the eve of the Iraqi invasion in 2003
that the Bush administration was committed to military action
regardless of what others thought. The Arab League (except Kuwait) and
Turkey were vocal in their opposition, as was much of Europe. To begin
with, that lack of support didn't matter, but as the going got tough,
the United States (and then-British Prrime Minister Tony Blair) became
more and more isolated in their efforts to stabilize the country. By
contrast, the first President Bush spent months stitching together a
coalition (one that even included Syria) and pushing a number of U.N.
Security Council resolutions through before ousting Iraqi troops from
Kuwait in 1991.
The United States is
unlikely to get a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use
of military force in Syria, given Russia's support for al-Assad. But
Obama has made it clear that the United States will not act unilaterally
on Syria. Beyond support from NATO members -- France, Britain, Germany
and Turkey, most importantly -- the United States has the significant
backing of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, which have both called for measures against the al-Assad
regime. And in this instance, Washington can also draw on popular
outrage around the world that any state would use poison gas
indiscriminately against its own children.
5. Define the doctrine
The (at best) mixed
report cards from Iraq and Afghanistan have called into question the
capacity of the world's greatest power to fashion change in remote
places. In Afghanistan, a counter-insurgency strategy based on massive
social and economic investment has sat uneasily with a counter-terrorism
strategy that is much more limited in scope. In his early days in
office, Obama spoke of bringing opportunity and justice to Afghanistan,
with "agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers."
But by 2010 there was a much narrower goal: degrade the Taliban and
force it to the peace table,and secure population centers in the Pashtun
south.
A retreat into isolation
-- recalling the old slogan "No Entangling Alliances" -- is not an
option. The United States is still the "indispensable nation."
"As long as it maintains
precedence in world affairs, the U.S. will be called upon to help
resolve crises like those in Libya and Syria," writes Chivvis.
"There are no simple formulas or maxims to guide policymakers through the uncertain waters they must navigate," he adds.
But some diplomats says a new doctrine is yet to emerge.
"In my meetings with
American policy makers I often detect a conversation between ghosts,"
Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, told the New York
Times. "The ghosts of Afghanistan and Iraq are vying with the ghosts of
Rwanda and Kosovo."
Michael Noonan, who
served in Iraq before joining the Foreign Policy Research Institute,
argues: "Unless the U.S. enters a new phase of national strategy where
the nation simply conducts punitive expeditions and then leaves
immediately following the initial actions then we must be prepared for
what the U.S. military has called "Phase IV" operations" (stabilization
and reconstruction).
David E. Sanger has
written about the emerging Obama doctrine in his book "Confront and
Conceal." Post-Iraq, he says, it amounts to "a targeted,
get-in-and-get-out fashion, that avoids, at all costs, the kind of messy
ground wars and lengthy occupations that have drained America's
treasury and spirit for the past decades."
In his first election
campaign, the president frequently dwelled on Iraq as the "wrong war,"
tapping into a war weariness among Americans. He will no doubt be aware
of the polling on Syria showing that precious few Americans support any
meaningful intervention in the Middle Eastern country.
But to pick battles
according to how quickly and cheaply they can be won brings its own
risks. The president told the American people after military action had
begun against Gadhafi that there were moral and strategic reasons to
act.
"To brush aside
America's responsibility as a leader and -- more profoundly -- our
responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances
would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to
turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of
America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images
of slaughter and mass graves before taking action," Obama said at the
time.
Critics will ask why the
much worse violence in Syria, over more than two years, does not
deserve similar action. Sanger wrote last year that Syria is "a
laboratory experiment in the limits of our power to intervene."
The experiment is still
unfinished. Syria could be the first of several states in the region to
unravel completely, much as the former Yugoslavia did, rendering null
and void the old imperial borders imposed by Sykes-Picot.
