Did Obama Deliberately Fail to Negotiate a Deal to Keep Troops in Iraq?

I n light of al-Qaeda’s recent gains and heightened sectarian violence in Iraq, President Obama has taken flack from many hawks in Congress for his failure to negotiate a long-term security agreement with Iraq that would have left U.S. forces in the country after 2011.

Yet the lack of a new security arrangement between the United States and Iraq was hardly a failure of diplomacy. While the Obama administration publicly supported the concept of keeping a residual force in Iraq; it deliberately failed to negotiate a new deal with Baghdad for domestic political reasons.

The hawks' attacks on this issue began over a week ago when Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) released a statement in which they severely admonished Obama for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq instead of leaving behind a residual force (a policy they strongly supported).

While most of the statement was boilerplate, it did contain a rather interesting and insightful tidbit:

Let it be clear that the Administration's narrative that Iraq's political leadership objected to U.S. forces remaining in Iraq after 2011 is patently false. We know firsthand that Iraq's main political blocs were supportive and that the Administration rejected sound military advice and squandered the opportunity to conclude a security agreement with Iraq that could have met U.S. military requirements..

Essentially two United States Senators are accusing the White House of concocting an entirely false account that a security agreement could not be reached because the Iraqis could not get their house in order.  

McCain and Graham don’t explicitly say why the Obama administration would do such a thing; but the sub-context is that the decision to withdrawal was politically motivated.

Oddly, I think McCain and Graham are pretty much correct. Here's why:

It is easy enough to see that it was in Obama’s domestic political interest to ensure every American in uniform was out of Iraq before the 2012 election. After all, it would be hard for Obama to claim he had fulfilled his campaign pledge and ended the Iraq War if there were still 10,000 or so troops stationed there.

The tricky part for Obama would be getting out of Iraq without seeming like he wanted to.

An overt policy to pull U.S. troops out before or at the end of 2011 without the support of Congressional hawks and the military would have looked cynical. It would have exposed Obama to blunt attacks that he was squandering the sacrifice of American blood and treasure, ignoring his military commanders, and allow his critics in the future to lay Iraq’s problems at his doorstep.

So there was little if any reason for the Obama administration to visibly go against the grain and oppose a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Such a political fight is best avoided if possible. And it was.

Rather, the Obama administration publicly supported the hawks and the military’s preferred policy for a residual force in Iraq. The administration’s support, however, was a political feint. I believe Obama wanted out of Iraq but masked his true policy preference in order to defuse criticism from the hawks while he maneuvered for a big political win with the moderates and doves long weary of the conflict.

Obama’s maneuver was brilliant in its simplicity: he would do nothing and let Iraq’s dysfunctional political system sink the prospects for a new security agreement. His hand would thus appear to be forced by Iraqi incompetence.

For years, the United States had taken on an indispensable and highly active role as the final arbitrator in Iraq’s chaotic politics. Even under Obama, the United States was routinely hammering together political agreements on issues large and small among the numerous Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish political factions who otherwise could agree on nothing but their mutual disdain for one another.

Yet when it came time to negotiate a new security agreement, the Obama administration did little if anything to ensure the Iraqis hashed out a deal amongst themselves over the arrangements' terms. The administration changed its tone just a bit, insisting it wanted to stay but only if the Iraqis could get their house in order on their own and ask.

The guiding hand of the United States which had brought a semblance of order and function to Iraq’s fragile government was suddenly lifted. U.S. officials merely watched from the sidelines as the Iraqis predictably spun their wheels over the issue and the calendar crept closer and closer to December 2011.

Once the deadline for a new deal expired in December 2011, Obama was able to pin the blame squarely on the Iraqis for being unable to get their ducks in a row on time. It's hard to imagine that if the United States—with all its power and influence in Iraq—had really wanted a deal it was incapable of twisting enough arms to get its way.

Nevertheless, Obama seized the opportunity to withdrawal the remaining U.S. forces under the political cover that absent a new agreement with Baghdad, he was merely following a timetable established by his Republican predecessor. Obama then took a bow during a national prime-time address in which he announced he had finally brought the war to a responsible and honorable end.

Oh well, just one more example of a sound policy abroad being sacrificed because it was bad domestic politics.

Assorted Interesting Links: 

Congress Wants to Kill Obama’s Iran Deal - Colum Lynch, John Hudson, Foreign Policy

Obama Threatens to Veto Iran Sanctions Bill - Howard LaFranchi, CSM

Iranian Hardline Faction Silent on Nuclear Deal - Thomas Erdbrink, New York Times

America Starts But Can’t Win Wars – Andrew J. Bacevich, LA Times

What exactly is the post-American Middle East? Part I

 A recent article in the New York Times about sectarian violence in the Middle East grabbed my attention for its use of an interesting foreign policy watchword gaining traction:

“But for all its echoes, the bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing: the emergence of a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds [emphasis added].”

I find it curious how effortlessly the idea of a post-American Middle East has been accepted (if not touted) by some policymakers and reputable foreign policy experts and how outwardly reasonable it sounds within the confines of the article. 

To be fair, the Times did not coin the phrase. I’ve read it recently in other major newspapers, editorials, in reports by the D.C. foreign policy think tank community, and seen the post-American label applied to other regions. Although it could just be a poor choice of words in an otherwise innocuous story about strife in a region long beset by strife, I feel the term hints at a larger political narrative advanced by certain corners of the U.S. foreign policy community that has developed over the past year or so that seeks to define contemporary U.S. policy in the Middle East as failed (I’ll expand on this more in a later post).

The post-American Middle East narrative is centered around the argument that the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 2011 and the aftermath Arab Spring in which several U.S.-backed regimes (and a few not so friendly) fell or were greatly weakened. This has resulted in a dangerous power vacuum that Islamist groups and states with sectarian agendas are ruthlessly exploiting. 

With the guiding hand of American power that supposedly ensured peace and stability among the regional players absent or otherwise constrained and weak, the Middle East is spiraling deeper into conflict and sectarian bloodletting. My chief problem with the post-American Middle East narrative (there are many) is how blatantly disconnected it is with reality and how bizarrely no one else seems to have noticed this given recent events.

Let’s just quickly review a few of the U.S. actions in the supposedly post-American Middle East over the last few months:

• In September, the United States struck a last minute deal with Russia and Syria that required the latter to forfeit its chemical weapons as an effort to avert a U.S. strike against the Assad regime in response to its large scale use of the weapons against rebel-held areas in late August. Apart from international inspections to ensure the Syrian military destroyed its own chemical weapons arsenal, the deal involves a joint military effort between the United States, Russia, China, and several Europe states to shepherd dangerous precursor chemicals out of Syria in order to destroy them at sea on a U.S. naval vessel (Strangely, the destruction at sea only became necessary after no country would allow the chemicals to be disposed of within their borders in an international case of Not In My Backyard).
•  In November, the United States struck a landmark interim deal with Iran in which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear weapons program in exchange for Washington agreeing to ease the international sanctions it imposed over the past few years which have hobbled the Iranian economy.
• In recent weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing forward Middle East peace talks between a reluctant Palestinian Authority and an even more reluctant Israeli government.
• Later this month, a peace conference will hopefully take place in Geneva between the Syrian rebels (although there are several major Islamist opposition groups refusing to attend) and the Assad regime which has been principally arranged by the United States.

Let’s also look at a few broader aspects of U.S. power in the post-American Middle East that are sometimes overlooked. (I’ll keep it to “hard power” for the sake of brevity):

• The United States has military bases in Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti.
• The United State is the key supplier of military hardware and training to the above countries’ armed forces in addition to Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
• The United States maintains a large naval and air presence in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea and without a doubt possesses military superiority over every other country in the region.
• Within the past year, the United States has taken direct covert military action (drone strikes and/or raids by Special Operations Forces) in Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
• The United States is pivotal in either directly supporting or assembling international support (in terms of financing the governments, arranging for peacekeepers, and providing military and police training and equipment) for the makeshift governments in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon and even the Palestinian Authority.
• Oh, and let us not forget the very close U.S.-Israeli military, political, and economic relationship.
• The United States is also the guarantor of Arab-Israeli peace and to this day maintains a small garrison of military observers in the Sinai.

So I’m curious how a post-American Middle East is emerging (or has emerged) while the United States clearly remains the most powerful and influential actor in the Middle East. The United States seems to be wielding its power everywhere in the region and on the diplomatic front the Obama administration seems to be getting its way left and right (whether you think these deals are good or bad is aside the point).

The idea that U.S. power in the Middle East has receded and left swirling chaos in its wake is a bit absurd. That is not to deny, however, the fact there is swirling chaos in several parts of the region. But the United States has never and will never be in control of events in the Middle East. The post-American Middle East narrative confuses power with control (or sometimes termed influence or authority) and therefore identifies weakness at nearly every turn.

Power is the relative distribution of capabilities among actors. The United States remains by far the most powerful actor and thus the most influential actor in the Middle East. But whether U.S. policies are effective or ineffective; or produce unintended outcomes or undesirable second-order effects is a different matter entirely.

The Politics of Doing Nothing versus Doing Something: Domestic Political Competition and Risk Taking over the Syrian Civil War

Why is U.S. policy towards the Syrian Civil War suddenly shifting from nonintervention to intervention? Was it really just the chemical attack outside of Damascus last week that was ostensibly conducted by Assad’s security forces? After all, what’s the difference between the Assad regime killing 100,000 people with conventional weapons—small arms, tanks, artillery, bombs, mortars, and even tactical ballistic missiles—and killing about 1,500 people using chemical weapons? From a strategic perspective, Steve Walt is right that a change in weaponry should have little to no impact on U.S. policy towards Syria. However, the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime has shifted U.S. policy on its head over the last week. Suddenly the Obama administration is poised to launch a military attack on Syria in the coming days (I’ll bet this coming Sunday or Monday). I think the real impetus for the change in Obama’s policy towards Syria rests in how the recent chemical attacks reverberated within U.S. domestic politics.

While Obama is now well into his second term in office that does not mean he has nothing left to run for. So long as the House is under Republican control, he has no avenue to advance his domestic priorities or even a specific major policy he can pass that would serve as the capstone of his second administration. Until the 2014 midterms, the next fifteen months in Washington will likely consist of budget and debt ceiling battles between Congressional Republicans and the White House. While Obama in the past has repeatedly outmaneuvered the Republicans in these fights, such wins have been short-term tactical victories. Obama’s last chance for a significant legislative achievement during his remaining time in office rests on the prospect that the Democrats can take the back the House and at least hold their ground in the Senate in the midterm elections in November 2014. Once he has a Democratic-controlled Congress, Obama then would have a short window to pass the kind of major legislation that presidencies are actually remembered for (Remember Obama said he wanted to be a transformational president and not just some guy in a round office). I think that Obama has likely weighed his approach and options regarding Syria (and other foreign and domestic policy areas) on each move’s potential impact and risks to his party’s prospects for success in the midterms.

I think Obama has previously decided not to take action in Syria because he saw lots of potential political risk and little to no upside. Furthermore, his opponents were unable to effectively inflict costs on him to significantly change his policy. Just a few weeks ago, Obama’s policy of non-direct intervention but providing low levels of support to the rebels was under increasing criticism from Republican and Democratic hawks in light of several battlefield victories by the Assad regime. Most accounts of Obama’s approach on Syria usually fell somewhere along the range of criticism between being adrift or directionless to inadequate or ineffective or all the way to being a catastrophic blunder or an outright failure. To correct his footing, Obama made a minor low risk concession to the hawks and begrudgingly announced the United States would start sending light weapons to the rebels (which apparently still have not arrived). All in all, Obama protected his political position fairly well and remained in the center between doves and hawks from both parties.

Then last week Obama’s centrist position on Syria was undermined after Assad’s security forces launched a chemical attack around Damascus in the early hours of August 21^st that killed about 1,500 people. The attack occurred almost a year to the day when Obama made a somewhat off-the-cuff remark during the presidential campaign that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line.” At the time, he seemed to be setting the bar for U.S. intervention in Syria quite high. After last week’s chemical attack, however, continuing to do nothing on Syria —i.e. maintaining the status quo—began to carry with it some political costs. The hawks could easily paint Obama as weak and cowardly. If the regime escalated with even further attacks over the next year, the hawks would have a decent argument that Obama was weak on Syria and so on.  This in turn would probably hurt Obama again and again heading into the midterms. It is important not to exaggerate the extent of the political damage, which would hardly be terminal, but Obama would have a bleeding wound that the hawks would reopen every time Assad used chemical weapons and could tie in with other issues like Iran where Obama set a red line on nuclear weapons.  For Obama, the risks of doing nothing (i.e. not using force) in Syria suddenly became higher than the risk of doing something (i.e. using force). To avoid the costs of inaction, Obama has spent the last week looking for something low-risk to do which would put him on a sound political footing but also divide and weaken his hawkish opponents in the future.

Obama will probably be take a miniscule risk of using limited force in Syria to shore up his domestic political flank against Republican and Democratic hawks clamoring for action after Assad’s forces violated the chemical weapons “red line.” A limited strike could change Obama’s domestic alignment stuck between the losing doves who have argued Obama should do nothing in Syria and the winning hawks who have argued Obama must do something in Syria but are often vague or divided over what that should entail. If Obama uses limited force he can forge a new alignment with the hawks who want to use just a little bit of force (like a low-risk onetime cruise missile strike that would not change the situation on the ground) and the hawks who want a more substantial use of force (like a riskier large-scale sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s military which would likely eventually topple the regime but create a power vacuum in Syria and leave the civil war raging). With a limited strike, Obama can drive a wedge through the hawks and shore up his political flank on Syria. He can also strengthen his position by trying to bring some of the doves from both parties on board by painting the strike as a humanitarian operation and playing up rhetoric about America’s moral responsibility to protect innocent civilians from crazy dictators with chemical weapons and so on. He could frame his actions as measured and pragmatic since he did not engulf the country in yet another large war in the Middle East (the key here would be to use the terms “Bush” and “Iraq” as often as possible when speaking to the doves).

So Obama will probably use force in Syria to regain the political center and splinter the Republican and Democratic hawks. But what is the strategic impact of a limited U.S. strike against Syria? As any military analyst would point out, lobbing a few cruise missiles at fixed regime targets will have no effect on the military balance of power between the Assad regime and the rebels. Further, I strongly doubt a limited strike would have much of a deterrent effect on the future use of chemical weapons either, since effective deterrence relies on the adversary perceiving the threat as credible and the action being deterred as becoming more costly than the alternatives. Assad is in the midst of waging a bloody civil war entering its third year. He is not only fighting for the political survival of his regime but probably his personal safety from a Qaddafi-style execution at the hands of the rebels. Furthermore, his Alawite commanders and soldiers know they and their families face the very possibility of being slaughtered by the rebel Sunnis if they lose—after all, they’ve slaughtered lots of Sunni fighters and their families too. How do you seriously expect to deter someone who has that much at stake when a few cruise missiles amount to the punishment?  Finally, over the past few days, the White House has told Congressional doves and others worried about direct U.S. military involvement in Syria not to fret because Obama has no intention of getting involved in a huge military operation there. To appease domestic doves, the White House essentially told Assad that the threat of future attacks or escalating punishments if he does not comply is fairly negligible. 

Interestingly, the hawks who want a U.S. intervention to be strategically effective are correct that a cruise missile strike against Syria would be pretty much useless and to achieve any change the United States would need to impose a no-fly zone and commit to a sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s ground forces. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies would also provide a considerably higher level of support and resources to the rebels to affect the military balance on the ground. All of this would take a very long time, but could be accomplished from a military perspective. But for what gain to Obama? 

Suppose after a six or ten month U.S. bombing campaign that Assad flees to Iran or is killed, Damascus falls to the rebels and the regime’s security forces disintegrate. A post-Assad Syria would very likely remain extremely violent and chaotic as the Sunni rebels and remnants of the Alawite forces continue to vie for power since the opposition is not unified at all and there is really no hope for a transitional government to step in overnight. The Sunnis will continue fighting the Alawites and other minority groups in addition to themselves (particularly the jihadist groups associated with al-Qaeda will fight the moderate Sunnis). Lebanon would certainly become less stable as violence from Syria spills over its borders and agitates the delicate peace among its rival political groups that are similarly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines as Syria's. Israel will be facing well-armed Shia and Sunni militant groups—which mutually despise Israels existence—fighting it out along its northern borders with heavy weaponry, and of course there is the issue of the chemical weapons possessed by the former Assad regime. Iraq, which is already reaching levels of violence not seen since the full-scale civil war was underway there from 2006-2008, will likely get worse as Iran’s Shia proxy groups and the Sunni insurgents (who are likely backed covertly by the Saudis and the Gulf States) go at each others jugular as the Iraqi government teeters. Jordan and Turkey will be further flooded with refugees and threatened by insecurity. Who knows what the Kurds in Syria (and Iraq) will do. Oh, and don’t forget Iran will still be getting closer to developing a nuclear weapon, which Obama has also said is a red line. The outcome in Syria is surrounded by uncertainty. There is a very high potential for wider regional conflicts to emerge and escalate. So far as I can tell, winning in Syria carries enormous political risks for Obama and nearly no upside.

In this sort of environment, Obama’s domestic allies and opponents who supported the intervention in Syria would then jump ship—just like many Democrats who supported Bush before the invasion of Iraq did after that endeavor went sideways. They can claim they backed the concept of intervening to prevent Assad from gassing his own people but the administration had bungled this or that and must shoulder the responsibility for the calamity. Basically everyone but Obama would get to say, “I didn’t sign up for this.” At that point, Obama could be looking at overlapping conflicts stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf which encompasses all of the region’s major states. For once there would actually be loose weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East that could fall into terrorists’ hands in addition to a tattered U.S.-Israel-Arab security umbrella and probably spiraling global oil prices that could hurt the economic recovery and piss off voters. That would certainly not bode well for Obama’s political standing at home and the prospects for a Democratic victory on November 4, 2014.

When examining Obama’s Syria policy, the questions we need to ask are how does each alternative policy course effect Obama’s chances in the 2014 midterms and is Obama helped or hurt by removing Assad and his regime from power before then? The answer I reach is that Obama needs to do something to regain his domestic political footing on the issue, but he cannot risk doing so much that the United States actually succeeds and topples Assad and he gets blamed for the chaos that ensues—at least before the midterms.