Norman Spinrad

69 West 9th Street, Apt.4B

New York, NY 10011

This article is freeware published as a vital public service. You are free,
indeed encouraged, to distribute it as widely as possible, and particularly to
members of Congress and relevant public officials. All commercial and
paper publication rights reserved.

THE EXIT STRATEGY FROM IRAQ:

From the Hotseat to the Catbirdseat
by Norman Spinrad

I have been very reluctant to broach this plan in public, because this is
the down and dirty, it is not simple, and it is very much hardball, and it may
be that surfacing it in itself may make its implimentation that much more
difficult. For all I know, there may be back-channel diplomacy along these
lines going on already, though there is no public evidence whatsoever that
this is so, and the level of the Bush adminstration’s realpolitik street-smarts
makes it highly unlikely. Nor is there any public hint at such thinking
coming from the Democratic opposition, so there seems to be nothing else
for it.
The first step is to face the inevitable: nothing is going to prevent Iraq
from breaking up into three separate states one way or another. The Shia
and the Sunnis hate each other, the Kurds--the largest ethnic population in
the world that has never had its own nation-state--have a 100,000 well-
armed and experienced militia and are just sitting back and waiting for Iraq
to fall apart to the south of them.
This is going to be the outcome. Once American policy accepts the
inevitable, it can, should, and must, turn it to advantage.
Step two is to realize that it is always easier and cheaper in terms of lives
and treasure for a great power to cause trouble than to stop trouble, always
better to be able to back an insurgency than to try to surppress it, as witness
the American success against the Soviet Union and the Taliban in
Afghanistan when its proxies were in the business of overthrowing regimes
versus the current situation where American policy is to prop up the Karzai
government against warlordism and Taliban insurgency.
So the United States should be talking to the governments of Turkey and
present Iraqi Kurdistan and brokering the following three-way deal:
At present, Turkey strongly opposes an independent Kurdistan on its
southern border because of its own restive Kurdish population and because
Iraqi Kurdistan has more or less allowed its territory to serve as a refuge and
base for PKK Turkish Kurd guerillas. So the deal is that the Iraqi Kurds
must agree to cooperate with Turkey in eliminating their territory as a base
for the PKK and transship their oil through Turkey, in return for which
Turkey does not merely permit a sovereign Kurdish state on its souther
border, does not merely recognize it, but becomes its champion, its co-
protector along with the United States, perhaps even sponsoring its
admission to the United Nations.
All three parties benefit. The Iraqi Kurds get their sovereign state. The
Turks not only get that state’s cooperation in dealing with the PKK, but as
the internation champion of that Kurdish state, the Turkish government
establishes better relations with its own Kurdish minority, and enhances its
credentials for joining the European Union, and garners American pressure
towards that end. And oh yes, the flow of Kurdish oil through Turkey and
Turkish ports.
The United States then may withdraw its troops from the Shia and Sunni
fragments of former Iraq and let them have at each other, which they are
already doing anyway, and secure an air base and a ground force base for no
more than say 25,000 troops in a very friendly Kurdistan, grateful for both
the American godfathering of its nationhood and for a protective American
presence.
From 150,000 troops in a lost war Hotseat to a minimal presence at
minimal cost in the regional Catbirdseat.
Of course Iran and Syria will be outraged and rather frightened, since
there are large and chronically restive Kurdish minorities within each of
their national territories on either side of a well armed and well-financed
Kurdish state supported by their traditional regional nemisis Turkey and with
an American air force and special forces base within easy striking distance.
What a pity to so discomfort two regimes who have proven themselves to be
such loyal and enthusiastic allies of the United States!
Better to be in a position to cause trouble than be sucked into a quagmire
where you have to try to stop it. Better to have potential benefit back
insurgencies with no more than air cover and special forces than trying to
combat them with a large gendarmerie army.
And the United States would be in a position to cause a great deal of
trouble for Syria and Iran if those regimes continued to be annoyances. Easy
enough to stir up Kurds in Syria and/or Iran when your Kurdish ally would
be only too happy to do it for you as long as you supplied arms, protection
from Syrian and Iranian retaliation against Kurdistan, and maybe a little
friendly air cover to the insurgencies.
The Syrians could be told that the United States would, shall we say, do
nothing to impede the natural desire of their Kurdish minority to merge their
territory with Kurdistan, unless Syria ceased meddling in Lebanon and
liquidated Hezbollah and all terrorist groups operating from Syrian territory.
The Iranians could be told something similiar, with the addition that
continuing attempts to build a nuclear weapons program would make it
impossible for the United States to act as a restraining force against the
Iranian Kurdish insurgency that could begin at any moment if they did not
listen to sweet reason.
The Catbirdseat.
Without an American army held hostage in the midst of the civil war in
the remains of Iraq, the United States could foment insurgencies in Iran or
Syria any time those regimes were foolish enough to ask to be taught a
lesson. Even no reason not to provide air cover to such insurgencies. If the
Syrian or Iranian air forces chose to fire at American planes, most of their
territory could be declared no fly zones, as was done with Saddam’s Iraq. If
the no fly zones were violated, the Syrian air force, flying vintage Soviet
hardware, or the Iranian air force, flying old American stuff, could easily be
eliminated.
That’s the bellicose version. That’s the hardball version. Even the
beanball version, or at least a high hard one under the chin when necessary
to back the opposing side off the plate. But there’s another baseball analogy
that constructive diplomacy could apply to such a situation: the trade that
helps all ballclubs. If they were willing to deal Iran and Syria could get
something out of it too.
Because none of this is going to settle the civil war between Sunni and
Shia Arabs in Iraq. The only way it can end is with a Shia victory. And then
the question becomes how much influence will the United States allow Iran
to have with the resultant Iraqi Shia state that had most of the oil.
Allow because the United States will be in a position to make more
trouble for Iran than any dominance over that state and even its oil could
ever be worth. But if the present Iranian regime played ball with the United
States, stopped its nuclear weapons program not under threat but as a good
will gesture however fatuous, sought a resumption of diplomatic and traded
relations, and so forth, it would be no skin off American teeth to allow as
close a relationship between Shia Iraq and Iran as the emnity between Arab
and Persians, fellow Shia or not, would allow.
 All this, of course, leaves the Iraqi Sunnis the big-time losers. But they
were going to be the big-time losers no matter what happened anyway. They
were a minority that tyranized the Shia and the Kurds and the territory where
they are the majority holds little or no oil. A rump statelet with no economic
base surrounded by enemy states.
However....
However the more secular and sophisticated Sunni Iraqis were the
intellectual heart of Saddam’s Iraq, educated, more flexible, more in tune
with modern global realities than the Shia. Or the Syrians. No real natural
resources there, but real human resources.
And while it was co-opted by wretched dictatorships in both countries,
Iraq and Syria were both officially ruled by parties that at least called
themselves Ba’ath Socialist. The single stupidest thing that the American
occupation did in Iraq was to outlaw the Ba’ath Party and promulgate a
process of “de-Ba’athification” instead of purging only the real leaders of
Saddam’s regime and encouraging the Ba’ath Party to clean up its own act.
Because the Ba’ath Party, returned to its ideological roots, was exactly
what post-Saddam Iraq needed--a political movement dedicated to
transnational secular Arab socialism, the closest thing to a progressive
political party the Middle East has ever seen.
In Iraq and still in Syria, the regimes were and are Ba’athist in name
only. But the Saddamist regime is long gone, the Iraqi Sunni rump state is
going to be in very dire straights, and the United States would be in a
position to apply enough carrot and stick to encourage or even force the Iraqi
Sunnis and the Syrians to make each other an offer they couldn’t really
refuse.
Namely an anschluss between the Iraqi Sunnis and Syria, in which the
Iraqi Sunni statelet becomes part of a Syria which modifies its political
regime into something approaching a true Ba’athist state in the original
sense.
Brokered, watched over, supported, protected, and applauded by a future
American regime enlightened enough to see that this is in its national
interest, its regional interest, in the beginning of some sort of Arab
renaisannce.
From the Hotseat into the Catbirdseat.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Better to play the Godfather if you can than let yourself be cast in the
role of the Great Satan.