Edward Luttwak has an interesting piece in today’s Opinion Journal (hat tip reader Wayne):
It was the hugely ambitious project of the Bush administration to transform the entire Middle East by remaking Iraq into an irresistible model of prosperous democracy. Having failed in that worthy purpose, another, more prosaic result has inadvertently been achieved: divide and rule, the classic formula for imperial power on the cheap. The ancient antipathy between Sunni and Shiite has become a dynamic conflict, not just within Iraq but across the Middle East, and key protagonists on each side seek the support of American power.
This reminded me of something I wrote about a year ago. I had just finished reading this unclassified US Military Intelligence report: Islam: A Threat to World Stability (posted by Daniel Pipes). Excerpt:
The Moslems remember the power with which once they not only ruled their own domains but also overpowered half of Europe, yet they are painfully aware of their present economic, cultural, and military impoverishment. Thus a tremendous internal pressure is building up in their collective thinking.Because of the strategic position of the Moslem world and the restlessness of its peoples, the Moslem states constitute a potential threat to world peace. There cannot be permanent world stability, when one-seventh of the earth’s population exists under the economic and political conditions that are imposed upon the Moslems.
The report goes on to analyze the forces that tend to contribute to Muslim strength and the forces that contribute to Muslim weakness. Unsurprisingly, the report concludes that the major force for weakness is the schism between the Sunni and the Shia.
Upon reading this I started to think about what would happen if we “lost†in Iraq, and it occurred to me that within the context of the Long War our failures in Iraq had an upper limit:
It is true that we did not declare our objective to be the introversion of Middle Eastern Islam, nor did we discuss the utility of Operation Iraqi Freedom as being the key to unleashing the ancient tensions between the Sunni and Shia. I cannot even be sure it was discussed in the highest offices. They may not have known.But it’s true nonetheless. Now, it may be a case of God watching over children, drunks, and the United States of America, but by removing the impediment of Saddam Hussein, we released that centuries-old demon that haunts Islam to this day.
The tensions that play out in Iraq are but a microcosm of the tensions that play out in Islamdom as a whole. Sure, one might argue that by removing her enemy we allowed an ascendant Iran, just as by removing Saddam we allowed an ascendant Shia south. But an ascendant Iran leads to a paranoid Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc. And while they are worrying about each other, scheming against each other, attacking and killing each other—well, while they are doing that they won’t be killing Americans. And that is what we’re after.
And as Luttwak writes, with their wary eyes now on each other, the Muslim nations view the Americans not as an enemy, but as an indispensable blocking force between them and their ancient foe:
The Iraq war has indeed brought into existence a New Middle East, in which Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S. What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally. But the result is exactly the same.
I think the Iraq Study Group report, which advised rapprochement with Iran and Syria, was exactly what Bush needed as a prelude to Rice’s upcoming meeting with the Sunni nations. For democracies playing realpolitik, emphasizing public opinion and domestic pressure is a time-tested way to get exactly what you want at the negotiating table.
Ramesh Ponnuru has noted another example of the Democrats unwittingly playing the bad cop to Bush’s good cop:
“As I understand it, our new Iraq strategy involves a delicate balancing act in which we persuade the insurgents that we’re not leaving until they’re defeated while persuading the government that we might leave before they’re defeated. As critics have suggested, this may not be possible to pull off. But if it is pulled off, won’t one of the reasons be that the president can point to a Democratic Congress when working on the government? It will be something if the existence of a “peace party” in America helps to bring about our success in the war. I do hope we’ll all get a chance to savor the irony—and the precedents.”
The Democrats’ persistent provincialism could actually help us. Both Maliki and the Sunni nations are more likely to support Bush if the alternative is Baker, Pelosi and Okinawa.
Although I largely agree with your post, even if there were no religious grounds for the Sunnis to fear Iran, they would still do so. No government in the region wants an overly strong Iran. The religious aspect merely highlights standard political and strategic concerns.
I will always remember Luttwak as the “expert” who predicted on “60 Minutes,” during the runup to the first Gulf War, that the Apache attack helicopters were fatally flawed and would suffer high casualties.
Any “expert” who is that far off on anything isn’t worth reading otherwise.
“And as Luttwak writes, with their wary eyes now on each other, the Muslim nations view the Americans not as an enemy, but as an indispensable blocking force between them and their ancient foe …”
Reality, eventually, has a way of dealing with most peoples’ imaginations. There will always be hold-outs, even unto death, whether out of obduracy or similar psychologies (e.g., the Left domestically and purely criminal and divisive elements among insurgent populations), but in the end “you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Thus here too, a substantial reassessment, such as is reflected in the President’s and supportive military’s new strategy, can very much serve to initiate a newly focused reassessment on the part of indigenous populations, in Iraq and elsewhere in Arab and other Muslim populations, at the local level. Much of this, if largely intuitive, is also reflective of some very elemental aspects of human psychology, existential sensibilities, etc. In relatively few months ahead, certainly less than a year, substantial indicators will make themselves known.
If we somehow “lose” Iraq, it would be interpreted by the Sunnis not as a triumph of Arab/Islamofascism over civilisation/West, but rather more painfully, as a harbinger of Persian hegemony, as an insult to Arab pride. Similarly, if we “won” Iraq, it would be regarded as a victory over Iran by Sunnis, not that of us over Arabs/Islamofascism. How could Arabs ever allow us to claim victory on our terms? One can always count on them to paint their own triumphs – even the 1973 War of Attrition was depicted as a victory for the Arabs over Israel.
Therein lies neither “defeat” nor “victory” ahead for us, whatever those terms may mean. Gone is the quest for a glorified romanticism of triumph, or the self-pitying, self-indulgent, self-induced depression of a “loss” abroad: there is only “peace” or “death”. I don’t think even the Democrats will be willing to sacrifice their lives for whatever they stand for (what exactly do they stand for, again?).