Could We Lose Iraq?

Should America micro-manage Iraq's domestic politics?

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institute is worried we might:

The mistake we are in danger of making in Iraq is that as our military steps back, our civilians are not always stepping up. Over the past six to nine months, our embassy has been inconsistent at best, and has panicked many Iraqis and many Iraqi leaders into believing that the Obama administration does not care about Iraq and is simply running for the exit as fast as they can. This isn’t true, and the President’s lieutenants have said so time and again, as has Vice President Biden, both in private and in public. But by failing to remain actively engaged with the Iraqi political process at all levels, by disdaining any further involvement in guiding Iraq’s domestic politics, and in abandoning aid programs willy-nilly, many embassy personnel have convinced a great many Iraqis of exactly the opposite. And therein lies the seeds of renewed civil war and a disaster for American interests.

I'm wondering why Pollack believes we can guide Iraq's domestic politics to a destination we find acceptable. If our bureaucrats possessed such a capability, wouldn't it have been in evidence in, say, the period between 2003-2007? That's not to say we should disengage willy-nilly, but I think the presumption here has to be that we really don't know what we're doing and that we should err on the side of minimizing U.S. exposure to Iraq's internal violence should the country implode again.

The other question that's not addressed here but is really central to Pollack's argument is the degree to which Iraq's politicians see their geopolitical interests as closely aligned with the United States. We know Iraqi society is riven with various ethnic and religious divisions which naturally pull at the country's geopolitical orientation, but is there a critical mass of Iraqis (and not just the political elite who depend upon the U.S. for their security) that sees Iraq's interests as largely overlapping America's?

And it's worth repeating again that the only reason Iraq matters to the U.S. at all is oil. If we used less oil, Iraq would matter less. (Pollack himself admits this in his book, A Path Out of the Desert.) Oil consumption is a technical problem, and America has proven time and again that it can solve technical problems (atomic bombs, moon launches, etc.). America has proven far less adept at long-distance nation building, especially in the Middle East. Why not play to our strengths?

(AP Photos)