A Neo-Con Speaks

Author Francis Fukuyama, a neoconservative who originally backed the American invasion of Iraq and was a signatory to the Project for the New American Century's famous letter to Bill Clinton advocating regime change, opines about learnings from the US experience in Iraq thusly:

American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign needed to defeat transnational militias and terrorists puts political goals ahead of military ones, and emphasises hearts and minds over shock and awe.

A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.

A final lesson that should have been drawn from the Iraq war is that the current US government has demonstrated great incompetence in its day-to-day management of policy. One of the striking things about the performance of the Bush administration is how poorly it has followed through in accomplishing the ambitious objectives it set for itself. In Iraq, the administration has acted like a patient with attention-deficit disorder. The US succeeded in organising efficiently for key events such as the handover of sovereignty on June 30 2004, or the elections of January 30 2005. But it failed to train Iraqi forces, failed to appoint ambassadors, failed to perform due diligence on contractors and, above all, failed to hold accountable those officials most responsible for these and other multiple failures.

This lack of operational competence could in theory be fixed over time, but it has important short-term consequences for American grand strategy. Neoconservative theorists saw America exercising a benevolent hegemony over the world, using its enormous power wisely and decisively to fix problems such as terrorism, proliferation, rogue states, and human-rights abuses. But even if friends and allies were inclined to trust America's good intentions, it would be hard for them not to be dismayed at the actual execution of policy and the amount of broken china this particular bull left behind.

I find each of these lessons to be largely accurate and well-articulated. Moreover, I find that lesson one is in many regards a function of lesson three. And whatever good intentions were behind the project, they have been plowed asunder under the weight of mistake after bumbling mistake.

But Fukuyama goes on to apply his insights to the increasingly tenuous situation in Iran to delineate how America's Iraq adventure has effectively shackled its policy options:

The failure to absorb Iraq's lessons has been evident in the neoconservative discussion of how to deal with Iran's growing regional power, and its nuclear programme. Iran today constitutes a huge challenge for the US, as well as for America's friends in the Middle East. Unlike al-Qaida, Iran is a state, deeply rooted historically (unlike Iraq) and flush with resources as a result of energy price rises. It is ruled by a radical Islamist regime that - particularly since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in June 2005 - has turned in a disturbingly intolerant and aggressive direction.

The US unintentionally abetted Iran's regional rise by invading Iraq, eliminating the Ba'athist regime as a counterweight, and empowering Shia parties close to Tehran. It seems reasonably clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons, despite protestations that its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes; nuclear energy makes little sense for a country sitting on some of the world's largest oil reserves, but it makes sense as the basis for a weapons programme. It is completely rational for the Iranians to conclude that they will be safer with a bomb than without one.

And knowing that the US is tied down in Iraq (albeit a potential staging area for military operations in Iran) with crumbling domestic political support simply provides the Iranians with enhanced negotiating position.

Fukuyama's analysis is instructive and reinforces many of the concerns I have raised about President Bush's plan to surge troops in Iraq. The "new" strategy, at least on the surface, doesn't seem to have internalized any of Fukuyama's lessons. And absent political support of any kind, seems only likely to intensify our troubles in the region.