New Republic: Why Leaving Iraq Was The Right Call

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President Barack Obama speaks during a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Washington, DC, Dec. 12, 2011. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Washington, DC, Dec. 12, 2011.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Douglas Ollivant, formerly Director for Iraq at the National Security Council, is a Senior National Security Studies Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Let us stipulate some ugly facts up front. Iraq remains a weak state. The political institutions are — charitably — immature. The business climate is not overly attractive and corruption is endemic. Were it not for oil, there would be no real economy. There is a serious terrorism problem. Relationships with all the neighboring states are problematic. Sectarian divides remain tense, with some key fault lines unresolved. The country's armed forces remain incapable of defending its international borders. Given all these facts, it is still very possible that Iraq could revert to its previous state of dysfunction, or find a new variety into which to fall. The chaos of the last few days in Baghdad — in which the Shi'a Prime Minster has pursued charges against his Sunni Vice President, with the latter taking refuge among the Kurds — is likely a precursor of the sort of political drama we can expect for some time to come.

But with all this said, we should still sound a muted victory cheer and embrace the Iraqi decision to decline an extension of the U.S. military presence in Iraq (excepting a small detachment, the Office of Military Cooperation in Embassy Baghdad, as is typical of embassies everywhere). The departure of U.S. military forces will give space for Iraq politics—both domestic and international — to normalize, it will permit the development of a more normal bilateral relationship between the United States and Iraq, and it sends an important signal that the United States is not attempting to impose a series of "satrapies" in the Middle East and around the world.

Above all, Iraqi politics need to achieve its own equilibrium. While Iraq has been nominally "sovereign" since 2004, the United States retained considerable — and in some areas, decisive — influence for several years thereafter. The strong level of U.S. oversight gave Iraqi officials considerable impetus to shirk their official duties. After all, if they didn't perform, the Americans probably would in their place — perhaps even picking up the tab.

The departure of the last U.S. military forces sends a clear signal that the Iraqis are — with all our best wishes — on their own. This is a matter of basic responsibility for Iraq, but it is also an opportunity. A number of recent studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of U.S. assistance programs in Iraq: Iraqis may not be losing much help after all. But either way, in the absence of U.S. programs — effective or otherwise — Iraqi governmental officials will have to learn how to make their institutions function. It may not be easy sailing. But it will be a good thing.

The various factions in Iraq will also have to find their own modus vivendi in the absence of a U.S. guarantor. This is also a good thing, particularly for those of us who believe that the horrific violence between 2005 and 2008 made it clear to all factions that political means are the only way forward. The Sunnis learned the hard way the price that a minority faction pays in a civil war, and these lessons were not lost on the Kurds — particularly given the remarkable accomplishments, economic and otherwise, that they have brought about in Iraqi Kurdistan and the cold reality of how quickly it could all be lost to violence. All factions, including the Shi'a dominated government, have too much to lose.

Iraq's relationships with its neighbors will likely also stabilize with the U.S. departure. The relationship with Kuwait can be expected to remain chilly (they have not forgotten 1990). Turkey seems to understand that Iraq is managing the PKK terrorism problem as best it can and this relationship should grow stronger, despite some tensions over water rights. Syria remains a wild card, and as regime change there seems much more likely today than it did some weeks ago, Iraq must keep a careful watch against the spread of violence over that border.

But it is the relationship with Iran that is both most overshadowing and of the most concern to the United States. Iran remains a much stronger power, with a better developed military, and has not been shy about using the free-trade regime of Iraq to develop some monopolies within Iraq, dumping cheap products in order to discourage the development of local business. Nor, to put it mildly, do the operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard "Quds Force" (a hybrid commando/espionage force dedicated to exporting the Iranian revolution in other countries) stationed in Iraq harbor benign intentions toward that country. However, many Iraq watchers fully expect that once that the U.S. "occupiers" have departed, Iraqi nationalists of all stripes will turn their attention more fully to the problem of Iranian influence. The Iraqis are just as uninterested in being an Iranian client state as they are in being an American ward.

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