Veto Players and Kagan's Pony Plan

By Fester

Pony plans are wonderful things.  They allow one to disregard reality, disregard facts and disregard revealed preferences in order to advance an argument.  They are also fantasy of the lowest order.  And Frederick Kagan is advancing that type of fantasy in defining the desirable end state he wants the US to fight for in Iraq.  Via Spencer Ackerman, here is Kagan's victory conditions as promogulated in the Weekly Standard:

Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This  has been said over and over.

Implicit within this definition is an effective nation state with a monopoly on violence and most likely an implicit anti-Iranian stance if the government/state is to be orientated towards the West.  So where does Kagan run into trouble as this sounds like a decent goal set?  Well, he runs into trouble if he conducts a veto analysis of the four major Iraqi players, the Sadrist currents, the Dawa/SIIC Shi'ite axis, the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs.  None of them support a majority of these goals, and all of them oppose as an existential threat at least one of these goals. 

The Sunni Arabs due to necessity of being a minority ruling a well armed majority may lean slightly US and strongly against Iran.  They would also support a reasonably strong and unitary nation state as that allows them to collect the spoils.  However any government that the Sunni Arabs would form (via coup most likely) would not be democratic nor representative.  An area of aligned interests would be a further crackdown on Islamic extremists of any variety as the Sunni Arabs have demonstrated that they don't like the foreign Sunni jihadis and have fought pitched sectarian battles.

The Kurds want to be left alone while not antagonizing anyone who could threaten their de facto or de jure independence.  Any Kurdish state that is to remain quasi-viable would need US security guarantees but the Kurds can not orientate hard against Iran for self-interest reasons either.  If an individual is a Kurd, then the government may be somewhat representative and somewhat democratic, but if an individual is not a Kurd than the government would be neither. 

The Dawa-SIIC axis does not want a viable unitary nation-state.  It wants to fragment Iraq into at least three pieces, of which they hope to control the richest portion.  Only due to its political weakness has it been forced to align with the US.  A good deal of their supporters still receive Iranian government pensions and Iran is their natural center of gravity.  The government would have the semblance of representative democracy even if difficult precincts are occasionally subject to unsuccessful division sized sweeps. 

The Sadrists are anti-US and least likely of the Shi'ite factions to strongly align with Iran although relations would dramatically improve.  The Sadrists want a unitary nation-sate for the same reasons as the Sunni Arabs -- helps them collect the spoils of oil.  The government would have the semblance of representative democracy even if difficult precincts are occasionally subject to sustained and successful ethnic/sectarian cleansing. 

Comments

[TW]

Really interesting way of presenting the dilemma. Thing is, if you accept this goal set and acknowledge that not all of these goals are achievable, you could prioritize among them & end up with something like the approach that the Bush Administration seems to be taking.

A rational person could look at the realities & conclude that anti-extremism & a pro-US tilt are the most important goals (and if you assume that the SIIC/Dawa axis can be cajoled into relaxing its support of Shiite extremism, and if you assume that 'pro-US' means allowing a permanent military presence so that we'll be able to influence events down the road); and that an anti-Iranian tilt, the preservation of an effective nation-state, and the establishment of a representative democracy are lesser goals that we're willing to trade off against (i.e. that we could tolerate a weak federation of ethnic enclaves, as long as (1) none of them were strong enough to keep us out or allow Iran in to establish a dominant influence, (2) each individual enclave wasn't unmanageably violent, and (3) there was at least a ceremonial nod to the idea of democracy, e.g. regular elections even if they're rigged and/or construed as simply a ratification of the ethnic spoils system). If that was your perspective, it might make sense to back SIIC/Dawa against the Sadrists, setting the stage for SIIC/Dawa, the Kurdish parties & the Sunni Arab parties to essentially divvy up the country going forward, with a permanent US military presence to hold the whole fragmented mess together.

Maybe that's what they've really got in mind. Even with that minimal goal set, though, i think it's extremely risky - bordering on reckless - to think that the Sadrists can be suppressed or shoved out of the picture at anything resembling an acceptable cost (if at all). Ultimately none of our goals can be attained without the four major players adjusting their veto positions; none of them can simply be run off the board.