How to Cut and Run

I recently met William Odom at the IISS conference in Geneva. I have a great deal of admiration for him as a soldier and a scholar. He has been making the argument that the United States should cut his losses and get out of Iraq practically since the day the occupation began. He reprises it here: How to Cut and Run.

Odom is not your typical anti-Iraq war type, as you'd expect for a former head of the NSA and Army intelligence chief. Most untypically, he doesn't just say get out but discusses how to do it, it amounts to a four step programme:

1. admit that we screwed up
2. involve Iraq's neighbours
3. cooperate with Iran, drop resistance to its nuclear arms programme
4. focus on Palestinian issue as a foundation for Middle East peace.

I find it difficult to agree with him on points 2, 3 & 4. Iraq's neighbours are already involved. I think we don't know nearly enough about how Islam in general and Iran in particular understand the utility of nuclear force--put differently how they conceive of deterrence--to feel sanguine about an Iranian bomb. And as far as I'm concerned the less attention paid to Israel-Palestine by everyone the better. That conflict has been prolonged and exacerbated by every past intervention not hastened toward its resolution.

I am reluctantlly in agreement with point 1, however. As Odom argues:

'Rapid troop withdrawal and abandoning unilateralism will have a sobering effect on all interested parties. Al Qaeda will celebrate but find that its only current allies, Iraqi Baathists and Sunnis, no longer need or want it. Iran will crow but soon begin to worry that its Kurdish minority may want to join Iraqi Kurdistan and that Iraqi Baathists might make a surprising comeback.

Although European leaders will probably try to take the lead in designing a new strategy for Iraq, they will not be able to implement it. This is because they will not allow any single European state to lead, the handicap they faced in trying to cope with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s. Nor will Japan, China or India be acceptable as a new coalition leader. The U.S. could end up as the leader of a new strategic coalition — but only if most other states recognize this fact and invite it to do so.'

One of the most disastrous outcomes of the war has been the collapse of Western unity. It's not as though it hasn't happened before but I don't think the split has ever been this profound.