The Baker Report: Speak Loudly and Carry a Small Stick
Analysis by Richard Fernandez, PJM Sydney Editor and author of The Belmont Club. The Iraqi Study Group report is out. Here are a few first reactions to the study and its recommendations. First, the principal utility of this report is its succinct description of the internal and external players in Iraq and an outline of their respective goals, many of which are malevolent. As a guide to the game the ISG Report is first rate. However, the study recommendations are extremely disappointing.
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The report concludes from the outset that the failure of local and regional actors to act rationally,and not any obviously crazy American policy, lies at the heart of Iraqi instability and the threat of regional Sunni and Shi’a clashes. The question is whether any American redeployment — any American policy for that matter — can alter this given the premise? Not obviously, but it doesn’t keep the ISG from trying.
The heart of ISG’s proposed solution is to add moving parts to the problem. This takes three forms:
- creating a forum at which Iraq’s neighbors will be invited to exert their influence in the internal affairs of Iraq;
- linking the legitimization of Iran’s nuclear program to any help it can provide to stabilize Iraq (page 53); and
- linking Iraq to a comprehensive solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Actually the report offers more than that. It promises the Sunnis that America will hold Afghanistan together and offers “prospects for a real, complete, and secure peace to be negotiated between Israel and Syria, with U.S. involvement as part of a broader initiative on Arab-Israeli peace as outlined.” The diplomatic mechanism for this process, called the New Diplomatic Offensive, includes not only an Iraqi International Support Group, to consist of neighbors who up until now, have been doing their level best to fuel unrest in Iraq, but also the Group of Five — the Security Council — to horse trade with Iran on the question of much subversion it will spare Iraq in exchange for a reduction of sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program — and also the Quartet group of countries to help broker a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine.
The normal approach to a difficult problem would be to bound or simplify it. But the ISG recommendations try the exact opposite: it adds complexity to the already complex situation.
There are two obvious problems with this approach. First is that Iraqi diplomatic success becomes dependent on the contingent. How can the ISG group have any reasonable expectation of promising the Iraqi International Support Group a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace? Waiting to spend a check that’s been in the mail for decades is testimony to optimism, perhaps more optimism than Iraq has been allowed. Second, and of more concern, is that a regional forum runs the risk of regionalizing the national conflicts in Iraq. Each party, Turkey, the Gulf States, Iran and Syria, will seek to maximize its interests within the new framework the ISG wants to establish. And since each won’t get it all in the nature of things, they’ll do what they always do: intimidate and scheme, but on a regional scale. What the Iraqi International Support Group will unquestionably do is legitimize regional interests in Iraqi internal affairs.
The report also suggests that a redeployment of resources from Iraq to Afghanistan is desirable. Why it makes sense to move American combat power away from the oil fields to a country even less stable than Iraq I will leave the readers to decide. Maybe this is because there is still broad perceived support for Afghanistan, though of course this is true only as long as Iraq remains the focus. But taken together with the undertaking to bring regional elements into Iraq, and linking its internal issues with regional ambitions, the undertaking to move the guards out the back while the guests come in the front may have some associated risks.
It is at any rate, unfair to describe the ISG recommendations as a reduction of American commitment overseas. They are a redeployment of American military and diplomatic resources on what is, if anything, a broader Middle Eastern front.
Recommendations 15 and 16 exemplify this tendency to widen the problem in order to solve it. In this verbatim extract from the ISG report, issues in Lebanon are coupled to security on the Syrian-Iraq border. The intractable is combined with the insoluble. Concessions are offered in the Golan Heights and American troops potentially committed into the bargain. And remember, this is the Iraq Study Group.
RECOMMENDATION 15: Concerning Syria, some elements of that negotiated peace should be:
– Syria’s full adherence to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.
– Syria’s full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.
– A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel’s problem with Hezbollah.)
– Syria’s use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
– A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.
– A verifiable cessation of arms shipments from or transiting through Syria for Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups.
– A Syrian commitment to help obtain from Hamas an acknowledgment of Israel’s right to exist.
– Greater Syrian efforts to seal its border with Iraq.RECOMMENDATION 16: In exchange for these actions and in the context of a full and secure peace agreement, the Israelis should return the Golan Heights, with a U.S. security guarantee for Israel that could include an international force on the border, including U.S. troops if requested by both parties.
Recommendations 20 and 21 underscore the potentially lethal interplay between the "external" and "internal" recommendations of the ISG.
RECOMMENDATION 20: If the Iraqi government demonstrates political will and makes substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should make clear its willingness to continue training, assistance, and support for Iraq’s security forces, and to continue political, military, and economic support for the Iraqi government. As Iraq becomes more capable of governing, defending, and sustaining itself, the U.S. military and civilian presence in Iraq can be reduced.RECOMMENDATION 21: If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government.
The Iraq Government might well respond to any American threat to "reduce its political, military, or economic support" by offering the role to another member of the Iraqi International Support Group. And dissatisfied factions might invite a rival member of the Iraqi International Support group to likewise, for example.
In sum, the ISG makes an attempt to reduce tensions in Iraq by engaging the parties responsible for the problem, but not in a way that obviously reduces their incentives to compete. The study reiterates the need for a stable and defensible Iraq while inviting regional "involvement" and undertaking to move American strength elsewhere. The effort might succeed, though it is not obvious why anyone should expect it to.
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32 Comments
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER:Adding a granny knot to a square knot
The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations for solving the problems in Iraq? Make them bigger by, among other things, offering to return the Golan Heights to Syria. Huh?"The normal approach to a difficult problem would be to bound or simplify it….
Dec 6, 2006 - 2:03 pm pat.ramsey:Interesting bits from the report. It certainly presents an opportunity for anti-war types to talk themselves into a corner. Now, it seems, Iraq is a part of the larger Middle East situation / War on Terror, by way of tying Israel, Iran, and Syria into things. Watch Democratic and anti-war-niks trip up when they call for support of the plan.
If I recall, the comment was made at the press conference that you can’t look at Iraq without looking at the whole of the Middle East. Vernon Jordan on CNN this afternoon said much the same thing.
Dec 6, 2006 - 2:06 pm ExRat:Yours is the first analysis of the ISG’s report that I’ve read. I haven’t had the time to read it myself. From what you describe, I’m not surprised at the contents, because the ISG is a group of lawyer/diplomat types, rather than operations/executive types.
By my observation, lawyer/diplomats have what may be a genetic bias toward process as an end in itself, which leads them to make recommendations that tend to make situations more complex rather than more simple. Perhaps it’s a variation of the old “barking dogs don’t bite” adage: “talking enemies don’t attack.” Pearl Harbor proved that idea to be false, but another trait of lawyer/diplomats that I’ve observed is that hope trumps experience.
I for one think it’s madness to give the likes of Iran and Syria any formalized influence over events in Iraq, because they will invariably act in their own interest, which would be to turn Iraq into another puppet state of Iran. I don’t think much better of the idea of linking Lebanon and Israel to Iraq, in any way whatsoever.
In my view, if these recommendations are followed, the name of Chamberlain will be replaced in history by the name of whoever “negotiates” with Iran, and the results of those negotiations will be comparable to the results achieved by Chamberlain in 1938.
Dec 6, 2006 - 2:07 pm darius:Cut and run is all it is. They won’t let the military do they job. Cut and run and the rupublicans are cut and runners too.
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:00 pm 'Uigi:Looks like tripe; smells like it, too. When will James Baker, James Carter, and the likes of Bill Clinton(s,etal) retire?!
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:07 pm beavis:pat ramsey, I dont give a shit if it’s part of the official GWOT now or not. It wasn’t at the inception and be pure ineptness, hubris and so forth, bush and crew has managed to turn it into a major problem. Now I’m supposed to support it in the larger GWOT picture? pffffffftt NOT.
congrats on opening Pandora’s Box.
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:10 pm Tyler:So if all we have to do to get Syria to help us is give it the Golan, then what do we give Iran? Armenia? How about giving Nepal to China so that they help us? And maybe Russia will help us if we give Poland back to them too.
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:22 pm sjd:you wrote: ‘Actually the report offers more than that. It promises the Sunnis that America will hold Afghanistan together and offers “prospects for a real, complete, and secure peace to be negotiated between Israel and Syria, with U.S. involvement as part of a broader initiative on Arab-Israeli peace as outlined.”‘ Don’t you mean “will hold Iraq together”?
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:34 pm Bill Faith:Re #16: I know the Israelis are gonna jump right on returning the Golan Heights in return for promises from Syria. Are these people serious?
Dec 6, 2006 - 3:47 pm Ira:About the only way that making the problem more complicated works is if your goal is either to (a) make the problem so complicated and intractable that the American people give up or (b) make the problem such a mess that the whole region blazes up in a series of wars.
Unfortunately, it’s likely to be (a) first followed by (b).
Dec 6, 2006 - 4:46 pm Don Meaker:1. Saddam Husayne had been supporting terror for years, to include the first WTC bombing and money to the families of homicide bombers. The terrorist murderer of Leon Klinghoffer lived in his Iraq.
2. Saddam Husayne had used WMD against Iran and against Kurds.
3. Saddam Husayne tried to organize the murder of a US President, certainly a terrorist act.
4. Saddam Husayne had used the Oil for Food program to bribe enough people in the governments of France, Germany, and Russia to prevent continuation of the sanctions/inspections that prevented his WMD programs from making significant progress. One subject of his bribery program was Mr. Ritter, formerly of the inspection teams.
Dec 6, 2006 - 5:02 pm Morton Doodslag:Islam isn’t implicated in the mess in Iraq.
Arab culture isn’t implicated in the mess in Iraq.
So this “report” is another piece of silly DC hogwash. Er, sorry, Muslims. I forgot that hogs are halal in Islam. Don’t mean to offend you — forfend that we should offend you!
If we say it enough: “Islam has NOTHING to do with terror, Islam has NOTHING to do with the failure of Iraq, Islam has NOTHING to do with the unversal state of backwardnes among all the Muslim nations across the planet!”
then maybe it will become true!
Dec 6, 2006 - 5:03 pm nbpundit:Instead of a movie called ‘Paint Your Wagon’, call it ‘Painted Into a Corner’.
The magnitude of ineptness is beyond
description. Have we all fallen down
Alices’ rabbit hole?
Lord, have mercy on us all, including
the obtuse.
Dec 6, 2006 - 5:07 pm TmjUtah:I thought the primary goal here was to address concrete steps to democracy in Iraq. By extension, there would be some sort of progress in the Long War.
Include Syria and Iran in negotiations? My mistake.
Not even Chamberlin was so foolish.
This document is an ode to 1979. Or even worse, 1975. Warm up the helicopters.
Dec 6, 2006 - 5:49 pm reliapundit:imaginary recommendation #69:
“Urge all parties to settle their disoutes peacefully and come to reasonable compromises.”
this is what the entire report might as well say.
bottom-line: the enemy must be defeated. it cannot be contained, or appeased; we cannot defeat them wioth detente.
the cold war ended when the ussr collapsed.
when tehran’s tyranny collpses, ww4 will end. not before.
iraq is the fulcrum.
Dec 6, 2006 - 6:24 pm Daniel Goldwater:I fail to see why they keep turning to the same ‘very old’ failed Hacks.
Bakers Madrid was a sad failure, Clintons Oslo was just as dismal.
This one has no hope of creating any positive outcome.
Except a US sanctioned nuclear Iran.
I am staying in NZ!!!!
Dec 6, 2006 - 6:33 pm Beddgelert:The results are, change course, instead of driving into the wind drive off a cliff… Are these idiots even aware of what’s going on in Iraq? First of all they should have included one representative from each Iraqi faction on their elite has-been squad, second of all only one of the ISG members has been to Iraq more than once… third,we live in 2006 not the 1980’s..did they even have cell phones in the 80’s??? It’s a good term paper for Political Science but a train wreck for a country (left vs. right)fighting itself and the media. Bush needs to step up and declare these things…
1. Iran get out or else, a bold line in the sand!
2. Syria needs to stop being the lap dog of Iran.
3. The U.S along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, The UA, Kuwait are forming an embargo against Iran and Syria.
4. All shipping going to and from Iran in the persian gulf is hereby blockaded until Iran pulls back its support of Insurgents and Terrorist organizations.
5. Iran and Syria have 10 days to appologize properly to the Iraqi Government for their respective rolls in inciting sectarian striff in Iraq, if they do not meet this request then 2 oil pipelines a day will be destroyed.
6. Irans President will publically apologize to the world for his arrogant speachs of hate against the west.
7. Iran will not ever have a nuclear weapon…ever!!!
B-out
Dec 6, 2006 - 6:38 pm Roger:Look it was a mistake to be there but dang we are there support our troops and another thing the media is killing our troops they should keep there dam opioions to there selfs in my eyes Cox’s Enterprises and his idoits just for the sake of selling newspapers are murders because of there storys on others believe are causing more violence wonder how they would feel as they are sitting on there thrones of a spirit saying you don;t wipe your ass like that …I say send them killers over there and for there safty without a weapon!
Dec 6, 2006 - 9:49 pm mike:Personally, I thought Bush’s strategy of non-engagement with Palestinians was brilliant, especially in light of the complete failure of every aspect of Oslo, et al. Things would be much worse (arguably) had American engagement in the conflict continued. The only difference would be that Israel would be more shackled to defend herself while negotiations provided a cover for terror.
The thing I wonder about this report is why the Palestinians again get a pass for any of their responsibility for any of this mess? It seems that this report has excused and justified Palestinian terrorism and rejectionism, while all but saying that Israel’s unwillingness to give everybody what they demand is the root cause. It is a reward for Palestinian resistance and in effect shifts the blame for everything to Israel. And what is most disheartening is that the acceptance of terrorism as a player-partner in the region (as in, “we’ll do this for you if you stop the violence here”) is once again strengthened. Terror is here to stay.
Dec 6, 2006 - 10:24 pm Just Some Poor Schmuck:Have Any Magic Wands Handy?
Belmont Club read the ISG report and notices that their recommendations are not limited to Iraq…or to reality. Pajamas Media: The Baker Report: Speak Loudly and Carry a Small Stick Some of the recommendations, in this case for Syria and…
Dec 7, 2006 - 12:50 am unaha-closp:In sum, the ISG makes an attempt to reduce tensions in Iraq by engaging the parties responsible for the problem, but not in a way that obviously reduces their incentives to compete.
It offers Israels humiliation as the greater incentive to be cooperative. To get the USA to force Israel to humiliate itself and withdraw from the Golan heights, the regional powers need to ensure peace in Iraq. Simple bargaining.
Dec 7, 2006 - 3:43 am redleg:Did anyone find “Peace in our time” in the report?
Dec 7, 2006 - 3:54 am Tom Ringwald:Did we really have to pay for this study/garbage???
Dec 7, 2006 - 5:25 am k. pablo:The plan articulated by the ISG might serve as a framework for a general cease-fire AFTER the regional war has run its course. That assumes the current actors are left still standing. While we were debating the semantics of whether events in Iraq constitute a “civil war”, a Regional War broke out.
Dec 7, 2006 - 6:15 am sanchmo:I think the public analysis on the ISG report is faulty because of a major underlying assumption. ISG is not a plan for victory, or even for a graceful draw.
ISG is a strategy for a negotiated surrender, or at best a tactical retreat. What else do you call it when you
Dec 7, 2006 - 8:16 am L Scott Davison:* Redeploy away from the battle field
* Willingly leave your primary enemy (foreign terrorists in Iraq) in a position of power on that battlefield
* Willingly negotiate additional concessions to your secondary enemies & their allies (Golan to Syria, nukes to Iran)
* In exchange for safe passage.
Is Rube Goldberg a member of the ISG?
Dec 7, 2006 - 9:03 am Charmquark:Remember, this document is a political ploy, not a serious new strategy.
The real strategy is to actually foment a Arab vs. Persian civil war in Iraq. As mentioned, getting regional players overtly involved in Iraq’s internal politics is the perfect way to pour fuel on the existing divisions of the muslim world. At the same time, we embrace a bold diplomatic offensive that presses Israel. Of course, in the end, Israel doesn’t give a spec of ground or any other concessions, it just gives us a chance to “act tough” towards Israel in an effort to eliminate the Jewish foil currently used by Arab politicos to justify everything. Of course, we would keep troops in Kurdish Iraq, because they are resolute and staunch allies, which gives us a base to run special ops out of (to keep the civil war stoked) and a force package standing by to pick through the rubble once the civil war has run it’s course.
It’s like Sun Tzu says. Divide your enemies.
I don’t necsssarily agree, but this is real strategy being outlined.
Dec 7, 2006 - 9:21 am Lou Rodgers:1938?
Dec 7, 2006 - 11:33 am John Lennon:With the release of the Baker report yesterday it is reminiscent of 1938 just before Chamberlain left to develop a treaty with Hitler.
I am so reminded of that first Batman movie where I first heard the term “ever dance with the devil?”. Well Mr. Baker don’t count on getting on with “Dancing with the Stars”.
“you must talk to your enemies” you say! Well James, talking and letting them think that you are Burger King (so they can have their own way) are two different things!
Wait a minute, it’s midnight and someone is breaking into my house, excuse me while I go and have peace talks with this serial killer. Maybe, just maybe, I will charm him to leave in peace. Not.
Dec 7, 2006 - 12:14 pm Mescalero:Isn’t this James Baker the same guy who retreated with his tail between his legs after Hezbollah bombed the barracks in Lebanon?
The so-called “realist” community doesn’t speak softly and carry a big stick in today’s world, they just walk stark naked down main street and carry big “soft” which impresses nobody.
Dec 7, 2006 - 8:22 pm Good Lt:Well, Bush chose to make an impact in the status quo of the ME after 9-11. Mission partially accomplished.
With time, limited amounts of blood, and patience, it can be done.
Dec 7, 2006 - 9:35 pm gordo:This is the best our so-called best and brightest, experienced advisors can give us? What a recipe for disaster. The word pathetic comes to mind.
The right Iraq strategy is simple: more troops with an aggressive game plan against the militias, al queda, and the rest of the killers. To hell with what Maliki and the current national Iraqi leadership thinks. Just do it and quit messing around.
Our enemies respect only one thing - strength. Something we are currently lacking. Our leadership acts like eunuchs.
Dec 8, 2006 - 6:32 pm