Conditionality is easier said than done

The big idea behind the Brookings Unfinished Business: An American Strategy for
Iraq Moving Forward report published yesterday is conditionality:

As long as Iraq’s leaders are moving their country in the direction that serves American interests, the United States can and should remain willing to help the Iraqis generously.

Otherwise, we should take our assistance elsewhere:

If Iraq’s leaders are not willing or able to act in a manner consistent with good governance, the rule of law, and the need for national reconciliation, then the risks to Iraq’s future stability are so grave that they should cause the U.S. government to reevaluate its level of commitment to the U.S.-Iraqi partnership and the resources it is willing to invest in it.

Let us consider what this might mean.  Take for example the last nine months of negotiations to form a new government: was Allawi correct in concluding that the election results legally dictated that he be asked to form a government because he won a larger number of seats in parliament? Or was Maliki constitutionally correct in claiming that his larger post-election coalition should be asked first? Conditionality could have required that the Americans make a judgment on this issue and behave accordingly. Wisely, the Americans largely stayed out of it.  Had they been required to decide who was acting in accordance with the rule of law and who not, they’d have put themselves in the middle of the then most sensitive issues in Iraqi politics, to no serious purpose.

Likewise with de-Ba’athification:  the Americans argued vigorously in private against the decision to exclude candidates in the March elections because of their alleged affiliations with the Ba’ath party, but ultimately they failed.  What if that failure had required a cut-off of assistance?  How would that have improved the situation?  Would it have served our purposes to make the transfer of military equipment to Iraq contingent on former Ba’athists being allowed to run in the elections?

Unfinished Business argues that “virtually all” American assistance should be subject to strict conditionality based on U.S. objectives.  Really?  Whether we bring Iraqis to the U.S. for university education should depend on what?  On whether the Iraqi police are conforming to international human rights standards? On whether Iraqi schools are teaching tolerance?  On whether Christians are being mistreated in Baghdad?  Has the history of Congressionally imposed conditionality not taught us something about how complex, illogical and even bizarre the procedure can be?

Or consider the “benchmarks” the Bush Administration negotiated with (or imposed on) Iraq in late 2006/early 2007.  They were thought to be vital to ending sectarian strife in Iraq.  Many have still not been met.  But sectarian strife has declined dramatically.  Would we have been wise to reduce military assistance because the benchmarks were not met?

In Baghdad in 2008, I asked a major Sunni politician whether he was concerned about one of the benchmarks, the oil law, which in Washington was thought to be vital to the Sunnis in order to ensure their fair share of oil revenue.  Fresh from a meeting in which the American Ambassador had berated him on the need to pass it, he replied, “no,” that was an American issue rather than an Iraqi one.  He wasn’t at all concerned with guaranteeing the Sunni share of oil revenue, which was already reliably flowing to the provinces according to population, but he was concerned that an oil law passed too early would give little money to the central government and too much to the provinces. The benchmark was thoroughly misconceived.

I am 100 per cent with the authors of Unfinished Business when they argue that U.S. commitments to Iraq, in particular the military ones, should serve U.S. interests.  But if that is the case, there won’t be much we can use as leverage without scoring an own-goal.  Conditionality is easier said than done.  It is not good strategy when your own vital interests are at stake, and it would be better to use it sparingly and tactically.