What is a normal relationship?

Here’s what the Administration would like you to know about Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s visit next week.

Maliki and President Obama will be marking the end of the more than eight-year American military presence in Iraq and the beginning of a new, more normal relationship between Iraq and the United States.  That is how senior officials yesterday framed their version of the visit, which will include a Wednesday event at Fort Bragg to thank the military for its sacrifices.  My suggestion that the President add a word of thanks to the civilians who have worked in Iraq was welcomed.  The “end of mission” ceremony will take place on Thursday, with the drawdown of the last troops occurring sometime thereafter.

By the end of the year, U.S. troops will be out of Iraq, except for the “normal” but large defense cooperation office headquartered in the Embassy.  A total uniformed contingent of 250-400 plus supporting contractors will be stationed at 10 Iraqi bases around the country.   The continuing security relationship will include substantial sales of U.S. equipment, to the tune of $11 billion (including F16s).  The Iraqis are fully capable of handling internal security.  The U.S. focus will be on external security, as well as police “train the trainers.”  The war is ending “responsibly.”

The normalization of relations with Iraq will be based on the Strategic Framework Agreement, signed during the the Bush Administration.  The Iraqis are enthusiastic about implementing it and have repeatedly pressed the U.S. for a stronger effort.  There are now eight bilateral committees at work.  The Iraqis want U.S. help in improving governance and restoring their regional role.  Iraqis want a strong state that transcends ethnic and sectarian divisions.  Americans will continue to advise in their ministries.

Maliki is no Iranian stooge–he left Iran during his exile from Iraq because his Dawa party colleagues were being murdered.  Even many of the Shia in the south are none too fond of the Iranians, whose influence is generally overstated.  We can and will be helpful to the Iraqis in dealing with the Turks, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Arab League.  We failed to line up the Iraqis on Syria in recent months.  That mistake will be corrected.  The U.S. will still have lots of leverage in Iraq:  they need and want us for many reasons.

Iraq is a functioning multiethnic state (the echoes of the Bush Administration were noted with irony) that faces a lot of problems, including the territories disputed between Baghdad and Erbil and failure to implement the agreements on which the current coalition government was based.  But the issues are being worked out through politics rather than violence.  Maliki is frightened of Ba’athist resurgence and does not always behave like a democrat, but there are countervailing forces in the parliament and elsewhere that restrain his actions.  He is no worse than Richard Nixon when it comes to rival political parties, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt when it comes to the constitutional court.

Iraq has tremendous economic potential, due largely to its oil and gas resources as well as its strategic geopolitical location.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is hosting the Prime Minister, and a good deal of emphasis will be put on commercial prospects (and also jobs, jobs, jobs, I imagine).  The Iraqis will be vastly increasing their oil export capacity, not only through the strait of Hormuz but also to the north.

The State Department is ready to take over the mission in Iraq.  It has developed its capacity for deploying expeditionary diplomats and other needed personnel quickly. The administrative and logistical challenge of supporting the big embassy and 13 other posts (10 defense cooperation and 3 consulates) has been significant, but the problems have been solved.

So what did I think of all this?

There is a good deal of wishful thinking involved, especially when it comes to the capacity of the Iraqis and the U.S. embassy to fill the vacuum the military withdrawal will leave behind.  The State Department has repeatedly failed on police training; it would be refreshing if it succeeded this time around.  It would also be surprising if there were not other hiccups, or worse.  Both Maliki and Obama are running risks.

But I don’t think we are making a mistake to withdraw completely:  it is what democratic politics and shifting priorities in both Washington and Baghdad demanded.  Americans are having trouble with the idea of continuing the effort in Afghanistan.  Iraq is long forgotten.  I also think it is important to get U.S. troops out of harm’s way before we deal with Iran, a challenge that is now coming on fast.  No military option with Iran has much credibility if American troops are vulnerable to Iranian proxies in Iraq.  I trust the new configuration, which includes 14 sites at which Americans will be present in numbers, will be far more defensible than the hundreds (even thousands at one time) that used to exist.

I also worry about Iraqi democracy, such as it is (which is admittedly more than in much of the region).  The counterweights to Maliki are still weak institutions.  The courts and provincial governments are particularly feeble.  His paranoia could well evolve in harmful directions.  If it does, the Americans will need to be ready to coax him back to a less self-destructive path.  Sunnis and Kurds should not be expected to accept a new autocracy.

The problem with the Iranians is not so much their clout in Baghdad.  It is their more pervasive influence at the local level, especially in the south but also in Kurdistan.  The GCC reluctance to engage seriously with post-war Iraq is allowing this pervasive influence to grow.  Despite repeated Administration assertions that the Arabs are beginning to engage with Maliki, there is precious little sign of it.  Getting Iraq on side about Syria is crucial, not only because it will discomfort Bashar al Assad but also because it will help heal Maliki’s relationship with Arab League states and put Tehran on its back foot.

Naturally nothing was said in this unclassified briefing about continuing intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation.  I assume there is a classified side to this “normal” relationship, one that will give the United States ample access to both information and opportunities, if they arise, to attack Al Qaeda and other terrorists.  Normal means different things to different people, but to Maliki it would certainly include our providing information that would help him protect the Iraqi state and his providing opportunities for the United States to do in its enemies if the Iraqis don’t want to do it themselves.

PS:  I should have included in this post a word about Arab/Kurdish tensions, which are not so much between Arabs and Kurds as between high officials in Baghdad and Erbil.  The Kurdistan Region has good reason to be disappointed with the failure to implement many of the items it thought Maliki had accepted as conditions for forming his government.  Baghdad has good reason to be upset that Kurdistan has signed an oil production-sharing agreement with Exxon, one that includes resources that appear to lie in disputed areas.  But these very real sources of irritation are not manifesting themselves in military confrontation so far as I can tell.  That is a really good thing.  But can it last?