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.
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Can the Lady deliver?
Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute has a sharper eye than I do, as he detected this from SecState Clinton this week: “Iran is entitled to the use of civil nuclear power for peaceful purposes.” In his well-crafted scenesetter, Simon bemoans that “this formulation could allow Iran to continue enriching uranium.”
I doubt we are going to be able to stop that. The best we can hope for is to limit the degree of enrichment and amount of material.
Monday’s P5+1 meeting in Geneva is a big test for the EU. If Lady Ashton can deliver, Brussels will gain serious credibility.
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One more for withdrawal from Afghanistan
Another Afghanistan report for that shelf you cleared: Gilles Dorronsoro says we can’t win and argues for ceasefire, negotiate, withdraw.
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Another moment of truth
International Crisis Group has put out its latest on Afghanistan, offering a definitive answer to the question of whether Karzai is worth it:
Any plan that fails to deal with the decay in Kabul will not succeed. President Hamid Karzai no longer enjoys the legitimacy and popularity
he once had and he has subsequently lost his ability to stitch together lasting political deals.
This is followed by a well-documented litany of failures in areas directly relevant to whether the mission as a whole can succeed.
But ICG then somehow manages to turn 180 degrees and recommend, in a backhanded sort of way, engagement rather than exit:
Overcoming the trust deficit between the Afghan government, the Afghan people and the international community will rely on more concerted efforts to increase political representation, to expand access to justice and to confront corruption.
This amounts to no more than wishing it weren’t so–if it wanted to be listened to, ICG would have done better to go where its analysis points: drawdown, presumably on the currently agreed NATO schedule.
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The moment of truth that lasts a long time
While the press and blogosphere focus on the diploleaks, which I admit provide diplomacy with more attention than it has had in a long time, my guess is that the more important and long lasting effects on America’s foreign and security policies will come from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, or more accurately from what the Congress decides to do with its recommendations.
The most relevant portion is found in The Moment of Truth under “Discretionary Spending” on pp. 21-23, though a quick read of the section on gasoline tax (p. 25) is recommended as well. “Security,” including international affairs (presumably the 150 account), would take a substantial cut (7.1%) from the President’s request for 2012, and get back above the 2012 level only in 2019. Wars (“Overseas Contingency Operations”) would be funded separately, but the funding sounds as if it would be strictly limited to military operations (it seems not to include counterpart civilian efforts).
The gas tax is notable for its modesty: 15 cents per gallon, a drop in the tank. If anything like the real cost of importing oil were charged to oil users, I suspect the number would be over $1 per gallon, which would still be modest compared to gas taxes elsewhere. When will we face that moment of truth?
Michael Mandelbaum’s Frugal Superpower is the best treatment I’ve seen of the implications of the coming budget stringency for foreign and security policy, though I think it mistaken in imagining that we’ll be able to avoid future state-building efforts. Or that we should, since judicious, preventive state-building is a relatively cheap way to avoid much larger military expenditures.
The only thing worse for U.S. foreign and security policy than the cuts contemplated in the Commission’s report is not making the kinds of cuts contemplated in the Commission’s report. The superpower needs to get its own house in order if it is to continue to play the appropriate leadership role abroad.
P.S. It looks more like $2 per gallon or more, but I am still looking for a good, recent source on the real costs of petroleum dependency. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
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Pakistan: what me worry?
Islamabad is busy pooh-poohing U.S. concerns and treating them as signs of bias against Pakistan, but anyone sensible would worry about that country’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) as well as about the security of its nuclear weapons.
As a science counselor at the American Embassy in Rome in the late 1970s, I visited one of Italy’s research reactors, which like Pakistan’s ran on HEU. It contained, as my guide pointed out, more than enough HEU to make a nuclear weapon. The U.S. has been busy collecting this material, and replacing it with less dangerous stuff, for some years now. No one responsible would pooh-pooh the concerns–and lots of proud countries have collaborated in getting the HEU into more secure places, including well-known U.S. toady Belarus.
We won’t I imagine find much about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the diploleaks, since those cables will likely be more restricted in distribution. But if Pakistan can’t respond more responsibly on HEU, it makes me worry even more about their nukes.
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