When going into Iraq, the president could countenance no pessimism about what might happen. Now, as the nation considers withdrawal, it seems he can countenance no optimism. The latest meme, touched on in the SOTU address, is that a U.S. departure from Iraq will embolden the terrorists, allow for an expanded base of Al Qaeda operations, and will, in the words of the president, “put our security at risk”.
This line of reasoning is often accompanied by a harkening back to our defeat in Vietnam, and the subsequent communist takeovers in Cambodia, Laos, and several African nations. Leave Iraq, we are warned, and we’ll be forced to watch the dominos fall.
The admonition is defective. It implies that the United States and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the only players on the global stage, locked in a zero-sum battle for control and influence. It ignores other nations and populations and how their behavior might change in the event of jihadist successes in Iraq.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the United States did experience a loss of perceived power and several states were taken over by Soviet-tilting, Marxist regimes. However, this produced its own counter-veiling reaction. The heightened international concerns about expanding Soviet influence resulted in, among other things, the shifting of China into the U.S. strategic camp.
This same dynamic holds true in the current struggle against Al Qaeda and its clones. Should the United States leave Iraq it could find itself with more, and surprisingly vigorous, allies in the war on terror, mitigating the sting of not achieving the preferred results in Iraq.
For example, a U.S withdraw could incentivize the Shiite government to fight Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents with greater urgency, given the inability to free ride on American power. And, its troops might prove to be surprisingly effective, fighting with more tactical ruthlessness, better intelligence, and a better understanding of the enemy than coalition forces.
Should the Shiite government collapse after an American withdrawal, “an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime” could ensue, in the words of the president; a prospect he labeled the “nightmare scenario”. Apparently, for this president, our enemies are not allowed to flight Al Qaeda. In reality, this scenario would be a nightmare for Sunni insurgents, including Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Should the motley mix of Sunni insurgents, one way or another, gain an independent, defensible stronghold in central Iraq, it’s quite possible that Sunni nationalists, Baathists and moderates would all turn on Al Qaeda. The marriage between these factions is founded on animosity toward Americans and Shiites. Should America leave, and the conflict with the Shia end, the foreign Sunni jihadists could find themselves marginalized or worse.
Moreover, should the Iraqi government, Shiite militias, and indigenous Sunni elements all fail to temper foreign jihadists, and should Al Qaeda gain a stronghold akin to what they had in Afghanistan, it would set off another layer of counterveiling reaction. Iran would make every effort to undermine such a stronghold, and might find assistance from other states in the region. The greater the threat such a base of terror operations posed, the greater would be the resistance to it.
Should local regimes fail to blunt a hypothetical Sunni terrorist stronghold in Iraq, and should radical, Qaeda-affiliated Islamists actually expand and take over in say, Jordan or Egypt, it would provoke a still more powerful reaction, not just from Tehran and Washington, but from Ankara, Europe, and perhaps many other corners, galvanizing all to isolate the radical Islamic states. The greater the threat that such states posed, the greater would be the resistance. And the less involved the United States was in spearheading the anti-Al Qaeda efforts, the greater would be the efforts from others.
The number of scenarios involving a check on Sunni-terrorist power are myriad, and far more probable than the dire warnings from the administration of an unmitigated expansion of Al Qaeda once our troops have come home.
This is the ironic reality of balance-of-power politics from which the world has not escaped. The United States will thus always find itself in one of two less than ideal situations: Increasingly hegemonic and successful in its fight against terrorists, but with a shrinking list of friends and remarkable amounts of opposition, OR waning in influence and projection, but with a growing list of friends, improved international public standing, and more help in the war on terror.
We encountered the former in spades in 2002 and 2003, when the nation was at a zenith of power, having rapidly dispatched with the Taliban. The decision of the United States to project itself further provoked: intransigence from Russia, China and France in the Security Council, anti-American elections in Germany, Italy, Spain, South Korea, and Latin America, and a global tide of hostile public opinion toward the American superpower. One wonders how the world would have reacted had things actually gone as planned in Iraq.
Now that America has been humbled, we’re beginning see the ironic but predictable turnabout of international attitudes, despite the chaos we’re responsible for unleashing. We may be as pleasantly surprised by the global support we’ll accumulate on the way out as we were by the intense resistance we experienced on the way in.
This doesn’t mean that support for our nation and its ideals will always be deterministically inversely related to our strength. A strong reputation, with a government and society worth emulating can soften international hostility toward the projection of American power, and encourage the spread of our most cherished values. This is soft power at work, and that soft power is compromised by our presence in Iraq, particularly when it involves episodes like Abu Ghraib.
Moreover, the character of our enemies and the global perception of the threat that they and their ideologies pose to others will determine the level of help we get in the struggle against Islamic terror. If we have faith in our values and the universal benefits of our way of life, and confidence in the obvious failing of the ideologies of our enemies, then we should always have room for optimism.
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