29
Falling back from a decisive victory war termination outcome to transition can be appealing because it avoids the need to negotiate with the insurgency or its sponsor. Transition uses the crossover point premise: that the intervening power can alter the relative balance of power in the conflict by degrading or defeating the insurgency while building the capacity of the host nation’s government and security forces. To paraphrase President George W. Bush, “As they stand up, we stand down.”1 The patron-client problems discussed earlier, however, can prevent that point from being reached.
The host nation’s security forces might increase in size, but corruption and poor leadership may degrade readiness and battlefield performance. Predatory behavior can undermine the government’s ability to win the battle of legitimacy and inspire disaffected groups to support the insurgency. Conversely, too slow a capacity-building effort and insufficient action against the insurgency could enable the latter to grow so strong that the host nation can never catch up. As the intervening power withdraws from the conflict, the incentives for reform may decrease if internal rivals remain a more immediate threat than the insurgency. If political leaders believe that the payoff is not worth the political cost, they may be unwilling to accept a small presence of foreign forces as trainers or advisors. Patron-client problems result in more substantial losses of influence than the intervening power might expect.2 Transition thus might not be a low-risk alternative if decisive victory fails.3 If the so-called crossover point remains elusive, the intervening country could face an unappealing choice between withdrawal (and hoping that the client survives) and an open-ended presence.
Iraq differs from Afghanistan (and Vietnam) in the absence of negotiations with the insurgency or its third-party sponsor. While reconciliation efforts during the Sons of Iraq movement entailed negotiation, those were primarily tactical and aimed at facilitating revolt against AQI in exchange for a cease-fire with US forces and protection from pro-government predation.4
The United States assumed that the Iraqis would win a political victory over AQI and the Sunni and Sadrist insurgencies, because violence levels reduced in the fall of 2007.5 The surge and Awakening, however, largely failed to lead to national reconciliation and broader political inclusion.6 While only Iraqis could make political inclusion work, the United States was not powerless to advance the prospects. Prime Minister Maliki’s sectarianism was still evident, but the United States took an increasingly passive stance. The United States had three significant opportunities to apply leverage for political reform and reconciliation: the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiations, the 2010 parliamentary elections, and the 2011 SOFA negotiations. It failed to do so each time.
The surge in Iraq was a time-limited force uplift.7 President Bush made a bold decision to double down on success in Iraq but had only a year left in office. Both competitors for the Democratic Party nomination, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, campaigned to end the war in Iraq (the so-called war of choice) and reinvest in Afghanistan (the so-called war of necessity).8 General David H. Petraeus, taking command of Multi-National Force—Iraq (MNF-I) in February 2007, had about seven months to make demonstrable progress before his congressional testimony in September of that year. He and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates believed that success by then could fend off demands for a rapid withdrawal timeline.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council resolution that provided the international legal basis for American military presence in Iraq was due to expire at the end of 2008 and was not likely to be renewed.9 Without a new framework in place, the US mission would be even more tenuous. The Bush administration wanted to keep American troops in Iraq, while Iraqi leaders sought an agreement that had greater respect for their sovereignty. They agreed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to govern the US military presence and a Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) to outline the bilateral diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations. The negotiations began in March 2008.
Maliki sought to increase his leverage as the withdrawal timelines became a political football during the 2008 US presidential election campaign. By the time presumptive Democrat nominee Barack Obama visited Petraeus in Iraq in July 2008, US forces had been steadily drawing down for the past eight months.10 Obama campaigned for a 16-month timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq, which Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki endorsed during an interview with Der Spiegel earlier in the month.11 That Maliki’s remarks occurred during the SFA and SOFA negotiations was probably no accident.12 Despite the steep reductions in violence, the American military presence remained deeply unpopular in Iraq.13 With AQI decimated and the Sadrist militia defeated during the Charge of the Knights operation, Maliki’s worries shifted to fears of a Ba’athist coup.14 He was looking toward the 2010 parliamentary elections to solidify his grip on power.15 The Americans were a good hedge against a feared Ba’athist resurgence until the Iraqi security forces could take on the task of internal security. Petraeus forecasted that this transition could occur by the end of 2011.16
Internationally, Maliki indicated to US officials that he suspected the Gulf Arab states were fomenting instability in Iraq. Iran, he believed, was helpful.17 Iran also had leverage over the Sadrists, which could be useful in the elections.18 Securing a withdrawal timeline from the Americans would bolster Maliki’s chances of reelection, improve his status with Iran, and give him greater leverage over the Sunni Arabs and Kurds.19 Stipulating the need for parliamentary approval of the SOFA would also likely win him support, improve his bargaining position regarding the withdrawal timeline, and distribute the risk as widely as possible.20 Once Maliki had heard from Defense Secretary Gates that the United States had no “Plan B” to keep troops in Iraq without a SOFA, he could stand firm and resist unwelcome provisions.21 He had everything to gain by securing the timeline and nothing to lose, as long as he left an opening in case things turned sour before the Americans departed.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, wanted a withdrawal framework based on the security conditions as the United States interpreted them, specifically the levels of violence and the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces.22 President Bush had faced down the Democrats on that issue, having vetoed a 2007 war spending bill that included a withdrawal timeline.23 Agreeing to one now would be a loss of face, but Bush was by nature less wary of audience costs and was moving toward the last year of his presidency. Giving way on the timeline to keep troops in Iraq until the end of 2011, when Petraeus forecasted the ISF would be ready to handle security, was deemed an acceptable outcome.24 Notably, the conditions did not include political reform and reconciliation—which Bush had established as a vital goal of the surge.25
The US side began the effort in disarray, with departmental disagreements.26 Without an interagency headquarters in Baghdad, the disputes and the negotiations had to be managed by the NSC. Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley initially allowed Defense to negotiate the SOFA separately, not wanting to create interagency friction over the matter. Still, US leverage was likely to be much higher if the SOFA and broader Strategic Framework Agreement (that the Iraqis keenly wanted) were tied together. The Iraqi government valued US economic and diplomatic support more than troop presence. Separating the two allowed the Iraqis to stick to their guns on the timeline without suffering economic or diplomatic penalties—or having to make painful political concessions. After three months of stalled negotiations by the Defense team, State took over the SOFA negotiations.27 The Iraqis maintained their demands for a timeline.
As the negotiations dragged on, Maliki insisted US forces be out of Iraq’s cities by early 2009 and completely out of Iraq by the end of 2010.28 His demands aligned with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s timeline. Administration officials interviewed by Gordon and Trainor claim that Crocker asked for guidance on July 29 from Bush. The latter wanted to avoid concrete deadlines. The president reportedly replied that he could only accept the end of 2011 as a withdrawal timeline and preferred an “as soon as possible” (as defined by the United States) wording on the withdrawal from Iraqi cities. In a video teleconference with Maliki the next day, Bush reportedly offered mid-2009 to be out of the cities and the end of 2011 as a “goal” for removing US troops. Maliki agreed but cautioned that his government could still reject the 2011 date.29 For Maliki, getting American forces out of the cities showed progress on sovereignty and increased his freedom of action to deal with perceived internal security threats. A former senior White House official close to the negotiations recalled that Maliki even wanted to rename the section on troop withdrawal to “Retreat of Coalition forces from Iraq.”30
Wanting to finalize the agreement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Baghdad to try to nail down the remaining issues in a one-on-one discussion with Maliki. She believed they had come to a final agreement that included a residual force of 40,000 US troops to assist Iraqi forces with training and logistics after 2011.31 That Maliki would have made such a concession seems unlikely. Besides, he could not make it unilaterally, and the Iraqi parliament would likely reject it.
When Bush met with Iraq’s President Talabani on September 10 in the Oval Office, the latter was adamant that without a SOFA, US forces must leave. Bush agreed to being out of Iraqi cities by the end of June 2009 and to a December 31, 2011, withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.32 The United States caved on the deadline. Bush recognized that three years was the best he was going to get, confided a senior White House official close to the negotiations.33 The Iraqi parliament approved the SOFA on November 27, 149 in favor, 35 opposed, 14 abstentions, and 77 not present.34
As important as political reconciliation supposedly was to American interests, it did not figure into any of the SOFA discussions.35 The United States made no effort to trade timelines for progress on reconciliation and political reform.36 The absence of a political strategy and a coordinated US-Iraq strategy undermined the ability of the Bush administration to set the conditions for durable success and to hold Maliki accountable for reforms. Maliki, meanwhile, was taking steps to consolidate power, using the ISF as a “political targeting force.”37
The US leadership changed in 2009. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, and General Ray Odierno replaced Petraeus as the US commander in Iraq. To bring the new administration up to speed, Odierno and Crocker prepared an assessment of the situation in Iraq. Notably, according to interviews by Gordon and Trainor, the US team in Baghdad cautioned against conditioning troop withdrawal to political progress. “While our military presence is key for the large issue of guaranteeing an environment for progress in the political process, it does not predetermine the outcome of that process.”38 US forces had defused several ethnic and sectarian flashpoints; losing that capacity entailed strategic risk. However, the United States had no strategy for advancing political reconciliation beyond crisis management, meetings, and encouraging pieces of legislation.39
Perhaps most significantly to diplomatic continuity, Ambassador Ryan Crocker departed. In one of his final cables, Crocker highlighted Maliki’s use of Iraqi special operations forces as tools of repression. “Maliki has shown that he is either unwilling or unable to take the lead in the give-and-take needed to build broad consensus for the Government’s policies among competing power blocks.” A key question, Crocker posed, was whether Maliki was becoming “a nondemocratic dictator” or was “attempting to rebalance political and security authority back to the center. . . .” Hedging his answer, Crocker believed “the answer lies closer to the latter than to the former.” He recommended that the United States “press the PM [Prime Minister Maliki] on institutional and political consensus-building as key to sustaining and advancing our relationship and support.”40 Crocker, one of the most talented and accomplished ambassadors in modern American history, highlighted the absence of a strategy to advance political reform and reconciliation. To an administration official reading the cable, the message was to stay the course and to keep encouraging Maliki to be more inclusive.
No doubt, this was the message conveyed by Crocker to his successor. Ambassador Chris Hill had a distinguished career and most recently had been the US negotiator with North Korea over their nuclear weapons program. Hill was reportedly determined to be the “un-Crocker.”41 He brought in his team, all with reliable diplomatic records but little to no experience in the region. Hill was also determined to redefine the civil-military relationship. Petraeus and Crocker were “joined at the hip,” which experts and former officials believed was instrumental in preventing Maliki’s worst tendencies.42 Hill reportedly wanted the embassy to stop acting as an “adjunct to the military” and show that the diplomats were really in charge.43 Whereas Crocker was skeptical of Maliki’s intentions and would pester him about reform, Hill enthused to Vice President Biden of the PM’s plan to build a broad-based cross-sectarian alliance.44 Such efforts were blocked, he assessed, by Sunni and Kurdish rivals who refused to get on board with Maliki’s inclusive agenda.45 Hill argued in January 2010 that the Arab-Kurdish divide, not the sectarian conflict, was the “greatest remaining challenge for the US effort in Iraq.”46