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09/08/2005

How to Win in Iraq

In my “Week in Review” column of 9/3, I referred to a piece in
the September / October issue of “Foreign Affairs” by Andrew F.
Krepinevich, Jr., a former lieutenant colonel and now a Professor
of Public Policy at George Mason University. Krepinevich’s
article is titled “How to Win in Iraq.” Following are a few
excerpts.

---

Despite the Bush administration’s repeated declarations of its
commitment to success in Iraq, the results of current policy there
are not encouraging. After two years, Washington has made
little progress in defeating the insurgency or providing security
for Iraqis, even as it has overextended the U.S. Army and eroded
support for the war among the American public. Although
withdrawing now would be a mistake, simply “staying the
course,” by all current indications, will not improve matters
either. Winning in Iraq will require a new approach.

The basic problem is that the United States and its coalition
partners have never settled on a strategy for defeating the
insurgency and achieving their broader objectives. On the
political front, they have been working to create a democratic
Iraq, but that is a goal, not a strategy. On the military front, they
have sought to train Iraqi security forces and turn the war over to
them. As President George W. Bush has stated, “Our strategy
can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand
down.” But the president is describing a withdrawal plan rather
than a strategy .

The insurgency plaguing Iraq has three sources. One is the
inexplicable lack of U.S. postwar planning. The security vacuum
that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime gave
hostile elements the opportunity to organize, and the poorly
designed and slowly implemented reconstruction plan provided
the insurgents with a large pool of unemployed Iraqis from
which to recruit. The second source is Iraq’s tradition of rule by
those best able to seize power through violent struggle.
Washington’s muddled signals have created the impression that
American troops may soon depart, opening the way to an Iraqi
power struggle. [This is why the Shiite Arabs and the Kurds,
even though they generally support the new government, have
refused to disband their own militias.] The third source of the
insurgency is the fact that jihadists have made Iraq a major
theater in their war against the United States, abetted by the
absence of security in Iraq and the presence of some 140,000
U.S. “targets.”

The insurgency is dominated by two groups: Sunni Arab
Baathists and foreign jihadists. Although it is difficult to
measure their strength precisely, the former group is clearly
larger, numbering perhaps 20,000, while the jihadists are
estimated to number in the low hundreds. The Baathists –
former members of Saddam’s ruling elite – hope to restore
themselves to power. The jihadists want to inflict a defeat on the
United States, deal a blow to its influence in the region, and
establish a radical Islamist state in Iraq .

The Iraqi insurgents are also relatively isolated from the Iraqi
people. Sunni Arab Muslims comprise the overwhelming
majority of insurgent forces but account for only 20 percent of
Iraq’s population, and the jihadists are mostly foreigners.
Neither insurgent movement has any chance of stimulating a
broad-based uprising that involves Arab Shiites and Kurds.
Indeed, despite the hardships endured by the Iraqi people, there
has been nothing even approaching a mass revolt against the
U.S.-led forces or the interim Iraqi government. This is not
surprising, for the insurgents have no positive message with
which to inspire popular support. A Baathist restoration would
mean a return to the misery of Saddam’s rule, and the jihadists
would do to Iraq what radical Islamists have done in Afghanistan
and Iran: introduce a reign of terror and repression.

The insurgency’s success, accordingly, depends on continued
disorder to forestall the creation of a stable, democratic Iraq and
erode the coalition’s willingness to persist and prevail. The
insurgents believe the coalition lacks staying power, citing as
evidence the U.S. withdrawals from Lebanon following the 1983
bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and from Somalia a
decade later after 18 U.S. servicemen were killed. The Baathist
insurgents hope that if they succeed in outlasting the Americans,
support from Syria and other Arab states will enable them to
topple the new regime. This would likely trigger a civil war,
with Shiite Arab Iraqis supported by Iran. Radical Islamists
would have perhaps their best chance of seizing power under
such chaotic conditions .

The current fight has three centers of gravity: the Iraqi people,
the American people, and the American soldier. The insurgents
have recognized this, making them their primary targets. For the
United States, the key to securing each one is winning “hearts
and minds.” The Iraqi people must believe that their government
offers them a better life than the insurgents do, and they must
think that the government will prevail. If they have doubts on
either score, they will withhold their support. The American
people must believe that the war is worth the sacrifice, in lives
and treasure, and think that progress is being made. If the
insurgents manage to erode their will, Washington will be forced
to abandon the infant regime in Baghdad before it is capable of
standing on its own. Finally, the American soldier must believe
that the war is worth the sacrifice and think that there is progress
toward victory .

The insurgents have a clear advantage when it comes to this
fight: they only need to win one of the centers of gravity to
succeed, whereas the United States must secure all three.
Making matters even more complicated for the coalition, a
Catch-22 governs the fight against the insurgency: efforts
designed to secure one center of gravity may undermine the
prospects of securing the others. For example, increased U.S.
troop deployments to Iraq – which require that greater resources
be spent and troops be rotated in and out more frequently – might
increase security for the Iraqi people but erode support for the
war among the U.S. public and the military .

The key to securing the centers of gravity in the current war is to
recognize that U.S. forces have overwhelming advantages in
terms of combat power and mobility but a key disadvantage in
terms of intelligence. If they know who the insurgents are and
where they are, they can quickly suppress the insurgency. The
Iraqi people are the best source of this intelligence. But U.S.
forces and their allies can only gain this knowledge by winning
locals’ hearts and minds – that is, by convincing them that the
insurgents’ defeat is in their interest and that they can share
intelligence about them without fear of insurgent reprisals .

The oil-spot strategy, in contrast, focuses on establishing security
for the population precisely for the sake of winning hearts and
minds. In the 1950s, the British used it successfully in Malaya,
as did the Filipinos against the Huk insurgents. Given the
centers of gravity and the limits of U.S. forces in Iraq, an oil-spot
approach – in which operations would be oriented around
securing the population and then gradually but inexorably
expanded to increase control over contested areas – could
work .

The U.S. high command must also end the pernicious practice of
rotating senior military and civilian leaders in and out of Iraq as
though they are interchangeable. Generals who have
demonstrated competence in dealing with insurgents in
Afghanistan and Iraq have been recalled to stateside duty. Such
officers should be promoted and retained in Iraq for an extended
period. Those who fail should be rotated back home and
replaced. As history has shown time and again, capable leaders
are “force multipliers”: they greatly enhance the effectiveness of
the troops under their command .

U.S. and Iraqi forces should refine their choices by targeting
those areas where they can find tribal allies – and should design
reconstruction efforts to ensure that the cooperative local sheik
receives “credit” for his help in the eyes of his tribe. Providing
such credit would increase the incentives for the tribe to help
ensure that reconstruction succeeds, and it might help persuade
tribes to provide intelligence on potential acts of sabotage or
even to actively support security operations.

Once local forces are ready to assume principal responsibility for
local security, most of the Iraqi army units in the area, the
national police, and their U.S. supporters should expand the oil
spot further. Some quick-reaction forces, however, should
remain in the initial oil-spot area to guarantee that the local
security forces have prompt support if needed .

No strategy will bring about an end to the insurgency quickly or
easily. In that sense, the strategy presented here is the best of a
bad lot. It is superior to the current “stay the course” strategy
and to following an arbitrary timetable for withdrawing from
Iraq, the solution advocated by many of the Bush
administration’s critics. Its chief virtue is that it reflects an
understanding of the war’s centers of gravity and attempts to
balance the sometimes competing demands of these centers
while also securing them.

There will of course be great difficulties in carrying out such a
plan. First, creating a coalition for a grand bargain will prove
challenging, given the long-standing animosities between
segments of the Iraqi population, the Iraqis’ suspicions of
Americans, and the cultural ignorance of U.S. forces and
policymakers. Second, the U.S. military must walk a fine line
between risking the increased casualties that extended
embedding of American soldiers in Iraqi units will produce and
risking a collapse of recruitment and retention efforts that could
result from a continued reliance on large U.S. troop deployments.
Third, setting up effective Iraqi security forces will be a fitful,
long-term process, and oil-spot operations could prove
frustrating to a U.S. military that prefers to take the fight to the
enemy through traditional offensive operations. Finally,
coordinating and integrating security, intelligence, and
reconstruction operations will require a level of U.S.-Iraqi
cooperation and an integrated U.S. effort far beyond what the
interagency process in Washington has produced – including
strong central coordination and leadership from the senior
political official on the scene, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.

Even if successful, this strategy will require at least a decade of
commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars and will result in
longer U.S. casualty rolls. But this is the price that the United
States must pay if it is to achieve its worthy goals in Iraq. Are
the American people and American soldiers willing to pay that
price? Only by presenting them with a clear strategy for victory
and a full understanding of the sacrifices required can the
administration find out. And if Americans are not up to the task,
Washington should accept that it must settle for a much more
modest goal: leveraging its waning influence to outmaneuver the
Iranians and the Syrians in creating an ally out of Iraq’s next
despot.

---

Hott Spotts returns September 22.

Brian Trumbore


AddThis Feed Button

 

-09/08/2005-      
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Hot Spots

09/08/2005

How to Win in Iraq

In my “Week in Review” column of 9/3, I referred to a piece in
the September / October issue of “Foreign Affairs” by Andrew F.
Krepinevich, Jr., a former lieutenant colonel and now a Professor
of Public Policy at George Mason University. Krepinevich’s
article is titled “How to Win in Iraq.” Following are a few
excerpts.

---

Despite the Bush administration’s repeated declarations of its
commitment to success in Iraq, the results of current policy there
are not encouraging. After two years, Washington has made
little progress in defeating the insurgency or providing security
for Iraqis, even as it has overextended the U.S. Army and eroded
support for the war among the American public. Although
withdrawing now would be a mistake, simply “staying the
course,” by all current indications, will not improve matters
either. Winning in Iraq will require a new approach.

The basic problem is that the United States and its coalition
partners have never settled on a strategy for defeating the
insurgency and achieving their broader objectives. On the
political front, they have been working to create a democratic
Iraq, but that is a goal, not a strategy. On the military front, they
have sought to train Iraqi security forces and turn the war over to
them. As President George W. Bush has stated, “Our strategy
can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand
down.” But the president is describing a withdrawal plan rather
than a strategy .

The insurgency plaguing Iraq has three sources. One is the
inexplicable lack of U.S. postwar planning. The security vacuum
that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime gave
hostile elements the opportunity to organize, and the poorly
designed and slowly implemented reconstruction plan provided
the insurgents with a large pool of unemployed Iraqis from
which to recruit. The second source is Iraq’s tradition of rule by
those best able to seize power through violent struggle.
Washington’s muddled signals have created the impression that
American troops may soon depart, opening the way to an Iraqi
power struggle. [This is why the Shiite Arabs and the Kurds,
even though they generally support the new government, have
refused to disband their own militias.] The third source of the
insurgency is the fact that jihadists have made Iraq a major
theater in their war against the United States, abetted by the
absence of security in Iraq and the presence of some 140,000
U.S. “targets.”

The insurgency is dominated by two groups: Sunni Arab
Baathists and foreign jihadists. Although it is difficult to
measure their strength precisely, the former group is clearly
larger, numbering perhaps 20,000, while the jihadists are
estimated to number in the low hundreds. The Baathists –
former members of Saddam’s ruling elite – hope to restore
themselves to power. The jihadists want to inflict a defeat on the
United States, deal a blow to its influence in the region, and
establish a radical Islamist state in Iraq .

The Iraqi insurgents are also relatively isolated from the Iraqi
people. Sunni Arab Muslims comprise the overwhelming
majority of insurgent forces but account for only 20 percent of
Iraq’s population, and the jihadists are mostly foreigners.
Neither insurgent movement has any chance of stimulating a
broad-based uprising that involves Arab Shiites and Kurds.
Indeed, despite the hardships endured by the Iraqi people, there
has been nothing even approaching a mass revolt against the
U.S.-led forces or the interim Iraqi government. This is not
surprising, for the insurgents have no positive message with
which to inspire popular support. A Baathist restoration would
mean a return to the misery of Saddam’s rule, and the jihadists
would do to Iraq what radical Islamists have done in Afghanistan
and Iran: introduce a reign of terror and repression.

The insurgency’s success, accordingly, depends on continued
disorder to forestall the creation of a stable, democratic Iraq and
erode the coalition’s willingness to persist and prevail. The
insurgents believe the coalition lacks staying power, citing as
evidence the U.S. withdrawals from Lebanon following the 1983
bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and from Somalia a
decade later after 18 U.S. servicemen were killed. The Baathist
insurgents hope that if they succeed in outlasting the Americans,
support from Syria and other Arab states will enable them to
topple the new regime. This would likely trigger a civil war,
with Shiite Arab Iraqis supported by Iran. Radical Islamists
would have perhaps their best chance of seizing power under
such chaotic conditions .

The current fight has three centers of gravity: the Iraqi people,
the American people, and the American soldier. The insurgents
have recognized this, making them their primary targets. For the
United States, the key to securing each one is winning “hearts
and minds.” The Iraqi people must believe that their government
offers them a better life than the insurgents do, and they must
think that the government will prevail. If they have doubts on
either score, they will withhold their support. The American
people must believe that the war is worth the sacrifice, in lives
and treasure, and think that progress is being made. If the
insurgents manage to erode their will, Washington will be forced
to abandon the infant regime in Baghdad before it is capable of
standing on its own. Finally, the American soldier must believe
that the war is worth the sacrifice and think that there is progress
toward victory .

The insurgents have a clear advantage when it comes to this
fight: they only need to win one of the centers of gravity to
succeed, whereas the United States must secure all three.
Making matters even more complicated for the coalition, a
Catch-22 governs the fight against the insurgency: efforts
designed to secure one center of gravity may undermine the
prospects of securing the others. For example, increased U.S.
troop deployments to Iraq – which require that greater resources
be spent and troops be rotated in and out more frequently – might
increase security for the Iraqi people but erode support for the
war among the U.S. public and the military .

The key to securing the centers of gravity in the current war is to
recognize that U.S. forces have overwhelming advantages in
terms of combat power and mobility but a key disadvantage in
terms of intelligence. If they know who the insurgents are and
where they are, they can quickly suppress the insurgency. The
Iraqi people are the best source of this intelligence. But U.S.
forces and their allies can only gain this knowledge by winning
locals’ hearts and minds – that is, by convincing them that the
insurgents’ defeat is in their interest and that they can share
intelligence about them without fear of insurgent reprisals .

The oil-spot strategy, in contrast, focuses on establishing security
for the population precisely for the sake of winning hearts and
minds. In the 1950s, the British used it successfully in Malaya,
as did the Filipinos against the Huk insurgents. Given the
centers of gravity and the limits of U.S. forces in Iraq, an oil-spot
approach – in which operations would be oriented around
securing the population and then gradually but inexorably
expanded to increase control over contested areas – could
work .

The U.S. high command must also end the pernicious practice of
rotating senior military and civilian leaders in and out of Iraq as
though they are interchangeable. Generals who have
demonstrated competence in dealing with insurgents in
Afghanistan and Iraq have been recalled to stateside duty. Such
officers should be promoted and retained in Iraq for an extended
period. Those who fail should be rotated back home and
replaced. As history has shown time and again, capable leaders
are “force multipliers”: they greatly enhance the effectiveness of
the troops under their command .

U.S. and Iraqi forces should refine their choices by targeting
those areas where they can find tribal allies – and should design
reconstruction efforts to ensure that the cooperative local sheik
receives “credit” for his help in the eyes of his tribe. Providing
such credit would increase the incentives for the tribe to help
ensure that reconstruction succeeds, and it might help persuade
tribes to provide intelligence on potential acts of sabotage or
even to actively support security operations.

Once local forces are ready to assume principal responsibility for
local security, most of the Iraqi army units in the area, the
national police, and their U.S. supporters should expand the oil
spot further. Some quick-reaction forces, however, should
remain in the initial oil-spot area to guarantee that the local
security forces have prompt support if needed .

No strategy will bring about an end to the insurgency quickly or
easily. In that sense, the strategy presented here is the best of a
bad lot. It is superior to the current “stay the course” strategy
and to following an arbitrary timetable for withdrawing from
Iraq, the solution advocated by many of the Bush
administration’s critics. Its chief virtue is that it reflects an
understanding of the war’s centers of gravity and attempts to
balance the sometimes competing demands of these centers
while also securing them.

There will of course be great difficulties in carrying out such a
plan. First, creating a coalition for a grand bargain will prove
challenging, given the long-standing animosities between
segments of the Iraqi population, the Iraqis’ suspicions of
Americans, and the cultural ignorance of U.S. forces and
policymakers. Second, the U.S. military must walk a fine line
between risking the increased casualties that extended
embedding of American soldiers in Iraqi units will produce and
risking a collapse of recruitment and retention efforts that could
result from a continued reliance on large U.S. troop deployments.
Third, setting up effective Iraqi security forces will be a fitful,
long-term process, and oil-spot operations could prove
frustrating to a U.S. military that prefers to take the fight to the
enemy through traditional offensive operations. Finally,
coordinating and integrating security, intelligence, and
reconstruction operations will require a level of U.S.-Iraqi
cooperation and an integrated U.S. effort far beyond what the
interagency process in Washington has produced – including
strong central coordination and leadership from the senior
political official on the scene, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.

Even if successful, this strategy will require at least a decade of
commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars and will result in
longer U.S. casualty rolls. But this is the price that the United
States must pay if it is to achieve its worthy goals in Iraq. Are
the American people and American soldiers willing to pay that
price? Only by presenting them with a clear strategy for victory
and a full understanding of the sacrifices required can the
administration find out. And if Americans are not up to the task,
Washington should accept that it must settle for a much more
modest goal: leveraging its waning influence to outmaneuver the
Iranians and the Syrians in creating an ally out of Iraq’s next
despot.

---

Hott Spotts returns September 22.

Brian Trumbore