It is sometimes necessary for a great power to keep a distant small country under military occupation—if need be, for a very long time.  The Romans could not contemplate an “exit strategy” from Palestine in the first century A.D.—or from a few other hotspots around the empire’s outer perimeter—without compromising their status as the world’s feared and respected hegemon.  The British did not enjoy keeping the northwest frontier under a precarious and costly control for over a century, but it had to be done if India was to be safe for the empire.  The Red Army had to maintain large garrisons in East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia; otherwise the “Socialist Community” would have disintegrated decades before the fall of the Wall.

Quite apart from the long-term weakness or folly of those strategic designs per se—in the end, India was a millstone around an enfeebled England’s neck, and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact heralded the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself—the presence of those powers’ troops in foreign lands made sense at the time within the terms of the political-military doctrines that guided their decision-makers.  The Pax Romana, Lord Rosebery’s “sane Imperialism,” the Brezhnev Doctrine: Those concepts did possess a degree of clarity and coherence within their own frames of reference, and they provided the basis for a “rational” calculus in determining policies.

As weeks of the American occupation of Iraq turn into months, there is little clarity and even less coherence in the Bush administration’s rationale for the costly and increasingly unpopular coda to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  It is unclear if the troops are there to build democracy, to create the stability needed for the Iraqis to build their political institutions themselves, or simply to impose a preordained Pax Americana, by whatever means and in whatever timeframe.  Statements by top political figures allow for all of those possibilities.

On July 1, President George W. Bush talked of transforming Iraq into “an example of moderation and democracy and prosperity” as a legitimate military-political objective of the United States.  He warned that it will be a “massive and long-term undertaking.”  An early U.S. exit is no longer contemplated, but the effort is worthwhile, and the objective, attainable.

The top U.S. official in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, was significantly less circumspect only days earlier, when he declared that American soldiers would fight, and impose their will, or capture, or kill all those who oppose them, “until we have imposed law and order on this country.”  Mr. Bremer has put talk of a transitional government on hold, and, instead, plans a process of “consultation” over a new constitution that may take years.  “We dominate the scene,” he asserted, “and we will continue to impose our will on this country.”  Mr. Bremer is less specific regarding the purpose of the dominance and imposition: “We’ve made a lot of progress but there is a long way to go . . . We did have a plan.  The problem is that it’s very difficult to execute the plan.”

For his part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the suggestion that the United States is in an Iraqi quagmire.  He was adamant that we are not facing a new Vietnam, and he asserted that the GIs are not fighting a guerrilla war.  He preferred to compare the U.S. military occupation in Iraq to the American Revolution and the outcome of the war to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Whatever the rationale for the occupation, Gen. John Abizaid, the new commander of the Iraq mission, told Congress simply that the military will remain there “for the foreseeable future.”  Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar went one better when he declared, upon returning from a visit to Baghdad, that “the idea that we will be in just as long as we need to and not a day more” is obsolete: “[W]e’ve got to get over that rhetoric.  It is rubbish!  We’re going to be there a long time.”

The corollary of Mr. Lugar’s assurance is that the United States will remain in Iraq longer, perhaps much longer, than is necessary.  The breathtaking idiocy of advocating unneeded missions notwithstanding, the obvious question is, How do we define the “need”?

If we pretend that the purpose of the war was to “disarm Iraq,” the mission has resulted in a resounding victory.  Whether Saddam destroyed his “weapons of mass destruction” in the nick of time—just to make sure that they would not be used against the Marines closing in on Baghdad—or whether they had not been there to start with, the important fact is that they were never a threat to anyone.  The United States, her regional friends and allies, and Iraq’s neighbors can all breathe a sigh of relief, and the Americans should go home.  Whether the liberated Iraqis subsequently indulge in “chaos,” in responsible nation-rebuilding, or in some intermediate form of political discourse is immaterial to the war’s purpose and to the measure of its success.

If the primary purpose of the war was to replace the regime in Baghdad, it is also possible to declare victory and to leave the place to its own devices.  Saddam is either dead or in hiding.  Even if he is alive, his reemergence on the scene is unlikely, certain to be resisted by the new authorities, and would be easy to deal with.  In the aftermath of the Americans’ departure, Iraq will either stay together or disintegrate into three (or more) units, with no discernible impact on the security interests of the United States.  “Iraq” is not a nation-state, even less a defined polity that needs a strong dose of American political and economic models of the good life.  The goals, challenges, and expectations of its ethnic and religious groups are not reducible to a common denominator.  Three different Ottoman provinces of old have never forged a sense of common destiny or common nationhood.  Being an “Iraqi” does not come before one’s Shia or Kurdish or tribal-clannish identity.

Even if we allow for the possibility that Washington is seriously determined—for whatever reasons—to maintain the fiction of that artificial state’s integrity, the occupation is unnecessary and counterproductive.  The United States can use all sorts of financial, legal, and political carrots and sticks to keep the external framework of a Shiite-Sunni-Kurdish “Iraqi” federation, while allowing each group to get on with its preferred form of self-rule.  The threat of the Turk will be enough to contain excessive Kurdish ambitions.  The prospect of an Iranian-style Allah-ocracy in the south is not only real but imminent, and the presence of American soldiers in Karbala will only make it more zany than it is likely to be anyway.  Iraq is precarious: Having U.S. soldiers on the ground for years or decades will not prevent an nonviable polity’s disintegration once the troops depart.  Not having them in Iraq at all will allow the dynamics of a long-stifled political process to unfold unhindered.

If the war was primarily, albeit not exclusively, about oil—a reasonable supposition, considering that Iraq has 17 percent of the world’s known reserves—then it is indeed necessary to retain direct, physical control of the wells, both in the Shiite south, in northwestern areas around Mosul, and in the Kurdish-controlled north.  For the American political elite to seek exclusive U.S. drilling concessions and 99-year leases (not to mention infrastructure reconstruction contracts) and to want their assets guarded by an American or “allied” armed force is amoral and cynical but by no means irrational.

In this case, it is prudent to uphold regional centrifugal—and even outrightly separatist—forces and to deal with the successor regimes on a piecemeal basis.  It is certainly undesirable to promote “democracy” in the fragmented successor-entities, as it would inevitably bring to the fore unpleasant demagogues—Islamic fanatics or nationalist populists—who would clamor for the oil money to be distributed to “the people” and for the Yankees to go home.  It is far wiser to encourage the political supremacy of time-tested clannish cliques—à la Kikritis and traditional tribal hierarchies—as they are cheaper to buy.  In this scenario, it is certainly not necessary to garrison and patrol Baghdad and other densely populated urban centers.  They will be kept dependent on the masters’ benevolence.

The wells, the pipelines, and Iraq’s sole deep-water port can be secured with one Marine division and some additional specialist elements, probably not exceeding 30,000 men.  The model exists in the Wehrmacht’s redeployment in Yugoslavia in 1943-44: Having realized the futility of playing bloody hide-and-seek with Mihailovic’s Chetniks and Tito’s Partisans across the wastelands of Bosnia and Montenegro, the Germans abandoned the hinterland and stuck to the areas that matter: 500 miles of coastal roads, a thousand miles of strategic railways, Herzegovinian bauxite mines, and the granaries of the Panonian plain.  

If President Bush is serious about transforming Iraq into “an example of moderation and democracy and prosperity”—possibly as a first step in the grand design of “bringing democracy” to the Middle East—then we are dealing with a serious problem.  The culture-altering Iraqi experiment will surely fail and yield no benefit to the United States.  A realistic attachment to the American interest has the potential to realize moral purposes, while the American exceptionalist obsession with transforming societies is a no-win situation.

Besides the impossibility of a serious national-security strategy based on neo-Wilsonianism, the political culture of the Middle East is sick, delusional, tyrannical, and violent.  The root cause of this disaster is Islam and the spiritual, moral, political, and economic desert that the legacy of Muhammad has produced for the past 13 centuries.  The lack of democracy in all societies affected by the collective psychosis known as Islam is patently secondary to the fundamental problem.  Reciting praises to the Religion of Peace and Tolerance, while simultaneously seeking to battle its consequences, is delusional and irresponsible.

If “democracy” is the goal, then disbanding the Iraqi army was a breathtaking blunder.  Telling hundreds of thousands of unemployable young men—many still armed to the teeth—that they should go home (sans pay, pension, and benefits) is an unexpected boon to those seeking recruits for an anti-American guerrilla force.  Most would have been happy to serve the new masters; many would have sought promotion by denouncing unreliable friends and colleagues and spying on would-be saboteurs.  In the meantime, according to the U.S. military, only a few hundred small arms have been collected following an appeal to the citizens of Iraq to hand over their weapons.  An overwhelming majority of several million weapons distributed among the people before the war remains privately owned; a Kalashnikov can be bought in Baghdad for less than $20.

It is possible that the purpose of our continued occupation of Iraq has nothing to do with the American interest.  Behind the rhetoric, the alibis, justifications, and lies, some very powerful people in Washington, and their influential partners abroad, may desire to keep American troops in Iraq in order to effect permanent changes in the strategic balance in the region for the benefit of Israel.

That this factual statement—based on ample empirical and anecdotal evidence—is dangerous to utter testifies to the sorry state of public debate in the United States.  The possibility that the war in Iraq was all about Israeli security may also explain the remarkable bipartisan unanimity on WMD’s—an issue that, in another universe, could have developed into an almost impeachable problem for President Bush.  As a seasoned Washingtonian insider explained,

The Democrats knew the war would be good for Israel, and Israel wanted it.  And they knew the American people would go along.  So on both principle and politics, it was a no-brainer.  The only reasons left to be antiwar were antagonism toward Bush and genuine concern for the danger of the endeavor, but when did that ever matter much in politics?  Both sides had been committed to a certain view of Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf War, and nobody stood to gain anything by challenging that view.

Those who wanted the war for reasons kept from the American public do not see the occupation of Iraq as the end of their assignment.  They are intent on a thorough reconstruction of the Middle Eastern political architecture, with its next stage—the Iranian reactor crisis—set to coincide with the collapse of the “Road Map” next winter.  Watch this space.