Memo to the New President: Managing the Iraq War

In this exclusive web video, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and former Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, discusses the challenges in Iraq facing the Obama administration.



TRANSCRIPT

The Status of Forces Agreement concluded in November 2008. What is the significance of this agreement and what does it mean for the future of U.S.-Iraq relations?

The Status of Forces Agreement that was just concluded between Iraq and the United States is an historic agreement and let me describe three reasons why it is so significant. First, at the broadest level, it provides a common vision between Iraq and the United States about what the relationship between these two countries is going to be over the next three years. This common vision and this agreement on how our forces are going to be regulated in Iraq over the next three years and how our forces are going to leave over the next three years; this is a new element to our relationship. The second way in which the agreement is significant is that it gives the United States and its forces what is really needed and that is a legal mandate for the conduct of the forces on the ground in Iraq until the time in which they depart. For the last several years, the United States and the government of Iraq have gone to the U.N. to get this mandate. This has had to be done on an annual basis and the mandate that is given was given under something called a Chapter 7 Status, which called Iraq a threat to international peace and security. Obviously, the Iraqis didn't like that very much and they didn't really like the content of the mandate, which really gave America very broad authorities and immunities. So the Status of Forces Agreement replaces that and offers an alternative legal mandate -- one that lasts three years instead of just one. The last way in which this agreement is very significant is that it really is a manifestation of Iraqi sovereignty. The primacy of Iraqi decision making is clear throughout the document. Two examples: Iraqis will have control over all detainees in Iraqi after a certain period of time; they'll be a transfer beginning at the beginning of the year. And secondly, Iraqis will have control over operations in the sense that no unilateral operations will be able to be done without their approval. So in these three regards, I would say this is a very historic agreement, one that both Iraq and the United States should be proud of.

What is the greatest challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama in Iraq, and will he need to rethink the approach he laid out during his campaign?

One of the greatest challenges facing the Obama administration will be how to divide resources between Iraq and Afghanistan. On the one hand, I think some people look at this and think, "Iraq appears to be stabilizing; it's a good thing. Afghanistan appears to be heading downward and that's a bad thing and we should therefore be transferring resources from Iraq to Afghanistan." I think that's the way things should go and they will go, but it's really a question of timing and this is more an art than a science. What the Obama administration will be faced with is two very different problems. Iraq, on the one hand, is a country that has a history of being very centralized, having a very strong government. It is a very wealthy country; it had a budget and a supplementary budget last year [2007] that totaled $72 billion for a population of about 29 million. In contrast, you have very different challenges in Afghanistan. The population is not as urbanized as it is in Iraq and the population is bigger; the country is bigger. Afghanistan also has less resources at its disposal. In contrast to Iraq's $72 billion budget, Afghanistan's internally generated budget was $680 million only. So you have very, very different, and there's many other things I could describe, but you have very different challenges. And there will be different strategies that are needed. And I think the challenge, as I mentioned, is how to take resources from Iraq and move them to Afghanistan. Because what no one wants is resources moved so quickly that things start to become less stable or shakier or deteriorate in Iraq at the same time that those resources may not be sufficient to change the trajectory in Afghanistan. And I think part of getting this right, part of the art of this, will be taking the right lessons from Iraq and applying them to Afghanistan.

What kind of leverage will President-elect Obama have to push Iraq toward the goals outlined in the Status of Forces Agreement?

Another challenge for the Obama administration will be finding its right relationship with the Iraqi leadership. The Bush administration had a very close relationship with the prime minister and many of Iraq's senior most leaders. No doubt, the Obama administration will also build close and good relationships. But there's the question: what will be the leverage that the United States has with the Iraqis and with this leadership, and how will it be utilized? A lot of people in the foreign policy community have talked about the United States having more conditionality, using a little bit more of an approach where the U.S. would ask Iraq to do certain, specific things in return for ensuring American support. Now this approach, this element of conditionality may be more successful in the future than it was in the past. And there's one main reason for this. In the past, Iraq's state was so fragile that something that was highly conditional, meaning a threat to withdraw forces unless the Iraqi government did x, y, or z, that could be a problem in the sense that if Iraqis didn't have the ability or didn't have the will to take the desired step then the United States would be forced to act on its conditionality or on its threat and that would have potentially fatal consequences for the process of building the Iraqi state and for American interests in the region. Today the Iraqi state is much stronger. The Iraqi institutions are growing in strength. And this element of conditionality may make more sense between Iraq and the United States. Iraqis are better positioned to deliver and they're better positioned to be an equal partner with the United States in setting forth the path ahead.

This was originally published here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18783/