Moving Beyond the Surge

March 21, 2008

“I don’t think it’s possible to maintain the current level of security [in Iraq] with American forces at any level unless there is political accommodation,” Michele Flournoy, President and Co-Founder of the Center for New American Security, said at a Center for American Progress event yesterday. What’s more, “the surge will have to end in June,” not because Iraq will have achieved meaningful political progress and durable security, but because the resources to continue it simply aren’t there, added Major General Robert Scales.

The surge of 30,000 U.S. forces in Iraq, in combination with changes in military strategy and the Awakening movement, has been credited with the reduction in violence and improved security situation in Iraq. General Petraeus “faced impending defeat, and has instead provided us with a useful stalemate” said Dr. Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University.

We now have a “window of opportunity” of relative calm in Iraq that the Bush administration can use for political action and in which, said Flournoy, “restoring our credibility and influence in the world should be a critical goal.”

This window of opportunity comes with significant challenges. The Iraqi people are demanding essential services like water and electricity, Al Qaeda is still a significant threat, the American people are losing faith in the war, and soldiers on the ground are suffering from increasingly long tours.

Panelists highlighted a long list of problems facing the American armed forces, including decreased training time, increasing levels of injury and post traumatic stress disorder, high AWOL rates, recruiting challenges, and low retention rates and morale.

While the challenges are significant, Lawrence Korb, a Senior Fellow at CAP, believes that “physically and psychologically breaking from the past” with the new presidency will help, and allow the focus to shift to the larger mission. A new administration will have to start from the premise that policy needs to both recognize the reality of the war and the vital interests of the United States in the region. How we handle this transition of power will affect the greater war on terror.

“The U.S. has no grand strategy to respond to the grand threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism and the war on terror,” Bacevich argued, implying that individual military efforts would be unlikely to succeed. However, Scales said, “great policy comes from great pressure,” so the potential for significant policy doctrine on the level of the Truman Doctrine could be forthcoming.

By building relationships with allies, restoring credibility on the international level, and focusing on the human rights of Iraqi civilians, America can leverage this window of calm to secure the future of Iraqi democracy and restore America’s reputation.