The Politics of Iraq in Iraq

It’s natural for Americans in the midst of a Presidential campaign to look at something like the Iraqi SOFA agreement primarily through the lens of American politics. But it’s real political significance is going to be found in Iraqi politics where the U.S. military presence looms much larger as an issue than it does in the United States. In particular, this is undoubtedly a triumph for Nouri al-Maliki. He’s managed to continue securing the short-term security benefits of an American military presence, but now without bearing the costs of being a supporter of an unpopular long-term presence. And beyond that, Maliki’s now succeeded through politics at doing what al-Sadr and various Sunni resistance groups couldn’t achieve through force of arms — he’s made the Americans promise to go!

The fact that it’s such a huge coup for Maliki, however, also tells us something important about American strategic options. We almost certainly could try to use our leverage to manipulate the situation in favor of staying in Iraq for quite some time now. The agreement contains wiggle-room and of course no agreement is self-enforcing. But we see here that to succeed in Iraqi politics, one needs to take a line against an open-ended American presence. And that means that any effort to stay for the long term will have a certain pushing-the-boulder-uphill quality to it. The United States is probably strong enough to prevent ourselves from being flattened, but we’re always going to be working against the natural contours of the situation and probably earning ourselves more new enemies than new friends.