Statement Submitted to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights, and Oversight
Statement submitted by Douglas Macgregor, PhD, Colonel (ret) U.S.
Army
Senior
Fellow, Straus Military Reform Project
Center
for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts
Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036-2109
Statement
submitted on Friday, February 8, 2008,
at 9:30 a.m. in room 2200 of the Rayburn
House Office
Building
On
November 26, 2007, the Bush Administration announced that a joint declaration
of principles had been endorsed by President of the United States of America, George
W. Bush, and Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Kamel
Al-Maliki. As envisioned by the Bush Administration the United States’ future relationship with Iraq includes a range of entangling measures,
foremost of which is the pledge to defend Iraq from internal and external
security threats. Article 2 of the Declaration of Principles is quite specific
insisting that U.S. Forces will support, “the Republic of Iraq in its efforts
to combat all terrorist groups, at the forefront of which is Al-Qaeda,
Saddamists, and all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation, and destroy
their logistical networks and their sources of finance, and defeat and uproot
them from Iraq.”
The joint declaration
will also reportedly lead to a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the
government of the United States
and the government of Iraq.
This agreement will not only replace the existing Security Council mandate
authorizing the current presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq. It will
also define the U.S.
military’s role inside Iraq
in ways that are normally agreed only within the framework of mutual defense
treaties.
It is
therefore the opinion of this witness that the Committee should recommend that
the House and the Senate resist any proposed arrangement that commits American
military power to any long-term presence in Iraq without a mutual defense
treaty in place, if that is the aim of the American people. Whatever
course of action the Bush Administration decides to follow in Iraq, it should
not attempt to make policy on the sly. Nor should the Bush administration
pretend that a major U.S.
defense commitment, internal and external to Iraq, is a matter for resolution
inside a SOFA. Instead, the Bush Administration should explain its true
strategic aims and work with the Congress, because that is how successful,
long-term security policy is made.
Setting
aside the commercial arrangements that bring to mind the British
Empire’s attempts to extract economic benefit from a weak Iraqi
state after World War I, there are a number of problems with the Joint
Declaration of Principles that merit the Committee’s attention. Chief among
them is the notion that a SOFA should be used to determine the conditions for
the use of American military power together with the stated commitment of the
United States to support the Republic of Iraq in defending Iraq’s “democratic
system” and, by implication its government, against internal and external
threats. The use of a SOFA to define a military mission for U.S. forces for
internal defense of the Iraqi government is a significant break with
established practice because SOFAs normally do not address the use of American military power
against external or internal threats to the governments that host the permanent
presence of the U.S. Armed Forces. These issues are normally addressed in
mutual defense treaties.
Instead, SOFAs are incorporated into the larger
security framework of such treaties. For instance, the SOFA that defines the relationship of U.S.
Forces stationed in Korea to
the Republic of Korea
is contained inside article IV of the mutual defense treaty between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea, signed on October 1, 1953. This is because SOFAs actually deal with
the routine administrative and legal issues that shape the U.S. military’s
conduct of day-to-day business inside the host country. These activities are
wide ranging and involve actions such as the notification of the host country
of the entry and exit of U.S.
forces along with the transportation into or out of the host country of
individual items belonging to U.S.
service members (i.e. automobiles), legal claims and susceptibility to income
and sales taxes. In places like Korea,
Germany or Japan where U.S. forces are permanently
stationed, SOFAs also address matters such as the delivery of mail,
environmental impact concerns, recreation and banking facilities.
In Germany, Korea, and Japan, SOFAs deal first and
foremost with the issues of civil and criminal jurisdiction over U.S. service
members to ensure that the Department of Defense protects, to the maximum
extent possible, the rights of soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines who may be
subject to criminal trial by foreign courts or imprisonment in foreign jails.
Once again, there is no language in these SOFAs that determine the legal
framework for the use of American military power to defend the host governments
against internal or external threats.
In the case of the
Federal Republic of Germany, the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that is the
legal basis for the current SOFA with Germany has an exclusively external focus and does not
contain language that could be construed as legitimating the use of American
military power for the purpose of defending the German government against internal threats. Article 6 of the NATO Treaty
specifically defines the term “armed attack” as an external attack and limits the
allied response to territories within specific geographical limits. The Treaty
states that NATO regards an armed attack as one:
“on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or
North America, on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of
any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer; on
the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these
territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of
the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or
the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of
Cancer.”
What
is notably absent from the NATO Treaty and the content of the existing status
of forces agreements with Germany that flow from it is any reference to the use
of U.S. military power inside or on the territory of Germany against internal
enemies of the German government. In Germany
(and Korea)
where U.S. Forces are stationed, the governments are strong, legitimate and
secure their own borders. This is yet another reason why the
institutionalization of internal U.S.
military intervention in Iraq’s
domestic affairs moves the United States
government into an entirely new international security role, one that is
uncomfortably close to the security arrangements the Soviet
Union imposed on the Warsaw Pact states.
In
the 1955 Warsaw Treaty, article 8 expressed respect for the independence and sovereignty
of its non-Soviet members, the treaty also acknowledged the international duty
of its members including the Soviet Union to
provide fraternal assistance in protecting the gains of socialism. The gains of
socialism equated in Soviet Russian terms to the installation of puppet
communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe resulting from Soviet Russian
occupation in 1945. Between 1953 and 1981, the Soviet armed forces provided
fraternal assistance on several occasions in the form of massive military
interventions to defeat open rebellions against Central-East Europe’s ruling
communist parties.
In
1953, Soviet forces moved into Berlin
to suppress opposition to the East German Communist government after Stalin’s
death. In 1956, Soviet tank armies intervened to crush the Hungarian uprising
that removed Hungary’s
communist party from power. In 1968 the Soviet suppression of popular political
dissent in the former Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia resulted in the
commitment of several hundred thousand Soviet and non-Soviet troops under
Soviet command to occupy the country’s major cities. The action to crush the
Czechoslovak people’s bid for independence from Moscow subsequently became known as the
Brezhnev Doctrine. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet premier and communist party
chief summed up the doctrine of the Warsaw Pact’s concept of limited
sovereignty in the defense of socialism with the words, “What we have, we
hold.”
The Bush
Administration’s proposed commitment to defend Iraq’s “democratic system,” seems
uncomfortably close to the Soviet notion of defending socialism. The fact that Iraq’s claim to democracy is extremely tenuous
makes this article in the Joint Declaration particularly disturbing because it
contradicts America’s
historic fight for the self-determination of peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa,
the Middle East and Latin America during the
Cold War. Members
should also recall that history is littered with examples of outside forces
that intervened in the internal affairs of other states with the best of
intentions, only to watch events spin out of control, and massive human
tragedies result.
This description would seem to fit contemporary Iraq.
An open-ended American military pledge to defend the Iraqi
government in Baghdad against internal enemies
also has the practical, if surely unintended effect of strengthening
alternative legitimacy inside Iraq;
namely, Kurdish, Shi'a, and Sunni legitimacy. Moreover, staying in Iraq much longer has the potential to undermine
American legitimacy among Americans — and U.S. allies. Collaterally, the use
of American force inside Iraq
also potentially undermines America’s
military presence in Afghanistan.
In view of these points, it would make sense for congress to identify specific
benchmarks of eroding legitimacy for the Iraqi government based on continued U.S. military involvement in Iraq’s internal
affairs.
Furthermore,
the use of Al-Qaeda as a brand name for any Arab rebelling against the U.S. military
occupation is a tactic used repeatedly over the last five years by general
officers and Administration spokesmen to persuade the American people that our
soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines confront an exclusively Al-Qaeda inspired
rebellion. In fact, as General John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander, pointed
out in testimony, Al-Qaeda’s adherents have never represented more than 3-5% of
the armed resistance to U.S. Forces in Muslim Arab Iraq.
In view of al Qaeda’s specific mention in the Joint Declaration, it seems
plausible that the Al-Qaeda brand name could be exploited in the future to
commit U.S. Forces to suppress any Arab in Iraq
who opposed the Iraqi government in Baghdad or
the U.S.
military presence.
The
second area of the Joint Declaration where problems arise is the
characterization of Iraq
as a sovereign state. In fact, Iraq
is neither a sovereign state nor a modern nation-state. A nation-state is
defined as having an internal structure of political power that exercises a
monopoly of control over the means of violence within its territory; as having
the authority to enforce the distribution of goods, services and resources
throughout the polity; and, as having a government that is the legitimate focus
of national political identity. None of these conditions currently applies to
the Maliki government. The truth is that the Maliki government would not
survive the withdrawal of U.S.
military power from Iraq.
The Maliki government
enjoys tepid support from Iraq’s
Arab population and meets of necessity inside the Green Zone under heavy U.S. military
security. Depending on the region, the Maliki government evokes a visceral
response from Iraq’s
Arab population ranging from quiet disdain to armed hostility.
Today, Iraq
is dominated by militias of every kind and its central government wallows in corruption.
Khalid Jamal al-Qaisi, the deputy commander of one of the
new, U.S. funded Sunni Arab
militias in Baghdad
proclaims, "We are an independent state; no police or army is allowed to
come in." He
and his contemporaries among the nearly 100,000 Sunni Arab Insurgents now on
the Army payroll refuse to cooperate with Iraqi Army and police, claiming with
considerable justification that they too are infiltrated by Shi’ite militias
and riddled with sectarian bias.
For these reasons, any elected official contemplating the
commitment of U.S. Forces to the survival of a government like Iraq’s, a government that already confronts
powerful, armed opposition inside its own borders, should recognize the damage
that reliance on U.S. troops
does to the legitimacy of Iraq’s
government. For this reason, the best strategy for the United States is to stay out of Iraq’s internal conflict until the conflict is
resolved and a new, legitimate Iraqi leadership emerges without direct U.S. military
support.
This was the general
strategy the United States followed in El Salvador, often cited as a case study
in how the United States can defeat insurgencies. However, it was not the U.S. military that defeated the FMLN guerrillas,
but the Salvadoran military under the control of its own government with U.S. encouragement and no more than fifty U.S. military
advisors. Moreover, El Salvador was not simply a sovereign
state, but El Salvadoran society was and is a single identity — an essential
prerequisite for successful internal defense of a government struggling for
survival and legitimacy.
These
points notwithstanding, there are other considerations that merit the
committee’s attention. Iraq’s
borders are uncontrolled and for geographical reasons, they are likely to
remain so. In view of the popular hostility among the Muslim Arabs to a
permanent U.S. military
presence in the region and Iraq’s
uncontrolled borders, U.S. Forces concentrated in large, fixed installations
could be at severe risk. The possibility of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD)
in the form of a low-yield nuclear weapon smuggled into the country and
detonated in close proximity to a large U.S.
installation like Balad Air Base where 30,000 U.S. troops and 7,000 contractors reside
should not be excluded. Temporary U.S.
military installations in Iraq
have already presented radicalized elements in the region with an opportunity
they would otherwise never have – to directly attack U.S. forces. The use of WMD against
a more permanent U.S.
base like Balad Air Base would probably constitute an immediate catalyst for
larger, regional war.
Finally, it appears to many in the United States and in
Iraq, that the true basis for the Administration’s current approach is the
popular narrative that Iraq has turned a strategic corner that suddenly in the
space of a few months, after nearly five years of bloody conflict involving the
massive loss of Arab life and property, new U.S. counterinsurgency tactics are
working and Iraq’s Muslim Arab population welcomes the presence of American
military power as the guarantor of their future prosperity and freedom. Members
must understand that this popular narrative is an illusion, one that is likely
to vanish as quickly as it was created.
Iraq’s bloody
Civil War created a brief strategic opportunity for U.S.
ground forces that a million additional U.S. troops could not. More than
two year’s of sectarian violence made the districts in and around Baghdad completely Sunni
or Shi’ite, significantly reducing the violence and improving conditions for
neighborhood businesses to operate. Where once there was one country called Iraq, there are
now three emerging entities; one Kurdish, one Sunni and one Shi’ite. For the
moment, this new strategic reality combined with huge cash payments to the
Sunni insurgents and Muqtada al Sadr’s self-imposed cease fire, not the much
touted troop surge, explains the drop in U.S. casualties.
Officers with years of experience in Iraq warn that
the “Great Awakening” could be transitory. “The Sunni insurgents are following
a fight, bargain, subvert, fight approach to get what they want,” said one
colonel. And what the Sunni leaders
want and what they are getting is both independence from the hated
Shi’ite-dominated government with its ties to Tehran and money; lots of money. Meanwhile, the Sunni
leaders who sit on the Awakening Councils are telling the Arab press that they
defeated the American military that is leaving and paying reparations.
Terms like, “concerned citizens” or “voluntary
Iraqi security forces” conceal the militant character of these heavily armed
tribal and sectarian-based forces.Cash-based
deals that support what is called the Sunni Arabs’ 'great awakening' have
little, if anything, to do with winning Arab “hearts and minds,” or building
democracy. The Sunni
‘Awakening” is neither democratic nor permanent. Some of the watersheds
that congress might anticipate as warnings of renewed and reinvigorated
conflict inside Iraq
might, for example, include a gradual Sunni Arab turn against U.S. Forces, or
when Moqtada al Sadr's 60,000 fighters "stand up" and resume attacks
on U.S. Forces.
Finally, adding
mass in the form of more soldiers to fight an insurgency is not the path to
success and cash payments to the enemy are always a
temporary solution. In
time, hatred for the foreign military presence overwhelms greed. If numbers of troops won insurgencies then Vietnam would
be the 51st state today. Since the end of World War II no Western army has
defeated an insurgency without the overwhelming majority of its soldiers coming
from the host country. In fact, the very act of flooding the host country with
foreign troops always guarantees that the occupied population will never
support the foreign invader.
Finally, there is
no incentive for the various Iraqi factions struggling for power to settle
their differences as long as the American military behaves as a co-belligerent,
manipulating factions with cash and violence in the country’s internal struggle
for power.
It is hard to imagine how the U.S. military would disengage from
this role if it were pledged to an internal defense role as envisioned in the
November 2007 declaration of principles.
The British military and political leadership reached
similar conclusions about the futility of a continued British military presence
in Ireland during the Irish
insurgency against the British Army between 1917 and 1922 and opted to withdraw
from Ireland
as a result. Thus, counterinsurgency (COIN) is a fatally flawed concept because
it encourages a self-defeating strategy in the pursuit of
"victorious" tactics as seen in Iraq,
in Ireland
and in a host of other countries.
After World War I when the cost of maintaining British military control
of Iraq in the face of a
Sunni and Shiite Arab revolt approached the cost of Britain’s national health budget,
Sir Winston Churchill, then, a member of the government, made the following
recommendation to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.
Winston
S. Churchill to David Lloyd George
1
September 1922
I
am deeply concerned about Iraq.
The task you have given me is becoming really impossible… I think we should now
put definitely, not only to Feisal but to the Constituent Assembly, the position
that unless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own terms in regard to
efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the financial
year. I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and
if
they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I
would actually clear out. That at any rate would be a solution. Whether we
should clear out of the country altogether or hold on to a portion of the Basra vilayet is a minor
issue requiring a special study…
Surveying
all the above, I think I must ask you for definite guidance at this stage as to
what you wish and what you are prepared to do… At present we are paying eight
millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of
which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.
In summary,
an American pledge to defend current or future Iraqi governments in Baghdad from internal
threats is a volcano waiting to erupt. The American military establishment
cannot juggle Iraq’s
multiple warring identities in perpetuity and as long as U.S. military power plays a significant role in Iraq’s domestic
affairs, no Iraqi government will be entirely legitimate.
Lastly, if the current U.S. occupation
is converted to a permanent military presence with this mission, the unifying
impact on Muslim Arabs across the Middle East
could be profound. Millions of Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs, the vast majority of which oppose a
permanent U.S. military
presence inside Iraq,
may well set aside their differences to join forces in eliminating the hated
foreign military presence and its associated puppet government. The
consequences of this development for U.S. Forces and for the United States’
international standing would be extremely negative. The Committee should recommend that the House
and the Senate demand to review any proposed arrangement committing the
American people to such a dangerous course of action.