By Ivan Arreguîn-Toft

"Peace with honor." This was the Nixon administration's euphemism for disengagement from South Vietnam, a place where corruption and incompetence had long doomed any hope of victory; even a victory as modest as the simple negative objective of preserving the political independence of tiny South Vietnam.

Today marks the first of a series of disengagements of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, as U.S. armed forces withdrew from Iraq's major cities and moved to take up blocking positions along likely infiltration routes into these same cities. The hope -- and it is little more than that -- is that in the time remaining between today and 2012, U.S. forces can manage to prevent a collapse of Iraq's fragile political independence and achieve what eluded them after 1973: peace with honor in Iraq.

The good news is that from the accession of General David Petraeus to command to the present, it is now fair to say that the "honor" part is not in question. In Nixon's time "honor" meant "no obvious defeat." Yet the honor of U.S. conduct in Vietnam remains a point of extreme controversy to this day. Many historians have argued that most U.S. armed forces in Vietnam de-civilized and de-soldierized: becoming viscous, drug-impaired war criminals. Others remember many who served with restraint, professionalism, and honor in the deepest sense of the word. To be fair, the weight of evidence pushes toward the barbarism side, but the truth is we will never actually know. Today, notwithstanding Abu Ghraib and five years of faith-based strategy, diplomacy, and politics during the Bush administration's tenure, "honor" once again means self-sacrifice and right conduct.

Since 2007, when U.S. strategy shifted dramatically in Iraq, U.S. armed forces have been dedicated to protecting noncombatants and by that means creating the crucial space for politics to resolve the underlying issues that lead young men to take up arms in the first place. Assaults against "evildoers" remain important, but have been conducted in a much more careful, methodical, and systematic fashion; and never, one must add, at the expense of Iraqi civilians. In short, U.S. armed forces can no longer be defeated in Iraq. The U.S. public understands that its new presidential administration is committed to pursuing more modest political objectives in Iraq with more effective tools than armed force. As a result, U.S. armed forces are preparing to leave Iraq in good order.

In fact, the mere physical presence of U.S. armed forces -- which in the main were never designed as an occupation and transition force -- had become (and remains) the single biggest obstacle to the achievement of a stable, prosperous Iraq. U.S. armed forces understood this as early as 2005. Their core concern then (as now) was that they not be blamed for "defeat" in Iraq. In this goal they have succeeded, largely due to unflagging public support and sympathy, and their tireless efforts to resolve the contradictions between what their experience and professionalism told them on the one hand, and the often foolish demands of their civilian leadership on the other hand.

The departure of U.S. armed forces from Iraq has another, less obvious benefit. Currently, most commentators believe that a U.S. withdrawal will signal a victory for Iran and fast-forward Iran's penetration of Iraqi politics. On the contrary. U.S. departure will remind Iraqis -- who with the exception of its Kurds and regardless of religious affiliation are virtually all Arabs -- that Iranians are Persians. Iran is likely to have as much luck bossing about the Iraqis after a U.S. withdrawal as China did bossing about the Vietnamese in 1975.

But there is bad news as well. After it became obvious that self-defense could not stand as a justification for the invasion, conquest, and occupation of a distant sovereign state, Americans turned to the positive objective of aiding Iraq's transition to a stable, democratic state; with the understanding that "democratic" meant "like us." This would protect us from terrorism, high oil prices, and just make us feel good. It wouldn't hurt Israel either. But nothing like that is even a remote possibility. What follows progressive U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will look very much like what preceded its intervention in 2003. Within a decade, expect to see the consolidation of a top-down authority structure (very much like that in today's Russian Federation), like as not dominated by Shii factions. Expect this consolidation of power to be attended by fighting between the Shii-dominated center and Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis, as well as extreme tension between Iraq and its neighbors: Sau'di Arabia, Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Israel.

In the end, success in Iraq -- one could hardly call it "victory" -- may come down to simply engineering a soft landing: a return to the way things were in 1980, when the United States was allied with an unpalatable but stable Iraq against an even more unpalatable and more dangerous Iran. Of course, that's if we're lucky.

Ivan Arreguîn-Toft is an assistant professor in the History and International Relations Department at Boston University and author of How the Weak Win Wars.

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By Monica Duffy Toft

As American troops pull back from Iraq's urban areas, a central question is whether Iraq's forces will be able to secure the peace. If history is any guide, Iraq's security forces face a challenging task. Ending civil wars and keeping them ended is not easy. Iraq faces three critical risk factors.

First, the violence was ended by a negotiated settlement. Iraq is a unique case when it comes to the emergence of civil war, which started with invasion and occupation by an outside power: the United States and its coalition partners. Yet rather than unite and attack the invaders cum occupiers, Iraqis turned on themselves. Stopping this self-destruction has entailed a series of negotiations and agreements between the parties to form a government and rule the country. In essence, no one side emerged victorious (as most recently by the government in Sri Lanka); rather, a negotiated settlement of sorts was put into place in Iraq, with each of the main factions guaranteed a say in running the government.

On the face of it, negotiated settlements are desirable outcomes for ending violence. Violence is stopped and each party is guaranteed a voice in the government; it seems more democratic. Yet this equity in governance comes at a price: negotiated settlements turn out to be the most precarious ending to civil wars. They are twice as likely to break down than are military victories, and the recurred war that results is often even longer and bloodier than the first war. In the longer term, Sri Lanka is likely to stabilize while Iraq is not. This is the case because for negotiated settlements to work, they require trust between the contracting parties and continual negotiation and bargaining. When tensions run deep, such bargaining and comprise are difficult. What we find is that these settlements hold for one or two rounds of elections, with the elections functioning as part of the negotiated process, but often break down thereafter. Why? Because one party or both becomes frustrated that it has not won (enough) parliamentary seats, leadership positions, or desired policies. Rather than pursue the ballot box one more time, they take out their guns and challenge the system.

There are exceptions. One is El Salvador, which suffered a long and brutal civil war that ended in a negotiated settlement in 1992. It has remained at peace, and in fact, the candidate for the former rebels, the Farabundo Martî, recently won the presidency. This bodes well for democracy in El Salvador. However, such an outcome will be more difficult to achieve in Iraq. The reason is the second critical risk factor in Iraq, which is sectarian divisions, a risk factor absent in El Salvador, where the fight was class-based, not ethnic, religious, or linguistic.

Divisions based on identity are risk factors for a number of reasons. First, most identities are born in bloodshed and in opposition to an "other." This means that when stories of the birth of the nation or religion are told and retold, they often invoke an enemy that must be overcome. For the Serbs, it is the nasty Ottomans or Muslims; for the Chechens, it is Moscow's imperial yoke; and for the Shia in Iraq, it is historically the Sunnis. Such histories of fear, hatred and violence are difficult to overcome and almost impossible to erase. Thus, when political power is divided up, these identities come to the fore and often play a role in how power is divided and administered. The Shii-Sunni division is real, and it will continue to play out in Iraqi politics. Already there are warning signs, including the dominance of Shia in the security apparatus (notably the Ministry of Interior) and the lack of progress in integrating the Sunni-dominated Awakening Council members in the security forces.

A final critical risk factor is the geographical distribution of Iraqis, with Kurds dominant in the north, the Shia in the southeast, and Sunnis in the west. Living in enclaves affords them greater autonomy to not only run their own affairs, but challenge the state. Ethnic groups that are concentrated in regions of a country and are also a majority of that region's population are three times more likely to engage in violence than those that are dispersed or constitute minorities.

One bit of good news is Baghdad. Not only is the city intermingled with different populations, but urbanization has a dampening effect on ethnic violence. Nevertheless, years of violence have segregated neighborhoods, and even countries with intermingled capitals undergo serious challenges to centralized state authority (consider Belgium).

Taken alone, these risk factors might not tip the balance. In combination, it's a different story. States experiencing civil wars ended by negotiated settlement, with distrust and fear among the dominant identity groups that are concentrated into separate enclaves are difficult to manage even in well established democracies. The likelihood Iraq will emerge as a consolidated democracy is slim. More likely, either Iraq will divide, or a new strong-man -- Shii or Sunni --will emerge to keep the country together.

Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School and the author of The Geography of Ethnic Violence and Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars.

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The dazzling incompetence of the Bush administration left Barack Obama with a long list of problems to fix. Yet Bush did provide his successor with one unambiguous gift: the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. By negotiating a timetable for the orderly removal of U.S. forces, Bush gave Obama a "get of Iraq free" pass, a clear path to ending Bush’s most expensive mistake. It is an opportunity that Obama should not squander.
 
As part of that agreement, U.S. troops are to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities today and deployed at nearby military bases, as a first step toward their eventual withdrawal. But does this course of action still make sense, given the recent increase in violence, a development that many people fear heralds a return to pre-"surge" levels of violence? The answer is yes. Despite these worrisome developments, the United States should "stay on course" out of Iraq.

The grim reality is that the United States is no longer in a position to guide Iraq's political future; that task is up to the citizens of Iraq. America's armed forces are extremely good at deterring large-scale conventional aggression and at winning conventional military engagements, but they are neither designed for nor adept at occupying and governing foreign countries whose character and culture we do not understand, especially when these societies are deeply divided. To say this takes nothing away from the sacrifices borne by our armed forces and their families; they were asked to do a job for which they were not trained or equipped, and which may have been impossible from the start.
 
Although often touted as a great success, the fate of the 2007 "surge" reveals the limits of U.S. influence clearly. Although it did lower sectarian violence, the surge did not lead to significant political reconciliation between the contending Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish groups. The "surge" was thus a tactical success but a strategic failure, and that failure is instructive. If increased force levels, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and our best military leadership could not "turn the corner" politically in Iraq, then prolonging our occupation beyond the timetable outlined in the SOFA agreement makes no sense. No matter how long we stay, Iraq is likely to face similar centrifugal forces, and our presence is doing little to reduce them.
 
Equally important, prolonging our stay in Iraq involves real costs, apart from the billions of extra dollars we will spend between now and the planned withdrawal in 2011. Our armed forces have been stretched thin, and are badly in need of retraining, re-equipping, and recovery. Remaining bogged down in Iraq also diverts time and attention from other strategic issues and continues to supply anti-American forces with ideological ammunition about our "imperial" tendencies. Delaying the agreed-upon withdrawal would thus be yet another strategic misstep.
 
The good news -- of a sort -- is that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people increasingly agree that it is time for us to go. The Maliki government drove a hard bargain with Bush over the SOFA agreement, insisting on a shorter deadline than Bush originally wanted and demanding greater restrictions on U.S. activities during the drawdown. The Maliki government did this because it understood that taking a tough line with Washington was popular with the Iraqi people, and it hasn't budged from that tough line despite continued internal problems.
 
It is of course possible -- even likely -- that violence will increase as U.S. forces draw down, and there is still some danger of open civil war. That will be a tragedy for which Americans do bear some responsibility, insofar as we opened Pandora's Box when we invaded in 2003. But that danger will exist no matter how long we remain, and our presence there may in fact be delaying the hard bargaining and political compromises that will ultimately have to occur before Iraq is finally stable.
 
In any case, that task should now be left to Iraqis themselves. Historian Edward Gibbon once observed that "There is nothing more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest." A wise admonition, and one that President Obama should keep in mind as he leads the United States out of the Iraq debacle. Getting out may not be easy but way ahead is obvious: just stick to the agreement that the Bush administration already signed.

I am heading to California tomorrow on a family vacation, and will be posting infrequently over the next ten days. I've asked a few people to contribute guest blogs while I'm gone, and I'm sure I'll chime in from time to time, but I plan to spend most of my time reading, hiking, and catching up with my family out west. I wonder if there's good Wifi in Yosemite Valley...

Our FP colleague Marc Lynch notes that Obama’s principled stand on Israeli settlement expansion and a two-state solution may be paying off in other ways, most notably in an easing in checkpoints, etc., on the West Bank. This is encouraging news and I don’t want to sound like a killjoy, but it is important to keep the big picture in mind.

After all, as Marc notes, at the same time that Israel is easing restrictions on the West Bank, they've apparently approved the construction of another 240 homes at an outpost near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. One hand giveth, the other hand taketh away.

At this point, freezing settlement expansion, lifting checkpoints, building up more effective and professional Palestinian security forces, reforming Fatah, trying to get Hamas to recognize Israel, etc., are all just means to an end; they are not ends in themselves. As Obama appears to understand, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be put to rest until there are two states for two peoples, and the Palestinian state cannot be some sort of permanently crippled Bantustan akin to the open-air prison that now exists in Gaza. Until Israelis, Palestinians, and their supporters elsewhere get to that finish line, in short, we haven’t really solved anything. 

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