Iraq and Third World Poverty: Agreeing (Mostly) With The LA Times

There are two good opinion pieces in today's LA Times. They are "good," of course, becuase for the most part they agree with me!

One of these is an op-ed piece by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations entitled "Iraq and the Fortunes of War." Haass makes a series of points that will sound familiar those of you who read this blog with any regularity:

1. "To [withdraw the troops] under present circumstances would be irresponsible. It is not, as is often stated, that withdrawal would undermine the value of all sacrifices made until now. Rather, leaving too soon could lead to a civil war among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that in turn would draw in the neighboring states.
   
   Why must that be prevented? Because chaos in a country of Iraq's resources and its location would be enormously costly. Terrorists would establish a stronger foothold there. Oil and gas production, the foundation of the world economy, would be disrupted. And perception among pro-Western governments that the United States is a reliable friend and ally would be gravely harmed."
2. At the same time, though, it is obvious "that we cannot sustain the current level of military effort given the strain on manpower and equipment; that force reductions would ease domestic political pressure on the White House and that they would address the argument that the insurgency is in part a reaction to the large U.S. presence. Near-term reductions also can be justified on the basis that the scale of American effort may actually be slowing the emergence of a capable Iraqi army, in that it reduces the urgency and breeds what some describe as a culture of dependency."
3. As a result of this tension, "[w]e will see the continued reorientation of U.S. forces away from offensive operations and toward the training and advising of Iraqis. More emphasis will be placed on holding secured territory and leaving the fight against the insurgency to Iraqi soldiers and police. This too should reduce U.S. casualties.

4. As to the probable outcome, "[i]t is, in principle, possible that Iraq one day [may emerge as] a successful democracy at peace with itself and its neighbors, providing a model for other states in the region to emulate. . . . Far more likely is something less and different: a barely functional Iraq, with a weak central government and highly autonomous regions, including a relatively secular, Kurdish-dominated north; a far more religious, Shiite-dominated south; a similarly religious, Sunni-dominated west; and a demographically mixed and unsettled center that includes the capital of Baghdad. . . . Still, a barely functional Iraq would be good, and at this point good enough. Sometimes in foreign policy, it is more important to avoid catastrophe than it is to reach for perfection. This is one of those times."
   

The only point in this with which I have some disagreement is the argument that the "reorientation of U.S. forces "will be away from offensive operations" and that "[m]ore emphasis will be placed on holding secured territory and leaving the fight against the insurgency to Iraqi soldiers and police." While I agree a reorientation of US forces is coming, I think it will be in the opposite direction. The reorientation, it seems to me, will be away from the policing and patrolling functions that are necessary to hold previously secured territotry and toward the offensive operations that are necessary to allow such holding operations to begin. There will for some time yet be a need for US forces to undertake or at least participate in the sort of pitched battle offensive operations necessary to drive insurgent forces from their strongholds. But more and more, the job of holding such strongholds once taken will fall, of necessity, to the Iraqis.

The second piece, is an LA Times editorial suggesting that "2005 will go down as a turning point in the global war on poverty." The editorial makes three points that will again sound familiar:

1. "Although there are plenty of reasons for disappointment — most notably the lack of progress in the Doha round of trade talks — there are reasons to be hopeful that the world's attitude toward poverty has evolved: It's no longer hopeless, or somebody else's problem."
2. After 50 years of seeing poor countries as nothing more than pawns in the "Great Game" that was the Cold War, another 10 or so years of simply ignoring them, and a final 5 years of making grandiose promises that were not kept, 2005 was the year in which "[s]purred on by activists like Bono and Bob Geldof, philanthropists like the Gateses and world leaders like British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wealthy nations [finally] took a deep breath and opened their pocketbooks."
3. But the progress is agonizingly slow. "Especially disappointing was the failure by the World Trade Organization to make much progress in opening markets and reducing subsidies for agricultural goods, a critical step toward raising living standards in the Third World. Bizarrely, leaders of industrialized nations would rather give away money than free up their markets, which would boost their own economies as well as those of their trading partners. A better trade deal must be put at the top of the world's agenda in the coming year."

I have one small quibble with this as well. I think there are signs of hope even in the results of the Doha talks. True, the talks did not produce the reduction of the developed world's trade barriers and subsidies that are, admittedly, critical to raising Third World living standards. However, I think even here that significant progress was made in getting the developed world to recongnize both the importance and eventual inevitability of those steps. As such, even here, 2005 may prove to have been a turning point.