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  See Also

  Iraq, National Security and Defense, Wars and Warfare, International Peace and Security

  Find New Allies

  Author:	Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow

  December 10, 2006
  The New York Times

  For all its deftness and honesty, the Iraq Study Group report flees the hardest choices and leaves us without a credible strategy. It calls for getting American troops out of Iraq, but says we’ll be there for a long time. It calls for more training of Iraqi forces, but doesn’t explain how to make it happen this time. It insists on reconciliation among warring sects, but offers no realistic political power-sharing plan to achieve it. Instead, the group’s gloomy assessment of the situation should have led it to a clear strategy aimed at limiting damage:

  First, try for a federal or decentralized Iraq with oil-revenue sharing, as its Constitution provides. Only federalism can prevent partition, though everything’s a long shot now.

  Second, provide means, protection and funds for Iraqis wanting to relocate for safety. It’s the only way to stop ethnic cleansing.

  Third, make common cause with Iraqi Sunni Baathists, Saudis and others to crush the terrorists in central Iraq. Once our troops start to leave, we can establish this clear common interest, and the Baathists will do a better job than we.

  Fourth, ally diplomatically and economically with Iraqi Shiites, who are, after all, Iraqis and Arabs, not Iranians and Persians, and who don’t want to be ruled from Tehran.

  This damage-limiting approach fits the facts on the ground described by the group, and may be the only way to avoid a failed Bush policy becoming a strategic defeat.

  This article appears in full on CFR.org by permission of its original publisher. It was originally available here

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  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

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