A Council on Foreign Relations meeting on President Richard Haass's new book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.

Listen to CFR President Richard N. Haass discuss his new book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars, with educators as part of CFR's Academic Conference Call series.

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Iraq is currently in the early stages of a negotiated end to an intense ethnosectarian war. As such, there are several contingencies in which recent, mostly positive trends in Iraq could be reversed, threatening U.S. national interests. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Stephen Biddle assesses four interrelated scenarios in Iraq that could derail the prospects for peace and stability in the short to medium term and posits concrete policy options to limit U.S. vulnerability to the possibility of such reversals.

Richard N. Haass argues that the second Iraq war was a war of choice - and a blunder.

Listen to CFR President Richard N. Haass discuss his new book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.

CFR President Richard N. Haass, whose latest book explores President George W. Bush's "war of choice" in Iraq, says he is concerned that President Obama may be turning the Afghanistan war into a "war of choice" too.

From the May/June 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs: The right war in Iraq, and the wrong one.

A new wave of sectarian violence has broken out in Iraq as the United States shifts its military and strategic focus to Afghanistan. Analysts warn new tensions could complicate withdrawal plans.

Lydia Khalil argues that President Obama need not lecture Iraqi leaders in order to convey U.S. support for Iraq's independence and sovereignty.

Charles Duelfer, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, says the biggest failure in the run-up to the war was misreading Iraqis' intentions, a lesson to consider when dealing with other hard-to-gauge countries, like Iran.

Lydia Khalil argues that domestic drivers in Iraq, rather than overhauled military or diplomatic strategy from without, will shape the nation's stability.

President Obama says ending the war in Iraq will require a new definition of victory, and experts add that the United States should expect no peace dividend in its budget anytime soon.

In this article, Ned Parker describes the ruling style of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the implications for the future of democracy in Iraq.

Stephen Biddle, a senior defense and counterterrorism analyst, says that President Obama's schedule for reducing and then ending the U.S. deployment in Iraq "is a reasonable compromise between several conflicting demands."

As Washington ponders how long to stay in Iraq, it would do well to remember the limited impact of the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s, and Somalia in the 1990s.