What's wrong with the "surge"? (2)

IN THE NEWS

[For the first post in this series, click here.

Grand strategy: Alone again, naturally
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration has insisted on, whenever possible, going it alone. The “coalition of the willing” was, short of acting without any allies at all, the furthest the Bush Administration could have gone from the traditional American approach to coalition warfare. In domestic politics, the Administration, once it got a poorly-worded approval from Congress to attack Iraq, shoved the other two branches of the federal government aside. In fact, the Administration deliberately excluded or neutralized important parts of the executive branch, most notably the State Department and CIA. To a startling degree, a narrow part of the US government, the White House and the Department of Defense, prosecuted a war with a far weaker alliance than the United States used in previous conflicts of this scale.

The “new” strategy for Iraq, the so-called “surge” of 20,000 troops, primarily in Baghdad, does nothing to  break the Administration out of its imperious solitude. Foreign governments are not providing additional troops, money, or even rhetorical support. The Administration has not revised its Iraq alliance, a brittle arrangement in which there is no formal obstacle to the British leaving at any time, and severe doubt that the Iraqi government is even fighting the same war as the United States. There was no sweeping re-formulation, in which regional powers, NATO, or the United Nations made new commitments to ending, reducing, or containing the violence in Iraq.

Within the US government, the proposed escalation—surge, augmentation, spike, spurt, whatever—hasn’t changed the Bush Adminisration’s relationship with other parts of the US government. Quite the opposite: the Administration is already digging in its heels during the first round of hearings, such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ recent testimony. If there are private talks between the Administration and the new House and Senate leadership, so what? Politically and constitutionally, the important next moves will occur in the open. Negotiating with the legislative branch of government is not like negotiating with Iran or Syria.

The "surge" changes nothing about the Bush Administration's radically different version of American grand strategy. If you have any doubts, look at how little has changed outside of Iraq. Iran continues its march towards nuclear weapons. North Korea has not budged, either on its nuclear weapons program, or anything else. China continues to assert its independence, most recently by trying to blind US spy satellites. Russian continues its effort to cement a sphere of influence and a separate direction from the West. Relations with the European Community have not changed. Whatever the merits or faults of the "surge" as a policy toward Iraq, it is certainly not a new direction for US foreign policy.

In announcing the strategy, the White House clearly tried to signal that something had changed. Unfortunately, moving the camera from one Presidential set to another did not alter one of the iconic images of the Iraq war: George W. Bush, speaking alone to the camera.

Comments

[Mojo]

How can you say nothing has changed? They got the surge plan from a completely different American Enterprise Institute fellow than they got the original occupation plan from.

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