Hard bargaining - Council on Foreign Relations
"...Many critics of the war now hope that a threat of US withdrawal will provide this lever. Senator Carl Levin, for example, has long argued that the US military presence serves as a crutch that enables Iraqis to avoid painful compromise and hard bargaining, and that only a timetable for removing this crutch can compel them to face facts and swallow a settlement.
The administration, by contrast, sees its troop surge as the means to reconciliation. In its view, chaos in Baghdad has pushed politics aside in favor of sectarian self-defense and the vengeance of militias. By deploying enough troops to bring security to the capital, the administration hopes to create breathing room and a political space within which a deal can be struck.
Neither view is sound. Instead, if there is any hope of a peaceful solution to Iraq’s civil war, it will require a new strategy in which military force is tied much more actively to ongoing political negotiations. Rather than merely creating space for diplomats to talk, our military must provide the leverage needed to drive unwilling factions toward compromise.
The surge will give us 160,000 heavily armed troops in Iraq. This is not enough to secure the whole country, but it is enough to provide some powerful sticks and carrots. Used selectively to threaten factions that do not compromise and assist those that do, American military power can be an important tool for negotiators..."
Biddle is an interesting guy, well credentialed and thoughtful.
"...:Iraq’s factions reject reconciliation, and will continue to reject it until outside pressure forces them to compromise..."
He assesses our current chance for success as slim and offers a radically different view of the employment of U.S. ground forces to politically leverage the various factions. While intrigued, I assess our chances as nil and have long preferred a re-deployment of our forces to Kurdistan.
I frankly think that our nation cannot stand another protracted public debate on strategy such as we went through from last May, 2006 through January 2007. Too long, too cumbersome, too public. Worst, too late, even then. As such, I think that we've committed ourselves to Petraeus' plan until it succeeds or our patience is exhausted.
I bet on the latter.