In which we discuss a diplomatic and military plan to start serving US interests in the Middle East.

The United States of America has been involved for too long in a war in Iraq which has failed to serve her interests. It has become clear from all accounts that there is no current strategy or goal, and that the present deployment of US and allied troops in the urban centers of Iraq is failing to serve any purpose. It is time for a strategic partial withdrawl from Iraq, and an accompanying shift in our foreign policy agenda. The United States should invoke a new agenda of diplomatic hardball with Iraq’s neighbors, and execute a phased and strategic withdrawal focused on securing her own interests.

Diplomatically, we must engage both Syria and Iran. The petulance with which they arrive at the negotiations must be converted to the absolute certainty that they must take a mature role in shaping the Middle East. The nature of the demographics of the region features built in incentives for each country to work to use the considerable social pressure they can wield to act as a stabilizing force in Iraq and the region as a whole.

First Syria. Syria's Ba’athist government embodies many of the worst traits of the region. Freedom Watch, and other human rights monitoring organizations have consistently given Syria the lowest possible rating for human rights. They imprison and torture their citizens, allow no free speech, and have a virtually totalitarian parliamentary process. Unemployment in Syria is above twenty five percent. It has been estimated that as many as ninety percent of the suicide bombers who given their lives in attacks in Iraq in the last year have been from Syria, through the porous border they share in the northwest portion of Iraq. The Muslim population of the country is more than seventy five percent Sunni.

A threatened US withdrawal from the cities of Iraq would force the Sunni population of Syria to sit up and take notice of the religious civil war underway in the streets of Baghdad currently. The Sunni in Iraq represent a minority of the country (around thirty five percent) -- the particular minority who most resisted the formation of a diplomatic Iraqi constitution in 2005. Without support of a peacekeeping force, like the US is currently attempting to provide, these Sunni will be forced to either agree to play politics, or be destroyed by the Shiite majority. Syria cannot accept a Sunni massacre, but lacks the military might to directly prevent it. So they would have no choice but to either provide safe haven for the overwhelming number of Sunni refugees who would flood their southeastern border, or, better still, use the vast social pressure they are currently applying to creating terrorists to push for a political solution which would serve to protect minority interests in Iraq.

Iran, with its firebrand religious leaders, have derived immense political capital out of the US occupation of Iraq. Overwhelmingly Shiite, Iran has no love for Iraq, but cannot afford to suffer so massive a border becoming any more unstable than it currently is. Moreover, virtually all of Iran’s wealth is derived from their state owned oil exports. Sitting atop a mountain of petrodollars, the president of Iran has risen to great popularity by race baiting (he recently held a conference to “determine” if the Nazi holocaust was a sham), and fanning the flames of anti-American sentiment. So long as the US remains a dominant and visible presence in Iraq Ahmadinejad can avoid contributing any solutions, and simply bask in the glow of the ill will the US engenders among the Shiites of Iraq.

Making both of these countries face up to the grim reality of a widespread Sunni v. Shiite conflict in the region, as well as the economic and military catastrophe presented by a massive exodus of refugees may serve to force them into directing their attention towards soothing, not fanning, the fires of sectarian conflict. Without the US military presence keeping a lid on the boiling pot, both countries face the very real risk of internal civil wars of their own and economic collapse brought about by millions of incoming refugees.

It has long been a knee-jerk leftist response to US involvement in Iraq that the war has been simply fought over oil. While this is a gross oversimplification, energy realists will be quick to oppose a US withdrawal from Iraq, claiming that we simply need the petroleum the region can produce regardless of the price. In great measure, they are right. Iraq is believed to possess the second largest reserves of petroleum of any country in the world, just behind Saudi Arabia. (Iran is third.) In a time when increasing concern about US energy shortages, and the pressure which can be applied by OPEC is mounting, simply ceding the oil reserves of Iraq to the howling medieval barbarians who currently dominate the country is not a practical solution. We need the oil.

This is where it’s time for a shift in US foreign policy which stops trying to inveigle the energy realist position under the guide of spreading democracy. This is a transparent sham, and indeed, the very word “democracy” from the mouth of the current president sounds a bit like the word “love” from the mouth of a street-walker. Democracy is only barely alive in the United States currently, between Patriot Acts and elections by decree. Let us stop pretending that we care about spreading it in Iraq. We do not, and even if we did, there is little evidence the Iraqis are interested. Let us instead forthrightly admit that what we need from the region is its oil. Oil is the reason we line the coffers of some of the worst regimes on the planet (Saudi Arabia for one), and happily fund terrorists every time we fill up at the pump. We cannot continue to allow Saudi Arabia and Iran to dictate our fuel supplies, and therefore, we cannot completely withdraw from Iraq.

But what we can do is extricate US (and the token “Coalition” troops) from the cities of Iraq where the murderous sectarian civil war is being fought. Six of Iraq’s eight major oilfields are not located near any major cities. Establish new “Black Gold Zones” around them. Ring the fields and refineries with troops, and import only foreign workers who were guaranteed to be loyal. Get the oil flowing out of Iraq and to the US and Coalition countries where it is needed.

Make an agreement with the Iraqi government, such as it is at any given time, that control of the oilfields, and the new infrastructure we’ve built around it will be returned to Iraw when the following conditions are met. First, the US and its allies must have recouped the cost of the occupation, and the costs of the money that has been squandered and stolen by greedy Iraqi officials during reconstruction. Second, that there must be a sufficiently stable government to whom control can be handed.

There are those who would quickly invoke the notion of sovereignty to protest coalition seizure of Iraq’s oilfields, but their arguments can be brushed aside. First, Iraq is no longer a sovereign nation by almost any standards. There is no one to negotiate with and no one who speaks for the people of Iraq. Thus, the region is owed no rights beyond the basic human rights we have been trying in vain to protect. This plan does not in any way infringe upon those rights. Second, in times of war, it is standard procedure to make use of the resources of captured territories in order to further the war effort and advance the interests of the occupiers. This is no different than US use of India’s rubber factories in World War Two, and no more morally questionable than continuing to fund states (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) which sponsor terrorists.

Finally, to those who would argue that the US has a moral responsibility to prevent the widespread sectarian slaughter in the streets of Baghdad should occur this salve: currently, US armed forces are spread too thin by trying to patrol and maintain order in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in the world. Remove our young men and women from the deadly and pointless urban conflict they are currently mired in, and redeploy those who are willing to other areas in which humanitarian efforts are desired, like Darfur, Myanmar, or elsewhere. If humanitarian interests are to be a motivating factor, then let us focus resources where they are wanted and can go the most good.

It is time for a political shift by which the self interests of the United States are put first.

It is time for a military shift by which the lives of our troops are spent wisely.

It is time for harball diplomacy that forces the Middle East to grow up and face the reality that their firebrand policies and immature forms of governance are self-defeating.