That didn’t take long. Just a few weeks ago Bush the Younger was imperiously using an agreement with Iraq to bind his successor to his failed policies. Now the Iraqi government has declared not once but twice that any agreement would have to have a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. Clearly Nouri al-Maliki knows that, at least for now, he’s the one with the leverage. Whether or not Bush has realized that yet is an open question but for the moment it is irrelevant because both of them are negotiating under a ticking clock. The current UN mandate for American forces in Iraq expires on December 31st of this year. That is the date you’ll see cited as the cause for these negotiations but the real reason is a date eight weeks prior, November 4th.
For the moment Maliki has the upper hand because if he doesn’t want to deal with Bush he can simply wait four months and deal with the President-elect instead. He may or may not get a better deal from the winning Senator than he would’ve gotten from Bush, but it is Bush who has to deal with Maliki, not the other way around. Of course, as soon as there is a President-elect the negotiating table shifts in that man’s favor because one way or another he’s going to be around for four years.
It is, therefore, in both Bush’s and Maliki’s interests to conclude some kind of an agreement before November 4th; unfortunately for both of them they seem to want the same thing: control over how and when American involvement in Iraq ends.
First, let’s take a moment to review each side’s proposal so far. The information we’re working with here is, at best, accurate only in a skeletal way (it’s in published, English-language reports after all) but it fits in with what we already know about each side. The initial American proposal was basically Colonialism II: de facto permanent military bases, extraterritoriality for mercenaries, control of airspace below 30,000 feet (a.k.a. ground support altitudes), and, perhaps most insane, the freedom to act (shoot people, detain suspects, and blow things up) without Iraqi approval. The Iraqi proposal, which by simple fact of being less insane will probably end up being a lot closer to any eventual agreement, is for unlimited military aid under the discretion of Iraqi officials until such time as the Iraqis deem it no longer necessary.
Maliki, who let’s all remember is neither stupid nor an American puppet, wants the GIs around until such time as he is militarily and politically secure, then he can score big popularity points by kicking us out. Bush wants the GIs bound permanently in Iraq because he believes our presence there gives us strategic leverage over the entire region.
The key political buzzword here is “timetable”. The existence of a “timetable” implies that the U.S. presence in Iraq is going to end, relatively soon. Bush, and his would be successor John McCain, want American troops in Iraq long term. The rational for that goes back almost two decades to the first Gulf War. On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded and conquered Kuwait. After that there was nothing but sand between the Iraqi tanks and most of the Saudi oil fields. The numbers are a little hazy but as I recall at the time Iraq and Kuwait each had something like 10% of proven global oil reserves and Saudi Arabia was at 25%. In August of 1990 there was a very real possibility that, had Saddam Hussein ordered his troops south, forty odd percent of all the world’s oil reserves would be controlled by one man. That his regime had been, up until 1 August 1990 nominally a friendly one counted for very little; that much oil in the hands of one government was a serious threat to the world economy and the United States of America.
Avoiding a repeat of that situation has more or less been US Government policy ever since. After the Gulf War it took the form of American troops in Saudi Arabia (the nominal rational for the 11 September 2001 attacks was the presence of non-Muslim troops in Saudi Arabia, the location of Mecca and Medina). With the Iraq invasion completed the US closed its bases in Saudi Arabia and began building them in Iraq, but the policy remained the same. The US Government views the presence of American ground troops in the oil-rich portions of the Middle East as an absolute strategic necessity, hence the need for a long term presence in Iraq.
The Iraqi point of view is, not surprisingly, quite different. They see no reason that the United States should have any kind of preferential treatment in the region. To them we should be just another oil customer. Maliki believes that his government will soon be able to administer the country without the help of American forces (he may or may not be correct about this) and once he can do that he has no incentive to allow American troops to remain or give us any kind of preferential treatment in terms of access to oil. Thinking that he or his constituents will allow us to remain out of some kind of gratitude for removing Hussein is the height of naivete.
Nevertheless that seems to be the attitude of the Bush Administration. The question is not what kind of deal can they get from Maliki, it’s will Maliki allow them a face saving deal? The only threat Bush can make is to unilaterally withdraw American support and allow Maliki’s government to fall, but for his own domestic political reasons he cannot do that. Of course, starting on November 5th there’s going to be a new American government and Maliki loses a lot of his leverage. McCain has promised to stay in Iraq, Obama has promised to leave. Either one of them will come at any status of forces negotiates with their primary goal in mind. If Maliki can put the screws to Bush and get what he wants he’ll do that, if Bush proves intransigent he’ll roll the dice with his successor. But there’s no way he makes a deal that’s bad for the long term interests of Iraq with a man who will soon be little more than the most famous ranch hand in all of Texas.
