The United States stands at a critical geopolitical crossroads. The next year will determine whether the United States attains the position of power broker or sees its power break. The current situation in Iraq underscores an unfortunate adage: politicians rarely make effective strategists. In order for the United States to buttress its strategic interests and national security needs, minimize its military casualties and wartime expenditures and strengthen its regional influence, it must repudiate democracy building and return to a realist mindset. A new vision for Iraq and the Middle East is necessary if U.S. fortunes are to improve.
Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional aims must be addressed in any serious discussion of Iraq. The regime in Tehran faces a number of serious challenges in its nuclear development. The quality of the nuclear fuel at the Bushehr and Isfahan facilities is dubious, as are the centrifuges necessary for uranium enrichment. The lack of a delivery mechanism is another problem, which is underscored by a few comparisons. South Africa began its nuclear program near the end of World War II and tested its first device only in 1976. It should be noted that the country had a well-funded and advanced research and development core, large territorial uranium deposits and near-perfect secrecy. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, the first bomb measured a gargantuan 4.5 meters in length and weighed 3,400 kilograms. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported that China, a state with a $700-billion trade surplus and a standing army of over 2.3 million, has produced only 80 land-based weapons after 40 years of nuclear development. Given Iran's low uranium deposits, dearth of trained scientists and 11 percent unemployment rate, historical precedent should cause us to question our hysteria. Whatever weapon Iran does produce, it will simply be too large to hand to individual terrorist groups. Iran's nuclear drive is not aimed at global apocalypse, but at sustaining an increasingly tenuous regime.
Iran's aims are almost purely regional. Shackling Western diplomacy with its public provocations and military posturing, it has made tremendous inroads on the Arab street. The regime has expanded its influence in Lebanon by footing the bill of last summer's conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, signed military cooperation pacts with Syria and funds the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance in Iraq. While problematic, this situation presents an opportunity for U.S. strategists. It was Iran that backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban more than five years before Enduring Freedom. Tehran fears a success of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, perhaps more than we do. It is especially eager to augment its position at the expense of its chief Sunni rival to the west and the second regional player of significant importance - Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia's relations with the United States are heavily one-way. The threat emanating from Riyadh could be traced back to 1925, when the House of Saud captured Mecca and Medina to become the dominant political force in the Arabian Peninsula. The victory was achieved in part due to Muhammed Saud's alliance with the followers of Muhammed Abd bin-Wahhab, the founder of Salafism, considered among the most fundamentalist strains of Sunni Islam. In 1979, Khomeini's rise in Iran and the seizure of sensitive parts of Mecca by extremist elements led the Saudi royal family to make what former C.I.A. Director James Woolsey called a "Faustian bargain" with the Salafi clerics. The royals ceded most educational, religious and cultural authority to the clerical elite in return for increased legitimacy and fewer investigations into state corruption. Presently, the Saudi royals are largely shunned on the Arab street as apostates and Western sell-outs, forcing them further into the arms of the clerics.Twenty-five percent of state GDP is set aside for so-called "patronage projects," largely bribes to tribal and religious leaders as well as the export of Salafism across the globe. The billions of Saudi Riyals spent on such efforts, which include complete or partial funding of over 200 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges were publicly acknowledged by the royal family. According to the think-tank Fredom House, King Fahd, the main mosque in Los Angeles, has been directly staffed by Saudi officials. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Right up until the U.S.-led invasion, the U.S.'s trusted "allies" in Saudi Arabia were directly equipping and financing the Taliban. The Saudis pose a distinctly transnational threat, and to a US fighting an ideological conflict and defending far-reaching global interests, a more lethal danger than Iran's regional aspirations.
Having positioned the chief players, we return to Iraq. The United States should move toward trade and diplomatic normalization with Tehran, perhaps engaging in limited military cooperation. The Saudis, heavily divided about supporting the Sunni insurgency between clerical hardliners and wealthy coastal Shiites, would be pushed to step up aid.
Accepting Riyadh, and not Tehran, as the chief threat to US interests, Iran would be allowed to consolidate a sphere of influence in the Shia south. The Saudis would be pressed to create a sphere of influence in Anbar Province. U.S. troop deployment could be reduced from 133,000 to less than 50,000, with bilateral negotiations beginning with Turkey on a package of financial and military incentives to allow for a maximum of Kurdish autonomy and a minimum of tolerance for the increased troop presence. Iraq's collapse into three pieces and a Saudi-Iranian balance coordinating a massive proxy sectarian conflict would completely change U.S. fortunes. The Saudis would have to divert funding to check Iranian influence and a feigned embracing of Tehran might convince them to stop seeing their relations with the United States as a one-way street. Iranian regional influence would be weakened, a split from Syria made more likely and its nuclear program delayed. The United States could emerge as a major regional power broker and frame Iraq into a larger balance of power strategy.
Boris Ryvkin '09 wants to be a politikian.
