# Posted 11:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

THREE NOT-SO-EASY PIECES: This Weekly Standard piece by Bob Kagan and William Kristol is worth noting. The authors begin by repeating - correctly - that "American ideals and American interests converge ... a more democratic Middle East will both improve the lives of long-suffering peoples and enhance America's national security." They then applaud statements to that effect by Condoleezza Rice and President Bush calling for a "generational commitment" to Iraq and the Middle East comparable to the U.S.'s commitment to Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. And in this, the security advisor and the president are also indeed applauseworthy: the intertwined task of promoting democracy and pursuing counterterror in the Middle East is as obviously central to U.S. security today as creating a secure, commercially prosperous free Europe was then.

Rather than basking solely in admiration for the president's bold, long-term vision, however, the authors are quick to measure current performance in Iraq up to its metric. They point to the successful performance of the U.S.'s mission at hand requiring two more divisions in Iraq - divisions which, thanks to the prior administration's short-sightedness, the nation simply does not have. But most interestingly, they then offer these two criticisms:

[Show me the money:] There has also been a stunning shortage of democracy assistance, at a time when, according to surveys taken by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Iraqis undergoing an explosion of political activity.... The price tag [for everything], which may be close to $60 billion, will provide fodder for opportunistic Democratic presidential hopefuls who are already complaining that money spent inIraqwould be better spent in theUnited States. But, again, the time to bite the bullet is now, not six months from now when Iraq turns to crisis and the American campaign season is fully underway

[And show me the diplomats:] Until recently, only a handful of State Department employees have been at work in Iraq. The State Department, we gather, has had a difficult time attracting volunteers to work in Iraq. This is understandable. But it is unacceptable. If the administration is serious about drawing an analogy with the early Cold War years, it should remember that the entire U.S.government oriented itself then to the new challenge. We need to do the same now. The administration must insist that the State Department pull its weight.

This paragraph, though, seems both their most stirring and their most correct:

Make no mistake: The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq. Indeed, there is more at stake in Iraq than even this vision of a better, safer Middle East. The future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the United States hopes to accomplish, and must accomplish, in the decades ahead.

I could not agree more completely, and endorse everything that I have quoted, as far as the authors go. However - and although they are two writers I respect deeply on the subject - I think they might be too quick to reject out of hand the prospect of looking overseas for soldiers. The authors seem to think of the matter as a choice between two options: simply asking our dedicated soldiers to do more of what they have been doing so well, or giving the entire enterprise over to the internationals - in which case either Kofi and Jacques Chirac will be the ones to determine the pace of Iraq's democratization, or still worse, we may suffer "the possibly unfortunate effects of turning over the security of Iraqis to a patchwork of ill-prepared forces from elsewhere in the world."

Hmmm. Though I agree with Kagan and Kristol on their other points, this particular bit seems a bit of a false dichotomy. Without doubt, the army's current deployed force is woefully insufficient for the task (this in numbers alone, not training or personal devotion). But first of all, we can't simply send more U.S. troops over, because we don't have them. A friend in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told me over lunch last week that bringing additional divisions online - as are indisputedly needed at the moment - would take five to ten years, with emphasis more on the ten than the five. (An important lesson from U.S. history: don't throw your armies away. you might need that.) As far as extending the current pace of deployment - anyone considering this as a viable notion should flip back a few issues in one of my favorite magazines to a piece by another talented Kagan who writes on national security matters (this time Fred). Kagan begins by noting that of the 495,000 troops in the U.S. Army, 370,000 are deployed at the moment. And this already represents a substantial overdeployment relative to the normal requirement to have two units at home in "yellow" and "red" stages - training, tending to base duties, recovering psychologically from overseas service in a combat zone, and rescuing families from divorce - for every one unit serving overseas. At the army's current size, following this rule would allow us to sustain an indefinite deployment of three and two-thirds divisions between different theatres. At present, we have the equivalent of over five out, in Iraq alone, and they aren't enough. Equally seriously, massive overdeployment of the reserve component has ceased to make service in the Reserves any longer an attractive path for amateur patriotic professionals with families and civilian careers. Speaking personally, I know at least several OxBloggers were giving serious consideration to service in the Reserves after 9/11 - but at the current deployment pattern, the price would simply have been too high to balance with beginning families and civilian national security careers. The damage this may have inflicted on the reserve component may in fact be incalculable.

On the other hand, bringing in Allied forces does not mean surrendering U.S. command and control, or democracy promotion aims. Indeed, both would be strengthened by having more feet on the ground to further consolidate security in Iraq. This is not to underestimate interoperability problems with even NATO allies, or the caution that we should take in the drafting of a UN resolution to permit the entry into theatre of peacekeepers from other democracies, like India. And a careful balance will have to be struck, between giving countries sufficient operational control over their own forces to secure their deployment of those forces, while retaining a preeminent role for U.S. leadership in the theatre to make sure that democracy promotion and order is what in the end results. But such complexities must be dealt with, as it is the path which must be taken.

That bit excepted, I heartily endorse everything Kagan and Kristol have said. More, please. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion