From Tehran to Baghdad, Kabul to Islamabad

GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT: Now for the Hard Part: From Iraq to Afghanistan, By George Friedman, Stratfor, July 15, 2008

Friedman is always smart, but this is simply brilliant. There is so much I agree with in here, such as the missed regional geopolitical opportunity because we did the postwar badly in Iraq, the real courage Bush shows on the surge, but then also the reasonable and shrewd response from Iran, and finally the logic of the redirect on Afghanistan (which Iran would support).

You put that all together and I still see the distinct opportunity to redefine the relationship with Iran. No, Tehran gets no simple puppet state in Iraq (always an overblown fear, in my mind, given the Arab-Persian divide, which is real, even among Shia), but Iran will clearly influence quite a bit. No, there won't be a fast withdrawal (never a possibility), but a steady one that must occur because the Army is so broken and Afghanistan calls.

This piece codifies my thinking all along on the surge: no argument against more bodies from Mr. SysAdmin (the commitment signal being key), but clear disagreement on the need to confront Iran over nukes (not covered here by Friedman) when there was such overlapping strategic interests still on both Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. To let Iran drive us so overtly on the nuke issue was to give Tehran too much control over our foreign policy and that decision gained us nothing really, the inevitable drawdown and proper redirect being in the cards all along. In fact, it is the danger of conflict of Iran that would be the ultimate diversion.

That's what I draw from the piece. You may draw other things. But again, it is brilliant analysis from Friedman.

Comments

[dan Hare]

The common interest to minimize the Taliban brings the USA and Iranian both a face saving opportunity to move forward.

[Christopher Thompson]

The article strikes me as a bizarre revisionist history. From the using "deep division over the wisdom of the invasion" to describe that the Neocons were for it and pretty much everyone else was against it. Or describing everyone being resigned to Bush staying-the-course until he's out, as everyone having "moved on to other obsessions."

Then there is the troubling insinuation that Bush is using war planning to "outflank" Obama politically. Follow that with the statement that is wasn't really the surge, but the change in tactics, that improved the situation. And remember, Friedman is stating the reality in these observations and trying to make sense them.

I think what I take away from this article is that the "success", if we can call it that, is really more of a minimal save by the military. I get the sense that the military, faced with an intransigent Commander in Chief, eventually found ways to bring this turkey to some kind of equilibrium. And we really have to commend the military for this save.

But there is really no discussion here of good strategies or the US getting out ahead of the problems. It is as if the conversation in America is only about trying to make the best of bad strategies. The article should have been titled: Iraq wasn't a total disaster, maybe we won't screw-up as bad in Afghanistan.

[Louis Heberlein]

Any arrangements with, and within, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran will be imperfect. The imperfections will be accepted by them, and the involved Old Core and New Core countries, only to the extent that their people were involved in the processes of making the choices on factors that involved them. Colonial era rulers, and elitist agents of the League of Nations, UN, and other outsiders did not often achieve that level of acceptance of imperfect, but improved Gap transformations. If it works this time, it will involve the broader bottoms up social and economic involvement by more 'common people' players.