There is a consensus among the Washington elite about the dire sectarian strife in Iraq and the potential for wider conflict in the Middle East. Having received the considered bipartisan advice of the Iraq Study Group, the president and his Cabinet are reviewing their options and preparing for their final turn at the helm of American global leadership.
We are approaching a seriously perilous period. We can neither retreat militarily nor stay the course in Iraq, where increasing numbers of people, for a plethora of reasons, want Americans to fail, withdraw or simply die.
Problems everywhere
The intervention has made an appallingly poor Iranian leadership overly confident; Tehran's regional hegemonic ambitions have been enlarged by a sense that the Arab Gulf is tilting away from the West toward the East.
Iran is now disinclined to dial back its nuclear enrichment program, and is driven by the perceived opportunity to covertly channel terrorism by proxy, especially via Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the al-Qaida network, notwithstanding a degraded central command capability, is more dispersed and, therefore, more dangerous than ever. The stalled Arab-Israeli peace process only fuels radicalization.
The strategy in Afghanistan is also failing, a fact suggested by the need to resort to short-term poppy crop eradication without a prospect of alternative livelihoods. Foreign fighters in both conflicts will eventually flow back to their homelands to sow greater internal tumult.
Energy insecurity is a growing risk, and petrodollars are flowing into the hands of some of the least salutary people on the planet.
Further nuclear proliferation in North Korea is probable. And longer-term threats, such as climate change, are falling off the policy agenda.
Holding out hope
Despite this bleak landscape, these dangers are not beyond our ability to manage, triage and endure.
There is hope. The year 2007 is not the prelude to the American equivalent of Britain's 1971 withdrawal from East of Suez. The world, and specifically the Middle East, needs American power and leadership. But America's power must be recalibrated if the world is to enjoy greater security and prosperity.
There are several reasons for believing the Bush administration's last two years will be different from the previous six, during which pragmatism and consultation were hardly the hallmarks of the White House.
First, the president and his top advisers are beyond a "state of denial." No one should expect the president to disavow all his policies; after all, he undertook the invasion of Iraq in the fear and anger of the post-9/11 period, out of a genuine conviction that his chief responsibility was now to clamp down on terrorism and any chance that al-Qaida operatives might acquire a nuclear device.
Early in January, the course correction from Bush is likely to show a healthy dose of contrition, largely reflecting strategic listening to more than just the palace guard. Of course, much of his advice will necessarily be filtered through the conservative yet sensible technocrats, Robert Gates, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley.
Gates, Rice and Hadley now share a lonely and arduous task of modulating American power for global reality, including the scaling back of U.S. objectives, rather than hewing to absurd neoconservative nostrums.
A second reason to think that the world will not have to squander two years of security while the American body politic swings into election mode is that the bipartisan nature of the Iraq Study Group report has extended the life of a lame-duck administration.
That new lease on life is at least six months while the Bush administration adjusts America's posture in Iraq and attempts to stem a slide to wider civil war in Iraq and instead starts to show more promise that hope is possible in Iraq.
A third reason to believe U.S. leadership will re-emerge during the next 24 months and not simply wait for a new occupant of the White House is that there is really no alternative in international security.
The problem with American primacy is that the current international order is filled with chaos and conflict. America remains the only country able to fill this global leadership gap. Europe and Asia remain limited partners in providing security outside of their regions. Whether America acts wisely or imprudently, it is the only country in the world willing to try to enforce the peace in the face of grave regional and international dangers.
Unfortunately, U.S. actions of late have done little to reduce those dangers, and today the Persian Gulf region remains at risk of greater instability from an enfeebled Iraq and an emboldened Iran.
Hard-pressed for alternatives
While many may pine for a cooperative and common security system in the Middle East, perhaps modeled after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the region remains far from such an idealistic architecture.
That is surely the obvious lesson of the International Institute of Strategic Studies' Third Gulf Security Summit recently held in Bahrain. Iran may take cheap shots at the need to remove the United States from the region, but when pressed for alternatives, even Persian diplomats are at a loss for words. The Iranian people deserve better than the wreckless zealotry of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Fourth, on the cusp of 2007, Washington better understands than ever that its pre-eminent power is insufficient to grapple with the serious challenges of international security. Europe can and should do more. More interestingly, Asian states like Japan, India and China can and may wish to do more to ensure the stability of the Middle East.
Japan is stepping forward, thanks to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's able team, especially Foreign Minister Taro Aso, defense chief Fumio Kyuma, and Yuriko Koike, national security adviser. The United States, as a Pacific and Atlantic power with long-term interests in the Gulf, is particularly equipped to lead and work with all of these powers who share a vested interest in shoring up regional security in an area of mutual centrality.
The exigencies of dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan are most urgent, followed closely by the long-term worry over Iran's bid for regional hegemony. Military power is important but not the primary means of achieving lasting political solutions to these and other security challenges.
To be sure, American military power has over recent decades more often than not protected regimes in the region from open aggression, whether to guarantee the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s or in enforcing the international community's resolve to turn back Iraqi aggression against its neighbors or as a counterweight to Iranian ambitions.
More recently, that same American comparative advantage has provoked further terrorism and violence, and countries in the Middle East wonder whether the United States is part of the solution or the problem. Conversely in Asia, other countries watch with concern the prospect of a failing and retreating American leadership.
Some concern with security can act as a healthy spur to these other countries to stand up and contribute more to international security. But the burden of helping to orchestrate and assemble countries on behalf of hope and international security remains with the imperfect but well-meaning leaders in Washington. There is every reason at this point to believe that President George W. Bush can answer the challenge.
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The author served in the administration of President George W. Bush and is director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.(IHT/Asahi: January 3,2007)
