Candidate Biden's Plan for Iraq

Following the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, several presidential candidates moved quickly to cite their knowledge and experience as evidence of their abilities to handle such a foreign policy crisis. Among them was presidential candidate and Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). The NY Times reported on how he underlined "his foresight by noting that he had long called Pakistan 'the most dangerous nation on the planet.'" He also mentioned a letter he and other senators had sent to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in October, "urg[ing] President Musharraf to provide better security for Ms. Bhutto and other political leaders – I wrote him before her return and after the first assassination attempt in October. The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered."
Prior to this, however, Biden co-authored with Senator Brownback (R-KS) an amendment calling for "a political settlement in Iraq based upon the principles of federalism."
Although some termed the amendment as a proposal to partition Iraq (including the Administration via the U.S. embassy in Baghdad), Biden strongly disputed that characterization, writing
"the Biden-Brownback amendment does not call for the partition of Iraq. To the contrary, it calls for keeping Iraq together by bringing to life the federal system enshrined in its Constitution. Partition, or the complete break-up of Iraq, is something wholly different than federalism. A federal Iraq is a united Iraq, but one in which power is devolved to regional governments with a limited central government responsible for protecting Iraq's borders and oil distribution. It leaves the door open for stronger unity if and when passions cool, as we're seeing in the Balkans. Nor does the amendment call for dividing Iraq along sectarian lines. Rather, it calls for helping Iraqis implement their own Constitution, which provides for any of Iraq's 18 provinces to form regions and sets out the extensive powers of those regions and the limited powers of the central government. The result could be three regions, or four or five or more. It will be up to the Iraqi people."
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Despite his efforts to control the interpretation, "partition" was exactly how many viewed the amendment's outcome, were it to be adopted by Iraqis (Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution: "it is time to do what Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and a majority of his fellow senators have been pushing of late: Build on . . . local progress by advising Iraqis to consider a form of federalism or, as we call it more bluntly, a soft partition of Iraq.").
But why would Biden and others attempt to intervene in what should be an internal Iraqi decision on its governmental structure? As Michigan University professor Juan Cole sees it, "first they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense to me; the US Senate doesn't even have the authority to divide Iraq. Wouldn't that be for the Iraqi parliament?"
From Biden's perspective, while the decision "will be up to the Iraqis. . . the idea that the United States -- with 160,000 troops in Iraq, 3,804 dead and nearly 28,000 wounded -- does not have a right and responsibility to voice its views and to push for a political settlement is absurd."
Yet others have termed the amendment as "cynical and dangerous." Stephen Zunes, of Foreign Policy in Focus, said "[w]hereas most Iraqis calling for a federal system advocate a bottom-up process based on geography as a means to counter the threat of a return to dictatorship in Baghdad, the Senate plan constitutes a top-down solution from the outside based on ethnicity and religion."
Or, as Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs argued, "where the senators made their big mistake was in focusing on federalism instead of constitutional revision. This is where there is room for the 'grand settlement' (including features related to federalism) which the senators so clearly want. This is also where such 'settlement' can be sought without violating the Iraqi constitution, because the process of revision itself is constitutionally mandated."
He added, "the procedures for implementing federalism in Iraq, consisting of the Iraqi constitution and the detailed legislation adopted in October 2006, unequivocally assert that (1) no federalization can start before April 1, 2008; (2) any new federal regions should come as the result of popular grassroots initiatives in the existing governorates; and (3) there is no imperative for every governorate in Iraq to opt for a federal status (theoretically, the number of new federal regions may be anywhere from zero to 15).
Biden's plan either violates all three of these aspects of the Iraqi legal framework or it has no meaning it all."
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The Biden amendment seems to assume that sectarian "cleansing" has accelerated the movement toward de-facto partition and he's simply acknowledging that development: "the amendment will not produce 'bloodshed and suffering' in Iraq. It is hard to imagine more bloodshed and suffering than we've already seen, which has been exacerbated by the failure of Iraq's leaders to stop sectarian violence and produce a durable, widely accepted political settlement. More than 4 million Iraqis have already fled their homes for fear of sectarian violence, at a rate now of 100,000 every month. The whole purpose of my amendment is to end that bloodshed and suffering by promoting a power sharing arrangement that meets the interests of all Iraqis and gives them more local control over their daily lives."
But, apart from violating Iraq's constitution and ignoring its citizens in attempting to impose a political settlement from both above and outside, Biden's plan for Iraq would essentially legitimize militias and criminal enterprise. Roger Owen, Harvard professor of Middle East history, likens the situation to that "of Lebanon during its own civil war, there were enough economic resources scattered around the country for local warlords who controlled them to maintain their own loyal militias and civilian constituencies without having to reply on the leadership's financial support."
Or perhaps, as Gen. Petraeus said, of the situation in southern Iraq, "occasionally folks have said that this is -- I don't know -- a little like the Italian city-states in Machiavelli's day or something like that. But there's an awful lot of to-ing and fro-ing."
The forces arrayed against a unified Iraq are, of course, many: Kurdish autonomy, Shia militias, Sunni tribes, and any number of criminal enterprises, not to mention external state influences, all struggling for influence and power over others. Clearly, there is no one, simple solution that will tidy up and bring near-term resolution to a murky and multi-faceted problem.
As the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, put it, "Iraq is a federal state. The constitution says so. One of the challenges the Iraqis face right now is trying to work out what that actually means translated beyond the constitution into law and into practice. . . It's a work in progress."
Does Biden's proposal reflect his deep understanding of foreign affairs? Certainly, that is his claim as a candidate for the presidency. But his plan is driven by a desire, first and foremost, "to bring our troops home without leaving chaos behind." Yet it is unlikely, given the issues discussed above, that "federalizing" Iraq would provide stability. It more likely would intensify and exacerbate the power struggles already inflaming the country.