WorldView Paul Gillespie: 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't'. So says David Baran, the French author of a book on Iraq, about the dilemma faced by the US-backed government there on whether to postpone the elections on January 30th.
In the face of escalating resistance and a political boycott by most of the hitherto predominant but minority Sunni community, how can the elections be fair and legitimate? But would not postponement represent a victory for the resistance, bolster its resolve, concede that this was a false strategy in the first place and risk an even greater backlash from the majority Shia and regional Kurdish voters who want the elections to go ahead?
Baran says, in an interview with Le Monde, that the more disappointing has been economic reconstruction and the rebuilding of the Iraqi state and armed forces the more has recourse been made to artificial calendars presented as victories over enemies of democracy.
Divisions have emerged at the highest levels of the interim government. The president, Ghazi al-Yawan, wants to postpone the voting and called on the United Nations to express a view; the prime minister, Iyad Allawi, publicly supported going ahead, but canvassed George Bush in favour of a postponement, only to be firmly rebuffed. One of the major Sunni politicians backing US policy, Adnan Pachachi, called for a postponement.
Pressure from Bush was seen in a statement issued by foreign ministers of neighbouring Sunni states - Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain - urging Sunni Iraqis to vote in the elections and warning them against "outside influence". This is a reference to Iran, which has been encouraging Shia Iraqis to assert themselves in the expectation that their victory would help to create a Shia belt in the Middle East stretching from Iran to Syria and Lebanon. This raises fears about Iranian fundamentalist influence.
The Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini leaders fear a demand by Shias for a greater say in their societies and a spillover from the insurgency in Iraq. Their intervention underlines the major regional consequences of what is happening in Iraq. The ultimate irony of a war directed against Islamic terrorism would be an Islamic Republic of Iraq emerging alongside Iran's.
Allawi defended the election a day after the governor of Baghdad was assassinated; he then announced that the state of emergency (in effect martial law) has been extended for a month after the elections.
This week the number of US soldiers wounded in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion passed 10,000. There are more and more complaints from the US army reserve that they are badly overstretched. The interim government's security chief believes there are as many as 40,000 "hardcore fighters" facing the the US and Iraqi forces, with up to 200,000 others supporting them.
If that is indeed so (US authorities dispute the figures), things look bleak for the US strategy in Iraq, since normally a 10:1 troop-rebel ratio is necessary to defeat an insurgency. The current US force level is 150,000.
That strategy is not set in stone, however, but is subject to political decision and changing circumstances. There is a sharp debate about it in and around the Bush administration. Its flavour is clear from contrasting views published this week.
Thus Robert Blackwill, a former Bush envoy in Iraq, predicts in the Wall Street Journal that Bush will not waver on the elections, which will see an impressive turnout in most of the country, with limited Sunni participation, which will take Iraqis substantially further towards a democracy to be underwritten by the writing of a permanent constitution.
In this perspective the interim government has a strategy to isolate and divide the resistance; the Iraqi army is beginning to fight; the economy is recovering; international help is on an upswing (notably the Paris Club's debt cancellation); and Iraqis do not want to see UN-sanctioned troops arrive to take the place of the US coalition but wish to take gradual control themselves.
Not so, says James Dobbins, another frequent US special envoy in the Clinton years and now director of international security at Rand, in the current Foreign Affairs. As he sees it, the US cannot win in Iraq "as a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning and inadequate preparation". He asserts: "Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent and it is unlikely to win them back."
Only moderate Iraqis can win the war, but they must work with neighbouring states and secure broader international support. This would reduce their dependence on the US, which should pull its troops out as quickly as possible and say it has no intention of seeking a permanent military presence in the country.
An accompanying article by Edward Luttwak reaches the same conclusions and argues that a US withdrawal from Iraq can be turned to advantage. "Geography alone ensures all other parties are far more exposed to the dangers of an anarchical Iraq than is the United States itself."
There is little stomach for a third perspective, canvassed by neo-conservatives, which would see US troop numbers increased, borders with Iran and Syria closed and Iraq's neighbours threatened with retaliation if they support the insurgency.
A prudent if gradual US disengagement from Iraq seems the most likely outcome. This would be in line with mounting evidence of US military overstretch and the need clearly established by the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster for it to work more closely with European and Asian allies to achieve its foreign policy objectives.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie