On November 3, whether the president-elect is John Kerry or George W. Bush, popular pressure for the United States to withdraw from Iraq will increase dramatically. If it's Bush, much of the anger that coalesced behind Kerry will convert to a new antiwar movement of a breadth not seen since Vietnam.
If it's Kerry, he could face a split in his own party. A great many Democrats, united behind the goal of ousting Bush, are too polite to say that they're not wild about Kerry's proposed Iraq policy, either.
The antiwar sentiment among Democrats powering Howard Dean's candidacy was deep and real. That Dean couldn't convert it to a nomination was merely a personal failure. Since then the situation in Iraq has only worsened.
And though Kerry, unlike Bush, has at least promised to get the troops out within four years, that will seem an awfully long time as GIs keep getting killed and Iraq moves no closer to stability. Indeed, as the months and years stretch on, the National Guard, reservists, and the conventional military will continue to be stretched thin, the costs will mount, and the casualties will rise. Public opinion has already turned against the war, and this will only intensify. Imagine the MoveOn ads.
What kind of exit strategy is thinkable? Neither candidate talks about this, since both are trying to project resolve. But you can be sure that both think about it -- a lot.
Stanley Hoffmann, the dean of America's international relations scholars, writing in The New York Review of Books, proposes a withdrawal within six months of the election of a new Iraqi national assembly. The United Nations would be responsible for assembling a new, international peacekeeping force. Troops could be drawn from any nation acceptable to the Iraqi government.
Morton Abramowitz, a distinguished former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Thailand who counsels early withdrawal, points out that the U.S. invasion and occupation have only increased radical insurgencies.
Peter Galbraith, former ambassador to Croatia, calls for an Iraqi federation under strict international supervision. Galbraith, long an advocate for the Kurds, worries that civil war could break out unless Kurdish semiautonomy is guaranteed and policed, though conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites is a risk, too.
Kerry is at least on the road to reason when he talks about a new start with a broader coalition that could gradually share responsibility with the United States.
One expedited approach would have a UN-led authority recruit peacekeeping troops mostly from Muslim or Arab-speaking nations that are at worst moderately authoritarian, such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, and Pakistan. The good-citizen nations that always contribute to peacekeeping forces -- Sweden, Norway, Canada, Australia, among others -- might also help. We'd withdraw troops as the United Nations put new troops in.
America would still pay a lot of the cost. But other nations would be so relieved that the United States had ceased to be a lightning rod for rage that even Germany and France might contribute something. In the short run, the peacekeeping force would be larger than the one in there now. As Kerry keeps observing, Bush has put in just enough forces to fail.
This strategy would get the United States out of its present disaster much more rapidly than either candidate currently proposes. But would it work?
Unfortunately, no course is guaranteed to "work," if that means turning Iraq into a stable, quiet democracy. Iraq will be a cauldron for the foreseeable future, no matter who polices it. But an international constabulary force with at least 50,000 more peacekeeping troops than the United States currently fields and with the hated American occupiers no longer there to stir up resentment, is more likely to work than the current policy.
Even with the best possible exit plan, Iraq could still end up with a smoldering civil war or with a new dictator only moderately better than Saddam Hussein (though America tolerates scores of those as long as they are not overtly hostile, including its former tactical alliance with Saddam brokered by one Donald Rumsfeld).
The worst outcome would be if Iraq turned into a haven for terrorists or if a Shi'ite-led regime were closely allied with a nuclear Iran, which would then raise pressures for a new intervention.
These risks will weigh heavily on the next president, who will not want to be remembered as the man who "lost Iraq." Still, internationalization and U.S. withdrawal would be a vast improvement, for the current policy is already a total loss. The sooner the next president reverses it, the better.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in the Boston Globe.
