WASHINGTON, 8 November 2006 — The news has been dominated by elections and Iraq. Today is only Iraq. The nation faces an agonizing choice between soldiering on, scaling back or pulling out. It should begin by considering the leading authorities on civil wars — Oxford’s Paul Collier, Stanford’s James Fearon and Barbara Walter of the University of California at San Diego — even if their thoughts are dispiriting.
The academics’ first point is that civil wars last longer than interstate wars. The average civil war since 1945 has lasted 10 years, and the median (or typical) one has lasted seven years. If we date the start of Iraq’s civil war in 2004 or 2005, we probably have at least another five years of fighting.
If you believe that the United States can stick it out that long, you must consider what it would achieve by doing so. In three out of four cases since 1945, civil wars have ended when one side has crushed the other. If the United States were prepared to use its troops to force the victory of Shiites or Sunnis, perhaps it could hasten the war’s end. But neither side makes for a palatable ally.
The United States could stay in Iraq in the hope that it may be one of the unusual civil wars that ends with a political compromise. This is possible, but the academics do not believe it to be likely. In his analysis of 50-plus civil wars, Collier finds that sectarian conflicts such as Iraq’s are harder to end than ideological conflicts such as El Salvador’s. Meanwhile Fearon emphasizes that wars in which each side is splintered are less susceptible to negotiated conclusions, because you can’t trust the other side to stick to a deal if the other side consists of multiple uncoordinated death squads. Both Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq are divided among competing militias.
Moreover, wars that end in negotiation tend to do so only after the combatants have fought to a standstill. Iraq seems a long way from that: Leaders on both sides appear to believe that, once the Americans are out of the way, they can get what they want by fighting. It may be that neither side will give up this belief until it has been tested. This leads Fearon to the view that US withdrawal is a precondition for the military test that in turn is a precondition for peace.
If Fearon is right, remaining in Iraq actually prolongs the carnage. But even if he is wrong, it’s not clear that remaining in Iraq is justified. In the past three months, 241 US troops have died; another five years implies the death of 4,820 Americans, more than were killed in the terrorist attacks of 2001. Meanwhile the US involvement in Iraq distracts from other pressing foreign policy problems. The price of staying in Iraq is high, while the gains are uncertain.
But it is also true that leaving Iraq could prove extremely costly. Fearon expects that withdrawal is likely to accelerate the conflict, unleashing an even more intense campaign of ethnic cleansing of civilians. So if the United States did decide to leave Iraq, it should signal its intentions clearly and give civilians time to sort themselves into ethnically homogenous groups, protected by their respective militias. Leaving Iraq could also embolden US enemies, though the spectacle of the United States bogged down in Iraq might arguably embolden them more. Withdrawal might also allow Iran to establish control over its neighbor, though Iran might find Iraq almost as difficult to control as the United States has.
But the strongest argument against withdrawal is that it might not be permanent. As civil wars progress, they undergo a change: In the first stage people fight because they believe they can win, but in the second stage they fight because there is no mechanism to make a peace deal credible. In a conventional interstate war, each side can retreat to the safety of its own territory and keep its army as a guarantee. But in a civil war combatants are expected to surrender their weapons, even though these are the only things that stop the other guys from massacring civilians. This prisoner’s dilemma explains why civil wars tend to be prolonged. It also explains why, when they do approach their end, outsiders are often necessary to put a final stop to them.
So when Iraq’s combatants fight themselves to stalemate, some coalition of external powers may have to enforce a peace, and the United States would probably be part of such an effort. Whether it’s worth staying in Iraq in the meantime — and if so, with what level of troop strength — is going to be the unavoidable debate of the post-election season.
— Sebastian Mallaby is a member of The Washington Post’s editorial page staff.
