A few days ago a reader named Jeff, who has a Sun Tzu site, suggests that the US "surge" in Iraq is working. Is it?

     At one level, the increase in US troops in recent months seems to correlate with a reduction is violence.  We have seen various reports that the streets of Baghdad seem quieter and fewer people are being killed.  That sounds great. 

     But Sun Tzu would ask us what the reduction in violence means for our ultimate goal in Iraq.  "Victory, " whatever that might mean in particular circumstances, is the whole point, after all.

      The stated goal of the surge, the purpose it was supposed to serve, is to provide breathing space for political reconciliation.  As with any war, the surge is not simply a military exercise; it aims at a political goal, and the violence can be justified only in relation to a political goal.  In these terms it is not at all clear, at this point, that the surge has "worked."

      A big front pager in the NYT  on Sunday delved into this question:

The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way
of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal
leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.

 The problem, of course, is that the US has been arming Sunni groups to fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, or whatever name that strain of the insurgency is using these days, but these Sunni groups are still very much at odds with the dominant Shiite forces which are central to state power.  And the Kurds are still looking out for their own sovereign interests.  We may, therefore, be buying time for a larger clash in the future. 

      Fred Kaplan took up this topic on Christmas eve.  He reminds us of what everyone knows: the US will have to start drawing troops down in the next few months as tours of duty expire and there is no political will to press more soldiers into this deadly service.  The various factions in Iraq know that the military dynamic is moving toward a reduction in US forces, and they may well be biding their time to take advantage of whatever the situation might be as the new year unfolds.  We will know better what the "surge" accomplished a year or two from now.

      There is another possibility as well.  Everybody also knows that next year is a US presidential election year.  If anyone wants to create a political message out of the violence in Iraq – and that is what fourth generation warfare is all about – they will have a bigger media stage as the presidential race heats up.  This could play either way: with those who have an interest in the US staying or with those who have an interest in the US remaining.  Politics is the determining the ebb and flow of military action.

     The political situation in Iraq is still dire.  The surge has not changed that.  And as long as that is true, Sun Tzu would question not only the tactical achievements of the surge but, more importantly, the strategic rationale of the entire Iraq war.