MIKE PESCA, host:
This is DAY TO DAY, I'm Mike Pesca.
MADELEIN BRAND, host:
And I'm Madeleine Brand.
In a few minutes we'll hear a music group that blends Arab, Ethiopian, and Israeli sounds.
PESCA: But first, an insider's take on the Iraq Study Group. Here's how the group worked. The 10 members on the panel sort of subcontracted out their job. Experts in key areas like Iraq's economy, security, and Iraq's politics were called in. They listened to testimony. They put their heads together. They made recommendations.
One such expert is James Dobbins, the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. He was on the Strategic Environment working group. Some people around Washington call him Mr. Post-War, because of his high level roles in post-war Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
So Mr. Post-War, explain to us what Strategic Environment - the name of your working group - meant.
Mr. JAMES DOBBINS (RAND Corporation): Well, it was looking at the region around Iraq and the influence that the regional actors had on Iraq or could have on Iraq, depending on how the U.S. interacted with them.
PESCA: Do you think reading the reporting today, any members of your working group will be deeply disappointed that they were contradicted or at least that their recommendations weren't taken?
Mr. DOBBINS: Yes. There will be a minority, but a respectable minority with, I think important opinions who made a contribution to the debate, who are probably going to demure.
PESCA: Well, the people who are upset wanted what in the final report?
Mr. DOBBINS: Well, I let them largely speak for themselves, but I think that the report has two basic recommendations. The first is that the U.S. should mount a more vigorous and in particular a more comprehensive diplomatic effort to engage all of Iraq's neighbors in a last-ditch effort to hold it together. And some were skeptical about whether the U.S. should engage Iran and Syria and whether if they did engage Iran and Syria it would have any useful effect.
The second main recommendation of the report is that the United States should begin moving to a smaller presence, a lower profile. Begin to turn combat duties over to the Iraqis and move to a posture, which is made up largely of advisors and enablers. And there were those and there still are those who believe we should be going in the other direction and actually putting in more American troops.
PESCA: The rhetoric about Iraq has not been let's solve this problem or let's leave this one country better off than when its bad dictator was ruling it. The rhetoric has been much more sweeping than that. That Iraq would be a symbol or a beacon or a lesson. Has that sort of grandiose thinking gotten in the way?
Mr. DOBBINS: I think it has. And I'd make a contrast between our rapid success in Afghanistan and being able to install a government that had broad legitimacy and support of neighbors and our failure to be able to do that in Iraq. We didn't invade Afghanistan saying that we were going to make it a model for central Asia and that once we democratized Afghanistan we were then going to try to work to change the form of government of every one of its neighbors.
If this had been our objective - our stated objective - in Afghanistan, we wouldn't have gotten bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. We wouldn't have gotten over flight rights from Pakistan. We wouldn't have gotten Russian support for our presence. We wouldn't have gotten the participation of Iran, Russia, Pakistan, and India in helping us form the Karzai government.
We went into Afghanistan saying we wanted to make sure it wasn't a launch pad for global terrorism and we wanted to install a broadly based government that was not a threat to any of its neighbors. And this was a proposition everybody could embrace and support.
We did go into Iraq saying we were going to make Iraq a democratic exemplar for the region and that once we democratized Iraq it would undermine the legitimacy of every neighbor and government and ultimately lead to a change in the form of government of every neighboring state.
Now, needless to say this was not a vision - a project - that any of those governments could buy into. All of those governments hoped we would fail. And all of them to one degree or another - with the exception of Kuwait - have worked to ensure that we failed.
I think that to the extent we begin to lower our emphasis on regime change and regional democratization and begin to emphasize themes like sovereignty and territorial integrity and stability we can secure the support of neighboring states. Because those are concepts, those are objectives, that all of them share and on which all of them might be prepared to work with us.
And if 15 years of experience in the nation-building field has taught me anything, it is that the United States cannot succeed in stabilizing countries if their neighbors don't want us to.
PESCA: That's James Dobbins of the RAND Corporation, a member of the Strategic Environment working group for the Iraq Study Group. Thank you, Mr. Dobbins.
Mr. DOBBINS: Pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
