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From: Office of Tetje Rod-Larsen 
Subject: June 17 update 
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:19:22 +0000 
June 17, 2014 
Article 
NYT 
Who Will Win in Iraq? 
1. 
Steven Simon 
Article 
The National Interest 
Can Iraq Be Saved? 
2. 
Zalmay Khalilzad 
Article 
The Washington Post 
The result of Obama's do-nothing policy? Iraq. 
1 
Richard Cohen 
Article 
The National Interest 
ISIS Challenge in Iraq: Why America Should Work with Iran 
4. 
Payam Mohseni 
Article 
NYT 
Take Mosul Back 
5. 
Roger Cohen 
Article 
The Washington Post 
Obama's foreign policy of retreat 
6. 
George F. Will 
Article 
7. 
Foreign Policy 
Why the New World Order Won't Be Orderly 
Randall L. Schweller 
Article I. 
NYT 
Who Will Win in Iraq? 
Steven Simon 
June 16, 2014 -- Washington- To go by much of the commentary about Iraq in 
recent days, the country is already past the breaking point under the lightning 
campaign by Sunni insurgents. Reinforced by hardened fighters from Syria and 
sympathetic communities in northern and western Iraq, the insurgents control much 
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of Mosul, the most important city in northern Iraq, and Tikrit, the home of Saddam 
Hussein's clan, and they have laid siege to Samarra, the site of one of Shiism's most 
storied shrines. It would be no surprise if the next few weeks brought them to the 
gates of Baghdad. 
But an assault on Baghdad, or even its capture, would be an illusory victory. It can 
only end in defeat — and the strengthening of the insurgents' sworn Shiite enemies 
in Baghdad and, especially, Tehran. 
First, consider the brute demographic reality. Unlike in Syria, Sunnis are a relatively 
small part of the Iraqi population, about 25 percent — though they are a majority in 
some areas of the west and north. And in Baghdad their numbers are minuscule. 
The reason for this lies in an earlier Sunni revolt triggered by the second gulf war. 
Baghdad was the target then, too, and its Sunni population was about 35 percent. As 
the Sunnis asserted themselves militarily, Shiites struck back; by 2008, when their 
fury was largely spent, Sunnis were reduced to as little as 12 percent of the city's 
population. 
If the insurgents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, enter Baghdad's 
residual Sunni neighborhoods, they will likely be welcomed, but they won't have 
much to work with, nor will they have the strategic depth they will need in the street 
fighting that ensues. 
Moreover, rather like what happened in Syria, the Sunni offensive is likely to spur a 
transformation of the Iraqi Army from the sorry mess it is now into a more resilient 
and operationally effective force. 
In Syria, the army reeled in the face of the rebellion in 2011; desertions were rife and 
large sections of territory were lost to the insurgency. But as incompetent 
commanders were killed or relieved and a new leadership emerged, the army was 
able to bring its vastly greater firepower to bear on an increasingly fractionated 
adversary. Its combat capability was multiplied by the successful integration of 
civilian militias and the intelligence and tactical advice supplied by Iran. This 
trajectory is likely to be replicated in Iraq. 
The character of the Sunni offensive will mobilize more than just the army. Mass 
execution has been meshed with the use of religious symbolism by the insurgents, 
who framed their objective as extirpating "the filth" — Shiite teaching and believers 
— from Najaf and Karbala, the two holiest Shiite cities. In a minority war on a 
majority population, this is a suicidal tactic. The Shiites will hit back even harder 
than last time. 
In addition to being hobbled by their paltry numbers, the rebels have chosen to make 
war on an adversary with powerful friends who have a serious stake in the future of 
Iraq. 
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Iran has already pledged assistance to the government of Prime Minister Nun Kamal 
al-Maliki and reportedly deployed elite units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards 
Corps to Iraq. The United States has sent an aircraft carrier and amphibious assault 
ship to the Persian Gulf and stepped up intelligence help for the Iraqi government. 
Although Washington is unlikely to use force directly against the rebels — in part 
because insurgents don't present the kind of targets that American air power is 
optimized to destroy, and in part because of reluctance to re-engage militarily in Iraq 
— the kind of advisory help, material assistance and diplomatic support that is on 
offer will stiffen Iraq's spine. Perceptions, real or imagined, of American and Iranian 
collusion will help, too. 
At the same time, gulf states that tacitly support the rebels as payback against Iran 
for its perceived takeover of Iraq will do nothing to support the rebels' military 
campaign, for fear of creating an uncontrollable situation, even if their nationals 
privately fund the rebel army. 
And once the fighting is over, the Sunnis will be even more isolated than before. 
President Obama's call for a multiethnic governing coalition aside, it is 
inconceivable that Mr. Maliki will now reverse his policy of excluding Sunnis from 
governance. 
In short, despite the rapid success of the Sunni campaign, it is a kamikaze attack that 
will make the Shiite hold on the Iraqi state stronger, not weaker. 
That said, it's unlikely that Mr. Maliki will have the stomach to retake the Sunni-
majority areas of western Iraq anytime soon. The rump Iraq, like the Assad regime in 
Syria, will be ever more in thrall to Iran, and committed to domestic policies that 
make the reconstitution of the country via a political process ever more unlikely. 
That's hardly an optimal outcome for Washington: Among other things, 
Washington's support for the Maliki government will put further strain on its ties to 
the gulf states; it will also complicate any effort to deal aggressively with Iran, with 
which it will find itself in an odd-couple alliance. 
American policy makers might anticipate that the insurgency will burn itself out 
before it presents a real threat to American interests. But they can't relax too much, 
because to the extent that this sectarian brawl produces something resembling a 
winner, it won't be in Washington, Mosul or Baghdad — but in Tehran. 
Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, was the senior director 
for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Security Council from 2011 to 
2012. 
Article 2. 
The National Interest 
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Can Iraq Be Saved? 
Zalmay Khalilzad 
June 17, 2014 -- The sudden fall of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and large 
swaths of the country's Sunni regions to groups of insurgents and extremists 
spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a grim manifestation of 
the failure of the country's leaders to implement a system of governance as agreed in 
the constitution. Iraq's mistakes—and those of the international community, 
including the United States—were not unavoidable, though, and the lessons learned 
can help resolve similar governance dilemmas in Syria and Afghanistan. 
The Iraqi constitution plotted a path for creating a system that protects the country 
from relapse to dictatorship and emphasized concepts that are appropriate for a 
country with a history of authoritarian rule and in which ethnic and sectarian divides 
run deep. The constitution included robust checks and balances, a clearly defined 
federal system, and provisions for a fair sharing of power and resources among the 
country's various communities, provinces and regions. 
Although the political process had a shaky start as the Sunni community largely 
boycotted the first post-Saddam election, intense diplomatic efforts by the United 
States eventually convinced Iraq's Sunni leaders to conditionally support the moving 
forward with the referendum on the constitution, which received more than two-
thirds support. The Sunnis also participated in the post-referendum national elections 
in late 2005. As a result, the framework garnered the buy-in of the country's key 
groups—Shia, Sunni, and Kurd. As Iraqi communities were coming together, the Al 
Qaeda attack on Samarra shrine, a revered site for the Shia, in February 2006 
resulted in a massive increase in violence verging on a sectarian civil war. 
Despite the increase in violence, and with U.S. commitment and help, the Iraqis 
came together and replaced Prime Minister Jaffari with Nouri al-Maliki and formed 
a national unity government. Supported by increased U.S. troops during the surge, 
the tide was turned. The improvement in security following the surge and the 
successful election in 2010 offered Iraq the security space to consolidate democracy 
and advance toward stability. The chance, alas, was squandered. 
Iraq could have capitalized on that progress at the time and avoided this fate if it had 
implemented the roadmap that was prescribed in the constitution. 
Instead, a number of mistakes were made. Contrary to the constitution, the party that 
won the largest number of seats in the 2010 election—the secular and cross-sectarian 
Iraqiya led by Ayad Allawi—was not allowed to form the  government. Instead, in a 
deal backed by the United States and Iran, Prime Minister Maliki remained the 
country's prime minister. Instead of implementing a power-sharing agreement, 
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which was the basis for Maliki remaining in office, he began to eliminate political 
rivals (especially among the Sunni Arabs), politicize the military and security 
services, and monopolize (rather than share) power. He also undermined the 
implementation of the federal system that was clearly stipulated in the country's 
constitution. The consequences were twofold. 
First, large segments of the Sunni community lost trust in the government, and more 
dangerously, lost hope that they would be treated with dignity and fairness as 
partners in governing the country. 
Second, relations between the central government and the Kurdistan region also 
deteriorated to the extent that Kurdish leaders became convinced that Iraq's federal 
structure had failed because the Maliki government repeatedly ignored or violated 
the political compact enshrined in the constitution, which was the basis of Kurdish 
assent to remain in a new Iraqi federal state. 
The United States could have played a vital role in helping Iraq stay on the right 
path. Instead of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and consequent political 
disengagement from Iraq's affairs, the United States should have sought to maintain 
a residual security presence in the country, coupled with robust diplomatic 
engagement, to provide the core security support necessary for the democratic 
political process to resolve the country's problems peacefully. 
Sustained presence and stabilizing influence over decades is in great part what 
allowed Germany, Japan and Korea to undertake the long-term sustained effort to 
build the political and economic institutions required for long-term stability and 
prosperity. 
Continued robust U.S. military and political engagement in Iraq in the past few years 
could have prevented today's crisis if the United States had done the following: 
- Functioned as a credible buffer between different communities, bridging 
communications and diffusing tensions by ensuring that each side understood their 
rights and responsibilities (for example, facilitating joint military mechanisms along 
disputed territories); 
- Overseen the proper implementation of power-sharing agreements and checked the 
excesses of the ruling party/coalition, which would have restrained Maliki's 
behavior; 
- Provided the sophisticated but essential capabilities that Iraq's established military 
did not possess (e.g., intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; complex 
operational planning; high-quality training, etc.); 
- Prevented Iran from using Iraqi land and airspace to drag Iraq into the Syrian civil 
war on the side of Bashar Assad's regime, with all its consequences for internal Iraqi 
cohesion; 
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- Assured key regional actors that Iraq's new government would not become a 
hostile power to any of them. If the core interests of their allies in Iraq could have 
been safe-guarded in an agreed power-sharing framework, interested regional parties 
would have had the incentive to help that framework succeed. 
Instead, Iraq's neighbors viewed the situation as a zero-sum struggle for power, 
though failing to recognize the fact that no one Iraqi group could completely control 
or defeat its rivals. Regional powers competed to fill the vacuum produced by the 
United States' departure. Iran wanted Shia to dominate. Gulf states wanted Sunnis to 
retake power. As neighbors begin to fear the worst-case outcome for their interests, 
they begin to act by fueling the conflict and internal divisions in an effort to assist 
groups with which they sympathize. The danger of creating a vacuum by precipitous 
withdrawal is an important lesson for Washington as it draws down the U.S. military 
presence in Afghanistan. 
The tragedy of Iraq shows that fragmented societies composed of multiple 
communities that have distinct ethnic and sectarian identities cannot be legitimately 
controlled by one group. The concentration or monopoly of power by one individual 
or community at the expense of others exacerbates tensions, anxiety and distrust. 
These conditions, when exploited by a determined extremist group like ISIS, can 
eventually push the country to a state of civil war. In the case of Kurdistan region, 
the Kurds will likely demand a restructuring of relations with Baghdad, perhaps 
even seeking independence. Going forward, the situation is likely to follow one of 
two paths. 
First, Iraq's leaders could seek to restore stability through renewed power-sharing 
arrangements among the three large communities—Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Based on 
conversation with Iraq's leaders, there is a consensus that Maliki must be replaced 
with a new prime minister to restore unity. This could unfold in two ways. Iraqis 
could establish a supreme national council consisting of the major leaders of the 
three communities, which could include Maliki, but which would have a new prime 
minister. Alternatively, the three communities could agree on a new Shiite leader to 
replace Maliki as Prime Minister. 
Getting Maliki to cooperate will be difficult. He is stubborn and has done quite well 
in this year's election. He will try to play the Iran card and argue that if you imposes 
conditions on its assistance, he will move closer to Tehran and accept its 
"unconditional" aid. Yet, difficult is not impossible. Even with his large voting bloc, 
he does not have the votes in parliament to form a new government. The Shiite 
religious leadership led by Ayatollah Sistani is not favorable to him. 
To achieve this outcome, U.S. diplomatic leadership, combined with a willingness to 
assist Iraq on the security front, will be vital. U.S. diplomacy should engage not only 
Iraqi leaders, but also directly or indirectly coordinate with others actors, especially 
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Iran. This type of coordination was critical in 2006, when Prime Minister Jaffari 
agreed to vacate the post of Prime Minister. 
If a new power-sharing arrangement is reached in Baghdad, local Sunni Arab 
leaders, including tribes, are likely to cooperate with the government against ISIS. 
This is what happened in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The Kurds, too, might defer 
exercising the option of going their own way. 
The second path for Iraq—in the absence of compromise—will be fragmentation. 
Kurdistan, which now controls all the disputed territories that were in dispute with 
Baghdad and has also acquired the oil and gas resources that can make it financially 
independent, will likely decide to go its own way, forging strong ties with Turkey 
and the West. Iraq's southern provinces and the Baghdad government will come 
under increased Iranian influence. In these areas, militias including some Shiite 
extremist groups with ties to Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds Force will gain control. 
The Sunni provinces will remain unstable, with both internal disputes and continued 
conflict with and within Baghdad and with various groups establishing ties with 
different regional states and transnational groups, including terrorists potentially 
threatening U.S. interests. As this unfolds, the United States might have to target 
terrorist sanctuaries in Iraq in a way similar to its actions in Pakistan, Yemen and 
Libya. 
The situation in Iraq, as well as the one in Syria, demonstrates that the United States 
cannot wish away the problems of the Middle East. The security problems of this 
critically important region, if left unattended, will grow worse, until they demand a 
response from the United States. Yet, with wise diplomacy and statecraft, the United 
States can broker political arrangements that stabilize not only Iraq, but also the 
region. We cannot, however, do so from the sidelines. 
Zalmay Khalilzad was the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN. 
Article 3. 
The Washington Post 
The result of Obama's do-nothing policy? Iraqi 
Richard Cohen 
June 16, 2014 -- Whose fault is the current debacle in Iraq? It could be Noun al-
Maliki's since he is the country's strongman and has alienated the minority Sunnis. 
It could be George W. Bush's because he started the whole thing off with possibly 
the stupidest war in history, the Children's Crusade exempted on account of youth. 
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The one person who is not at fault, we are told over and over again, is the current 
president of the United States. Like Millard Fillmore, he has kept us out of war. 
President Obama is hardly the ogre of right-wing invective, and Obamacare will turn 
out to have been a truly major reform of our creaky health-care system. But the 
subject of this column is foreign policy, the area where a president's power is 
substantially unchecked. He can, as Obama showed by swapping Sgt. Bowe 
Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders, just ignore the law. The GOP emitted a pro 
forma wail and then returned to contemplating the meaning of Eric Cantor's defeat. 
No one much cared. 
Other than avoiding war, it's hard to know what Obama wants. I know what he says, 
but actions always speak louder than words. For instance, he wanted Bashar al-
Assad to cease using chemical weapons. His language was strong, nearly warlike: 
"Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of 
children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying 
in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A 
father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk." 
What happened next? Virtually nothing. 
All those poisoned kids were soon forgotten and so, too, were all those people killed 
in the war, perhaps as many as 200,000. Those of us who advocated more forceful 
action were denigrated as war lovers who wanted to send in the infantry. (Better 
boots on the ground than head in the clouds — but I prefer neither.) Airstrikes and 
such might not have worked, but doing nothing never does. 
This is a serious, depressing discussion. Countless lives have been lost. A civil war 
that might have been stopped in its tracks was allowed to fester. The Syrian 
dictatorship survived, and the war has spilled into Iraq. It has the potential to engage 
the whole Middle East — Jordan, for sure, and then that tiny nation west of the 
Jordan River: Israel. The madmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria don't only 
kill Muslims; they would gladly also drop a bomb on Tel Aviv. 
The United States may now find itself on the side of Iran — a majority Shiite nation 
much like Iraq. What could be more preposterous? What could be more ironic? 
Worse, we could find ourselves engaged in a religious war — Sunni vs. Shiite. What 
will our Sunni friends — the Saudis, for instance — think of that? Or maybe we 
should just wash our hands of the whole thing and turn over a hunk of the Middle 
East with its oil to a terrorist organization — one that boasts of committing 
massacres. Oh, what dreams it must have in the desert night. 
William Goldman, the screenwriter, is one of my favorite philosophers. "Nobody 
knows anything," he once wrote. I thought of him when the politically indestructible 
Cantor got trounced. What happened? Theories galore, but the salient fact is that 
nobody saw it coming. 
EFTA00706976

It was the same with the stock market crash of 2008. Everyone had charts and 
graphs and smiling eminences on CNBC, but — somehow, I mean somehow —
almost everyone got it wrong. And what about ISIS? How come the administration 
did not know what was coming? If it did, it sure kept the information close to the 
vest. 
To balance the Goldman Rule — call it a hedge — I invoke one of my own creation: 
the Rule of the Worse. You thought Cantor was bad? Look who's coming after. You 
thought you can't get more evil than al-Qaeda? Look at who's pillaging Iraq, a 
terrorist group that even al-Qaeda can't stomach. 
The wise president applies both rules. We know so little, but the one thing we do 
know is that things can get worse. They did in the Middle East, where Obama settled 
for a victory jog around the political infield after getting Assad to give up most of 
his chemical weapons. He now must deal with a region that is so much worse than 
anyone imagined. Where does the fault lie? Where it always has — where the buck 
stops. 
Whose fault is the current debacle in Iraq? It could be Noun al-Maliki's since he is 
the country's strongman and has alienated the minority Sunnis. It could be George 
W. Bush's because he started the whole thing off with possibly the stupidest war in 
history, the Children's Crusade exempted on account of youth. The one person who 
is not at fault, we are told over and over again, is the current president of the United 
States. Like Millard Fillmore, he has kept us out of war. 
President Obama is hardly the ogre of right-wing invective, and Obamacare will turn 
out to have been a truly major reform of our creaky health-care system. But the 
subject of this column is foreign policy, the area where a president's power is 
substantially unchecked. He can, as Obama showed by swapping Sgt. Bowe 
Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders, just ignore the law. The GOP emitted a pro-
forma wail and then returned to contemplating the meaning of Eric Cantor's defeat. 
No one much cared. 
Other than avoiding war, it's hard to know what Obama wants. I know what he says, 
but actions always speak louder than words. For instance, he wanted Bashar al-
Assad to cease using chemical weapons. His language was strong, nearly warlike: 
"Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of 
children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying 
in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A 
father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk." 
What happened next? Virtually nothing. 
All those poisoned kids were soon forgotten and so, too, were all those people killed 
in the war, perhaps as many as 200,000. Those of us who advocated more forceful 
action were denigrated as war lovers who wanted to send in the infantry. (Better 
EFTA00706977

boots on the ground than head in the clouds — but I prefer neither.) Airstrikes and 
such might not have worked, but doing nothing never does. 
This is a serious, depressing discussion. Countless lives have been lost. A civil war 
that might have been stopped in its tracks was allowed to fester. The Syrian 
dictatorship survived, and the war has spilled into Iraq. It has the potential to engage 
the whole Middle East — Jordan, for sure, and then that tiny nation west of the 
Jordan River: Israel. The madmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria don't only 
kill Muslims; they would gladly also drop a bomb on Tel Aviv. 
The United States may now find itself on the side of Iran — a majority Shiite nation 
much like Iraq. What could be more preposterous? What could be more ironic? 
Worse, we could find ourselves engaged in a religious war — Sunni vs. Shiite. What 
will our Sunni friends — the Saudis, for instance — think of that? Or maybe we 
should just wash our hands of the whole thing and turn over a hunk of the Middle 
East with its oil to a terrorist organization — one that boasts of committing 
massacres. Oh, what dreams it must have in the desert night. 
William Goldman, the screenwriter, is one of my favorite philosophers. "Nobody 
knows anything," he once wrote. I thought of him when the politically indestructible 
Cantor got trounced. What happened? Theories galore, but the salient fact is that 
nobody saw it coming. 
It was the same with the stock market crash of 2008. Everyone had charts and 
graphs and smiling eminences on CNBC, but — somehow, I mean somehow —
almost everyone got it wrong. And what about ISIS? How come the administration 
did not know what was coming? If it did, it sure kept the information close to the 
vest. 
To balance the Goldman Rule — call it a hedge — I invoke one of my own creation: 
the Rule of the Worse. You thought Cantor was bad? Look who's coming after. You 
thought you can't get more evil than al-Qaeda? Look at who's pillaging Iraq, a 
terrorist group that even al-Qaeda can't stomach. 
The wise president applies both rules. We know so little, but the one thing we do 
know is that things can get worse. They did in the Middle East, where Obama settled 
for a victory jog around the political infield after getting Assad to give up most of 
his chemical weapons. He now must deal with a region that is so much worse than 
anyone imagined. Where does the fault lie? Where it always has — where the buck 
stops. 
Whose fault is the current debacle in Iraq? It could be Nouri al-Maliki's since he is 
the country's strongman and has alienated the minority Sunnis. It could be George 
W. Bush's because he started the whole thing off with possibly the stupidest war in 
history, the Children's Crusade exempted on account of youth. The one person who 
EFTA00706978

is not at fault, we are told over and over again, is the current president of the United 
States. Like Millard Fillmore, he has kept us out of war. 
President Obama is hardly the ogre of right-wing invective, and Obamacare will turn 
out to have been a truly major reform of our creaky health-care system. But the 
subject of this column is foreign policy, the area where a president's power is 
substantially unchecked. He can, as Obama showed by swapping Sgt. Bowe 
Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders, just ignore the law. The GOP emitted a pro-
forma wail and then returned to contemplating the meaning of Eric Cantor's defeat. 
No one much cared. 
Other than avoiding war, it's hard to know what Obama wants. I know what he says, 
but actions always speak louder than words. For instance, he wanted Bashar al-
Assad to cease using chemical weapons. His language was strong, nearly warlike: 
"Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of 
children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying 
in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A 
father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk." 
What happened next? Virtually nothing. 
All those poisoned kids were soon forgotten and so, too, were all those people killed 
in the war, perhaps as many as 200,000. Those of us who advocated more forceful 
action were denigrated as war lovers who wanted to send in the infantry. (Better 
boots on the ground than head in the clouds — but I prefer neither.) Airstrikes and 
such might not have worked, but doing nothing never does. 
This is a serious, depressing discussion. Countless lives have been lost. A civil war 
that might have been stopped in its tracks was allowed to fester. The Syrian 
dictatorship survived, and the war has spilled into Iraq. It has the potential to engage 
the whole Middle East — Jordan, for sure, and then that tiny nation west of the 
Jordan River: Israel. The madmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria don't only 
kill Muslims; they would gladly also drop a bomb on Tel Aviv. 
The United States may now find itself on the side of Iran — a majority Shiite nation 
much like Iraq. What could be more preposterous? What could be more ironic? 
Worse, we could find ourselves engaged in a religious war — Sunni vs. Shiite. What 
will our Sunni friends — the Saudis, for instance — think of that? Or maybe we 
should just wash our hands of the whole thing and turn over a hunk of the Middle 
East with its oil to a terrorist organization — one that boasts of committing 
massacres. Oh, what dreams it must have in the desert night. 
William Goldman, the screenwriter, is one of my favorite philosophers. "Nobody 
knows anything," he once wrote. I thought of him when the politically indestructible 
Cantor got trounced. What happened? Theories galore, but the salient fact is that 
nobody saw it coming. 
EFTA00706979

It was the same with the stock market crash of 2008. Everyone had charts and 
graphs and smiling eminences on CNBC, but — somehow, I mean somehow —
almost everyone got it wrong. And what about ISIS? How come the administration 
did not know what was coming? If it did, it sure kept the information close to the 
vest. 
To balance the Goldman Rule — call it a hedge — I invoke one of my own creation: 
the Rule of the Worse. You thought Cantor was bad? Look who's coming after. You 
thought you can't get more evil than al-Qaeda? Look at who's pillaging Iraq, a 
terrorist group that even al-Qaeda can't stomach. 
The wise president applies both rules. We know so little, but the one thing we do 
know is that things can get worse. They did in the Middle East, where Obama settled 
for a victory jog around the political infield after getting Assad to give up most of 
his chemical weapons. He now must deal with a region that is so much worse than 
anyone imagined. Where does the fault lie? Where it always has — where the buck 
stops. 
Roger Cohen is a journalist and author. He is a columnist for The New York Times 
and International Herald Tribune. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in 
fifteen different countries 
Article 4. 
The National Interest 
ISIS Challenge in Iraq: Why America Should Work 
with Iran 
Payam Mohseni 
June 16. 2014 -- The US should seize the opportunity presented by the Iraq crisis to 
reach out and engage Iran. The threat posed by ISIS and radical jihadism as well as 
the potential for further regional instability represent important areas of mutual 
strategic concern for both countries. By engaging the Iranians, the US will gain the 
critical ability to shape the course of events without getting bogged down in the 
conflict. It will also help the US build a working relationship with Iran that could 
ease the current nuclear negotiations forward and lay the groundwork for future 
cooperation when a successful deal is reached. 
First, US engagement will make certain Iraq does not become wholly dependent on 
Iranian aid and that the US will play an important role in shaping the operational 
environment. Iran's Revolutionary Guards are already in Iraq advising and assisting 
the government on the military operations. Iran has openly declared its ability and 
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intent to help Iraq, and it has the recent experience of success in Syria to effectively 
do so. The current conflict means that Iran's influence and penetration of Iraq will 
only increase and become more entrenched than ever before. By assisting the Iraqis 
and working with the Iranians, the US can create mutual dependencies between the 
groups and enable the US to influence the operation of the fighting and the political 
balance between the different parties. 
Second, the US will be more effective in trying to reach a political solution to the 
conflict by engaging Iran. The current crisis cannot be solved simply through 
military means; it requires a political solution more importantly. The increasing 
monopolization of power by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had 
alienated the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds and excluded them from governance. To 
forge a broader and more inclusive coalition to lead Iraq, the assistance of Iran will 
be critical as it is an influential power behind the scenes. By engaging the Iranians, 
the US can shape the political process necessary for the reformulation of power in 
Baghdad. 
Third, the cooperation between the US and Iran will do much to build confidence 
between the two countries that would serve to help the current nuclear negotiations. 
It would also establish the parameters for a future working relationship between the 
US and Iran should the negotiations succeed. A history of mutual hostility and the 
lack of trust between the countries pose important challenges in the current 
negotiations. On the Iranian side, for example, whenever I travel to Tehran, 
hardliners have repeatedly voiced their suspicions of US willingness to engage them 
to me and frequently raise the issue of mistrust when discussing the negotiations. 
Cooperating on such a mission can do much to dispel these ideas and open the 
environment for more fruitful decision-making on the nuclear issue. 
While detractors may claim that by doing so the US will give Iraq to Iran on a silver 
platter, the US will actually be strengthening its own position in the country. By not 
doing so, Iran will be the sole benefactor of the crisis as it begins to assist Iraq just 
like Syria. Of course, the US should be highly cautious of providing direct military 
assistance to the current Iraqi government so as not to appear to have sided with the 
Shia in the sectarian conflict. However, by engaging Iran privately and working 
with all regional partners in reaching a political and military solution to the crisis, 
the US will be effective in promoting political stability and greater social inclusion 
in Iraq. 
Payam Mohseni  is the Iran Project Director and Fellow for Iran Studies at the 
Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is 
also a Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard's Department of Government where he 
teaches on Iranian and Middle East politics. 
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Article 5. 
NYT 
Take Mosul Back 
Roger Cohen 
June 16, 2014 -- London — Less than 60 miles from Mosul, where the Sunni Islamic 
fanatics who have overrun the city are slaughtering their enemies as if the Middle 
Ages never ended, a rather different scene in Iraq was recently described in a report 
from the Russian investment firm Renaissance Capital: 
"We saw Ferraris and Bentleys being driven by students at the American University 
of Iraq in Suleimaniyah, and at the only five-star hotel in Erbil, the car park was 
filled with new BMW's and Range Rovers. The few international restaurants in Erbil 
cost approximately $90 per person for a meal with a beer. The city's shopping 
centers carry international brands, all of which we noticed are priced at least 40 
percent higher than the international standard; and shop managers claimed inventory 
flies off the shelves." 
In nascent Kurdistan, run by the Kurdistan Regional Government, whose relations 
with the central government in Baghdad are a stop-go affair, things are different. 
Even the worst mess has its winners. The Kurds, almost a century after missing out 
on statehood at the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, are the beneficiaries of Iraq's 
mayhem. Even their relations with their Turkish nemesis have been commerce-
smoothed into something approaching warmth. 
Nobody should bet against an independent Kurdish state within the next decade. 
Syria and Iraq are in a state of implosion; Middle Eastern borders are up for grabs. 
Qaeda affiliates have already done their grabbing. They control wide swathes of 
Syria and Iraq 13 years (and trillions of dollars) after the United States went to war 
in Afghanistan to dismantle the jihadi state within a state of Osama bin Laden's Al 
Qaeda. 
This is not a terrific denouement to America's post-9/11 wars. The blame game is in 
full swing. Aficionados of the counterfactual are having a field day. Iraq in its agony 
is the perfect locus for handicappers of the hypothetical. It's an old game. If 
Napoleon had had B-52s at Waterloo, things might have worked out differently. 
The left blames the disaster on President Bush and the American invasion of 2003 
that shattered the Iraqi state and removed its murderous dictator, Saddam Hussein. If 
this had not happened, there would be no fanatics from the Islamic State in Iraq and 
Syria at the doorsteps of Baghdad. Wrong, says the right. President Obama is to 
blame for abandoning Iraq in 2011 without leaving a residual counter-terrorism 
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force. His feckless failure to back the Syrian opposition early in the uprising was a 
principal cause of Syria's collapse into a lawless haven for Islamic fanatics. If 
Obama had been more resolute in Iraq and Syria, ISIS would not be on the rampage. 
A plague on both their houses! It's unseemly to fight Washington's talk-show wars 
over the myriad dead of the Levant. 
The facts are plain enough. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 because of its 
weapons of mass destruction program. However Iraq did not have any weapons of 
mass destruction. The invasion brought the Shiite majority to power, so advancing 
the interests of Shiite Iran, America's enemy. It ousted the Sunnis, upsetting the 
Sunni-Shiite balance in the Middle East, and infuriating America's nominal ally, 
Saudi Arabia. As a result, a Sunni-Shiite regional conflict has been escalating over 
the past decade. 
There was no Al Qaeda in Saddam's Iraq. The United States birthed it through the 
invasion. It then beat Al Qaeda down, before allowing its affiliates to regroup by 
leaving and doing nothing about Syria's disintegration. American and Iranian 
interests in Iraq are now aligned in preserving the sectarian Shiite government of 
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, encouraging his (unlikely) outreach to the 
winning Kurds and the whiplashed Sunnis, and beating back the barbarians of ISIS. 
However, the political forces arrayed against cooperation with Iran in the Congress 
are powerful — and U.S. and Iranian interests part ways in Syria and over Israel. A 
logical approach in the Middle East is seldom a feasible approach. 
Got it? 
If not, do not worry. The blame game misses the point. Iraq and Syria, well before 
America's hapless intervention and hapless paralysis, were rotten to the core, as ripe 
for dismemberment as the Ottoman Empire a century ago, sickened by the 
personality cults of brutal rulers, cracking at the internal lines of fracture colonial 
overseers chose to disregard. They were in a state of postponed decomposition. 
Sunnis in Iraq and Alawites in Syria, minorities both, believed (and believe) they 
had some irreversible right to rule. They do not. 
President Obama should use targeted military force to drive back the fanatics of 
ISIS. If the jihadis cement their hold, the blowback will be felt in Europe and the 
United States. Such action will not resolve Iraq's problems, or the region's. But the 
alternative is far worse. It would be a betrayal of the thousands of American lives 
lost since 2001 and of the millions in the Middle East who view the Middle Ages as 
over. 
Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent 
for more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001, and 
foreign editor six months later 
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Article 6. 
The Washington Post 
Obama's foreign policy of retreat 
George F. Will 
June 16, 2014 -- "From the Halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli ... " 
— The Marines' Hymn
Two hundred and nine years after Marines visited those shores, dispatched by 
President Jefferson to punish Barbary pirates for attacking U.S. vessels in the 
Mediterranean, Marines are again in that sea, poised to return. If they are sent 
ashore, their mission will be to rescue U.S. citizens from the consequences of U.S. 
policy. Then they might have to do the same thing in Baghdad. 
The House Select Committee on Benghazi should not consider the attack on the U.S. 
compound in Benghazi, Libya, its sole or even primary topic. Rather, it should begin 
at the beginning, with the U.S. military intervention in Libya's civil war 18 months 
before Benghazi. 
Today, Libya is an anarchy of hundreds of rival militias. The U.S. intervention, for 
which President Obama's phrasemakers coined the term "leading from behind," was 
justified by "R2P" — the "o_sponsibility
protect" Libyans, especially in Benghazi, 
from the supposed threat of genocide inflicted by Moammar Gaddafi. This 
humanitarian imperialism quickly became an exercise in regime change. But the 
prolonged attempt to assassinate Gaddafi from the air made no provision for a 
replacement regime. 
The Benghazi committee should hear from Alan J. Kuperman of the Lyndon B. 
Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. In his policy brief 
"Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene," he says: 
Gaddafi did not initiate violence against peaceful protesters. Rather, protesters 
initiated the violence that engulfed four cities. Media reports "exaggerated the death 
toll by a factor of 10, citing `more than 2,000 deaths' in Benghazi during the initial 
days of the uprising, whereas Human Rights Watch (HRW) later documented only 
233 deaths across all of Libya in that period." Furthermore, when the United States 
and a few other NATO nations intervened in March 2011, "Gaddafi already had 
regained control of most of Libya, while the rebels were retreating rapidly toward 
Egypt. Thus, the conflict was about to end, barely six weeks after it started, at a toll 
of about 1,000 dead. .. . [The intervention] enabled the rebels to resume their attack, 
which prolonged the war for another seven months and caused at least 7,000 more 
deaths." The intervention encouraged peaceful protesters in Syria to use violence in 
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the hope of attracting an intervention. This increased the rate of killing there tenfold. 
And since Gaddafi fell, "sophisticated weapons from Gaddafi's arsenal — including 
up to 15,000 man-portable, surface-to-air missiles unaccounted for as of 2012 —
leaked to radical Islamists throughout the region." 
Perhaps including Iraq. The Benghazi committee is organizing as Iraq crumbles, its 
army disintegrating as the enemy approaches. In January, Fallujah fell to forces of 
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an al-Qaeda affiliate. ISIS's conquest of Mosul, 
Iraq's second-largest city (its population of 1.5 million equals that of Philadelphia), 
then Tal Afar, is redundant evidence that the U.S. experience in Iraq was the worst 
episode of squandered valor in U.S. history. 
Some will say that it would not have come to this if the Iraqi army had not been 
disbanded, or if there had been better occupation planning, or if there had been a 
bigger occupying force, or if an agreement had been reached to keep a significant 
number of U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, or if .. . 
Enough. Here is a question for Republican presidential aspirants: 
Given the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and given that we now 
know how little we know about "nation-building" and about the promotion of 
democracy in nations that need to be "built," and given that Saddam Hussein's 
horrific tyranny at least controlled Iraq's sectarian furies, and given that Iraq under 
him was Iran's adversary, and given that 10-year wars make Americans 
indiscriminately averse to military undertakings — given all this, if you could 
rewind history to March 2003, would you favor invading Iraq? 
Obama is conducting the foreign policy retreat that he promised, that then-Secretary 
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton facilitated without apparent qualms and that many 
Americans said they wanted until it began to make them queasy. The Republican 
challenge is to articulate a policy that fills the vast space between this retreat and the 
ruinous grandiosity of the "freedom agenda" of Obama's predecessor. 
Americans prefer not to think about, and rarely allow elections to turn on, foreign 
policy. Events, however, are not cooperating. Trotsky probably did not really say 
this, but someone should: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in 
you." 
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. 
He is a Pulitzer Prize—winner best known for his conservative commentary on 
politics. 
Article 7. 
Foreign Policy 
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Why the New World Order Won't Be 
Orderly 
Randall L. Schweller 
June 16, 2014 -- Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, foreign 
policy experts have been predicting that the United States' days as global 
hegemon are coming to a close. But rather than asking themselves which 
country is most likely to replace the United States, they ought to be asking 
themselves whether the concept of global hegemony still applies in our era. 
It increasingly seems that the world will no longer have a single 
superpower, or group of superpowers, that brings order to international 
politics. Instead, it will have a variety of powers -- including nations, 
multinational corporations, ideological movements, global crime and terror 
groups, and human rights organizations -- jockeying with each other, 
mostly unsuccessfully, to achieve their goals. International politics is 
transforming from a system anchored in predictable, and relatively 
constant, principles to a system that is, if not inherently unknowable, far 
more erratic, unsettled, and devoid of behavioral regularities. In terms of 
geopolitics, we have moved from an age of order to an age of entropy. 
Entropy is a scientific concept that measures disorder: the higher the 
entropy, the higher the disorder. And disorder is precisely what will 
characterize the future of international politics. In this leaderless world, 
threats are much more likely to be cold than hot; danger will come less 
frequently in the form of shooting wars among great powers than diffuse 
disagreements over geopolitical, monetary, trade, and environmental 
issues. Problems and crises will arise more frequently and, when they do, 
will be resolved less cooperatively. 
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION 
How did we get here? The shift began in the twentieth century, with the 
advent of nuclear weapons and the spread of economic globalization, 
which together have made war among the great powers unthinkable. As 
many scholars have pointed out, the world has enjoyed the longest period 
of relative peace in recorded history. The absence of cataclysmic wars 
among great powers has obviously been a great boon. But it has also come 
at a real cost. For the past several centuries, wars between the extant power 
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in the international system and the rising challenger or challengers have 
occurred every hundred years or so, crowning a new leading power, which 
is responsible for organizing international politics and shouldering the 
burdens of global leadership. In crowning new kings, these hegemonic 
wars also obliterated the old orders, wiping the institutional slate clean so 
that a new global architecture, better suited to the times, could be built 
from scratch. The wars were thus a good thing in some sense, because they 
replenished the international system with new energy in service of world 
order and lasting peace. In their absence, we no longer have a force of 
"creative destruction" capable of resetting the world. And just as seas 
become foul without the blowing of the winds, prolonged peace allows 
inertia and decay to set in. Power is already more diffuse than it ever has 
been. And it is growing more so by the year. The United States remains an 
important power, but it knows that it no longer towers over all contenders. 
Plagued by ballooning debt, Washington has narrowed its foreign policy to 
a few basic objectives. Yet the deterioration of Pax Americana is not due 
solely to the United States' declining power. It is also a problem of will --
one rooted in fading national resolve to use those power advantages that 
the United States still enjoys. Interactions between political actors are also 
characterized by greater entropy. The digital revolution has allowed 
information to spread farther than ever before, empowering average 
citizens, celebrities, corporations, terrorists, religious movements, and 
shadowy transnational criminal groups. The power these groups can exert, 
however, is unconventional. They have the power to disrupt, to stop things 
from happening, but they don't have the power to enact their own agendas. 
Twitter, Facebook, and text messaging have allowed citizens to organize 
massive demonstrations and topple dictatorial governments. But there is 
little reason to believe that citizens organized via social media are able to 
institute political changes. 
INFORMATION OVERLOAD 
Entropy is not only on the rise in the international system. Individuals, too, 
are experiencing greater personal entropy, as they discover that they are 
incapable of handling the speed at which digital information is transmitted. 
Information rains down faster and thicker by the day. Increasingly, modern 
people may feel, as the psychologist and philosopher William James did in 
1899, that an "irremediable flatness is coming over the world." Flatness 
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here refers to a general sense of banality and loss of meaning. Rather than a 
heightened sense of stimulation and awareness, information overload 
produces boredom and alienation. As the economist Herbert A. Simon has 
explained, a "wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." This is 
because in "an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a 
dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information 
consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the 
attention of its recipients." In that sense, modern society suffers from 
collective attention deficit disorder. No matter how much we pump up our 
brains with drugs originally intended to treat Alzheimer's and narcolepsy 
or attempt to "train" our brains using Cogmed or Lumosity, we are likely to 
remain terminally distracted by the flood of digital information from 
Google, Twitter, e-mail, RSS readers, Netflix, Firefox tabs, and Flickr 
photostreams. Organizations, too, face this problem. The U.S. National 
Security Agency alone intercepts and stores nearly two billion separate e-
mails, phone calls, and other communications every day. "The complexity 
of this system defies description," lamented John R. Vines, a retired U.S. 
Army general who reviewed the U.S. Defense Department's intelligence 
efforts last year. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is 
making us more safe." 
Having greater quantities of information at our fingertips has not produced 
greater wisdom. Instead, it has led to information entropy. As the volume 
of information processed or diffused increases, the information becomes 
noise. In the digital age, information is routinely distorted, buried in noise, 
or otherwise impossible to interpret. The result is that people respond to the 
many contradictory "facts" and "informed opinions" being hurled at them 
by essentially selecting and interpreting facts in ways that accord with their 
own personal, idiosyncratic, and often flat-wrong ideas about the world. 
Knowledge no longer rests on objective information but, rather, on 
seductive "true enough" facts. Knowledge that is pocked with holes but 
that seems true enough will continue to hold sway over those who simply 
want to believe something that feels right. 
WELCOME TO PURGATORY 
The new world of rising structural and informational entropy means that 
history can no longer repeat itself. We will not endure the hell brought on 
by a world war, for example, or by utter economic catastrophe. But this 
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