So, I was going to do a writeup of the CNAS Future of Iraq event, but I got sick and more or less sidetracked even though I tried to put type to blog, with Hans Zimmer's awesome soundtrack for Inception in the background.
As you might have seen from my rather enthusiastic tweets from the event it was pretty awesome--despite the fact that there was no mention or discussion of my two favorite perennial subjects, giant robots in space, lolcats, or other assorted Internet time-wasters. Given that CNAS did an event on US-Japan relations in June perhaps I missed the relevant discussion of Japan's increasing arsenal of awesome giant robots and the challenges these awesome giant robots pose to regional security integration in the Pacific. As for lolcats, as I've discussed with Crispin Burke on Twitter, the concept of "lolcat-based operations" still has not yet hit its stride in defense thought--despite the potential these spastic critters have of crippling C41 through time-wasting at work (they already do, along with Facebook and Farmville, in many American workplaces).
With that lengthy preamble, the event (in the Federal Triangle) took a look at the endgame of US-Iraqi relations after the reduction of US forces that has been ongoing for some time. The Defense Department's Dr. Colin Kahl, and State's Michael Corbin, spoke. Corbin focused more on the mechanics of US-Iraqi relations, whereas Kahl made more broad comments on the overall shape of the relationship. One thing that came through was a definite sense of optimism about Iraq's future security challenges, although moderator Nathaniel Fick did have some pointed questions about what events and metrics might make the US revisit its assumptions.
The Q&A session was a relative "who's who" of defense analysts and reporters, as you might see from the event's Twitter hashtag, including Yochi Dreazen of the National Journal the Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Biddle. As usual, the familiar questions about the Anbar Awakening narrative, political integration, judicial issues and sectarian political competition came to play. Water--and access to it--came up inevitably as well.
One question I had, but didn't really quite formulate in my mind until I was back on the metro, was whether or not the overall campaign design of Operation New Dawn--the official name for the new US mission in the country--had any similarities to many of the other limited partnerships that the US is currently engaged in (many of which were made famous in Robert D. Kaplan books). If the US is moving toward what Basil Liddell Hart called a "limited liability" posture in much of the world, then US engagement in Iraq after major force reductions and the overall campaign design for achieving strategic objectives in modern Iraq may be an interesting test of this new doctrine's validity.
As an aside, I am also very amused by how much Twitter is becoming a part of political science and policy events. In most of the ones I have been to over the past year there have been event hashtags with many postings. Although the sheer volume of tweets pales in comparison to business and tech events I've also gone to, it is now a crucial dimension of conferences. I was checking Twitter on my iPhone throughout the event and people around were Twittering, splitting their attention between the real-world conversation and the virtual one.
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