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By the standards the George W. Bush administration set for itself, a successful conclusion to the Iraq invasion was well within reach by the time the president declared victory on May 1, 2003. A constitution was ratified on October 15, 2005, and a general election took place on December 15, 2005, to elect a permanent 275-member Iraqi council. A government, headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, took office on May 20, 2006. Yet this government —as of early 2008— had not met one of Washington’s benchmarks for national reconciliation, security, or governance. Maliki’s government refused to distance itself from radical clerics or curb their private militias. Nonsectarian technocrats were not invited to join the cabinet. Police units that practiced sectarian partisanship were not suspended, Government ministries stacked with loyalists bred corruption.1 Even the surge of additional American troops in the winter of 2007–08 has failed to provide the breathing space to pass the 18 legislative benchmarks the Bush administration called vital to political reconciliation. How could a government so utterly dependent on American collaboration defy U.S. wishes, yet hope for U.S. forces to remain in Baghdad? With ample evidence of Iraq’s failure to meet the public security and civil service criteria of a secular state, why had the Bush administration not tied aid to policy performance? Why has it not made continued support contingent on achieving explicit milestones? The trap the United States faces in Iraq exemplifies a recurring dilemma in U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have continuously coddled client regimes that are unwilling to make the political trade-offs necessary for national legitimacy. Despite American rhetoric about overseas reform and ambivalence about 11 Walking with the Devil: The Commitment Trap in U.S. Foreign Policy 173 “My children, it is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.” —Old Balkan proverb used by Franklin Roosevelt backing dictators, throughout the cold war many U.S. political leaders relied on one authoritarian regime to help defeat another more odious authoritarian regime.And there were the proxy wars, too, when the United States armed Iraq against Iran and the mujahedin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Such myopic policies consequently impaired America’s ability to forcefully advocate domestic reforms within those regimes. Once engaged, U.S. support weakened American demands for pro-reform quid pro quo terms. This is the U.S. commitment trap. Committed to the survival of allies but lacking the leverage to discipline recalcitrant regime leaders, America creates a strategic vulnerability that even weak client states can exploit. The commitment trap reduces America’s credibility as a reform advocate. It binds the United States so that America cannot walk away from allies without eroding its credibility.2 Curiously, this trap isn’t sealed abroad but at home—by the fears that have driven the U.S. electorate since the cold war. Supporting Reform in Cold War Client Regimes Client regime reform is within the U.S. ideological tradition, and attempts at such efforts have been an important component of American security policy since the cold war. In 1946 General George Marshall attempted, without success , to form a coalition government in China and to persuade Chiang Kaishek ’s ruling Kuomintang Party to accept Communist Party participation in elections.3 In another example of U.S. efforts to change the behavior of a client regime, Secretary of State Dean Acheson suggested to the shah of Iran in 1949 that the best way to deter war and achieve security “was not by military preparations but by so developing free economic and social structures as to protect them from foreign aggression and upheaval.”4 Presidents Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Carter gave similar advice to the shah. In early 1950 President Truman warned South Korea’s strongman, Syngman Rhee, that he would receive no more U.S. aid if he canceled elections. His successor, Park Chung-hee, was put on similar notice by Kennedy in 1961 and again in 1963. However, under stress of civil war or external aggression, even U.S. presidents who entered office advocating overseas reform eventually reinforced the very regimes they once condemned. Regardless of their political philosophies , every American president has put democracy on hold when larger security issues arose. As keen observers of U.S. policies, autocrats such as Chiang Kai-shek, Shah Pahlavi, Ferdinand Marcos, and Park Chung-hee used security threats of insurgency or invasion to serve their...

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