The Foreign Service Journal, February 2012

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 State’s Iraq Transition Challenge As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, the State Depart- ment was poised to officially take up its greatest overseas operation since the Marshall Plan: the transition from a predominantly military U.S. pres- ence to civilian engagement in Iraq. Though Embassy Baghdad is the largest, costliest and one of the most heavily fortified U.S. diplomatic mis- sions in the world, this undertaking is sure to test both the department and the Foreign Service. “This is clearly something that the State Department has never done be- fore,” Under Secretary of State for Management and Resources Patrick Kennedy, who oversees the enormous Iraq transition portfolio, told Reuters on Dec. 18. “We have excellent people at the State Department with manage- ment, acquisitions, logistical, security, communications and medical skills,” Kennedy added. “We are ready.” Not everyone is as confident as Mr. Kennedy. “I think there is a lot of very serious concern about the depart- ment’s ability to take the lead on all of this, given the cuts it has faced over the years and how difficult it has been for them to operate in semi-war zones,” Brian Katulis, a security expert at the Center for American Progress, told Reuters. Not the least of the challenges for State is the fact that the withdrawal of U.S. troops is not synonymous with the end of the IraqWar. As we go to press, explosive sectarian battles continue, as do bomb blasts within the heavily for- tified “Green Zone” of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the country’s already shaky coalition government was plung- ed into yet another serious political cri- sis at year’s end, and Iraqi Prime Min- ister Nuri al-Maliki appears to be moving against political rivals and op- ponents, even at the cost of stoking ethnic and sectarian tensions. As Harvard Professor Meghan O’Sullivan points out in a Dec. 21 Bloomberg commentary, Iraq’s nas- cent political institutions have not yet gelled, so vital political issues, such as disagreements over Iraq’s federal char- acter, remain unresolved. But there is consensus on one thing, at least: most Iraqis long ago stopped seeing Americans as heroes and liber- ators. Consequently, managing con- tinued U.S. engagement promises to be a formidable task. While there has been very little dis- cussion of it, preparations for the tran- sition have been under way for more than a year under the direction of Am- bassador Patricia Haslach, who is based in Washington, D.C. State’s transition operation is expected to in- volve some 16,000 individuals: about 2,000 members of the Foreign Service and other federal employees, and 14,000 contractors, half of them secu- rity personnel. Only a small number of U.S. mili- tary personnel will remain in Iraq to C YBERNOTES T here is nothing inevitable about Europe’s decline. But we are standing on the edge of a precipice. This is the scariest moment of my ministerial life, but therefore also the most sublime. I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it [the euro zone] survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. — Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, speaking in Berlin on Nov. 28, 2011; quoted in Der Spiegel (www.spiegel.de).