Words on the SOFA

17 July 2008, 1251 EDT

Dr. iRak has a terrific discussion of the increasingly confusing information concerning whether or not Maliki called for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

It makes good reading in conjunction with today’s New York Times article discussing the ambivalence many Iraqis feel about a possible Obama victory.

I made a brief case against a US pullout from Iraq lat December. But I also see the wisdom behind Obama’s plan to use a phased withdraw as a way of leveraging the Iraqis. Clearly, a completely open-ended commitment generates moral hazards in US dealings with the current government. So a lot depends on just what the “residual force” entails, and how willing Obama is to adjust policy as circumstances shift. Given the quality of his people, I’m increasingly confident that they’ll handle the US presence in a responsible manner.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.