This week on TPMCafe's America Abroad, the bloggers are talking about... Iraq, a Concert of Democracies, the 2000 GOP Foreign Policy Platform, and Washington Foreign Policy Cliques. My full summary is after the break.

Iraq

As Bush continues to decide how to fix Iraq, Ivo Daalder asked why John Negroponte, the Director for National Intelligence wasn’t included in the meeting. Daalder takes this as a sign of the administration’s view that they don’t “need any intelligence information on what's going on in Iraq”. “Their 'new way forward’ on Iraq will have nothing to do with what is actually going on” Daalder fears. Vali Nasr weighed in on Iraq, stating that an increase in US troops there would be a mistake. He believes the additional troops would not be “…to police the streets and hold the line against the creeping violence, but to expand the war by taking on the Shia militias”. This would upset the Shia and could provoke an uprising in the oil rich south. Instead he called on Bush to increase troops in Afghanistan where the Taliban’s attacks have increased. Otherwise, he fears that “…ignoring Afghanistan will take that country back to where it was before 9/11”. Daalder offered his view that “the current talk in Washington of escalating troop levels, intensifying training, and enhancing the security presence in Baghdad completely misses the point that all such increases are useless unless they contribute to the decisive defeat of one side in Iraq’s civil war”. He explained that “the crushing defeat of Islamist forces by the Ethiopian backed Somali transitional government underscores a central truth of all civil wars — such wars typically end only when one side decisively defeats the other."

In Other News On America Abroad

* John Ikenberry continued the discussion of the Concert of Democracies into this week when he introduced a series of correspondence he had with David Rieff. The exchange highlights Rieff’s objections that the Concert would be “…based on, an uncritical acceptance of the idea that American hegemony is the best context for world order AND democracy”. He also sees that US involvement in the Concert could turn into “one more forum for us to bully people”.

*After being prompted by a reporter to look over the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform, Daalder noted that the Bush critique of Clinton then has become a worse reality now. “While Bush inherited a lot of problems from Clinton, in each instance he had done everything possible to make things worse.”

* Ernest Wilson looked into the cliques that have formed in the Washington based foreign policy community. He feels as though “…Campbell and Chollet’s ‘tell all’ piece in the current Washington Quarterly…” thoroughly explains the trend. Wilson asks readers to weight in on what the post-Bush era may look like.