Biden's philosophy of diplomacy first, force last

No issue has gotten more political scrutiny, however, than Mr. Biden’s position on Iraq, and it is likely to get more attention now, given that Mr. Obama opposed the war from the start. According to aides, after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Biden agreed with the argument that the threat of American retaliation might be insufficient to protect the country.

While Mr. Biden never linked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Qaeda terrorists, he was concerned that the effort to maintain economic sanctions was faltering. While Iraq was not an imminent threat, its presumed programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, he argued, could become one, unless United Nations resolution on weapons inspections were strictly enforced.

If military action was needed, he argued, it should be a last resort taken in concert with other nations. The dismantlement of Iraq’s weapons programs, not the toppling of Mr. Hussein, he said, should be the goal.

During the early part of the American occupation, Mr. Biden initially argued that more troops were needed. As the conflict dragged on, and the notion of sending additional troops became more unpopular with the voters, he began to advocate a new plan, one that sought to apply his Balkan experience to Iraq and appeared to open the door to troop withdrawals.

In a 2006 Op-Ed article in The New York Times that he wrote with Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Biden recalled how Bosnia had been divided into Muslim, Croat and Serbian federations. He advocated the creation of three largely autonomous Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions, while preserving a limited central government.

Critics complained that the sectarian groups in Iraq were too intermingled to be so easily disentangled. And in its original formulation, the plan had another liability: it was more popular in Washington than in Baghdad, where Iraqi leaders viewed it suspiciously as an effort to partition their country. When the Senate passed a resolution in September that endorsed Mr. Biden’s plan for a loose Iraqi federation, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and other Iraqi leaders initially objected.

Mr. Biden has sought to refine the original concept by emphasizing that his major point is the need for a decentralized federal system in Iraq. But the plan has faded from the public debate as violence has declined and the Maliki government has begun to assert its sovereignty.

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Indeed, Mr. Biden’s position appears to have shifted closer to that of Mr. Obama. Like Mr. Obama, he has emphasized the need to withdraw all combat brigades within 16 months of taking office, while building up American forces in Afghanistan. There is much in their positions that remains to be spelled out.

With American commanders emphasizing the need to avoid hard and fast deadlines in withdrawing troops, with the Iraqis at loggerheads over provincial elections, and with uncertainty over the future role of tens of thousands of Sunni volunteers who have been helping to maintain security, the situation in Iraq would be sure to challenge Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama should they reach the White House.

This story, A Philosophy of Diplomacy First, Force Last, originally appeared in The New York Times.

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