Planning for Defeat
George Packer discusses Things Fall Apart in The New Yorker
In a recent New Yorker article, "Planning for Defeat: How should we withdraw from Iraq?" correspondent George Packer takes a hard look at Iraq's future. According to Packer, American leaders must "do what they have not yet done—look beyond the next three to six months, to the next two or three years."
Packer examines the merits of several strategies put forth by various think tanks and government officials, including one outlined in Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack’s book, Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War. Byman and Pollack, senior fellows in foreign policy studies at Brookings, assert that the top priority is to prevent the Iraqi conflict from spilling over and destabilizing neighboring states. Things Fall Apart explains what the United States can do to reduce the threat of a wider conflict. Such a containment approach would require deterring neighboring states from intervening, helping mitigate the risks associated with refugees, and striking terrorist havens.
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