As President George W Bush seeks to deeply entrench US military forces in Iraq, the Congress and foreign policy pundits are looking beyond his term and debating the future of US foreign policy there. Violence is down in Iraq, and Bush hopes to use the apparent success of his surge strategy to solidify the relationship that he has laid out with the government of Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki. For Bush, that constitutes a longstanding commitment to Iraqi security. But there is concern among the Democrats that Bush is trying to shore up an Iraq policy within which the next president will be forced to operate.

In November, Bush and Maliki signed a declaration of principles around which an agreement is to be negotiated by July. The agreement is meant to replace the UN mandate — set to expire next December — which allows foreign troops on Iraqi soil. With many cheerleaders of the war, such as Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, calling for an extended US troop presence in Iraq, the security aspect of the agreement will set policy beyond the next president’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009.

Democrats have been railing against the idea that Bush is in a position to make these commitments. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both say they will pursue legislation requiring President Bush to seek congressional approval for the Iraq status of forces agreement, and a joint subcommittee meeting was convened on the topic on Wednesday in the House of Representatives.“The next president is going to inherit a situation where, maybe if they’re lucky, there has been enough peace in the meantime for political progress to be made,” said Phillip Gordon of the Brookings Institution at an event there. “But more likely is that any of these factors that I mention leads to a situation in which the president is actually faced with the dilemma that we’ve been facing for the past four years, which is ‘Is it worth it?’”

However, the administration and its supporters insist that the agreement will allow adequate flexibility for the next president. “If you look around the world, we have a lot of status of forces agreements,” Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings senior fellow, said. “But it never means that we’re obligated to stay in any given place for a given length of time with troops. We always have a right to reassess and to leave. These rules govern whatever troops are there doesn’t prejudge the continuation of that presence.”

“There’s no legal basis for it. The next president can do what he or she wants. I’m quite confident about that,” he said. When asked if this made the hearings on Capitol Hill unnecessary, O’Hanlon said, “They’re unnecessary legally. I think they’re useful in the sense that they send a message from the US Congress to the world that you should not interpret whatever Bush does as being able to necessarily survive his presidency and bind the next president’s hands.” “Bush may be conveying a sense of permanence to these decisions that it would be unfortunate to have others interpret in that way,” he said. — IPS