The violence in Iraq could deliver a grim measure of vindication for Biden. Was Biden right?

The advance of Islamic militants across Iraq has brought fresh criticism for the Obama administration — but may also deliver a grim measure of vindication to one very prominent White House official: Vice President Joe Biden.

In recent months, former officials and pundits have questioned and even ridiculed Biden’s foreign policy acumen.


Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoir that Biden “was wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue of the past four decades.”

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And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new book “Hard Choices” notes that Biden “remained skeptical” about launching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 — and that others in the administration were at odds with Biden. “I thought we should go for it,” Clinton states, a contrast she has also drawn attention to on the road since leaving office.

This week paints Biden’s judgment in a far different light.

Recent events in Iraq call attention to his prediction nearly a decade ago that the war-torn nation was heading toward a breakup along sectarian lines — and to a prescription he offered to try to manage that reality by granting Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds greater autonomy over various parts of the country.

In other words: While Biden may have taken a beating repeatedly in recent years for some foreign policy calls he’s made, his judgment on Iraq’s capacity to stay united now looks almost prescient.

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“Some will say moving toward strong regionalism would ignite sectarian cleansing. But that’s exactly what is going on already, in ever-bigger waves,” Biden wrote in a 2006 New York Times op-ed he co-authored. “Others will argue that it would lead to partition. But a breakup is already underway. As it was in Bosnia, a strong federal system is a viable means to prevent both perils in Iraq.”

A Biden representative declined to comment on whether Biden views himself as vindicated by the recent moves bringing Iraq closer to a breakup along sectarian lines. However, Biden’s co-author on the plan said it remains the last, best hope for saving the country from spiraling violence.

“It’s the only solution,” said Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The ship hasn’t sailed. It’s still a basis for doing something. … I don’t know if it will work. But in terms of what could work, it’s the only thing.”

Gelb said the plan was something of a flop after it was rolled out. It came to be branded as a call for “soft partition,” even though he said the intention was to preserve the country rather than see it splinter. Critics said it could even encourage ethnic cleansing.

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Still, on the presidential campaign trail in 2007, Biden talked regularly about the idea. It even got a floor vote in the Senate, where a sense-of-the-Senate resolution he sponsored on “federalism” for Iraq passed, 75-23. (Clinton voted for the measure. Then-Sen. Barack Obama did not vote on it.)

But Gelb said Biden doesn’t appear to have pushed the idea after he became vice president.

“I don’t think he was outvoted. There just wasn’t any interest in it,” Gelb said. “The Middle East experts in Washington all pissed on it … which just fed into the criticism that we were calling for partitioning of Iraq.”

While President Barack Obama didn’t mention Biden’s plan Friday, the president did suggest that it was possible that the contrary idea of a security brought to bear by a strong central government in Baghdad may have been misplaced.

“The United States has poured a lot of money into these Iraqi security forces, and we devoted a lot of training to Iraqi security forces,” Obama told reporters at the White House on Friday.

“The fact that they are not willing to stand and fight and defend their posts against admittedly hardened terrorists, but not terrorists who are overwhelming in numbers, indicates that there’s a problem with morale, there’s a problem in terms of commitment, and ultimately that’s rooted in the political problems that have plagued the country for a very long time.”

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The president added that the way forward in Iraq would require accommodating the different populations there, something Biden was stressing seven years ago.

And Obama called for “a serious and sincere effort by Iraq’s leaders to set aside sectarian differences, to promote stability and account for the legitimate interests of all of Iraq’s communities, and to continue to build the capacity of an effective security force.”

“In the absence of this type of political effort, short-term military action — including any assistance we might provide — won’t succeed,” the president said bluntly.

Some foreign policy experts say Biden’s proposal was never viable, not because of opposition from D.C. think tanks but because Iraqi leaders just were not willing to make the trade-offs necessary to arrive at such a deal.

”Biden was wrong because the only way Iraq can be partitioned is the way they are doing it now,” veteran national security journalist Tom Ricks wrote on Twitter Friday. “I think we will wind up with a partitioned Iraq — a Shiite south, a Sunni northwest and a Kurdish northeast,” he added.

Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies also said the details of dividing up Iraq in the way Biden envisioned were simply too complex to be settled at a negotiating table.

“You can in a security sense divide Iraq, but you start talking about infrastructure and about roads and about economics and about water … all of a sudden you begin to realize with some 27 million people this doesn’t work out too easily,” said Cordesman.

Former Bush National Security Adviser Steve Hadley said that when the “soft partition” idea was floated several years ago, it never gained much traction with Iraqis.

“Iraqis at the time didn’t want it,” he said. “I’m not so sure whether that continues to be the case.”

Hadley and other experts noted that the Iraqi constitution actually calls for some of the federalism Biden was proposing, but the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki undermined the efforts to share power, money and natural resources.

“It was always going to be a federal Iraq. … Unfortunately, it was never really fully implemented,” Hadley said. “If this situation stabilizes, I’m not sure you won’t end up with some kind of federated Iraq, anyway. It makes so much economic sense.”

Former Obama State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said a key problem with Biden’s proposal from the outset was that partition of Iraq, whether by law or just in practice, would fuel sectarian divisions in other countries across the region.

“The flaw in that idea was that it was always just about Iraq, yet Iraq is symptomatic of the sectarian divide that has continued to flow through the Middle East,” said Crowley, now a professor at The George Washington University.

“The dilemma in bringing back the Biden idea now is we’re not just talking about Iraq, we’re talking about Syria. The two are joined at the hip to some extent. If we acquiesce in three states, instead of one, you’ve got a cascading effect in Syria, if not the whole region.”

Crowley said the best answer for Iraq at this point most likely involves some form of federalism, but that will require al-Maliki to step down — perhaps with a push from Obama.

“Could Iraq be governed as more federated state? Ultimately for Iraq to be successful, you probably have to move in that direction. Is Nouri al-Maliki the guy to lead that? No. Everyone wants a Mandela to emerge, but there’s no indication in any of these countries a Mandela-like figure is in the offing,” Crowley said.

“President Obama needs to tell al-Maliki it’s time to go. … You need to refresh the political scene in Iraq and hope you get greater integration than we’ve seen so far.”