ABSTRACT
The essay makes three major points:

I - A few rare opportunities exist for a militarily and economically superior power to end a war it wants to get out of. These exist when a war has lost public support, failed to achieve decisive results, and is in a costly stalemate the projected costs and risks of which exceed the benefits. These war-ending opportunities have characteristics of significant changes in belligerents, changes in the balance of forces resulting from the success or failure of major campaigns, significant escalations or threat of escalations in levels and geographic scope of violence, major changes in the political and economic estimates of the costs and benefits of continuing the war for the economically dominant party (a view not necessarily and probably not shared by the adversary), and major political changes of government in the economically and militarily dominant country. Based on these criteria, I argue that two such opportune years of war-ending decisions exist for the US in the Iraq war on terms that need not be either victory or defeat: In 2007, and again in 2009.

A previous opportunity may have existed in 2004, but was not grasped in the hope of more decisive and pervasive military and political victories in the future and even better opportunities for ending the conflict on more favorable terms.

II - In Iraq there exist seven different types of wars since 2002. Each involves the US militarily, politically, and economically. The opportunities for the US to end the wars it wants to get out of depends on the kind of war that is being fought. One of these Iraq wars - call it the 2002-2003 War of Regime Change - was won decisively by the US-led Coalition forces' invasion and ended with the defeat of the Iraqi army, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the replacement of his government by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A second kind - the US-declared global "War on Terror", cannot be won or lost in Iraq, nor ended there. The five other wars of two kinds - three insurgencies and two civil wars - may or may not offer opportunities to be ended by the US in the next three years, depending on their characteristics and the US level of risk and investment.

III - Courses of action for ending the seven simultaneous Iraq wars in the next years. For those of the seven Iraq wars the US is believed capable of ending, specific actions to end the conflict are recommended. These are for the three anti-US occupation forces insurgencies that cannot be defeated at current or even available increased force levels'. Recommended for ending them is the withdrawal and re-deployment (to the US, Afghanistan, Kuwait?) of US military occupation forces, and their replacement by a massive economic assistance, infrastructure and employment development program administered multilaterally but financed by the US at roughly a quarter of the annual $100 billion cost of the US occupation. To contain the Shia-Sunni civil war and the Central Constitutional Government's civil war with all the warring sectarian factions and foreign terrorists, direct negotiations with surrounding states and major economic inducements of trade, aid, and technical assistance are recommended.

I- A few rare opportunities for a militarily and economically superior power to end a war it wants to get out of.

The Iraq, Afghan, Vietnam, and Korean Wars remind us (and in the Afghan case, Russia) how difficult it is to get out of a war that one would prefer not to continue.
There can exist a few rare times when a government that wants to discontinue a war can change its strategy and war aims, declaring victory or defeat or stalemate or a change in priorities or whatever political cover it can muster, and end its participation in a war (though not necessarily that of other parties involved).

We know from the history of the termination negotiations of previous regional wars from 1946 to 2000 that if any party to a conflict believes that the outcome is likely to become more favorable if the fighting continues, then a cease-fire call from a superordinate power like the UN Security Council or a global superpower or even the dominant military power involved in the conflict is unlikely to end hostilities. Ideally, for war termination negotiations - tacit or explicit - to progress, there must be convergence of expectations concerning current trends in war outcomes among the parties. When there is a period of major changes in those trends indicating changes in likely conflict outcomes and their timing, such as the military situation, the exhaustion of important forces, the loss or phyrric victory of a major battle or campaign, the escalation of the level of violence and costs of the war, the loss of domestic elite and public opinion support, or the sudden perception of a serious risk of spread or escalation of the conflict, one or more of the adversaries may come to believe that the outcome of its continuing in the war is more and more unfavorable to its original or conflict-modified purposes of political and economic commitment, there may exist a rare opportunity to end the war and cut the losses of the belligerents, whether they are 'behind' or 'ahead'.

Schelling describes such a period in the Vietnam war in 1968 after the Tet offensive, when President Johnson gave President Nixon an opportunity to withdraw "with honor", but Nixon declined. Schelling goes on to quote historian Ernest May's observation that "Governments never surrender the wars they fight- new governments have to come in to do the surrendering." Schelling observes that Lyndon Johnson let in a new Nixon administration in 1968, but it failed to take advantage of the opportunity to end the war then. Was there such an opportunity for the US to begin to end its involvement in the Iraq war (or some of the Iraq wars) in 2006 and 2007, on terms likely to only grow less favorable if not exercised?

Consider that in 2006 and continuing into 2007 a confluence of developments afforded opportunities for the US to end its engagement in the Iraq war. What were these events?

1.The escalation of violent communal conflict in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis, Sunnis and Kurds, and the constitutional civilian government into a three-or four-sided civil war, as violence reached unacceptable levels on all sides.

2. Widespread realization of the incapacity of the currently sized US and allied occupation forces in Iraq to provide minimal security for Iraq's civil government, civilian population, normal productive economic activity, and infrastructure restoration and rebuilding. Growing awareness of the inability (or unwillingness) of the US to double or triple its 150,000 occupation troops and USAID development investment to what would be required to (a) Secure Iraq's borders against Jihadist and other terrorists/insurgents reinforcing the various insurgencies and terrorists, (b) Defeat the various insurgencies and terrorist groups hostile to each other and the civil government, (c) Recruit, train, and deploy enough technically competent and politically reliable Iraqi military and police to replace US occupation forces in providing security for the civilian population, economy, and infrastructure, and (d) Protect, repair, and rebuild the disrupted energy, water and sewage, public health and hospitals, housing, transportation, communications, and commercial infrastructure of the country.

3. In the US, the dramatic shift in public opinion to majority opposition to the US forces remaining in Iraq, a majority loss of confidence in the President's conduct of the war, and a rising tide of criticism by expert military and political leaders.

4. The November 2006 election changing control of both houses of Congress from the incumbent President's Republicans to the Democrats largely opposed to the Iraq war. Constitutionally, the war-making power and decisions and its financing is lodged in the Congress, which has now changed from support for the war to support for ending it.

5. The December 2006 report of the Baker-led Iraq Study Group, confirming the failure of the 2002 US military victory and subsequent occupation to pacify Iraq and re-establish its society and economy, warning of the trend into chaos, and recommending accelerated withdrawal of US forces and their replacement with US-trained and equipped Iraqi army and police, together with diplomatic initiatives involving the neighboring governments of Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to obtain their cooperation and support for ending the war and restoring economic activity (especially oil and agricultural production).

These five events of 2006 favoring withdrawal of US forces from Iraq within a year were counterbalanced to a still unknown degree by the following six 2006 events:

1.The Iranian President's announced threat to destroy Israel, an important US ally.

2.Iran's announced determination to continue to develop nuclear technology, giving Iran the capability for producing enough fissile material for manufacturing nuclear weapons within a few years. Russia and China's reluctance to support the severe UN sanctions advocated by the US and EC to deter and delay Iran's nuclear developments.

3.Iran's continued sponsorship, arming, supplying, and political support for the avowedly Islamicist Jihadist Hizbollah, considered by the US and EC to be a terrorist organization and certainly an enemy of the US and Israel.

4.The election of Hamas to Palestinian leadership, with Hamas considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the US, breaking down peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and the subsequent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the 2006 summer's Israeli-Lebanese war against Hizbollah, ending inconclusively with Hizbollah strengthened rather than weakened, reducing Israeli confidence in its own government.

5. The development and testing of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, making
more urgent and credible the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation to Iran (and Saudi Arabia in Sunni reaction to a Shia bomb).

In addition, the following conditions and trends of previous years continued, such as:
- Repeated and continued statements by US President Bush to the effect that he
intends for the US military engagement in the Iraq war to "stay the course" "as long as it takes to finish the job", the "job" or his declared war aims being the democratization and pacification and uninterrupted free enterprise export of Mid-East oil, despite any advices to the contrary from the Iraq Study Group
- Administration critics in the US and abroad, from conservative to liberal. President Bush and his closest Administration colleagues appear unable to admit the failure of their Iraq venture after four years, and show little prospect of changing their minds before they are removed from office after the 2008 election.

Analysis of the benefits, costs, and risks of these pros and cons of US engagement in Iraq concludes that, on balance, 2006 and 2007 do appear to offer a rare opportunity to end the US-Iraq war. The problem of ending the unwanted war in Iraq can be addressed more effectively by disaggregating it into its component conflicts or "wars", which can have very different endings. By doing so we obtain an admittedly more complex but more accurate indication of what such endings would be. Thus we ask, just what kind (or kinds) of war is the current Iraq conflict, and what is the termination opportunities associated with each?

Wars or tests of strength end in victory, defeat, or stalemate. Most often they end in a unilaterally imposed or negotiated cease-fire and settlement. The test of strength is composed of the resources available and committed, the elements of which are the resources of the belligerents' lands, population, physical and cultural capital, and their unified political wills. Economics can measure these elements of overall belligerent strength, and can provide a rational calculation of the expected benefits, costs and risks to each of the belligerents of continuing versus terminating the conflict on the basis of their own goals, information, and expectations for themselves and their adversaries.

Different kinds of wars have somewhat different kinds of endings, and involve somewhat different economic measures of relative strength and expected outcomes, and somewhat different game theory analyses of termination decision trees. For example, the ending of a two-sided relatively symmetrical international war between two unified nations is analyzable as a simple two-sided zero-sum, negative sum, or in rare cases of easy conquest, positive sum games. The war ends for each side in victory or defeat or stalemate. Examples of win/lose war endings are the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, in which Iraq's victory was won at high cost, the Iraq-Kuwait War of 1991 in which Iraq defeated Kuwait in an easy (though short-lived) conquest, and the US-Iraq first Gulf War of 1992 in which the US and allies defeated Iraq. An example of a two-sided war ending in stalemate with neither side victorious or defeated is the Serbo-Croatian war of the early nineteen nineties.

The economic analysis of the ending two-sided war between two nations immediately becomes more complex if there is disunity on one or both sides between domestic factions evaluating the benefits and costs of victory or defeat differently. Then the analysis becomes one of two (or more)-sided non-zero sum games nested within each of the two-sided non-zero sum game. With the incorporation of alliances on one or both sides, complexity grows again, as multiple relationships multiply goals, means, expectations, and endings and their economic evaluations by all participants. The more parties to the conflict there are, generally the longer it will take to achieve the convergence of outcome expectations among all the belligerent parties that is the essential precondition for a negotiated termination. This is why regional wars among several nations tend to take longer to settle than local wars between two nations, and world wars among multiple regions and nations take longer than purely regional wars.

The ending of World War I is an example of a two-sided war of alliances in which internal disunity played a major role in termination, first on the Allied side (with the 1917 Russian revolution ending the war between the Central powers and Imperial Russia) and raising German hopes of a victory, and then in 1918 with the German social democrat opposition adding to the weakening of the Central powers by the US intervention on the Allied side and the German-Austrian defeat. Given technological and tactical military parity between the opposed alliances, and the internal disunity of the Central powers, the changed balance of economic, population, and military resources, once America entered the war, made the outcome predictable by economic analysis.

Civil wars and insurgencies or internal revolutionary conflicts can have somewhat different alternative endings. According to Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 20 December 2006), "Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the US civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don't want to play that role, Iraq's civil war will end in A or B."

Actually Friedman's Mideast civil war endings are variations of the major three outcome war endings we outlined above for each party to a conflict, victory, defeat, and stalemate, with Friedman's A equated to victory or defeat, and his B and C being special forms of stalemate involving hard or soft partition dividing the parties imposed by a cooperative agreement or a superordinate external power, respectively. The 1990's ending of the Serb-Kosovo war by the NATO-US-Russian imposition of a soft partition and the ending of the 1947 India-Pakistan communal conflict and civil war by the British withdrawal and a hard partition are examples of these externally imposed stalemated terminations, as was the US-imposed termination of the Suez war of 1956 pitting Anglo-French and Israeli forces against Egypt. The first was, however, also a defeat for Serbia and victory for Kossovo, the second a defeat for the British Empire and victory for both Indian and Pakistani independence, and the third a defeat for the Anglo-French invasion of Suez, a victory for US diplomacy, and a stalemate of the Egyptian-Israeli conflict ending in a bilaterally negotiated peace.

II - Seven Kinds of Iraq War

What kind of war is the current Iraq conflict? How can it, how will it end? When? What can economic analysis contribute to an earlier, less costly ending than the ones more likely if current policies and trends are allowed to continue? The current Iraq conflict consists of seven kinds of overlapping and near-simultaneous wars:

1. The 2002 Iraq-US-led Coalition war of 'Regime Change' won by the US-led
Coalition and lost by the Saddam Hussein Government of Iraq.
2. The 9/11/2001 US-declared "War on Terror" and specifically Al Caeda that is global in scope and of indefinite duration, one phase of which was the US-Taliban Afghan war, which did not quite end with the defeat of the Taliban and continues as a combination of insurgency and low-level civil war.
3. The Baathite/Sunni insurgency against the US occupation forces
4. The Sunni-Shiite civil war
5. The Shiite insurgency against the US and UK occupation forces
6. The Sunni-Kurd civil war
7. The War between the Iraqi Constitutional Government and all the warring sectarian factions of Sunnis, Shiites, and foreign terrorists including Al Caeda,
threatening anarchy and/or horizontal escalation into a major regional war and eventually vertical escalation into a regional limited nuclear war.

Seven Endings for Seven Conflicts: How and when can they most likely end?

1. The 2002 Iraq-US-led Coalition war of 'Regime Change' won by the US-led
Coalition and lost by the Saddam Hussein Government of Iraq essentially ended its military phase in 2003, and part of its political aims with the adoption of a constitution and election of leaders and a legislature. The political and economic recovery is still incomplete and requires several years of substantial investment before political stability/economic recovery.
2. The 9/11/2001 US-declared "War on Terror" and specifically Al Caeda that is global in scope and of indefinite duration. A still unended phase of it was the US-Taliban Afghan war. It did not quite end with the defeat of the Taliban, and continues as a combination of insurgency and low-level civil war. The global "war on terror" will never be entirely won or lost, but can be contained if its intended victim states neither under-react or over-react.
3. The Baathite/Sunni insurgency against the US occupation forces will end when US forces are withdrawn from Iraq, undefeated but disengaged, which could be within months but because of Bush Administration fear of admitting failure is likely to continue until 2008 or 2009.
4. The Sunni-Shiite civil war could end with either a partition into a federation of three states (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd), or a unity government, or Friedman's "soft partition under an iron fist" by another 200,000 US troops in two years (the earliest they can be recruited and trained), or an expansion of the sectarian civil war into a regional Sunni-Shia conflict with Saudis actively supporting Sunnis and Iran supporting Shias. None of these alternative endings is likely in the next two years, as the fairly well balanced Sunni-Shia regional conflict plays out into a likely stalemate.
5. The Shiite insurgency against the US and UK occupation forces will end when US and UK forces are withdrawn from Iraq, undefeated but disengaged, which could be within months but because of Bush Administration fear of admitting failure is likely to continue until 2008 or 2009.
6. The Sunni-Kurd civil war could end in a truce and soft partition involving exchange of minority Sunni populations in the Kurd area with Kurd populations in predominantly Sunni areas, and an agreement between the parties on sharing oil revenues and security obligations overseen by the US and Turkey, or a three-state partitioning under a strengthened and stable central government. This might be done in a year or two with major US and Turkey security guarantees and US economic assistance. A less attractive alternative to the soft partitioning or integration into a unitary Iraqi state is the
Declaration of Independence of a united Kurdistan, opposed by Turkey and Iran but supported by the US and EU. This might happen in a year or two if the Kurds run out of patience with the new Iraqi government restraining the Sunnis and working out an equitable oil deal. The continued presence or absence of US forces in Iraq is unlikely to affect these outcomes unless the US forces were doubled in number so that 50,000 of them could effectively guard the Kurdish population against Sunnis, and Turkish and Iranian borders.
7. The War between the Iraqi Constitutional Government and all the warring sectarian factions of Sunnis, Shiites, and foreign terrorists including Al Caeda,
threatening anarchy and/or horizontal escalation into a major regional war and eventually vertical escalation into a regional four way hopefully limited but not small nuclear war among Shia Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, Israel, and US mid-east forces. This conflict might be ended by the addition of doubled or tripled US ground forces to keep the three warring factions and the external insurgents in line and subordinate to the constitutional non-sectarian unity government. A temporary surge of 30-40,000 added US troops is unlikely to make this possible, and may in fact be as likely to exacerbate these conflicts as to accelerate ending them. An acceleration of the rate of training, equipping, arming and turning over of security and policing duties to local Iraqi army and police, given their unknown reliability and loyalties under continued sectarian strife, is also as likely to protract the war as to end it.

III Seven Course of Action to End the Wars, or what might be done to end them.

The problem of ending the Iraq collection of violent conflicts may be best addressed by the isolation and de-escalation of its component elements, not necessarily at the same time but whenever opportunities occur. These opportune times to end one or more of the seven major component conflicts are not necessarily simultaneous. Below are some de-escalation policies and programs that could be begun immediately or within a year or two, by type of conflict in Iraq, that might speed war endings and save lives and costs to all involved - which is the goal of The Economics of Ending Wars, or the "Economical Endings of Wars".

1. Ending the 2002 Iraq-US-led Coalition war of 'Regime Change' won by the US-led Coalition, but incomplete in its non-military political and economic elements. Here the applicable adage is "You broke it, you own it." The US invasion, occupation, and attendant violence destroyed much of Iraq's energy, water, and transport infrastructure, social services, the Sunni-led army and police forces, and many forms of government employment, and created massive unemployment and neglect of public health and other social services, motivating and dialing to protect against further violence and criminal activities. The policy that security must be established before the economy and society can be restored has not worked and needs to be reversed. Even as security is still uncertain, productive economic activity, employment and income need to be restored. Job creation, employment and income restoration can be done with something like FDR's 1930's New Deal's WPA (Works Progress Administration), funded by the US at a small fraction of the 110 billion USD annual direct cost of the military occupation. If a quarter of that were invested in an Iraq public employment and reconstruction program, there would be available for every Iraqi man, woman, and child roughly $4000 or $20,000 for a typical family of five. (George McGovern and William Polk in their 2006 book, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, provide details of how this could be operated and financed at a fraction of current military costs, while saving thousands of lives on all sides.)

Keynes' critique of the termination of World War I in his The Economic Consequences of the Peace is still pertinent to the persisting failure of American political-military-economic policy planning for the termination of the Iraq wars:

"Chapter 6: Europe After the Treaty
This chapter must be one of pessimism. The treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe - nothing to make the defeated Central empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New.
The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others - Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the states whose destiny they were handling."

2. Ending the global "War on Terror" or anti-terrorist campaign could be re-labeled correctly and much more effectively by calling it the global anti-terrorist containment campaign and isolating its Iraq component and labeling it for what it is: A foreign intervention by Al Caeda and Islamicist terrorists in Iraqi affairs, intended to disrupt peaceful ending of the Iraq conflict in order to tie down US counter-terror forces, stimulate additional recruitment into Al Caeda, and deny the US Arabic allies in its defense against Islamicist terrorists. The global "war on terror" cannot be ended in Iraq, or probably ever, but it can be contained like other criminal activity, and minimized in Iraq by better border security and Iraqi police trained to identify and counter its few hundred agents in Iraq. How much to invest in Iraqi border security is a problem of political-military benefit-cost analysis and of equalizing the marginal utilities of alternative investments in post-conflict stability. See Richardson's What Terrorists Want (2006), especially Chapters 7 and 8, "Why the War on Terror Can Never be Won", and "What is to be done?"

3. Ending the Baathite/Sunni insurgency war against the US occupation forces will end whenever US forces are withdrawn from Iraq, undefeated but disengaged. The sooner US troops are withdrawn, the sooner Sunni attacks on them will end and American and Sunni casualties from this particular conflict will stop. It is extremely unlikely that Sunni insurgents will pursue the departed US forces to the US homeland in vengeful terrorist attacks, having achieved their war aims of ejecting foreign occupation troops from their own areas. One counter-argument to the withdrawal of US forces, that there will be a chaotic bloodbath left behind if US forces are not there to contain and stop it, does not apply to this particular war, because the intended targets will be removed from the arena of action. From any benefit-cost-risk comparison, the best time to end this particular element in the Iraq war is as soon as logistically possible - that is, within weeks to a very few months. Also, the US forces should not be withdrawn piecemeal, exposing them to greater danger than if withdrawn in large chunks as close to simultaneously as logistically feasible.

4. Ending the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq could be with either a partition into a federation of three states (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd), or a unity government, or Friedman's "soft partition under an iron fist" by at least an additional 150,000 US troops in two years (the earliest they can be recruited and trained), or an expansion of the sectarian civil war into a regional Sunni-Shia conflict with Saudis actively supporting Sunnis and Iran supporting Shias. None of these alternative endings is likely in the next two years, as the regionally fairly well balanced opposing forces in the Sunni-Shia regional conflict plays out into a likely stalemate. The US "iron fist" suppressing the conflict is simply not available for at least two years of recruitment and training even if Congress approves that degree of Army expansion Unfortunately for the parties to a stalemate, stalemates tend to last a long time as they are occasionally challenged by the hope of one or the other party for changing them into a victory, sometimes by escalating the conflict horizontally to mobilize more allied forces, sometimes escalating vertically to a higher, more destructive level of military technology. Indications of the parties entertaining thoughts of resort to both types of escalation are Shia Iran's drive to master the nuclear fuel cycle and its attendant opportunity to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia's warning statements that it might be forced to intervene in a Shia-dominated Iraq that oppresses the Sunni minority, and that it might feel itself forced to develop a Saudi nuclear capability if Iran persists in doing it.

I do not believe the US can solve this termination problem for the millions of Shia and Sunni Moslems worldwide in their periodically dormant and violent 1200-year history, and certainly not by attempting the aggressive American-style evangelical democratization of the entire Mid-East. The best we may hope for is the diplomatic and economic support of the more peace-seeking, rational and non-violent elements in both religious communities - and in the meantime keep out of their way militarily except in direct defense of our allies or selves.

5.Ending the Shiite insurgency against the US and UK occupation forces will end when US and UK forces are withdrawn from Iraq, undefeated but disengaged, which could be within months but because of Bush Administration fear of admitting failure is likely to continue until 2008 or 2009. Ending the Shiite insurgency against US and UK occupation forces in Southern Iraq is similar to but probably even more difficult than ending the Baathite/Sunni insurgency war against the US occupation forces in central and Western Iraq in (3.) above. Because of the proximity of Shiite Iran, and the US desire to continue to put pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear program, the US is going to be more reluctant to give up its bases in Southern Iraq and around Basra. Also, Shiites encouraged by their majority population and the proximity of the well-armed, supportive and sanctuary neighboring Iran, and their internecine conflicts with the aggressive Sadr militia, are even less tolerant of the US/UK occupation forces because they don't need them as much for protection against their sectarian adversaries as do the minority Sunnis. Although the sooner US troops are withdrawn, and the Shiite attacks on them end and American and Shia casualties from this particular conflict stop, the level of violence involving Shias among themselves and against Sunnis is unlikely to abate, and may increase. There is not much a numerically inferior US/UK military force can do to suppress the violence of the Shia militias against other Shia factions and Sunnis. The best course for limiting the violence of Iraqi Shias in degree and geographic extent
is to support their peaceful economic development in their areas of predominance, perhaps negotiating the flow of economic, infrastructure, and public health assistance through neighboring Iran following an intensive US effort to improve diplomatic and cultural relations with them.

6.Ending the Sunni-Kurd civil war could end in a truce and soft partition involving exchange of minority Sunni populations in the Kurd area with Kurd populations in predominantly Sunni areas, and an agreement between the parties on sharing oil revenues and security obligations overseen by the US and Turkey, or a three-state partitioning under a strengthened and stable central government. This might be done in a year or two with major US and Turkey security guarantees and US economic assistance. A less attractive alternative to the soft partitioning or integration into a unitary Iraqi state is the Declaration of Independence of a united Kurdistan, opposed by Turkey and Iran but supported by the US and EU. This might happen in a year or two if the Kurds run out of patience with the new Iraqi government restraining the Sunnis and working out an equitable oil deal. The continued presence or absence of US forces in Iraq is unlikely to affect these outcomes unless the US forces were doubled in number so that 50,000 of them could effectively guard the Kurdish area and population against Sunnis, and the Turkish and Iranian borders. The fighting in the dual Kurd/Shia occupation of the Northern city of Mosul is unlikely to be much affected by current US force deployments or even modest and temporary "surges". The Kurds and the Sunnis in North Central Iraq are more likely to quash their conflict among themselves without the confusing presence of US forces too small to protect both factions from each other but too large to be ignored. Furthermore, both factions have a common interest in cooperating on oil production and exports, and are more likely to do so without the privatizing efforts of the US occupation that is contrary to Iraqi preferences for public ownership.

7.Ending the War between the Iraqi Constitutional Government and all the warring sectarian factions of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and foreign terrorists including Al Caeda, threatening anarchy and/or horizontal escalation into a major regional war and eventually vertical escalation into a regional four way hopefully limited but not small nuclear war among Shia Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, Israel, and US mid-east forces. This conflict might be ended by the addition of doubled or tripled US ground forces to keep the three warring factions and the external insurgents in line and subordinate to the constitutional non-sectarian unity government. A temporary surge of 30-40,000 added US troops is unlikely to make this possible, and may in fact be as likely to exacerbate these conflicts as to accelerate ending them. An acceleration of the rate of training, equipping, arming and turning over of security and policing duties to local Iraqi army and police, given their unknown reliability and loyalties under continued sectarian strife, is also as likely to protract the war as to end it. Probably the best that can be done to peacefully strengthen the central government against its violent opponents in the next two years is to provide substantial economic assistance, investment, and humanitarian aid in it, in the hope that a majority of each of the sectarian factions will find it more economically productive and secure to cooperate with rather than to contend with the central government.

In conclusion, the economic strategies for ending the above-described Seven Simultaneous Iraq Wars most economically and promptly require disaggregating the different types and tailoring distinct war termination approaches most appropriate to each of the seven wars. The anti-US occupation insurgencies of Sunni, Shia, and Kurd regions and populations are best ended by withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and the deadly irritant they produce. To contain the ongoing Shia-Sunni civil war, and prevent it from spreading to neighboring nations, direct negotiations by the US and EC with those neighboring states is urged by the Baker/Iraq Study Group, including sufficient inducements of trade and aid and sufficient threats of selective military intervention and the dire consequences for all if the conflict escalates to a nuclear one within the decade.

Out How: The Political Economy of Ending Wars, in Iraq and Others Clark C. Abt
TABLE I

7 Iraq Wars	US Goal	Result	Ending
US-Iraq 02-3	Regime Change	US military victory	occupation, regime change, Saddam executed
US-AlCaeda "War on Terror"	defeat or contain	Taliban defeated	continuing
US-Iraqi insurgents	pacify, disarm	continuing stalemate at high cost	escalation or de-esc. & US forces withdrawal
US-Sunni insurgents	"	"	"
US-Shia insurgents	"	"	"
Sunni-Shia Civil War	end, but how?	"	US not in control
Iraqi Government Vs. all insurgents	Govt.win	deteriorating stalemate	US may support Govt. win by building up " mil.polit/econ.

CONCLUSIONS:

US terminated War #1 in 2006
US can terminate in 2007 Wars #3, 4, 5 by unilateral withdrawal of military replaced by
Massive economic aid & diplomatic initiatives

Stalemates or "neither victory or defeat" can end in

A-Escalation or Spread
B- Continued fighting, greater costs
C- Stop-armed truce
D -De-escalation-partial withdrawal E- Complete withdrawal + econ.aid
F-Negotiated peace, disarm, rebuild
E- In withdrawal of military forces by the Superior (occupying) power, both sides 'win' something

- the occupier wins limitation of costs, containment of violence
- the occupied country 'wins' independence and freedom from occupation, reduced losses and possible economic assistance in rehabilitation

"In defeat defiance, in victory magnanimity" - WS Churchill, possible motto for warriors of national independence or survival.

BIBLIOGRAPHY for Out How: The Political Economy of Ending Wars in Iraq.
Clark C. Abt 1/4/06

Clark C. Abt, The Termination of General War, Ph.D. Thesis, MIT, 1965

Ibid, A Strategy for Terminating a Nuclear War, Westview, 1985

Sydney D. Bailey, How Wars End: The UN and the Termination of Armed Conflict, 1946-1964 See especially Section 3.2, "The Timing of the Call to Stop MilitaryOperations" under Chapter 3, "The Diplomacy of the Security Council".

Keith Hartley and Todd Sandler, eds., Handbook of Defense Economics, 1995
See especially Chapter 6, "Arms Races and Proliferation", by D.L.Brito and M.D.
Intriligator, and Chapter 7, "Theorizing about Conflict" by Jack Hirshleifer.

Charles J. Hitch & Roland McKean, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age 1960

Fred Charles Ikle, Every War Must End, 1991

J. M. Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, 1931
Ibid, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919
"Chapter 6: Europe After the Treaty
This chapter must be one of pessimism. The treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe - nothing to make the defeated Central empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New.
The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others -- Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the states whose destiny they were handling."

George McGovern and William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, 2006

Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, 2006

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 1960, Arms and Influence, 1966
Ibid, Strategies of Commitment, 2006 See especially Chapter 16,
"Vietnam: Reflections and Lessons."

Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 1942 See especially Appendix XXVI, "The Analysis of
War by Economists", p. 1365-1375

APPENDIX I

THE ECONOMICS OF ENDING THE IRAQ WAR - LATE 2006 MEDIA QUOTES

12/24 "What Surrounds the Iraqi Tinderbox" , Bill Marsh op/ed, NY Times
"Nearby Militaries and Motives: Jordan with 6 million 92% Sunni, 100,000 soldiers, fearing refugees (already sheltering 700,000 Iraqi refugees; Syria with 18.5 million 74% Sunni, 415,000 soldiers, feeling threatened by US, is content to have it bogged down in Iraq; Turkey with 70 million, 88% Sunni, with second largest military in NATO of 421,000 soldiers after US, wants a unified federal Iraq, wants to avoid Kurdish Kurds from joining greater Kurdish state with autonomy and oil wealth; Saudi Arabia with 26 million 90% Sunni, 355,000 soldiers, fierce rival of Shiite Iran for regional dominance;
Iran with 68 million, 89% Shiite, seeks to increase influence via Iraq's Shiite majority, aligned with Syria. Sunni governments fear a 'Shiite Crescent' from Lebanon and Syria through Iraq and Iran."

12/24 "Imagining Iraq After We Leave" , 5 letters to the editor, NY Times.

12/20 "The State of Iraq: an Update", by Kamp, O'Hanlon, and Unikewicz, NY Times
"As 2006 winds down, two developments stand out: the failure of the previous year's election to produce any sense of progress, and the commencement of Iraq's civil war, dating back to the Feb.22 bombing of the hallowed Shiite mosque in Samarra and escalating ever since. Despite some unconvincing comments from Bush in November that "absolutely, we're winning", most Americans now agree on the diagnosis…the Iraq Study Group warned of a further "slide toward chaos", Colin Powell said he thought we were losing and the Army was about broken, and Robert Gates admitted we aren't winning….At a minimum, we will probably require a large job creation program, a surge of perhaps 25,000 more troops to improve security in Baghdad, an ultimatum to Iraqi political leaders that if they fail to achieve consensus on key issues like sharing oil, American support for the operation could soon decline. If such steps fail, last-ditch options may be needed within a year, including the "soft partition" of Iraq by religion and ethnicity , combined with a plan to help people move to where they feel safer within the country….it seems very likely that 2007 will be make or break time in Iraq."
"Mideast Rules to Live By- What Bush needs to know in Iraq" by Tom Friedman.

12/20 "New Iraq Strategy Emerges: First Security, Then Politics, Michael Gordon, NYTimes, p.12. "If more troops quell sectarianism, political reconciliation could follow."

12/20 "General Opposes Adding to US Forces in Iraq, Emphasizing International Solutions for Region", Thom Shanker, NYTimes, p.12 "General Abizaid resistant to increasing American fighting force there….he argues that foreign troops are a toxin bound to be rejected by Iraqis….even the leading role in combat cannot long rest on American forces …Gen.Abizaid argued that combating Islamic extremism requires a regional approach….'requires that we figure out how to get economic, political, diplomatic and military elements of power synchronized."

12/20: Top Shiite Cleric Is Said to Favor A US-Backed Coalition for Iraq, Kirk Semple, NYTimes. "Iraq's most venerated Shiite cleric has tentatively approved an American-backed coalition of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties that aims to isolate extremists, particularly the powerful Shiite militia leader Moktada al-Sadr.

12/20: President wants to increase size of armed forces"- A Long-Term Plan to Fight Terror - No Action on Iraq Troops" by Tom Shanker, NYTimes

12/20: Military Action Against Iran Would Be Disastrous, Annan says." Warren Hoge, NYTimes.

12/20: In Iraq, Success vs. Failure, Letter to the editors, NY Times

12/19: "Gates warns of 'calamity' if Iraq effort fails" Boston Globe, p.2
"Failure in Iraq…would impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades"

12/19 "How Bush can fix his policy failures" by Strobe Talbott, Financial Times
"Iraq, unlike Vietnam, is surrounded by dominos…mounting resentment around the world over US disregard for international law, institutions, treaties, alliances. US will need maximum participation and trust from the international community…for the 'diplomatic offensive' recommended by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. Whatever course the President chooses in Iraq, he will need the UN. The US should close Guantanamo Bay, or make it Geneva-compliant.

12/19 "Five Events and how they changed the world in 2006 - G.Rachman in FT
"January: Russia blocks gas supplies to Ukraine. February: the bombing of the golden-domed mosque in Samarra- one of the holiest sites for Iraq's Shia Muslims. May: "An Inconvenient Truth" opens in US cinemas. July: war breaks out in Lebanon. November: America's mid-term elections are held. Extraordinary economic growth in China and India is probably the most significant economic and political development of our era."

12/19 God's Gift? The folly of forcing freedom on those who don't want it - Orlando Patterson, NY Times Op/Ed. "Apart from the horrible toll in American and Iraqi lives , two disastrous consequences seem likely to follow from this debacle. One is that, by the time America extricates itself, most Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will have come to identify freedom with chaos, deprivation, and national humiliation. The other is that most Americans will become so disgusted with foreign engagements that a new insularism will be forced on their leaders in which the last thing that voters would wish to hear is any talk about the global promotion of freedom…"

12/18: "Former secretary of state Colin Powell says surge in US troops unwise" Boston Globe

12/18: "A War That Abhors a Vacuum", Marine Maj.Ben Connable, NY Times Op Ed
"Withdrawing troops ..hasn't worked very well." "The confusion caused by the withdrawal …would be compounded as religious, militia and political loyalties divided inadequately prepared military and police units -- full-scale ethnic killing would become a very real possibility."

12/12: "Time to Offshore Our Troops" by Gholz, Press and Valentino, NYTimes, p.31
"US forces can best protect the Persian Gulf from afar. Our modern weapons could easily halt an Iraqi or Iranian invasion in its tracks. In a war in the Strait of Hormuz, US operations could be carried out largely by submarines, surface ships and naval aircraft…US allies play the primary role defending their own oil fields and safeguarding their internal security, and their forces are better suited for the job. The Iraq war is now a painful failure for the US. …it creates an opportunity to reassess longstanding policies. The best way to increase our security and the stability of that troubled region is to drastically reduce our military presence there."

12/11: "Iraqi President Denounces US Strategy on Security" Kirk Semple, NYTimes
"President Jalal Talabani said Sunday that the American program to train Iraq's security forces had been a repeated failure and he denounced a plan to increase the number of American advisors working with the Iraqi Army, saying it would subvert the country's sovereignty. …Mr. Talibani, who is Kurdish, said the Iraq Study Group offered some 'very dangerous' recommendations that undermined the country's ability to control its own army and police force.

12/11: "The Time Is Now: Iraq is lost. Withdraw the troops." Bob Herbert, NYTimes
"With support for the war in the US having all but collapsed, the only real question on the table is how long the US is going to drag out its inevitable pullout of combat forces. …The inevitable moral question …is how to justify the lives that will be lost between now and the final day of our departure….members of the Study Group continue to insist that the key to an American withdrawal over the next couple of years is the improvement of Iraqi security forces to the point where they can successfully step into the breach. This is a complete fantasy. In a foreword to Halberstam's chronicle of the Vietnam fiasco, Senator John McCain wrote:'It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die…for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war.' The US lacks that resolve when it comes to Iraq. It is time to pull the troops out of harm's way."

12/11: "Desperate for answers to all-important Iraq riddle" by James Carroll, Boston Globe. "Nothing in Washington's present strategy can stop Tehran, which is the main revelation of failure in Iraq. Military force is the new impotence, but we will flail away, preferring death to diplomacy. This course keeps us stuck in Iraq, while guaranteeing that Iran's going nuclear. ..Washington must renounce the nuclear double standard, recommitting itself to nuclear abolition. The reason Iran should not have nuclear weapons is that no country should."

12/10: "Iran Ties Role In Iraq Talks to US Exit" Hassan Fattah & Michael Gordon, NYTimes. "Iran's foreign minister said his country would enter discussions on stabilizing
Iraq only if the US commits to a troop withdrawal."

12/8: "Don't Count on Iran to Pick Up the Pieces" by Kenneth Pollack, NY Times

12/8: "Set a Date and Buy Some Leverage" by Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times
"Our real choices in Iraq are ten months or ten years. Either we commit the resources to entirely rebuild the place over a decade, for which there is little support, or we tell everyone that we will be out within ten months, or sooner, and we'll deal with the consequences from afar.

10/16 "655,000 Iraq War Deaths", Curren Warf, MD, Fall PSR Prescription For Action
"On Oct.10 the esteemed medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006"