The Economist believes that America's planned withdrawal from Iraq is neither a complete victory nor a complete defeat. Iraq's current state deserves neither moniker. The anticlimactic withdrawal (overshadowed, frankly, by the Economic Question) is much like Obama's victory: it is a landmark, nothing more. Neither the Americans, Iraqis, sectarian rebels, nor the untold foreign influences can claim victory. The true test will come in the three years following America's withdrawal.

Mr Bush's "surge" was fortunately coupled with the Maqtada al-Sadr's decision to fight his wars with words rather than bullets. This paragraph in The Economist's latest briefing indicates how important that move has been:

"But this may soon change dramatically because the Sunnis are set to contest provincial elections due on January 31st, when they may well oust the Kurds from local power. To minimise their expected losses, the Kurds are bent on ensuring that all the non-Sunni minorities, such as the Christians, Yazidis and Shabaks, vote for a Kurdish-led list of candidates."

Your correspondent cannot draw direct causality between Mr al-Sadr's politicization and the politicization of the conflict. But it certainly helped.

If Iraq can continue to hold elections and maintain a functioning democracy, and if sectarian differences are fought bitterly in parliament rather than on bloody streets, then America can claim victory. America's objective was a stable democracy and the removal of Saddam Hussein -- victory hinges on the fulfillment of the former. America must leave Iraq proper by 2011, but American influence must not depart with the last troops.

The Iraqi government must not be seen as American puppets or in any way in league with Israel -- that will remove whatever legitimacy it has built. But Iraqi leaders should recognize that America has a vested interest in the stability of Iraq and that Israel's enemies are Iraq's enemies as well. George Crile claims, in Charlie Wilson's War, that Pakistan collaborated closely with Israel to combat the Soviet Union. Iraq and Israel both have to resist Iranian and Syrian interests in the disintegration of their respective states. The two governments ought to maintain informal and under-the-table collaboration in the way they deal with the Persian and Syrian threats. America will help -- the American military-industrial complex would welcome arms sales to Iraq; Iraq should also look to America and Europe for joint-military exercises and advisors. For it's part, America must avoid looking at all like it is involved in Iraqi affairs if it wants Iraq's government to be stable. Iraq is not Afghanistan circa 1980. Iraq will be sovereign and America should make a whopping show of respecting that independence. Let's be more rigorous with our analysis though -- Iraq will need help, and America wants to offer it. Let that be the extent of the relationship, and let the help be voluntary, secret, and let the direction and commands come from mouths speaking Arabic, not English.

America may not have desert-camouflaged, rifle-toting soldiers in Iraq after December 2011, but Iraq ought to encourage American military influence to remain. America wants some stability in the Middle-East in the form of a secure Iraq; Iraq does not want to disintegrate; both believe that democracy is the answer. This intersection of interests ought not be ignored, and both countries should make the most of it.