'If Brown pulls a stunt over Iraq, Sarkozy's just a phone call away'

James Forsyth talks to insiders in Washington and London about the biggest dilemma facing the next Prime Minister — and finds that, as much as Brown might like to break free of an unpopular conflict, his options are severely limited Cordon Brown could administer the coup de grace to George W. Bush's presidency. If, following the expected visits to Iraq and Washington in the first weeks of his premiership, Brown were to announce that British forces would be pulled out of Iraq by March 2008, then the already fragile support for the war in the US Congress would finally snap. Brown's 100 days would be off to the blockbuster start that his acolytes have long dreamed of.

Seventy-two per cent of the American public disapprove of Bush's handling of the war and 76 per cent believe that the 'surge' is not improving matters. Even normally loyal Republicans are making clear that their patience is limited. A rapid British withdrawal would therefore make the Bush administration's position politically untenable. One senior Republican congressman warns, 'If Britain pulls out, it's game over.' In these circumstances, the update on the progress of the surge that the new US commander, General Petraeus, is due to deliver in September would become largely academic. Bush would not just be a lame duck; he would be a paralysed president, with Congress refusing to fund the war except on its terms.

A declaration of an intention to quit by Brown — a Love Actually moment on steroids — would create a clean break with what the public regard as the biggest error of the Blair era. It would prove he was more Rottweiler than poodle, and instantly make him a hero to the growing majority on both sides of the Atlantic who see the effort in Iraq as futile; a feeling that is only bolstered by the Iraqi police's apparent collusion in the kidnapping of British citizens there. Brown would have achieved what all the huffing and puffing of the Democratic presidential contenders has not achieved: he would have ended the war. If a Democrat were to take the White House, Brown would be the venerated elder statesman.

And Brown's recent comments do indeed hint at something dramatic coming. Naturally, he has to trot out the formula that he takes 'collective responsibility' for the original decision to go to war, but his chum and former press secretary Charlie Whelan recently spun the line that none of the Chancellor's friends believes that he supported the invasion. In his new book Courage: Eight Portraits, Brown expresses admiration for Bobby Kennedy's 'courage' in breaking with Lyndon Baines Johnson, and this is being seen in some quarters as a possible prelude to a dramatic shift in Middle East policy. His much-used line that 'I'm going to go out to Iraq, look at the situation on the ground and see what is happening' implies that he is looking for an excuse to execute an about-turn on the war. Brown's modus operandi, as he has shown over the NHS, the euro and pensions is to make a private decision, launch a review and then present his policy as a response.

And yet. . . the likelihood is still that Brown will not perform a violent about-turn. He was, after all, far more publicly supportive of action in Iraq than in Kosovo, and Robin Cook's diaries show that he lent Blair crucial support in Cabinet in the run-up to the war. As Cook records, at the Cabinet meeting five days before the final vote in Parliament on Iraq, 'Gordon launched a long and passionate statement of support for Tony's strategy.' The 'yes' he laconically uttered during the 2005 campaign when asked if he agreed with the way Blair handled Iraq was as accurate as it was terse; Brown was a supporter of the war in both word and deed.

Above all, though, he is an instinctively cautious politician; his decision to give the Bank of England independence is so memorable precisely because it stands out as an act of daring in Brown's record. Pulling troops out of Iraq would make him responsible for what happened next; and withdrawal by the Coalition would almost certainly be followed by genocidal violence. It would in all likelihood spark a regional war, with the Saudis moving in to protect their Sunni co-religionists from Iranian-backed Shiite death squads, and the Turks trying to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. Brown is hardly likely to want to be even partly responsible for that. Forcing Bush to admit defeat would not look so clever following the `Srebrenica moment' that would almost inevitably follow.

All the same, Brown has wiggle room. This isn't Brown's war in the same way that it is Blair's. A concession from Brown that things have not gone as planned is not met with the same vicious raspberry that Blair receives for making the same point. Brown can execute a shift in strategy more easily and more gracefully than Blair ever could.

To date, though, Brown's comments on Iraq have been anodyne. There has been no thorough analysis of what went wrong. He acknowledges that the war has been 'divisive', hardly a novel insight. He stresses the importance of economic reconstruction, rightly citing the massive unemployment in Iraq as a failure of the Coalition. Unemployment in Iraq hasn't dropped below 25 per cent since the invasion and might now be as high as 40 per cent. But this failure is actually the product of another failure: the failure to create order, without which economic revival will remain a pipe dream.

Even those who argue that Iraq is still salvageable do not believe there is much opportunity to push economic reconstruction in the current circumstances. But the Bush administration will be keen to work with Brown on it, if only to keep him on board. Brown's overwhelming emphasis on the importance of economics in creating peace is met with a roll of the eyes by many foreign-policy experts. Certainly, the view that more jobs would have instantly healed the scars of decades of totalitarian brutalisation in Iraq or that freer trade between Israel and Palestine will lead to the end of that conflict is as naive as the neocon dream that a democratic tsunami would follow the liberation of Iraq. Yet a former Bush administration official, who did not always have the easiest relationship with Brown, praises him for his work on the issue. He predicts that there will be 'more robust development carry over to Afghanistan and Iraq' under this new partnership.

Brown creates a division in Washington. If you're a Democrat, or work in development, you probably know him and respect him If you're a 'hard-power guy' and a Republican, he's a mystery to you. His contacts with the Bush administration to date have been mixed. He had a disastrous meeting with Condoleezza Rice in February 2005, revealed in this magazine Considering that Rice is almost family to Bush (she once referred to him as 'my husband' at a Washington dinner party) this could be a major stumbling block. But set against that is an excellent relationship with the treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, the coming power in the administration.

The only face-to-face meeting between Bush and Brown was in April when Bush 'dropped by' on a meeting between Brown and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. But the meeting seems to have made little impression on Bush, whose view of Brown is that he is 'a good fellow' — but that's a standard Bush compliment. It's the phrase he used to describe Putin after all.

Some Bush allies, though, don't expect the relationship to run smoothly. One senior House Republican is scathing about Brown: 'There are about two people who give a fig about Gordon Brown in Washington. We see a guy who doesn't try with us, who looks like he'll play politics with Iraq. Looks like a socialist. He ain't Tony Blair, and that's a bad start. He should remember one thing if he's thinking of pulling a stunt over Iraq: a brand new friendship between us and Sarkozy is just a phone call away.'

Many in Washington see Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French President, as more likely candidates than Brown to be Bush's 'new Blair'. However, one former Bush staffer expects Bush to figure Brown out quickly, and argues that as the President has almost no cards to play he'll be extremely keen to flatter Brown when they meet. In a reversal of the usual power dynamic, it is the American President who needs the British Prime Minister. Brownian pet projects like the push for universal education in Africa could soon find themselves rising to the top of the international agenda.

The real political test for Brown will come as the US debates Iraq this autumn and then again next spring; the speed of developments in Washington could leave Brown scrambling to keep up. If Congress turns decisively against the war and refuses to fund it without a specified departure date, then Brown risks the indignity of appearing to be swept along in the US wake as much as Blair supposedly was. Yet, as we have seen, if Brown moves to place himself firmly ahead of the internal American debate by ordering a rapid withdrawal, he risks being held responsible for the consequences of that policy, which will not be pretty. It's Catch-22.

Britain's presence in southern Iraq, furthermore, is crucial to any chance of saving the Iraq mission. A former adviser to the Iraq Study Group describes the internecine Shiite strife in the south as the 'single greatest threat' to the future of Iraq. Moqtada alSadr's reappearance in southern Iraq following several months of self-imposed exile in Iran is not an encouraging sign, and the light footprint strategy — Rumsfeld plus' — that the British have pursued has limited their effectiveness. Yet the current deployment does at least act as a check on the situation.

This force also keeps open the US supply — and, ultimately, exit — route from Kuwait and through the south to Baghdad. This job would have to be done by someone even if the British withdraw. It is impossible to see how the surge could succeed with an accelerated British withdrawal, since that would require a redeployment of already overstretched Iraqi and American forces to Basra.

If the Americans depend on British support, Brown's position depends on internal American politics and Petraeus's testimony in September. Unfortunately, this key date makes a major push by Iraqi insurgents in August probable; they have gone on the offensive whenever they have had an opportunity to influence either US or Iraqi politics. As time goes on, British forces could also find themselves dealing with Shiite militias trying to reassert themselves in Basra after seeing their influence in Baghdad tempered by the surge. Yet withdrawing is often the most dangerous thing to do militarily, and a rapid withdrawal presents its own problems.

It is almost impossible to see how Petraeus can announce progress that will satisfy Congress in September. Proponents of the surge point out that it will only be at full strength from the middle of this month and that it is unrealistic to expect to have Baghdad and its environs secured until around March next year. But these arguments are being given increasingly short shrift. Tragically, after years of a failed strategy in Iraq, the one with the best chance of success may be given only months to work.

Blair was often frustrated by the Bush administration's disdain for regional diplomacy; recall the glee with which Downing Street embraced the Iraq Study Group's recommendations on this point. Brown will have no such problem as the first public talks between Iran and the United States for 27 years demonstrated. As it scrambles to sustain support domestically for the war, the Bush administration is being forced to exhaust every possibility — even those that it suspects are hopeless. Condoleezza Rice will find herself sitting through far more grand UN-organised regional summitry than her predecessors.

But the likelihood remains that Brown will initially confine himself to changing the rhetorical emphasis of the mission from security to rebuilding — and to announcing a clearer departure plan than anything offered by Blair. He is unlikely, in other words, to order a pullout by March next year. The ongoing challenge for him will be to stay ahead of the game in Washington. But in doing that Brown must avoid pushing the US into a premature withdrawal that could well dwarf the horrors we have already witnessed in Iraq.