As the presidential campaign begins in earnest, the Iraq War continues to preoccupy the American public. Sen. John McCain insists U.S. troops remain in Iraq until victory is achieved. Sen. Barack Obama stresses the need to bring troops home as soon as possible after President Bush leaves office.

Both candidates’ positions leave many questions unanswered.

For McCain, the end game of U.S. policy remains undefined, as it has since the March 2003 invasion. His arguments for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq do not sit well with the American public. Obama’s call to withdraw U.S. troops is highly persuasive. If the United States is no longer required to spend almost $10 billion a month to support the Iraq War, then much-needed funds for investment in education, infrastructure and social programs will become available. However, a rapid withdrawal from Iraq could undo the security gains made during the past year, promote regional instability and ultimately force an even larger American commitment in Iraq and the Middle East.

No one has asked a basic question: Are the McCain and Obama strategies the only U.S. policy options in Iraq?

Is there a policy that could assure the U.S. victory in Iraq, while reducing American (and Iraqi) casualties as well as the need to maintain large numbers of American troops there?

A third alternative does exist. It involves a massive expansion of current U.S. social and economic reconstruction projects – a Marshall Plan for Iraq as it were – financed by Iraq’s windfall profits from oil sales, and an aggressive public diplomacy campaign to bring to the attention of the Iraqi public the contributions Americans have made toward rebuilding the country.

Having participated in training Provincial Reconstruction Teams, I have been extremely impressed with the myriad, highly successful projects they have implemented throughout Iraq, which have created enormous gratitude on the part of Iraqis who were helped. Thus the basic model for the proposed reconstruction policy is already in place.

McCain’s desire for a military victory notwithstanding, the U.S. cannot maintain existing force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. More disturbing, the U.S. remains ill-prepared to engage in military operations should serious hostilities break out elsewhere. One of the lessons learned from Iraq is that, short of the highly unlikely prospect of reinstating the draft, the military option should be reserved for only the most pressing threats to our national security.

Obama supports an “orderly” and “responsible” withdrawal from Iraq. Does this mean he would slow down the withdrawal of U.S. troops should there be a significant rise in violence? Despite his call for a rapid withdrawal, Obama’s remarks suggest there are conditions under which it still might be some time before U.S. troops come home from Iraq.

Neither candidate has discussed a third policy option that has become more feasible given the significant improvements in the security environment in Iraq during the past year. This policy option, which entails both a dramatic expansion of social and economic reconstruction, and a creative and sophisticated public diplomacy campaign, has been largely ignored until recently by the Bush administration.

Developed by the current U.S. forces commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, provisional reconstruction teams have successfully used a “bottom up” social and economic reconstruction approach to rebuild Iraqi society. PRTs have, for example, helped Iraqi farmers around Falluja – once the most violent city in Iraq – reclaim more than 17,000 acres of agricultural land. Forced to grow whatever crops the Ba’athist regime decreed, and paid low prices, farmers had little incentive to maintain their lands prior to 2003. Now they decide what to plant. With high demand for their crops, not only are farmers making handsome profits, but their children are no longer forced to migrate to urban areas where they often join insurgent groups and sectarian militias.

The key difference between the Petraeus-Crocker approach, begun in earnest in 2007, and earlier Bush administration policies is implementing projects that Iraqis want, rather than imposing projects developed in Washington that they often don’t need.

With its huge oil revenues, Iraq is uniquely positioned to finance a massive reconstruction project. What are the recent developments that suggest that this new policy could help the U.S. bring the war in Iraq to a successful end?

By any metric, violence in Iraq has decreased dramatically since the summer of 2007. While the “surge” helped improve security, the most important factor in reducing violence was the decision of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army leader, to call for a truce and forbid his militia fighters from engaging in armed attacks. Improved security conditions have led Iraqis to turn their attention to other concerns, especially the lack of jobs, electricity, municipal services, education and health care.

In interviews I conducted in Iraq and Jordan last October and November, Iraqis overwhelmingly rejected sectarian-based parties, which they criticized as highly corrupt and nepotistic. Thus the improved security situation has changed the focus of Iraqi political discourse.

Public discontent with current political elites, who are seen as not only corrupt but ineffectual, has encouraged members of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Da’wa (Islamic Call) Party to oust him. Fear of being deposed has forced Maliki to endorse a number of policies that he formerly opposed or avoided. To prove that he is a strong leader, Maliki decided to mount and personally supervise an offensive on the southern city of Basra, Iraq’s only Persian Gulf port.

After retaking Basra from the Mahdi Army and criminal elements, Maliki authorized the Iraqi Army to occupy Sadr City, the Baghdad slums that constitute Muqtada al-Sadr’s stronghold. This offensive was successful as well, as has been the June offensive in the northern city of Mosul, the last major al-Qaida stronghold in Iraq. Maliki followed military operations in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul with the bloodless occupation of Amara, a city along the southern border with Iran that is a major smuggling route for weapons and insurgents from Iran.

These successes have led to a spike in Maliki’s popularity, especially among Iraqis freed from rule by oppressive radical Islamists and criminal gangs. The new security gains have been accompanied by initiatives designed to create stronger ties with other key political actors, particularly the two Kurdish political parties that control the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government – the Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – and the main Sunni Arab political movements, especially the National Accord Front and the so-called “Awakening Movement,” formed by tribal leaders in Anbar Province to fight al-Qaida.

Maliki’s concessions to the Kurdish Regional Government, or KRG, on the contested city of Kirkuk, which has a majority Kurdish population, his agreement to effectively incorporate the Kurdish peshmerga militia into the Iraqi army by paying its salaries, and his backing down from opposition to KRG negotiating contracts with foreign oil countries, have won him significant political capital among the Kurds.

On the Sunni Arab side, Maliki finally pushed through passage of the Provincial Powers Law this past March that will allow elections for provincial councils to take place throughout Iraq this coming October. Because Sunni Arabs have felt excluded from the political process, having these councils will give them greater access to the national political process.

These positive developments point to an opening for the next president. A massive social and economic reconstruction program, funded not by U.S. tax dollars but by Iraq’s oil revenues, would continue to improve the security situation by providing jobs, health care, expanded educational opportunities and new investments in modernizing Iraq’s oil infrastructure. A massive jobs program would seriously undermine the ability of sectarian militias, such as the Mahdi Army and radical Islamist insurgent organizations such as al-Qaida, to recruit Iraqi youth.

Barack Obama would seem to be the more likely candidate to take advantage of this new policy strategy in Iraq. As heir to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Policy and the Marshall Plan, a Democrat seems much more inclined to develop such a proactive policy in Iraq. The beauty of this policy is that it would allow Obama to keep his campaign promise to bring about an orderly troop withdrawal from Iraq, while fulfilling Americans’ desire to end the war.

With employment on the rise, and investment in middle-range industries and the oil sector, violence would continue to fall in Iraq, eliminating the need for a large U.S. troop presence. Reduced violence, increased political stability, investment opportunities for U.S. firms and downward pressures on oil prices all behoove our presidential candidates to seriously consider this new policy option in Iraq.

Yet few Iraqis are aware of America’s role in Iraq’s national reconstruction. Public diplomacy, once a Bush administration priority, has fallen by the wayside. There is a large and flourishing Iraqi press, much of it available on the Internet, an equally large television network, and a huge blogosphere. A creative U.S. strategy could fill the Iraqi media and Internet with a wide range of Iraqi testimonies of how American projects have improved their lives.

What this policy option suggests is the need for a radical restructuring of U.S. foreign policy. Obviously military preparedness must remain paramount. However, the U.S. strategy of supporting authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East that fail to provide for their citizens’ needs has been shown to be thoroughly bankrupt. Even President Bush admitted as much in his November 2003 speech calling for democratization of the Middle East and describing U.S. support for regional autocrats as a failure.

Iraq can provide the model for a new reform-based foreign policy in which the U.S. concentrates on building the economies of the region and helping to develop education, human rights and civil society organizations. With the U.S. providing technical skills and cutting- edge technology, the possibilities for economic growth and developing human capital would offer the populaces of the region, 60 percent of which is under the age of 30, new hope for the future. Rather than throwing in our lot with authoritarian dictators, the U.S. should focus on truly winning the hearts and minds of Middle Easterners throughout the region. Not only would this policy be much less costly in lives and money than the military option, but it offers the only hope of undermining the radicalism and violence that, if left unattended, will destroy the political and social fabric of the Middle East.

Eric Davis is a political science professor at Rutgers University and a Carnegie Scholar for 2007-2008. His most recent book is “Memories of State: Politics, History and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq.” He wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and can be contacted at [email protected].