Robert O'Neill is the former Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the former Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford, and Australia's preeminent scholar of international strategic studies. Last night at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, O'Neill gave a lecture titled "Prospects and Perspectives on International Security" (pdf) in which he discussed the situation in Iraq in some detail.

Here is how Professor O'Neill began his remarks:

We stand at a very testing time in terms of shaping our security environment. I do not want to be overly pessimistic. We and our forebears have come through worse situations and gone on to great periods of prosperity, relative peace and cultural achievement. But for us at this time, that happy end is by no means assured.

More importantly, here is how Profesor O'Neill described the stakes and the consequences in Iraq:

Given the result of the recent US elections, we need to think hard about the consequences of possible defeat in Iraq. To elaborate on what I said earlier, that conflict can be won only by a much more effective coalition effort, requiring a major increase in US and allied troop numbers in Iraq, substantial improvements in training and operational methods, and a much stronger civil reconstruction effort. This is not likely to happen. The probable outcomes are either a sudden descent into chaos as coalition forces are withdrawn, or a protracted civil war, overlain with an insurgency against remaining coalition forces. In the event of chaos, effective government in Iraq will cease for at least some years, during which terrorist groups will be able to concentrate, rebuild, flourish and reach out to other targets outside Iraq. Enemy forces will be heartened; recruiting will rise; funds and weapons will pour in; pressure will be exerted on regional governments friendly to the West; more young men and women who are willing to commit suicide to harm Western and Israeli interests will become available; and the oil price will rise to new heights.

Defeat in Iraq will be a serious blow to the public standing of the US and will invite other challenges to its authority. US citizens will have to be more careful of their own security both outside and inside their own country. US business abroad will feel more under threat of terrorist action.

Iran will read a message of encouragement for its intransigence in dealing with the West. It will almost certainly go ahead to produce nuclear weapons. It will exercise an overshadowing influence in Iraq, Syria, the Arab Gulf states and Israel. The lesson of US failure in Iraq will be read (perhaps wrongly) as US unwillingness to attempt regime-change in Iran. The North Koreans will probably draw similar conclusions, although with less justification than in the case of Iran because North Korea is nowhere near as strong a state. Nuclear weapons proliferation will become more difficult to control with the threat of intervention against the proliferators dismissed.

As Fouad Ajami writes, America's involvement in Iraq is "has been unimaginably difficult, its heartbreak a grim daily affair." The Bush administration has been wrong about a number of things regarding Iraq, and it bears full responsibility for underestimating the difficulty we've encountered there. However, one thing they've been right about for some time, as O'Neill and other experts continue to agree, are the stakes of the struggle and the consequences of defeat.