It appears that despite the efforts of partisan politicians to make the Bush administration "failures" in Iraq the singular issue of public attention, the real future of Iraq may yet be discussed in public forums. And the real future of Iraq revolves around one question: should Iraq be preserved as a single nation state or should it be partitioned into three or more smaller states.
Historical precedents for partition are many. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia are recent nation states that are now multiple nation states. In the more distant past, British India became India and Pakistan, and the latter divided into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
A debate of sorts on this issue can be experienced by reading diplomat Peter Galbraith's summary case for partition of Iraq in the NY Daily News and Michael Hirsh's critique of Galbraith in Washington Monthly.
What is the SWNID position on this? Still evolving, but intrigued that partition may alleviate the present crisis, as it did in other nations. Hirsh is right that it's illogical to decry the Bush administration's "mistakes" in Iraq and then proclaim that partition was inevitable. But it is also true that with hindsight no one would suggest that India could have emerged as a single, independent nation or that it should have remained under British imperium rather than be divided.
We suspect that it may take another American administration to advance the prospects of partition effectively. Bush has apparently exhausted his political capital, domestic and global, with the liberation of Iraq's Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis from Saddam. Any move he now makes is inevitably suspect simply because he makes it. Like Truman stuck in Korea (we remain fixated on the many ways that Bush is like Truman), he probably needs a successor administration to conclude the peace, such as it is.
None of this negates what the war has accomplished. People decry the situation in Iraq because they lack the memory and the imagination to consider what a world with Saddam still in it would look like. The cynicism that prefers the "stability" of a genocidal dictator with imperial ambitions doesn't bear comparison to the idealism that accepts the risks of removing such a tyrant. And in the end, the risks inherent in the cynical stability are inevitably greater.
4 comments:
I believe some critics are correct in saying there was never a united Iraq. Forced obedience was instituted only with great cruelty and great force. That unity does not exist today is not a product of the Allied occupation, as some have claimed. Rather it is a revalation of what has always been. I do not believe that "democracy" will bring an end to sectarianism in Iraq, only make it an acceptable institution in the eyes of the West. Sunnis under Saddam were formerly able to control the country and sublimate the other factions because they had the most guns. Today, Shihites are able to control the country and oppress their peers because they have more voters. This has always been the essential flaw in democracy, even as the American founders saw it (see the history of Maryland). What happens when minority factions are not treated as nicely as they are in some Western societies (see the French Revolution)? I am favor of the partitioning of Iraq for these reasons, but one must take great care to ensure that each new nation is able to defend itself and resist the influence of other nations who would wish to bring it under their power (see Lebanon and Syria). But the short of it is that democracy is no answer when factions cannot tolerate each other (see Northern Ireland)
I'm a bit surprised that talk of partitioning Iraq has taken so long. Even before the war, it seemed to me to be the obvious move. I can't help but think that the Bush administration decided against that strategy because it failed to take its own rhetoric about the region seriously enough and tended to romanticize the salutary effects of democracy. Some folks, it would seem, are not ready for self-rule. Bryan D offers strong reasons to believe that the Iraqis are such folks. He also issues an important warning about the limitations of partitioning: it too will fail unless the resulting states maintain their sovereignty. I would add that the success of any partition also depends on a fair distribution of Iraq's oil fields. Without that, the internal violence is sure to continue.
I admit that Turkey is (and has been) a problem, Fiona, but we do have one rather large bargaining chip at our disposal. Turkey has an almost irrational desire to be part of the European Union. If Bush were willing to press the point, I believe some concessions could be had from both Europe and Turkey that would benefit an independent Kurdish state. But as you note, he has already committed himself to a unified Iraq, and, alas, whoever heard of a politician admitting he was wrong? Perhaps even SWNID would agree that this is another reason for thinking that any push for a partition would most likely come from a new administration.
For the first time in a while, I agree with Fiona. I've fallen a bit behind on this topic as I have been traveling far too much as of late. But Fiona has said much of what I had beent thinking. Except I would like to expand on what was said about a Kurdistan.
No only does Turkey not want a Kurdistan to come about (one that would without doubt want to push into southern Turkey) Iran really does not want Kurdistan to come about. You are looking at another Israel, perhaps without all the fanfare and the support of Christians across the U.S. though. The massive populations of Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey could wield a large amount of power and if they set their sights outside of land they would be given in Iraq it would cause great trouble for both of those countries. In which we would see another war via Iran, and if not war, countless ploys of terrorism that makes the sunni triangle look like a day at the park.
Neither Sunni or Shihites like the Kurds, Turkey has openly exterminated them and Iran does not like their population. It is because of these powers that Kurdistan will not come about without a major shift of power in the middle east.
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