The "Surge" Won't Work -- A Wilsonian Solution for Iraq

You break it you buy it.

Photo by James McCauley. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Colin Powell, perhaps apocryphally, warned President Bush in the build up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, "If you break it you buy it." Irrespective of the dubious intelligence upon which the case for war in Iraq was built, little disagreement exists upon the following statement: It was Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship that maintained the fragile peace between the various sects and ethnic factions in Iraq.

Now, nearly four years and a third of a trillion dollars later, with Saddam Hussein awaiting the hangman's noose, Iraq is plunging headlong into civil war. US forces, caught in the crossfire, are fighting a loosing battle – attempting to impose nationhood upon an unstable and unwilling collection of warring factions.

It is an effort that can only end in failure.

Iraq, if it is to exist as a unified state entity, must follow a singular path. Unable and unwilling to accept the compromise of representative government, one faction must ultimately conquer and subordinate the others in what will likely prove to be a bloody, brutal, and lengthy civil war. If the United States is to continue in its occupation of Iraq throughout this process it will suffer the consequences – both in blood and treasure - as warring factions seek legitimacy by striking at an unpopular foreign garrison.

Though noble in intent, even the Pentagon's planned escalation, a "surge" of troops, is unlikely to avert this long, slow, bleed. A temporary increase in the number of US troops will have little lasting impact on sectarian and ethnic tensions now hundreds if not thousands of years old. Indeed, the "surge" may have the unintended political affect of ending what little political support for the Iraq war still exists in the United States. Should the violence persist, the American public may very well interpret that failure as the death-knell of an American presence in Iraq.

Alternatively, the United States may, as it did in the days of the Cold War, choose a favored side in a deeply sectarian conflict, hoping to influence the outcome and secure a friendly government in the Middle East though at a prohibitive cost, both politically and economically.

Neither option is likely to be seen as desirable, both by a President unwilling to compromise upon the fundamental wisdom of the decision to invade and a public increasingly dubious of the long term stability and viability of the President's plan for the region.

A third option exists.

Iraq's boundaries were drawn by Sir Winston Churchill and are one of the many enduring reminders of European colonialism throughout the world. As such, those boundaries are both artificial and arbitrary – grouping, as the British Empire often did, disparate tribes, ethnicities, and religions with little regard for more traditional lines of demarcation. By adhering to lines fixed only by geometric convenience, the United States has hamstrung itself – effectively condemning American troops to the dismal choice between a bloody, decades long occupation and an ignominious retreat. Like Gaul, Iraq is divided into three parts and an exit strategy that capitalizes upon this reality enjoys significant advantage.

To that end President Bush should consider, among his various other plans, the audacious option of dividing Iraq into three separate states. The first, a Kurdish state comprised of the northern regions of Iraq, particularly those bordering Turkey, would establish a homeland for the Kurds and eliminate much of the ethnic dimension of the Iraq conflict. As the overwhelming remainder of Iraq's population is divided along sectarian lines, primarily between the two most prevalent sects of Islam – Shiite and Sunni, dividing Iraq's southern regions between these sects follows logically and leverages self determination for the conflicted religious groups and the removal of much of the impetus for continued conflict by the non-extremist portions of the population.

This plan trades one large problem – an Iraqi Civil War – for a series of smaller ones. As former claimants to Iraq's oil wealth, the newly divided states must either arrive at some mutually beneficial sharing of oil revenues or forgo them entirely. The Iraqi population is not segregated by sectarian affiliation, making the imposition of such a division both difficult and costly. Moreover, Iraq has few natural borders which provide a serious impediment to a modern military, making the defense of these newly created states a difficult proposition.

Indeed similar challenges proved insurmountable in the aftermath of the First World War. Wilson's plan for a Post-War Europe privileged self determination over defensible borders. As a result, Hitler's Wehrmacht found little resistance as it rolled through Eastern Europe during the Second World War. But the world is very different today than it was nearly a century ago when Wilson's doomed idealism was inflicted upon Europe. In that perhaps lies the greatest difficulty in the plan of a divided Iraq.

The United States must humble herself.

After so many years of failed occupation, the United States has little legitimacy or moral authority left in Iraq. Its political will is sapped and its confidence shaken, rendering an exit strategy of this scope politically impossible as a unilateral measure. It it time to turn to the United Nations. Through the course of the reconstruction the United States has jealously guarded Iraq against other powers which, though unwilling to assist in the invasion, expressed interest in the profits and oil revenues to be made in reconstruction. Bush must return to the United Nations, admit his mistakes, and ask for the cooperation of the world to secure Iraq against a future genocide.

It will be a lot of hard work - something the President has repeatedly assured Americans he's not afraid of, though perhaps not convincingly. Massive numbers of international troops will be necessary to relocate those who wish to move across the boundaries. Still more troops would be required to create and, for some time, staff defensible borders. Creating a fair and equitable means to divide Iraq's oil wealth would require the cooperation of the United Nations as well as the existing Iraqi oil ministry (conveniently one of the few ministries inside the Green Zone).

But the United States can not walk this road alone. The pathetic "coalition of the willing," the scattered remains of a bribed collection of third rate powers, is not sufficient to even begin an undertaking of this magnitude. Bush must beg the assistance of the world and, in doing so, must admit the error of unilateral invasion. Other alternatives abound: civil war, genocide, retreat, defeat; but none present a viable and lasting peace for Iraq nor a desirable end game for the beleaguered United States.

You break it, you buy it.

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