Inveterate Interventionism Is Bad Foreign Policy

It must be difficult to do an analysis of a policy issue when your ideology ties both hands behind your back, to say nothing of your brain.

Bret Stephens’s, “Iraq Tips Towards the Abyss,” in The Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2013, Opinion, is one such case. Mr. Stephens meticulously records the carnage in Iraq for the past two months, and clearly notes the absence of the international community’s concern. But then, he substitutes ideology, i.e. inveterate interventionism, for reason.

One of the great failing of the Bush Administration, and specifically its National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and later still the Obama Administration and its Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was that they did not recognize the divisions within Iraq. And, therefore, did not have an intelligent plan of what to do in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed.

The inability to fashion a sensible accord between Iraq’s three sectarian groups, resulted in immediate and ongoing violence. The more sensible strategy for Iraq would have been to partition the country into three entities: Kurdish (Mosul); Sunni (Baghdad); and Shi’a (Basra).

First, there is no compelling historic justification for modern day Iraq. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference and subsequent San Remo Conference in April 1920 laid the groundwork for an Iraqi nation. Prior to 1919, modern day Iraq did not exist. There was no Iraqi nationalism and no Iraqi identity. There was what the British called “Mesopotamia” - referring to the Ottoman Empire’s provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.

Second, it is understood that the reconfiguration of Iraq will cause consternation to some. However, the entire Middle East has skin in the game, and none more so than Turkey and Iran. A Kurdistan nation will not be the death of Turkey. It will however be a stable force in an unstable region. An accommodation to the Kurds would work toward balancing and even mitigating Iran’s position in Iraq, especially under Nouri al–Maliki, the Shi’a Prime Minister

Third, Mr. Stephens’s view that Mr. al-Maliki is a stabilizing force in Iraq is just wrong. Recall Mr. al Maliki’s first acts when American forces left Iraq. He attempted to arrest the Sunni leadership for trumped up capital charges. Mr. al-Maliki is an Iranian Shi’a puppet. Reducing Shi’a dominance to southern Iraq will correspondingly reduce Iran’s influence in the region.

Fourth, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is not the dominating force portrayed in Mr. Stephen’s piece. Iraq’s Sunni and former Baathists are more than happy to let al Qaeda suicide bombers blow up Shi’a and themselves. When sectarian violence turns to civil war, it will be Sunni Baathists that exert control and govern in central Iraq, not al Qaeda.

Iraq is an artificial State. To believe that Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’a can live peacefully together contradicts realty. Just as Bosnia became a failed state when Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians were provided with the means to choose the conditions under which they wished to live, which you will recall resulted in War (1992 – 1995).

A solution to Iraqi violence is to construct a new compact. That new compact will be the partition of Iraq into three distinct States. 

The failure in Iraq was not military defeat, but diplomatic malpractice.