And what about the economic disparity between the three regions, Brain? Even if we disreguard the almost certain war to result in any attempt to divide Iraq into 3 separate ‘nations’, what makes you think that would be acceptable to all 3 of them…especially in light of the fact that there is oil to the north, and oil and ports to the south…but not much in the center (with the exception of the capital if I’m remembering my Iraq geography correctly). Why would the Shi’ite (those most likely to be in that region) go for this plan?
For that matter, besides the Kurds, is any other Iraqi group advocating the splitting up of the country into 3 parts?
But isn’t drawing borders like this exactly what got us into trouble with Pakistan, India, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Syria, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, DRC, Ireland, and, well, basically the entire ME and Africa… hm, I guess good chunks of Asia and Latin America, as well? Not to mention Europe… hm…
What we are basically doing is is arbitrarily dividing one arbitrary nation into three arbitrary nations, which will have three dictatorial governments which will supress three minorities differently, and cause unrest in every neighboring country, since the borders with them are also drawn arbitrarily, and divide ethnic groups.
Then, the Shia ethnic majority area decides that the Shias in the Sunni ethnic majority area are being mistreated, so goes in to kick their asses and liberate their people. They decide, hell, while we are here, and it is unfair that the Sunnis have the majority of the wealth in the country, why not just stay here?
The gist is, instead of having 1 coutnry to deal with, you now have 3 countries, and you’ll end up with a situation like you have in the Balkans, where countries overflow onto each other and are constantly at “war” with each other’s ethnic minorities - all because they were arbitrarily drawn around lines of ethnic majorities after WWI.
I haven’t seen one instance where trying to divide up a country based on ethnic majority has worked out well.
It may be impossible to prevent the different regions from separating themselves, even if the CPA doesn’t sponsor it. As soon as the US/UK (and possible successor) occupiers leave, either there will be a central government able to impose its rule over the entire landmass, or regional ethnic leaders will take over instead. There seems to be no realistc reason to hope for a strong central government that wouldn’t be as authoritarian as Saddam’s, though.
I think we have to sponsor democracy, and deal with the consequences - or else admit it’s about the oil. If Turkey and Iran have popular uprisings, well, that’s been happening for a long time, and how would it be worse? What is it that we stand for, anyway?
But, with the exception of Yugoslavia, the division of the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires into ethnically more-or-less homogeneous nation-states following World War I has worked out well, in that the resulting states of Eastern Europe now appear to be pretty much stable, at peace with their neighbors, not particularly abusive of their house minorities, and not interested in territorial expansion or revanchism or irredentism. What’s more, most of these countries are going to join the European Union before too long. And then all of Europe will enjoy a state of continent-wide lasting peace such as it has not known since the fall of Rome; and it will be a much nicer kind of peace than was the pax Romana.
Of course, it took a lot of time, and blood spilled, and another World War (and massive ethnic relocations after it, at Stalin’s orders – e.g., Germans of East Prussia deported west to East Germany), plus the Cold War, to produce that happy state of affairs.
The Shi’ites are a majority in the south, not the center. As for the Kurds, they don’t propose splitting Iraq into three – they just want their own territory to secede from it (and eventually expand to encompass the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and Syria), and they are indifferent as to whether the remainder of Iraq remains one state or divides in two.
Ah, my appologies. On reflection I simply mis-spoke and transposed Shi’ites and Sunni. It doesn’t change the fact that if you divide the country into 3 parts they won’t equally have a share in the oil wealth, no?
And yes, I’m aware of the fact that the Kurds don’t give a rip about the rest of the country…they simply want to secede and form their own nation. Of course THEIR division from the rest is one of the major sticking points, as an independant Kurdistan would cause a blowup in the region almost immediately.
I’m still not seeing this as a viable solution though. Also, is there any serious movement to do this by the Iraqi’s themseleves (again, discounting the Kurds who we already know want independance)?
Um… the Russian state was never divided into anything. It went straight to the Soviet Union, and in fact simply expanded.
Um… aside from those whole “WWII” and “constant struggles between ethnic minorities in the Balkans despite living under a tyrannical foreign government” things, yea, that worked out great.
One could easily attribute this to the fact that they were all pretty much puppet governments for the better part of the time since they were divided up. I think that saying that the borders have been drawn permanently in Eastern Europe is a dangerous thing to say - there are certainly a lot of people in Eastern Europe who would disagree with such a rosey outlook on their future.
As for “not particuarly abusive of their house minorities,” I think you need to be looking into the modern histories a little bit more. Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Macedonians, Greeks, Turks, etc don’t exactly “get along.”
The ONE case of ethnic division that I can think of actually working out OK is Czechoslovakia… but that is an entirely different beast than Iraq. The Czechs and Slovaks may not be of the same culture (differing in language, economics, social structure, etc), but they get along well enough.
Very likely, in the long term. However, the political unification of Europe will be a long time in coming, and there will always be an indifference towards Eastern Europe - especially Russia, who is already on edge about NATO’s expansion.
For instance, the inclusion of Turkey into the EU? How will THAT play out with Greece? What effect will the EU have on Albania? The entire Balkans region is an area that most Europeans tend to turn a blind eye to. They don’t like that kind of stuff in their backyards. I doubt we’ll see most of Eastern Europe join the EU, much less a military and political grouping of Europe, any time soon.
Sure, what’s a few holocausts and atrocities between friends?
Centuries worth of constant warfare, arbitrary line drawing, genocide, massive population relocation programs, dictatorial governments, foreign occupation, ethnic repression, and lack of free will does not make for a happy go lucky ethnic combination. I think your outlook on Eastern Europe is a little optimistic, and you dismiss little tiny things like Hitler’s reunification of the Germanic peoples, Russia and the Soviet Union’s “rescue” of the Slavs, religious warfare, ethnic contamination and cleansing, etc a wee bit too easily.
Are we not on the wrong side of history to deny the Kurds in general a nation?
Why is this particular successor arrangement to the ottoman empire sacrosanct any more than the european variants were (see, eg. the former yugo, )?
Frankly, if Iran were to absorb the 15 million far more secular iraqui shia, it could only be an improvement that might put the reformers in iran over the top
The more I think about it, the more the “three nations” policy makes sense.
As it is now, we’ve got a policy of subduing the three major warring hostile factions by force of arms and “pacifying” them into democracy. I can’t see how this approach can possibly succeed without significant American casualties and massive Iraqi loss of life.
If we pull out before “pacification”, it looks as if the place will descend into civil war, Balkan-style. Again, massive loss of life. And complete chaos. What did the UN “peace-keeping” force really accomplish in the former Yugoslavia? Not a hell of a lot, as far as I can see. It took serious force on the part of NATO to effect the tenuous peace that existst there now, and Kosovo is still a tinderbox, not to mention some other places. So it seems to me likely some kind of split quite likely in the region now called Iraq, unless the US put a gun to everyone’s heads (and fires it, like as not).
So, what say we get the factions to sit down and agree to a split. Well, you reasonably argue, Turkey would never go for it. Fine. We draw a line in the sand and say “your move.” If we can establish bases in the former Iraq as part of the deal, Turkey now needs us a hell of a lot more than we need them.
Fuck, I sound just like a Neocon schemer. The self-fulfilling prophesies are forcing even me into proposing a land grab. It’s the cleanest solution I can think of, under the circumstances. Sickening.
Hmmm…Let’s see…within one month , on May 1st (that seem quite “soon” to me), Lettonia, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia will join the EU. Romania and Bulgaria will most certainly follow in the coming years.
That seems to me like a good chunk of the former east european states. Actually, all of them except 4 of the 5 former yugoslavian republics and Albania.
To say a given course of action is wrong or unethical is one thing, but to say it puts us on “the wrong side of history” implies that there is a general historical trend in the direction of “progress” and we’re bucking it. Which is how the Communists used to think and talk (and still do, I guess), with their deterministic dialectical materialism.
But you have hit it on the head. Ever since the early 19th Century, the political idea of nationalism has been in the ascendant, with only the ideas of international socialism and communism seriously competing with it in general broad appeal. (Older internationalist ideas such as the unity of Christendom or of Islam have been dead since at least the Protestant Reformation.) The basic general principle of nationalism can be summed up as: Every identifiable ethnocultural nation (defined as a group of people with a shared language, cultural heritage, and traditional national territory) should be ruled by a single and completely independent state. This was the idea behind the breakup of the multinational empires of Europe after World War I, and also played a role in the post-WWII decolonization of what we now call the Third World, and in the later breakup of the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Union. It was also one of the ideas behind the Holocaust, the breakup of Yugoslavia, “ethnic cleansing,” and various other historical atrocities.
On balance, has nationalism been successful? Well, most of the most prosperous and stable countries of the modern world are nation-states. Truly successful multinational states are extremely rare – the only examples I can think of are Canada and Switzerland. (Countries with a single defining nationality plus large national minorities that lack the status of full and equal membership in the polity, as with the Basques in Spain or the Indian nations in the U.S. or the Kurds in Turkey, are not multinational states but imperfect nation-states; and, as such, they can still be successful, and have been.) And one of the reasons Africa has had so much trouble since decolonization is that the post-colonial states are not true nation-states; they cut across the boundaries of language and culture, they unite disparate ethnic groups within their borders, and a lot of conflict and turmoil have resulted. In the Islamic, world, nationalism is underdeveloped – most Muslims are loyal first to their family, clan and tribe, next to Islam as a whole, and their attachment to the nation-states they happen to live in is usually iffy. In strict terms of nationalist philosophy, there is really no good reason for Saudia Arabia to be separated from other Sunni Arab states such as Yemen, Oman, Syria, etc.; although a “United Arab Republic” would make more sense as a nation-state if it were limited to Asian Arab territories and did not include Egypt or countries further west. Egypt is a thing apart, with its own national heritage predating Islam.
Is nationalism the best course for the world’s future? Personally, I would like to see the whole world evolve, over the course of the next century or so, into a larger version of the European Union – a political federation of more or less homogeneous nation-states. Independence and unity for the Kurds might be a step in that direction – or in the opposite direction. Hard to tell from here.
As I noted above, there is a nationalist secessionist movement among the Arab Shi’ites of southwestern Iran; whereas, so far as I know, there is no movement in Iran to annex the Arab Shi’ite region of southern Iraq. And the mullahs who rule Iran might be skeptical of the idea, for the reason you mentioned.
well, there is, of course, a wave of progress, where sovereignty moves upward ina cosmopolitan fashion, and we end with world govt.
But , meanwhile, nationalism is gettin a hell of a run, not to mention religious sectarianism, which ws supposed to be a matter of pre-enlightenment history.