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IRAQ'S LEADERS
have a tentative constitution, but they've postponed
a fundamental question — can Iraq really exist as
one nation?
The Kurds and Shiites negotiated the draft charter,
the Sunnis are left to take it or leave it, and the
whole affair has literally papered over deep
divisions about regional autonomy, oil revenues,
Islamic law and more.
By demanding one new Iraqi state, the U.S. and its
allies are ignoring the lessons of recent history.
They are spending blood and treasure to preserve a
country that no longer makes sense as a state, and
to keep together people who only want to be
separate. Iraqis might get closer to democracy, and
the U.S. might get closer to its goals in the Middle
East, if everyone would jettison the fiction of a
unified, single Iraq.
THERE HAS NEVER been serious consideration given to
the idea of dividing Iraq in a way that would align
with its distinct ethnic and religious groups. The
Bush administration declared that it would remove
Saddam Hussein and install a democratic government
and that Iraq's borders would remain intact. In
April 2003, President Bush told the Iraqi people,
"Iraq will go forward as a unified, independent and
sovereign nation that has regained a respected place
in the world."
That desire lines up with American foreign policy
since the close of the Cold War. In the early 1990s,
the U.S. resisted the collapse of the Soviet Union
into separate republics. We are still trying to hold
Afghanistan together as one country. The U.S. has
intervened in such places as Somalia and Haiti to
rebuild states — with spectacular lack of success —
that cannot control conduct within their borders.
The former Yugoslavia, where NATO appears to be
encouraging fragmentation, has proved to be the only
significant exception to the policy rule. For the
United States, it seems, it's either the original
nation-state or nothing.
Meanwhile, a great wave of decentralization has
occurred throughout the world. In 1945, for
instance, there were 74 independent nations; today,
there are 193 (two more if you count Taiwan and a
nascent Palestinian state). And with
decentralization has come economic growth, and more
democracy. Even the seemingly centralized European
Union acts to break down traditional nation-states
into smaller regions that cooperate in varying
trading groups across old borders.
Large, diverse nations make sense when they can
efficiently provide "public goods" such as defense
and law and order. But such nations are also costly
and difficult to maintain, because — as we see in
Iraq — it isn't easy to force people with very
different values, needs and desires together.
Economists say that as the threat of wars among
nations recedes and free trade agreements expand,
nation-states will become smaller naturally. People
will trade in the protection offered by large states
for the interconnections of globalism. In fact, by
supplying security and supporting free trade over
the last half-century, the United States has been
encouraging the very fragmentation it is fighting in
Iraq.
Dividing Iraq into three parts would take advantage
of these trends. Allowing the Kurds, Shiites and
Sunnis to operate independent states would reduce
divisions over the design and power of their
governments and speed the reconstruction of state
institutions. It would allow each group to find
consensus on questions of religion and law and
concentrate its strength within compact, defendable
borders that follow natural geographic and
population boundaries. It would undermine the
insurgents' cause and their ability to carry out
attacks. And that would enable U.S. and coalition
forces to withdraw.
The difficulties that have plagued the creation of
an Iraqi constitution signal that the United States
should reconsider the heavy costs of maintaining
states such as Iraq. It isn't a given that the
borders of Iraq should remain permanent or that the
United States and its allies should waste time,
lives and money to force together groups that are
willing to kill each other.
Americans have faith that a constitution, virtually
by itself, can weld together disparate peoples and
places. But the United States became a nation not
only through the Constitution but also through the
fiery experience of the Civil War. Only then could
Abraham Lincoln reconstruct "the United States" into
a singular, not a plural, noun.
We should not forget how unique our experience is.
Most European and Asian countries were nations —
with a dominant language, religion and values —
before they became states. In Iraq, we're working
the equation backward. Its unhappy factions show
that it is not a nation. Its troubled constitutional
process shows it may never be a unified state.
JOHN YOO is a law professor at UC Berkeley
and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. He served in the Bush Justice Department
from 2001-03.
www.latimes.com
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