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America stands to benefit in long term
26.2.2007
By Martin Slann |
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February 26, 2007
In March 2003, the United States and its allies
invaded Iraq and destroyed a brutal dictatorship.
Within several months, resistance to the United
States had morphed into sectarian violence. It's
important to remember that most of the violence
involves the two largest religious sects, the Shia
(about 60 percent of the total population) and
Sunnis.
The former are supported by Iran just as they are in
Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. The
violence threatens disintegration of the Iraqi
state. However, for the United States, this is not a
bad thing.
Rather, American interests would be better served if
Iraq did dissolve. The northern third, non-Arab and
Kurdish, is a pro-American enclave that has created
a democracy of sorts, in great part because of U.S.
protection, and controls substantial oil reserves. |
Martin Slann chairs the Macon State College Division
of Social Sciences, Photo: AJC |
Country that can be
dissolved and thereby pose less of a threat to the
U.S.
The Iranian Kurds, like the Iraqi Kurds, seek their
own state. We should encourage both to secede and
establish one sovereign state that would almost
certainly become a strong American ally. A Kurdish
state would in turn encourage other non-Persian
peoples in Iran, such as Azeris (a fourth of the
Iranian population) to oppose a government they
hate.
Iran could conceivably be reduced to half of its
current population and territory and weakened
immeasurably. Even better, its hostile and fanatical
regime would lose control over significant oil
reserves. All of this could occur because of what
the United States demonstrated in Iraq (as well as
in Afghanistan): a will to overthrow regimes
determined to do us harm even as they torment their
own people.
Regime change in Iran could be accomplished by
military action, but that is neither preferred nor
necessary. Regime change would occur almost
certainly if the United States simultaneously gave
support both to Iranian dissidents in exile and
within Iran to establish a government in exile
pledged to democratic reforms and a renunciation of
terrorism. If Iraq and Iran devolved, Syria would
take notice. It faces the same kind of problem:
competing ethnic groups and sectarian distrust.
The misery and violence in Iraq is thus an
opportunity for America. Our foreign policy for
decades has been predicated on the notion that we
must support and enhance political stability in the
Middle East. But why are we interested in preserving
the territorial integrity of regimes that want to
destroy us?
Instead, we can add allies that are indigenous to
the region who, unlike Saudi Arabia, would actually
help us. Besides Israel, we would be able to count
on a fully independent Lebanon, a strong Kurdistan,
an "Azeristan" happy to sell oil to us.
This is not an unrealistic scenario if we but
understand that managed chaos in the short term can
be a good thing.
ajc com
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