Recommended: U.S. Can’t Win Iraq’s Civil War

I recommend James Fearon’s lead article, Iraq’s Civil War, in the March/April 2007 Foreign Affairs magazine. Iraq is, of course, in civil war whether or not the American administration will admit it. Something like 60,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the past three years by their own countrymen over religious and tribal differences as various armed factions maneuver for power, and if that doesn’t qualify as a civil war I don’t what would.

Fearon points out that of the worldwide civil wars since 1955, about three-quarters of them have ended with a decisive victory by one of the sides. Only about one-quarter ended with power sharing agreements of the sort we have been promoting in Iraq, and these only come about when two conditions have been met: (1) the participants have fought for long enough (typically around 10 years) that it is finally clear to all sides that no one side is powerful enough to prevail, and (2) each of the main players is cohesive enough that it can control its own forces. (Hamas and Fatah in Palestine come to mind as a current example)

Neither of these conditions exist in Iraq at the moment, and as Fearon points out, a continued America troop presence prevents the first of these conditions from being met. So long as American forces provide some sort of control, the Shi`a can continue to believe that as soon as the Americans leave they will prevail because they are in the majority, and the Sunnis can continue to believe that as soon as the Americans leave they can retake the country, since they did it once before.

Of course his argument goes into much more detail than this short summary, and the whole article is well worth reading. But the conclusion is persuasive – we aren’t helping either our own cause or the cause of the Iraqi people by pursuing this fantasy that if only we keep troops there long enough things will improve. The Democrat’s drive for immediate and full withdrawal probably isn’t the answer either, but a staged disengagement of some sort seems the best of a bad lot of choices.