The "Shiite strategy" was always the default strategy
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 8:22PM ■"U.S. Shiite Strategy Faces More Clouds: Fresh Iraq Violence in Basra Raises Doubts on Free Rein For Militias Linked to Iran," by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. A12.
U.S. forces in Iraq, because we didn't attract enough allied boots-on-the-ground and screwed up the initial rebuild period during which we had 90% of the Iraqi people on our side and failed to keep them there, has been forced into a devil's bargain: letting the Shiites grow some serious militias to keep themselves safe from the insurgency. Amazingly, so far those militias haven't given into the temptation for all-out civil war, which to me signals that the Shiite region of Iraq is already achieving a functioning political system of sorts (yes, highly Islamist, but expecting anything else was silly, like expecting the young U.S. to be anything but highly Christian in orientation).
A largely autonomous Kurdistan was in the works for a good decade prior to the Saddam takedown. Our most successful nation-building effort to date in the post-Cold War period was the one in which we did nothing but the overarching security (no fly zone in the north) and let the people get their own act together (see, it doesn't have to be rocket science if the party in question is really incentivized--as the Kurds were).
Now we have a fairly successful nation-building story emerging in the Shiite portions of Iraq, with some of the credit going--quite frankly--to an Iran that wants to see a historical enemy kept divided and weak and to gain a significant ally in the region.
One wonders if this outcome wasn't always in the cards, no matter how good our SysAdmin effort. But clearly, absent one this outcome became the path of least resistance and--given the alternatives--not a bad one at all so long as we can reach some modus vivendi with Iran like we did with a Soviet Union back in the early 1970s.
And our biggest friends in this process will not be the EU, but India, Russia and China. You will hear this ad nauseum from me in the future: the New Core sets the new rules.
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