WPR's The New Rules: For U.S. After Iraq, History Once Again Awaits

America has entered a new phase in its Iraq operations, one that represents the end of the “lost war” to many, the non-combat continuation of nation-building to others, and a vague sense of a never-ending global security commitment to just about everyone.  Americans, who crave clear definitions of success or failure, aren’t sure what to make of this turning point, especially since for many, their attention has already shifted to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Meanwhile, some pundits sound the alarm with cries of “permanent war,” even though we haven’t officially declared war on anybody since 1943. As for the rest of the planet, humanity currently enjoys the most systematically peaceful period in its recorded history.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Oil output rising in Iraq

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani addresses the oil symposium.WSJ story on deals that signal rising oil output by Iraq is coming.  Despite the lingering violence and political paralysis, the government seems doubly intent on moving forward with its big plans.  Immense logistical challenges are described, and yet the foreign firms are already working on their blocs.

Two licensing auctions awarded 11 deals last year.  If all proceed as planned, Iraq goes from a fraction of Saudi output to basically matching it in seven years. The foreign firms must cooperate on a massive water-injection system to be shared. 

Meanwhile, BP and Sinopec are bragging that they’re increasing production at the massive Rumaila field already by 100bpd.

All this is important news, because nothing will encourage political cooperation in Baghdad more than increased revenue to be shared.

Kurdistan pursues its own economic connectivity with Iran

 

NYT piece on how the Kurds are facilitating Iranian oil exports, pocketing the profits in a way than angers Baghdad.

Analysts say that the Kurdish region’s oil trade with Iran provides a revenue source that it does not have to share with Baghdad, at least for now, diminishing its reliance on exports to Turkey. It also grants them leverage in resolving oil and internal border disputes with Baghdad.

“They can negotiate from a position of strength,” says Ruba Husari, an oil specialist and founder of Iraqoilforum.com. “They are running their own oil kingdom.”

But questions about the legitimacy of the region’s oil activities are increasingly coming from within.

“Kurdistan is like an island with no rule of law when it comes to oil,” says Abdulla Malla-Nuri, a member of the region’s Parliament from the Gorran opposition movement, which broke away from one of the governing parties last year and has accused them of rampant corruption.

Kurdistan is acting in its own best interests, as one might expect of a state-within-a-state.  The US under Obama hasn't exactly gone out of its way to work with the Kurds, and they return the favor.

The surge in Iraq did not fix everything!

FT op-ed by David Gardner that reflects the absurdly high bar some experts set for counterinsurgency--as in, "The surge did not erase the layered trauma of tyranny, wars, invasion and occupation."

Well, I guess it didn't.  

But the surge (using that term in the most general sense) did reduce fatalities dramatically and improved security commensurately.  Yes, the Shia won, like majorities tend to in ethnic fights the world over, but the key thing is that the victory was marked by stability and not further bloodletting, and the surge played its role.

As for not making it possible for the current political system to forge a unity government after the last election, that's simply ballooning the surge's purview to ridiculous size.  The key thing to note in the current political paralysis is the lack of widespread violence.

Yes, Iraq has a long way to go, but four free elections in a row can hardly be discounted in a region not known for them. Everybody wanted the occupation to go better, and certainly we learned a ton of lessons, but the truth is, most nation-building efforts are largely irrelevant to the larger process of creating economic connectivity to the outside world, which ensues if there is something local to draw in outsiders and there's just enough security and predictability to allow business to unfold. Once those dynamics come into play, it's primarily up to the locals to demand better of themselves.

The military effort can buy you that time and little else.  So some perspective please.  We keep coming up with these fantastic images of successful nation-building and then decrying the military's inability to make them happen instantly, when history says you don't even start posting grades until a good decade passes.

But it's our desire to do everything ourselves that forces this mindset. If you accept that you'll be just a fraction of the SysAdmin effort, despite manning the bulk of the Leviathan one, then the longer timeline is no big deal because you're not trying to pick up the entire tab. Our problem is simply our inability to cede control to others better suited for the economic integration efforts, which are always led by the most powerful neighbors and rising powers of the age.

When you need to own the victory because you need to own the war, then realizing the postwar success in others becomes infinitely harder.

When you want SysAdmin bad, you get it bad

NYT story on shabby construction efforts as we drawdown in Iraq:

After two devastating battles between American forces and Sunni insurgents in 2004, this city needed almost everything — new roads, clean water, electricity, health care.

The American reconstruction authorities decided, however, that the first big rebuilding project to win hearts and minds would be a citywide sewage treatment system.

Now, after more than six years of work, $104 million spent, and without having connected a single house, American reconstruction officials have decided to leave the troubled system only partly finished, infuriating many city residents.

The plant is just one of many projects that the United States has decided to scale back on — or in some cases abandon — as American troops who provide security for reconstruction sites prepare to leave in large numbers.

Even some of the projects that will be completed are being finished with such haste, Iraqi officials say, that engineering standards have deteriorated precipitously, putting workers in danger and leaving some of the work at risk of collapse.

The American officials give many reasons for their decisions to scale back or drop some projects before more troops leave, including that they discovered in some cases that the facilities diverged from Iraq’s most pressing needs, or that the initial work — overseen by American contractors and performed by Iraqi workers — was so flawed that problems would take too long to fix.

Reconstruction officials point out that they have completed the vast majority of the $53 billion in projects they planned throughout Iraq, from bridges to honey-bee farms.

And the officials, along with the United States Embassy in Baghdad, say they are aware of only isolated concerns about the quality of reconstruction work now under way in the country, or about projects being left undone.

“I am not aware of the Iraqis having any sort of hard feelings that we will not finish current projects and award projects we said we would,” Col. Dionysios Anninos, head of the Army Corps of Engineers office in Iraq, wrote in an e-mail message. “We will finish strong!”

But some Iraqis have compared the current hurried reconstruction effort to the haphazard American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said they found that construction standards had slipped so drastically that they ordered an immediate halt to all American-financed projects, even though American inspectors had deemed the work to be adequate.

The Americans had told local authorities they were speeding up projects because a nearby United States Army base was scheduled to close this summer.

Shaymaa Mohammad Ameen, who works with reconstruction officials as a liaison for the Diyala Provincial Council, said American officials frequently threatened to leave when Iraqis questioned engineering standards and brought up other safety issues.

“They constantly tell us that if we do not approve, they can always move the allocated funds to projects in other provinces,” she said.

In Baghdad and Salahuddin Provinces, local officials say Americans have simply walked away from partly completed police stations, schools, government buildings and water projects during the past several months without explanation.

And in Dhi Qar and Babil Provinces, there are complaints that roads and buildings recently completed by the Americans do not meet basic construction standards.

I've said for years, given our mindset toward exiting, and China's mindset for wanting to own resources in the ground, we would have been much better off subcontracting the entire reconstruction effort to the Chinese.

Hard to see how it wouldn't have cost far less and accomplished far more.

Another point I've made in the brief for close to a decade now:  the SysAdmin is necessarily more rest-of-world than just the United States.  We are not good at everything and shouldn't try to be.

What a drawdown from "combat operations" really looks like

NYT story on the reality of what a post-drawdown US force presence in Iraq will actually entail.

The August deadline might be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex. American soldiers still find and kill enemy fighters, on their own and in partnership with Iraqi security forces, and will continue to do so after the official end of combat operations. More Americans are certain to die, if significantly fewer than in the height of fighting here.

The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 — from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the surge — is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of matériel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.

What soldiers today would call combat operations — hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants — will be called “stability operations.” Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.

“In practical terms, nothing will change,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top American military spokesman in Iraq. “We are already doing stability operations.” Americans ceased major combat in Iraq long ago, and that has been reflected in the number of casualties. So far this year, 14 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and 27 more from accidents, suicides and other noncombat causes, according to icasualties.org.

Remember this when you hear similar descriptions re: Afghanistan.  The norm for US interventions of significant size is that we go, we fight, we drawdown, but we stay for the long haul. The key is getting casualties down to very low levels.  Once achieved, the US public will allow ad infinitum, because opponents are no longer able to characterize it as "war."

The experts have it backwards;  the American public has little patience for the Leviathan, therefore its operations must be very short and highly victories, but it has plenty more patience for SysAdmin stuff so long as the commitments are seen as small enough, the casualties low enough, and the value-achieved-for-expenditure seem reasonable.

The silent LLP between the PRC and the USA

 WAPO story on a long-favorite theme of mine here and in the brief:  the limited liability partnership between China and the US--as in, we do the Leviathan and pay for virtually all of the up-front SysAdmin work, but China cashes in nicely on the backside economic integration.

China didn't take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq or the bloody military battles that followed. It hasn't invested in reconstruction projects or efforts by the West to fortify the struggling democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

But as the U.S. military draws down and Iraq opens up to foreign investment, China and a handful of other countries that weren't part of the "coalition of the willing" are poised to cash in. These countries are expanding their foothold beyond Iraq's oil reserves -- the world's third largest -- to areas such as construction, government services and even tourism, while American companies show little interest in investing here.

The Chinese are risk-tolerant on economics, just not on the pol-mil.  And they cannot become a superpower until they get such risk-tolerance in the kinetic realm.  And that can't come until they go multiparty, because the CCP cannot afford even a single loss of face.  And if you can't afford to lose, then you can't afford to wage war.

So oddly enough, the longer we put up with this LLP, the longer we keep China in its pol-mil place.

Chart of the day: Iraq will soon outproduce Iran in oil--another sad expression of America's complete failure (!) in Iraq

Projection, mind you, from WSJ's gov sources, but one that shows the difference between connectivity and the lack thereof.

Iran's oil-field problems predate its recent standoff with the West and the latest round of sanctions. Revolution and eight years of fighting with neighbor Iraq through the 1980s took their toll, with output plunging from a high of 6 million barrels a day from the mid-1970s. Oil infrastructure was damaged, and oil expertise fled the country. Many of Iran's oil fields are older than those of their Mideast neighbors, and so are declining much faster.

Iran has to replace roughly 300,000 barrels a day of production each year from old fields just to keep its total output from falling.

More recently, many foreign oil companies—sought out by Tehran for their expertise and capital—have been deterred by the increased politicization of Iran's energy sector under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005.

Only the pinheads imagine the Big Bang strategy purely in military terms. 

Blast From My Past: First time on national TV

Aired February 26, 2003 - 12:50 ET

BARNETT: Thank you.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. military is constantly transforming military capabilities to meet future global threats. A senior strategic researcher at the U.S. Naval War College, Thomas Barnett, is a big help in that regard. His latest article appears in the March issue of "Esquire" magazine, titled “The Pentagon’s New Map.” Mr. Barnett is currently working at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He's joining us now live from San Diego, California.

Mr. Barnett, a very interesting article. Thanks very much for joining us.

You see this current struggle with Iraq within the broader issues of the gaps resulting from globalization. Give us the gist of your thesis.

THOMAS BARNETT, PENTAGON ADVISER: Well, this new way of looking at the world begins with a simple series of observations. First, you look at where this country has sent its military forces around the world over the past 12 years, or basically since the end of the Cold War, a total of 132 cases. You draw a line around the majority of these cases, the regions where these situations have been concentrated, and you're really talking about the Caribbean rim, you're talking about most of Africa, you're talking about the Balkans, the Caucuses, central Asia, the Middle East, southeast Asia.

You draw a line around those regions of the world and you ask yourself, what's the common characteristic here that defines why we seem to be sending military troops into these regions time and time again in this era of globalization? And the basic argument I make is, these are the countries or regions that are having a hard time with globalization. In effect they can't integrate their national economies with a global economy because of repressive political regimes, endemic conflict, abject poverty, perhaps they just don't have the robust legal systems to attract foreign direct investment.

BLITZER: And so I was going to say, that's why you think a war with Iraq right now is not only inevitable and desirable, but clearly imperative for the United States and indeed for Iraq. That's also your argument?

BARNETT: Yes, because when you talk about the parts of the world that aren't integrating in this larger process we describe as globalization, it's very instructive to note that these are the places we're sending our troops again and again.

So you've come up with this new security paradigm that says, it's disconnectedness that tends to define danger in this era of globalization. And when you're talking about the Middle East, you're talking about a region of the world that has very little connectivity with the rest of the planet. Basically, they offer oil, and what we're trying to do is prevent terrorism from coming out of there.

BLITZER: But do you really believe, Mr. Barnett, that the U.S., with this military engagement, can transform that region, beginning with Iraq, into vital democratic robust nations?

BARNETT: Well, my argument is basically, we've got to shrink these parts of the world that are not integrating with the global economy, and the way you integrate a Middle East in a broadband fashion with the rest of the global economy is to remove the security impediments that create such a security deficit in that part of the world. And the biggest security impediment right now, I would argue, is the regime of Saddam Hussein. You move that out of the area, you eliminate that source of conflict, and hopefully, you can talk about integrating part of the world that over the past several decades has woefully underperformed economically. Basically the Muslim population represents something like 20 percent of the global population—only engages in about 4 percent of the trade.

So we've got to expand this dialogue, this interaction between the West and the Middle East beyond just oil. My argument is it's not the oil trade that we have with the Middle East that accounts for the enmity those regions feel for us; it's the fact that we don't have anything BUT the oil trade.

BLITZER: A provocative article in the new issue of "Esquire" magazine.

Thomas Barnett, thank you very much. We gave our viewers just a little bit—an appetizer, if you will—of what's in the thrust of your article.

Thanks for joining us.

What I remember:  I was in San Diego doing an intra-governmental consulting gig (as War College profs, Bradd Hayes and I were there leading a visioneering exercise with a naval systems command, using the same process we had developed within Barnett Consulting LLC in our previous commercial work with the United Way of Southeastern New England—now known as the United Way of Rhode Island, thanks to our advice).  The appearance on Blitzer’s show was arranged by Esquire’s PR firm, Dan Klores Communications.  So I engineered a suitable break in the proceedings, stepped outside the naval facility and into a limo that took me to a ratty little local remote facility (dingy storefront in strip mall), where the tech threw up a pretty San Diego backdrop on a screen that even featured, if I remembered, the occasional commercial jetliner on final approach over the city skyline—on a loop).  It was my first remote and it was hard.  The tech said I wouldn’t want to watch the feed because the time delay meant both Blitzer’s and my own lips wouldn’t match up to what I was hearing—faster—over my ear bud.  He warned that I would start trying to slow down my words to match my lips, making me sound drunk.  So I went without any visual aid and simply stared into camera.

In the car ride on the way home, I called my parents to see if they caught my first-ever appearance on national TV, and the first thing my mom said upon answering was, “Your father and I both agree:  TV adds 15 lbs.”

Without missing a beat, I turned to the invisible camera in my mind and quipped, “Folks—my mother!”

I saw the tape finally days later when I got home.

When I read the text today, my logic remains unchanged:  You go after bad actors when you can muster the international will, but what you focus on in the aftermath ain't democracy but economic connectivity.

Grunstein on "what has Iran really won?"

Map found here (the flashing bits are the shifting line in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war--another "longest war")

I just really like this bit:

It is by now the consensus view that the primary strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War has been Iran. By this view, the removal of a hostile regime in Baghdad has not only moved Iraq into the Iranian sphere of influence, but has also opened the floodgates for Tehran to extend its influence westward throughout the Middle East. 

This analysis, while compelling, begs the question: If Iran has "won" the Iraq War, just what has it really won? In a best-case scenario of a stable Iraq, it still amounts to a potentially volatile and dangerous relationship, and definitely a high-maintenance one, just next door. If the recent negotiations over Baghdad's coalition government are any indication, maintaining that stability among Iran's Shiite clients, friends and allies in Iraq will require significant diplomatic investment. That investment will only increase once U.S. forces are no longer present to serve as a firewall against potential conflict outside Iran's circles of friends. And in a worst-case scenario of simmering ethno-sectarian violence or outright civil war, Iran has simply inherited a veritable sinkhole of political, financial and military resources.

The Big Bang moves in mysterious ways.

The rest of the piece is a critical deconstruction of the Turkey-Brazil deal and how Iran once again "triumphed."

The Middle East after Iraq

Very nice World Politics Review piece by Gregg Carlstrom.

The premise:

In dozens of statements, interviews and news conferences since taking office, Obama has been adamant about sticking to the withdrawal timetable, which calls for removing all U.S. combat troops by August 2010 and a complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011 . . . 

And Obama is by no means bucking domestic public opinion in holding so steadfastly to that promise now. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released in January found that 62 percent of Americans support his timeline for withdrawal . . . Domestic politics, in other words, argue strongly against delaying the withdrawal. 

And yet, the prospect of doing just that continues to be a hot topic in Washington. Tom Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, published a paper in February urging the Obama administration to scrap the timeline. Conservative commentators and analysts -- Max Boot, for example -- think the U.S. should maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq. Lawmakers routinely ask civilian and military officials whether the deadlines are flexible. 

At times, the Pentagon has also seemed far more circumspect than the White House about the timetable.

Publicly, the Iraqis take great pride whenever US troops pull back or out of a city or region, but privately, Iraqi officials are more circumspect, says Carlstrom.

Internally, the future is rather bright:

"What's left of the insurgency is pretty quiet these days," said Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation. "And there's never going to be a time when they have a greater motivation to attack than now."

Why now at the end?  Insurgencies always ramp up violence when the occupier is leaving, in order to claim "victory!" So expect some additional effort.

The real concerns are "external":  e.g., the internal border with the KRG (Kurds) and the real one with Iran and Syria (but more so Iran).

I certainly agree with Carlstom here about the look of an inevitable post-2011 presence:

But most analysts say that any American presence will look much different after 2011 than it does today: A few thousand troops, mostly serving in an advisory and training role, or performing functions that Iraqi forces can't yet handle. The Iraqi military is also executing an ambitious procurement plan, with the air force, for example, planning to purchase more than 400 new planes over the next decade. U.S. troops will certainly help train the military on its new hardware. 

Regionally speaking, it is as I've long argued, a question of competing Shia-Sunni poles potentially using Iraq as a proxy-war site.  But Carlstrom reassures here:

Iran's role in Iraq does continue to grow, as evidenced by the parade of Iraqi officials visiting Tehran before and after the parliamentary election. Saudi Arabia represents the other pole, a Sunni Arab counterweight to the Persian Shiites in Iran. But both countries are mistrusted by a plurality of Iraqis -- and not always for sectarian reasons. For instance, the Shiite Sadrist movement, with its staunchly nationalist views, often holds Iran at arm's length. Against that backdrop, some analysts say, the U.S. could carve out a durable diplomatic role in Iraq. 

What may temper Obama on all this:  Bob Gates fears a final-scene-of-Charlie-Wilson's-war outcome, as in, penny wise and pound foolish.

I agree and don't see how Obama can stick with his zero troops notion, unless it naturally incorporates several thousands of non-combat personnel--essentially pure SysAdmin.

Chart of the day: drawing down in Iraq

A trio of stories (WAPO, NYT, WSJ--the last providing the chart) exploring the feasibility of the drawdown trajectory, all projecting the usual fears (meddling neighbors, political gridlock in Baghdad, stubborn insurgent activity, fears of an Arab-Kurd conflagration).

Bases will shrink and disappear, as will vast amounts of gear.  What gets left behind is primarily small units for training and support to the Iraqi army.  Besides the usual counterinsurgency stuff, the big focus is on controlling Iraq's long borders--especially with Iran.  U.S. troops will likewise be stationed along the line separating the Kurdish Regional Gov provinces and the rest of Iraq.

Naturally, backfilling with contractors will occur, and by the end of the summer, they should outnumber the troops by 50% (75k to 50k).

The footprint of the Special Ops forces will remain basically unchanged across the coming months--the focus on killing the worst insurgents.  I wouldn't be surprised if "zero" is never reached but never acknowledged either. The SOF guys aren't usually counted.

I would comment on the administration's strategy here, except I can't really see any--other than leaving. Iraq-the-outcome seems no more regionalized now than it ever was under Bush-Cheney.  I feel like we're pushing the foster kid out the door on his 18th birthday no matter what.

And yeah, the neighborhood is making plans.

Amidst movement to crown the Shiite coalition, the Kurds recalculate

The Kurdish leadership, in the person of the regional government's president, is cooperating with the formation of a new government, and yet, per an NYT story . . .

... no one has been more openly aggressive in the jockeying for position than Mr. Barzani, and he is being closely watched because the issues he seeks to influence all have stark ramifications for Iraq’s stability. In particular, his demands for a federalist approach to governing Iraq — a weakened national government and stronger regional control — have revived fears that his Iraqi Kurdistan region may eventually try to secede.

During a recent interview, Mr. Barzani said he was determined to extract upfront commitments from any prospective coalition partners in Baghdad on potentially explosive issues like the settlement of disputed internal borders, including those of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, and the sharing of oil revenues.

“It is impossible for us to participate in or back a government that will operate in the same old way,” said Mr. Barzani, speaking at his mountaintop palace overlooking the regional Kurdish capital, Erbil.

With Jalal Talibani's party fading, Barzani seems to have effectively co-opted the rising reform movement known as Gorran, once again yielding a solid Kurdish bloc.

And so Barzani is once again pushing for a plebiscite that would possibly allow the Kurds to form their own independent nation.

One of the crucial Kurdish demands will be a pledge from the next prime minister to carry out Article 140 of the Constitution, a hotly contested passage that outlines the steps toward a plebiscite on the fate of the disputed northern territories, including Kirkuk.

“If Article 140 is not implemented, then this will mean the demise of the Constitution and Iraq itself,” Mr. Barzani warned . . . 

The back and forth over Article 140 is one example of how the Americans have sought to soften the Kurds’ demands while still showing support for their relative autonomy within a larger Iraq.

Mr. Barzani noted that one of the main reason Kurds dropped their opposition to the election law in November was a promise by President Obama that the United States would “push hard” to put in effect Article 140. He said Mr. Obama first made the promise in a telephone call at the time and then reiterated it at a meeting in the Oval Office in January.

The Administration, to the extent it ever did make such promises, has quietly backed off from any appearance of supporting a vote, fearing a Balkans-like conflagration would ensue as the Kurds seek a divorce.

And so the benefits of political integration and economic interdependency are stressed.

As I often argue in the brief, whenever globalization's connectivity is allowed in situations previously denied (by authorities or through sheer difficulty of circumstances), there's always somebody who considers the divorce route, and it's typically the most ambitious and experienced in terms of self-governance.  In Iraq, that's the Kurds, although some Shiite parties have made similar noises.  It's a tricky business for outside forces, because the surest route to keeping the state together is a unitary political structure, but then that makes any ambitious minorities all the more like to agitate against feared dictatorship.  If you encourage federalism, then the alternative problem is that the same minorities will often want to go all the way--so to speak.  So you end up trying to get them to see the downstream advantages of--again--political integration and economic interdependency.

A tricky row to how, as they say.

For a nice overview, see the referenced WPR article by Liam Anderson.

Best chunk:

As it turns out, the issues of federalism and oil and gas are both amenable to compromise in a way that accommodates Kurdish demands without alienating Iraq's Arabs. On the issue of federalism, for example, the problem is not so much the degree of autonomy the constitution grants to the Kurdistan Region, but the fact that this autonomy is not exclusively limited to the Kurdistan Region. At ISCI's insistence, Article 119 allows for governorates, singly or in combination, to form regions that would then enjoy the same level of autonomy as the Kurdistan Region. ISCI's original project for a nine-governorate region in the south now appears dead and buried, but this is no guarantee against the formation of smaller-scale regions in the future. Hence, the constitution contains the potential for the emergence of multiple regions, each of which would have the power to control its own internal security and to manage its own oil and gas fields. In the view of many Iraqi Arabs, this vision of federalism, in which powerful regions are loosely held together by an emasculated central government, is a blueprint for the disintegration of the Iraqi state. 

The oil and gas problem is more complex, but similar in kind. Once again, and despite periodic friction on this issue between Baghdad and Irbil, the real problem is not the Kurds. To begin with, the oil reserves of the Kurdistan Region are dwarfed by those in southern Iraq. And although the constitution allows regions to manage their oil and gas sectors, it requires them to distribute the revenues among the Iraqi people on a proportionate basis. The more serious problem is the possible future emergence of other regions, particularly one centered on Basra. Removing the management of Basra's oil from centralized control would leave almost no role for the federal government in the administration of the oil and gas sector.

Fortunately, the issues of federalism and oil and gas can be addressed as a package. The optimum vehicle for this is a separate autonomy agreement for the Kurds. The problem with Iraq's constitution is that it fails to treat the Kurdistan Region as sui generis.

Sounds fixable, allright.