ultpaladin wrote:
Interesting background info Wildbill, I'm actually a political science/history major with a focus on international relations. In fact over the next several quarters I'll be working on a paper that proposes a constitutional design for Iraq that would mitigate ethnic and sectarian conflict. Obviously such a proposition is a little late, but it is certainly an interesting what if.
Read the Balfour Declaration (I believe it was called) that led to the creation of the French Mandate for Lebanon, created by the League of Nations to carve up the Ottoman Empire. After being granted statehood, the Lebanese factions rotated their leaders in offices of state, the Maronite Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, even the Druze. (BTW, this was the subject of my Master's thesis.) Would such a scheme work in pluralistic Iraq where Sunni Muslims have always held sway? Would the Kurds and the southern Shia get a fair shake?
Lebanon fell apart when Hassef al-Assad, actually an Alawite minority in his own country of Syria, invaded in 1976. The Hezbollah movement holding the Bekaa Valley didn't help matters either. Lebanon lacked a strong enough army to repel the invaders. Therefore, if the Iraqi military is not rebuilt and armed, Iran could easily destabilize Iraq for decades (in the vacuum of a full American withdrawal), even invade and occupy. The only way any plan of stable government will work in Iraq is through the creation of a covenant that all factions will respect, coupled with a strategic deterrence force sufficient to mitigate regional foreign aggression.
In my humble opinion, the U. N. is a greater failure than the League of Nations, nothing but a communist mouthpiece during the Cold War. Anyway, good luck building your model, but I see nothing but Armageddon coming.