Iraq and Yugoslavia
Fri Feb 23, 2007 at 04:17:43 PM PDT
For once, the pro-war LA Times commentator Max Boot put up a reasonable article in his column:
Is Iraq turning into Yugoslavia?
[...] In the former Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, ethnic groups have clashed over the years, but they also have had long periods of peaceful coexistence — and not only under the heavy hand of a Tito or Saddam Hussein. Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, Kosovars, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs lived together for centuries under the relatively benign Ottoman and Habsburg empires and later under their own monarchy. So did Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Mesopotamia.
In both cases, intermarriage rates were high, and there was no popular clamor for civil war. In more recent times, domestic strife was fomented by megalomaniacs such as Slobodan Milosevic and Abu Musab Zarqawi, who sought to profit from the violence. They were able to gain the upper hand because central authority had collapsed. In a lawless land, ordinary people were forced to seek protection from sectarian militias. As these groups committed atrocities, they fed demands for vengeance, leading to a death spiral.
Quite right: rarely, or very rarely, is there genuine broad public zeal for war. It takes a maniac or few to awaken supposedly deep instincts for violence. Recent history of sudden political changes shows that most people assume a normal and more just life in good faith, but then a handful of manipulative nuts or most active self-seekers fill the power vacuum. A good example but in the economic sphere is Russia in the 1990's.
Sadly, the Bush administration behaves now just as maniacs in power. They are not to be stopped regardless of what is reasonable or what the people want. As Martin Luther King would say again, the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.
Of course, deep "culture" of violence of the Middle East cannot be denied. But that is not a tragedy of "savages beyond help". The tragedy is of adaptation to ever escalating spiral of violence. The Middle East is not stuck in the Middle ages. The violence there is much worse than then, and getting worse. Whether human-naturally or not, the West made contributions to the sad evolution of violence there. Mere adaptation to violent environment has lots of vile looks, for any side.
Viewing the violence from a comfy couch, it is easy to conclude that "these people are animals. We can't help them." But imagine what would have happened in Los Angeles if the 1992 riots had gone on for weeks, with no police or military intervention. L.A. could have come to resemble Baghdad or Sarajevo, with Anglo, African American, Latino and Asian gangs rampaging out of control.
To extend the analogy, violence could have spread throughout Southern California. That's what happened in the Balkans when fighting spread from Slovenia, the first province to secede, to Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. A wider spillover was averted thanks to American-led intervention.
Here I start to disagree with Max Boot, obviously. The analogy to the LA riots is mediocre at best. Is he advocating the role of US as the world policemen?
Today, only the U.S. troop presence is preventing Iraq, already in the throes of a low-level civil war, from degenerating into an all-out conflict a la Yugoslavia. The likely effect of such a bloodletting is spelled out in a recent report, "Things Fall Apart," by Brookings Institution fellows Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack. They examined recent civil wars not only in Yugoslavia but in Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somalia and Tajikistan. "We found," they write, "that 'spillover' is common in massive civil wars" and "that while its intensity can vary considerably, at its worst it can have truly catastrophic effects."
I am sceptical whether Iraq would necessarily fall into worst civil war if the US troops leave. At the first place, George W Bush ignited the hell there with his "Mission Accomplished". The presence of US troops is more a latent source of violence than alleviation; the "surge" is about to prove that.
If the US troops would leave, it is of course possible that Iraq would fall into worst civil war, if the worst maniacs grab the power. Studies of worst ethnical conflicts are important, but so should be studies of almost "trivial" cases of peaceful resolutions. It is easy to overlook, for example, that the breakup of the Soviet Union was not traumatic neither in Eastern Europe nor in Central Asia (unless autocratic regimes there have to be viewed as ethnical problem). Most of Europe has almost forgotten agitations of just 70 years ago. Could Europe fall into nationalist torment again? With certain "leaders", that might be possible; they would know much how to make hell. But we ought to know something how to avoid national disasters as well.
Humanity may not know "scientifically" much how to heal national conflicts as yet. If people do not allow themselves to resist their militant instincts, they only learn how to fight wars.
Regarding Iraq, it is plausible that there is more chance for a nonviolent resolution with the US troops there than without them. But that might take more than a policing role. I do not mean that there must be an idealistic Wilsonnian nation building solution. Any nonviolent resolution is better than persistently violent limbo. If I have particular suggestions, these are: serious commitment to break violence; forcing any kind of dialogues; establishing safe zones; and setting behavioral example (at least in the safe zones).
For time being, the US troops often show quite barbaric behavior standards themselves. The presence effectively prevents Shiites and Sunnis take responsibility for their own safety. As far as the "war on terror" goes, the Iraq episode is a terror haven.
Maybe it's too late to avoid the catastrophe that Byman and Pollack warn of. But Yugoslavia showed how much good a decisive intervention could do. The case for action — for sending more troops rather than withdrawing the ones already there — is even stronger in Iraq because we have caused its current turmoil and cannot escape its consequences.
Just sending or keeping troops is not enough of a decision. You should better what exactly you do with them. Does Bush know what he wants? Even if he does, you don't want to trust him, do you? But right, the US can do its best to resolve the turmoil it caused.
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