Andrew Olmsted thows out an interesting aside:
The more I look at history, the more I come to believe that we could have avoided just about every war in our history had we chosen to do so. The decisions would have come with costs: staying out of the Civil War, for example, might have meant the end of the United States as we know it. Nonetheless, Lincoln could have avoided fighting that war had he gone along with conventional wisdom and agreed to let the South go. In some cases … it’s pretty clear in retrospect that we made some good choices …. In other cases … it’s pretty clear that we acted almost entirely from a desire to be an imperial power. In plenty of other cases the question is far more difficult: were our decisions to defend South Korea and South Vietnam good wars of choice or bad ones?
An Australian writer some years ago (sorry, can’t remember whom) made an interesting point: understanding why wars break out requires understanding why peace breaks out. If it is so difficult to stop a war when it hasn’t started, how is it that a war that has been in progress for years can be stopped? The reason, he asserted, is found in the notion of war as a continuum of non-war international relations. When a nation decides it can get more from fighting than it will lose, it is willing to fight. When two nations are willing to fight, there is almost a certainty of war.
In other words, wars start when two (or more) nations aren’t willing to give up what they might gain by fighting. Once one (or more) of those nations realizes that it will gain the most, or lose the least, by giving up, that side gives up.
History seems to bear out this line of argument, and leaders (as opposed to some of their followers) seem to be pretty rational about decisions to go to war. This indicates that our best bet to quell the Ba’athist part of the Iraq war, at least, would be to give the Ba’athists hope for non-reprisal and some shot at political integration. For the jihadis, being religious zealots, we probably won’t be able to do better than kill them or drive them out.
In any case, I don’t think it will take more than another two years to bring Iraq to the point of relative peace and stability. I hope I am correct in this.
That’s a perhaps oddly optimistic idea, Jeff. I’m not sure that I agree with you. There’s something that economists refer to as the “relative downwards inelasticity of income” or, said another way, due to the perversity of human nature people will work much harder to avoid losing something they think is owed to them than they will to achieve it in the first place.
Sunni Arabs in Iraq can’t achieve what they had (and what they believe they deserve) through the democratic process. And so I haven’t been surprised that so many of them will go to very great lengths to get back on top. The real question, perhaps, is why more of them haven’t joined the “resistance”.
Obviously, I could be wrong. In particular, if the new government turns out to be horrible to the Sunni, the Ba’ath will likely gain strength and morale for continuing to fight. There are other scenarios, as well, where this could happen. (For example, if the Shi’a had been stupid and gone for religious rule.)
The Sunni cannot achieve what they had, but if they are able to go to a federal system, they may be able to get more than they have. The Kurds want a strong federal system. There’s a chance that they’ll get at least a weak one.
The way to get to such a system is to write it into the constitution, and the Sunni erred in not participating, in that they have weakened their voice in the writing of the constitution. However, there are some indications that the Shi’a themselves are interested in a system at least somewhat federal, and this may mean the Sunni will have less of a problem with that loss of voice than they otherwise would have.
In either case, it’s not a lost cause, if the Sunni can be brought into the political process. The US and the interim Iraqi government have been working very hard at doing just that at the local level.
More to the point, though, is that the Sunni are busily proving that they cannot get anywhere through violence. They did not stop the election, or secure concessions, or do anything else other than marginalize themselves further. I think that the Ba’athists are not yet tapped out, but I think that the jihadis are becoming tapped out. As the jihadis are destroyed or driven out, the Ba’athists will increasingly be faced with the choice of becoming part of the new system or becoming irrelevant.
I take the optimistic view that they will join the system, because the Ba’athists are nothing if not pragmatists. Without the cadre of jihadis willing to die in hopeless attacks, the Ba’ath will likely not be able to sustain operations at a level that will net them any advantage. At that point, those who can flee will flee, and those who cannot will become part of the system or irrelevant.
In general, people want the best life that they can get, and if the Iraqis and the coalition can get together a reconciliation process, perhaps on the lines of what worked in S. Africa, I believe that the costs to the Sunnis of ceasing resistance can be lowered below the costs of sustaining it. The other way to do that is to raise the costs of resistance, which we and the Iraqis have also been doing.
War is a failure to communicate. Or, rather, the ultimate in communication. Prior to war the two sides are posturing, negotiating, testing – figuring out potential gains, losses and costs, and the associated risks. War results when they fail to agree on those items and continues until they do. If the ultimate outcome could be definitively communicated to both sides in advance there would be no war. But it cannot.
The historian is Geoffrey Blainey. The book is The Causes of War.
The blogosphere is a wonderful thing. Thanks, Mark.
Dave, that’s exactly what I was going to say. I’ve been meaning to re-read the book, which is difficult to do when you can’t remember the author or title.
Bright blessings