The Grillmaster has recently received confirmation that he did in fact secure a Masters of Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast. Comparative Ethnic Conflict is a mouthful, but today’s post just may show that it actually has something to teach us. ‘But Grillmaster, you’ve been back in the States for four months,’ you might say. ‘Surely you received your grades months ago.’ Naïve fools! Very few things happen with what one would call efficiency in the great administrative vortex that is the United Kingdom.
As it goes in postgraduate degrees, so it is with final status negotiations around implementing the Good Friday Agreements. The parties continue to sputter towards the basic conclusion that all can foresee: shared power, oversight from the UK and Ireland, and a final end of political violence. The province is unlikely to descend back into the painful violence of the Troubles, but with Paisley and Adams in control of electoral politics, what one would call normal representative government is likely still some time off.
The past weeks have seen a similar reminder from the former Yugoslavia. There, the accord hammered out at Dayton gave ten years of relative peace (with the teensy exception of that whole Kosovo thing). At the same time, that peace has been guaranteed only at the point of NATO guns, with populations clinging ever more doggedly to ethno-national identities. Western diplomats made the prudential judgment in the past month that the parties, a decade removed from the worst of the conflict, could begin to modify the Dayton Accords to build a more unified, effective government.
The fate of the Oslo Process is perhaps the classic case of good documents alone not adequate to resolve ethnic conflicts. The story of their ultimate collapse has been told by many more qualified than this writer. Suffice to say that with all the roadmaps, frameworks, and interim agreements one could put a nice coat of wallpaper on that lovely little wall that Ariel is building through the West Bank.
Ethnic resentment dies hard, and thus resolving (or transforming if you prefer) ethnic conflicts takes years of careful prodding and poking, managing rivals while promoting local responsibility. The governments of the UK and Ireland have done this admirably in Northern Ireland. The success of the former Yugoslavia will likely be judged over the coming years. Israel-Palestine is very much a work in progress. None of these situations, however, is more uncertain or more important than that we currently face in Iraq.
It is important to remember the lasting nature of outside engagement in the above examples at this time of national reevaluation of our policy in Iraq. I sense that among the well-intentioned and even analytically sound calls to bring our troops home is that ugly skeleton in the closet of American diplomacy: Isolationism. There is a growing part of the American public that wants to be rid of the worries of Iraq. This is a dangerous undertone of statements like, ‘We need to allow the Iraqis to run their own country.’
America should draw down her troop levels in the months ahead, but the squabbling, feuding, opportunistic politicians of Iraq make our continued deep involvement in the process an absolute necessity. What worries me is that weak-willed politicians may use the slogans of ‘allowing the Iraqis to secure their own destiny’ as an excuse for abrogating our responsibility and ability to contribute to the shape that future takes.
Of course Iraqis should control their own destiny. Except that we just removed their old world order with our bombs, in the process removing the main impediment to open ethnic conflict. It may be a good thing that Saddam is gone, but policy makers need to learn from Belfast, Sarajevo, and Hebron just how much outside management is necessary before deeply conflicted societies can run their own affairs.
This requires a delicate dance. American policy makers must remain engaged with Iraqi officials as crucial decisions are made regarding that country’s future. American military officials must continue to cooperate with Iraqi forces combating the insurgency. American corporations must responsibly engage in the task of rebuilding the shattered Iraqi infrastructure. And all of this must as much as possible avoid the semblance of an occupation. The Grillmaster harbors serious doubts as to whether this administration is up to the tall task that it has brought upon itself.
