Behind Iraq’s protests, a call for better democracy
Read my op/ed in tomorrow’s Washington Post.
I wrote this originally during my trip to Baghdad in January. It was even more “optimistic” then than the current version, which will strike many as still too rosy-eyed. What I did not see in January was the enormous gap that has opened up between Iraq’s politicians and its people. The politicians were happy with the “national partnership” government, but the people were not seeing anything change in their too real lives.
Maliki seems to have understood this, after the demonstrations. We’ll see how effective he is at getting some results.
I do think there are upsides for the United States if a more or less democratic Iraq can come out of this mess a high-volume oil (and maybe gas) producer that exports to the north and west as well as through the Gulf. That’s not neo neo conservatism. It’s just realism. No need anyway for Iraq to be a model any longer–the Arab countries seem to be in a race to produce democracies left and right. Let’s hope they succeed at least as well as Iraq.
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Your op ed “Oil is a separate issue. Iraq can produce great volumes at low cost from giant reserves – possibly on the order of those in Saudi Arabia – but it does not have the infrastructure to get the oil to world markets. Iraq traditionally has exported most of its oil through the Persian Gulf, a route that is exposed to Iranian pressure. A safer option would be to use pipelines north and west to Turkey and Syria, which would send crude into European markets at lower cost than shipping through the Gulf while also reducing Iranian leverage. “is a hypothethical!.How could Iran put on pressure ?