Power of History

The removal of Saddam Hussein will be an unqualified positive development for the Middle East. But many of the strongest proponents of a war seem to harbor a fantasy about what the “new Iraq” will look like.

History in Iraq will not come to an end with Hussein’s removal. However powerful the United States may be, we cannot suspend the forces of geopolitics in a place once known as Mesopotamia that’s been at the center of contending empires for about 4,000 years.

We need to eliminate Hussein, taking all the time that’s needed to get all the international backing we can. And once he’s gone, we need to stay there long enough to prevent an orgy of internal vengeance-seeking and to lay the foundations of a more open political order.

We must especially ensure that neighboring states -- Turkey, Iran and Syria, in particular -- do not attempt to meddle in Iraq’s internal politics for unilateral gain in the swirl of postwar uncertainties.

Yet what no occupying force or interim administration can do is prevent the laws of Iraq’s geopolitics from kicking in. Iraq does not cease being Iraq, even with its savage ruler gone. The locale comes replete with deeply embedded cultural, historical and ethnic rivalries that will not suddenly cease to operate.

Though the new Iraqi leader will no doubt forswear production of weapons of mass destruction, such a commitment may be short-lived. Regional instability and competition are powerful spurs to acquiring them -- as Israel, Pakistan and India have done. The shah of Iran said “Iranian greatness is worthy of nukes.”

Ever since independence, Iraq has increasingly seen itself as a key contender for leadership of the region, a rival to Egypt and Iran. The new Iraq will indeed devote much of its initial energies to building a new political and social order. But Hussein did not invent the Iraqi claim to primacy in the region, and that vision will fairly soon reemerge because no Iraqi leader can yield that claim of a leadership role to others.

More specifically, Iraq has long seen itself as the aspiring Persian Gulf hegemonist -- the protector of Arab rights against Persian efforts to project power and influence across the Gulf waters.

Iraq, along with Iran and Saudi Arabia, is hardly likely to abandon efforts to manipulate the weak and vulnerable emirates of the region. Iraq will continue to see Syria, Iran and Turkey as rivals. And it, along with Iran, will eventually want to see the United States out of the Gulf so that it can play its normal and influential role without outside interference.

Before long, that role will encompass the Palestinian problem, which no leader of Iraq will be able to ignore. To be sure, it will be helpful if Iraq curtails cash awards to Palestinian families of suicide bombers, but the bombers never did depend on Iraq and never will. Iraqis are steeped in a long tradition of Arab nationalism and will not turn their backs on the Palestinian cause.

A new Iraqi regime can perhaps be pushed into signing a peace treaty with Israel, but that is a risky early step for any Iraqi leader who wishes to be seen as an independent Iraqi patriot and not a puppet of the United States. And even a peace treaty does not end Iraqi activism on behalf of the Palestinians.

As an oil producer, Iraq will be driven by a desire over time to strengthen its hand in the oil market and not simply to meet U.S. needs.

Finally, we have the proposition so keenly supported by neoconservatives in Washington that the U.S. will be able to establish a long-term military base in Iraq from which it can engage in direct intervention as needed against other regional states. This is a pipe dream. There is virtually no way, over the longer term, that any credible Iraqi leader will allow his country -- steeped in nationalism, pride and regional suspicion of the U.S. -- to become the instrument of American power in the region.

The patterns of geopolitics are not immutable. But before we can even begin to think of the emergence of a “new geopolitics” of Iraq, the culture of the Gulf region requires wholesale reordering toward liberalized governance and decades of peaceful coexistence.

Yes, in the first year or two of the new Iraqi order, Baghdad probably will try to comply with U.S. interests, a big step up from Hussein. But if we believe that Washington can remake Iraq anytime soon into a chosen instrument for American long-term interests in the region, we had best get out our history books and get real.

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Graham E. Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and the author of the forthcoming book “The Future of Political Islam,” from Palgrave.