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| Volume XI, Winter 2004, Number 4 |
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| Excerpt: Possible Pathways for Iraq's Political Evolution |
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| Kenneth Katzman |
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Dr. Katzman is senior Iraq analyst at the Congressional Research Service.
The ongoing violence and instabil-
ity in Iraq prompt questions about
how Iraq will evolve politically.
The Bush administration has said that its policy is to build a stable, moderate and democratic Iraq, even if doing so requires an indefinite deployment of significant numbers of U.S. military personnel. However, insurgency and instability continue to rise to ever-higher levels, despite continuous U.S. and coalition counterinsurgency operations, and substantial high-level U.S. efforts to promote political transition and stability. Can the administration's goals for Iraq be accomplished, and, if so, what combination of policy choices could promote that outcome? Or are political outcomes in Iraq dependent only on the interactions among various Iraqi factions, impervious to the effects of U.S. policy choices?
A useful tool for evaluating Iraq's future is to examine alternative scenarios and possibilities. Although the characteristics of countries and situations vary greatly, some analogies can be drawn between events and trends in Iraq and those experienced by other countries in the region. These "models" are not intended to be exhaustive, and Iraq's political evolution might not approximate anything else seen in the region to date. However, the models discussed below can be helpful in analyzing current trends in Iraq.1
1 The "pathways" analyzed in this article are expanded versions of scenarios discussed by the author in a presentation for congressional staff at a Congressional Research Service seminar on Iraq on July 12, 2004. Some of the scenarios discussed in this article are also analyzed in a September 2004 briefing paper by Chatham House, "Iraq In Transition: Vortex or Catalyst?"
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