Collapse

Barrett: The Collapse of Iraq and Syria
Figure 1. Map of Iraq. Source: CIA World
Ottoman Turkey. In effect, the political structure of the region has moved
to a situation increasingly in line with the fractured historical, economic,
and social reality on the ground.
Steeped in the pedagogy of the nation-state, the foreign policy establishment
finds itself stymied in its attempts to stabilize, or to borrow an old
term, “Vietnamization,” and escape the situation. In fact, it is difficult for
Western policymakers to even conceptualize what actually exists in the
region. These policymakers are typically blind to the political, economic,
and social co-dependency and conflicted inseparability of Iraq and Syria,
and to the fact that the Saddamist regime in Iraq and the Assad regime in
Syria were the way they were for a reason. Western and indigenous forces
shattered the colonial construct of 1919 and with it any semblance of control
from Baghdad and Damascus, leaving a political and security vacuum to be
filled by others—ISIS, Shiite militias, Sunni jihadists, and sectarian ‘rump’
states in Baghdad and Damascus.
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