Is Iraq an arena of conflict or a state that refuses to play its geopolitical role?

The victim argument: which is partly true

It is fair to begin by acknowledging: Iraq has experienced real and destructive external interventions. The American invasion of 2003 brought down the state and dismantled its institutions. The Iranian intervention through armed factions obstructed the building of a centralized state. The Turkish intervention in the north strikes the water infrastructure. The Gulf intervention through financing certain political currents distorts political life. All of this is real and cannot be denied.

But the victim argument becomes problematic when it turns into a discourse that relieves Iraqi officials themselves of any responsibility. The genuine victim is one who learns from what happened and works to prevent its recurrence. Iraq -- in many of its political chapters -- appeared to adopt the victim discourse to confer legitimacy on political stagnation rather than using it as a stimulus for change.

The negligence argument: which is also true

The states that governed Iraq since 2003 were not each built on the idea of Iraq as a state with a unified national project. Each was built on the idea of 'our share of the state.' The Kurdish parties want a federal Iraq that maximizes their autonomy. The major Shia parties want an Iraq that guarantees their dominance over state resources. The Sunni forces want an Iraq that stops their marginalization. All these demands are legitimate in themselves, but no one has yet formulated a comprehensive Iraqi vision that brings these demands together in a political project capable of confronting the outside world from a position of strength.

You cannot demand that the outside world respect your sovereignty while you invite the outside world to fund your parties, support your factions, and protect your regions. The contradiction here is not only diplomatic -- it is a contradiction in the concept of the state itself.

The possible geopolitical role

Iraq as a regional mediating state is a geopolitically feasible role. And it has successful precedents: Austria after the Second World War; Switzerland through its long history; Qatar in its contemporary model -- despite its limitations -- which made mediation in regional disputes a source of protection and influence. Iraq can do this on a much larger scale if it possesses the political will and institutional competence.

The mediator role between Iran and the Gulf, for example -- for which limited and tentative experiments have been made -- can become an established policy that turns Iraq into an essential player rather than an arena. But this requires an Iraqi government that is not itself divided between loyalists to Tehran, loyalists to Washington, and loyalists to Riyadh.

The structural dilemma

At its core, the dilemma is this: Iraq cannot play a unified geopolitical role as long as its main political components are simultaneously playing different and contradictory geopolitical roles. If an Iraqi armed faction receives its orders from Tehran, and another Iraqi party receives its support from the Gulf, and a third secures its relationship with Washington, then 'Iraqi foreign policy' is not a policy in the true sense -- it is the sum of contradictory foreign policies performed by internal proxies.

The solution is not repression or exclusion -- that is what the past tried and failed. The solution is building an internal political compact -- even if difficult and painful -- that defines what Iraq wants from its geographic position: a state of mediation, trade, and soft power, or an open arena whose price is paid by the Iraqi people alone.

Analytical conclusion

Iraq is simultaneously victim and negligent -- and this is harder than being only one of the two. A victim of real external interventions, and negligent in building the internal unity necessary to resist these interventions. The road from arena to active state does not pass through complaining about the outside, but through reforming the inside until the outside is no longer capable of penetration. This is the true test that Iraq faces today.

Analytical article series -- Iraq and Geopolitics

Part One: Articles 1-7 of 21 -- Part Two to follow