Eight years after the United States and Iran agreed to enthrone Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister of Iraq they agreed to replace him with the relatively unknown Haider al-Abadi.
The United States claims it wants a more "inclusive" government while Iran goes along just making sure someone friendly to its own plans is at the top. Al-Abadi seems to fit both their ideas. But the hope that changing a head will change the path Iraq is on is vain. It is only very seldom the man at the top who is a country's problem.
It is a U.S. foreign policy fallacy that changing the man at the top, always likened to Hitler, will solve everything. The fallacy is somewhat self enforcing. Some "senior administration official" leaks to the media that X is probably not such a good man. The media then go around and collect anecdotes, rumors and quotes which support the unspecific claims about X. The next day the "senior administration official" reads the New York Times or watches CNN and fells affirmed in his position because, you know, X is really a very bad man and the sole problem and all you need to confirm that is right there in the media.
But usually it is not the person who manages a nation who is forming that nation. The nation and its situation are just as much forming the person leading it. Ghaddafi wasn't the way he was because he created Libya to his likeness but because successfully leading a united Libya required him to be the way he was. Russia is not re-surging because of Putin but because Putin formed his policies to the way Russia is. It is that, not his personality, that gives him sky high poll ratings. Maliki led Iraq in a way that gave him the support of the majority of its people. He did not give in to the blackmail by Sunni tribes which had become accustomed to the bribes the U.S. military had showered them with. It is that "lack of inclusiveness" that made him successful:
Mr. Maliki’s bloc won the most seats in April’s national election, and Mr. Maliki personally won more votes than any other politician.
If al-Abadi changes Maliki's major policies he will have no support from the majority of his country and will either end up as a brutal dictator or dead.
The rules of the political cycle in unruly countries apply:
- A strongman is replaced by a weak man who resorts to force to rule over a fractured society
- See #1
Replacing Maliki, a still complicate and uncertain process, will not change Iraq, its problems, like the U.S. support for a Kurdish oil state, or the policy decisions its leaders will have to make to stay liked and alive.
