Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 2 | Page 7

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

Iraq its Neighbors, and the United States: Competition, Crises and the Reordering of Power
By: Henri J. Barkey
Scott B. Lasensky
Phebe Marr, editors
Iraq its Neighbors, and the United States: Competition, Crises and the Reordering of Power. United States Institute of
Peace: Washington D.C. 250pp. $19.95. ISBN: 1601270771.
Volume: 1 Issue: 2
June 2013
Review by
Seth J. Frantzman, PhD
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Israel
The American led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a momentous game-changing event in the region. The importance of it may not be apparent for
years to come. In Iraq and its Neighbors, the author set out to compile numerous important essays examining the regional strategic issues that Iraq
confronts. In the introduction, the editor’s note that the invasion “upended Iraq’s relations with its neighbors, profoundly altered both the regional
balance of power and America’s role in the region, and fundamentally changed the assumptions about Iraq’s future” (p. 1).
The book generally presents a series of case studies of individual countries and how they have related to Iraq before and after 2003. As the editors
claim, “Iraq’s strength, ambition and aggressiveness were the source of instability in the region” (p. 3). Iraq is accused of being this source of
instability because it had fought an almost decade long war with Iran in the 1980s and then launched an invasion of Kuwait which resulted in it
becoming a pariah state in the 1990s. The notion is that after 2003, the state became a source of instability, not because it projected its power, but
because it became a power vacuum into which Iranian, Saudi and other interests were poured. Nevertheless “the traditional cross-border tensions
Saddam so eagerly exploited have not disappeared and are likely to plague regional relations for years to come” (p. 5).
The editors, a professor of international relations at Lehigh, and two scholars working with the U.S. Institute of Peace bring expertise and
experience to this volume. They have combined an excellent assortment of articles and secured a forward by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, who
worked with the Iraq Study Group and, in Baker’s case, played an important role in shaping the U.S. role in the region.
In ‘the new Iraq’, Phebe Marr and Sam Parker argue that the “Iraqi state is slowly reemerging and, with it, so too are its long-established traditions
of statecraft and power maintenance” (p. 14). However, they correctly note that Iraq is, in some ways, a threat to its neighbors through having
become a weak state. This problem is ever-present, as illustrated by the continuing low level terrorist insurgency in Iraq that has taken place in
2012, after the book was published. What role Iraqi instability played in encouraging the Arab Spring or the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad in
Syria is not clear. Henri Barkey, a professor at Lehigh University, writes in ‘a transformed relationship’ that Iraqi relationship has changed in recent
years. “During much of the Cold War the two countries were on opposite sides of the global divide” (p. 46). Barkey notes that, beginning in 2009,
the Turkish government began a new policy of dialogue with the Kurds and thus, was seeking to transform what had been a conflictual relationship
with the Kurdish proto-state in northern Iraq. The author argues that Turkey’s AKP party’s Islamic outlook allowed it to renew relations with the
Kurds more easily than past Turkish nationalist parties. However the article notes that there is a “time bomb” in relations with the two countries.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate in Turkey; this could become a bone of contention in relations between the two countries. In the final
analysis, however, this article does not seem to offer a clear view of what Turkey’s ongoing policy of incursions into the Kurdish areas of northern
Iraq mean for long-term relations.
Mohsen Milani argues that, regarding the Iranian relationship with Iraq, “the first one began when the war started in March 2003 and ended with the
victory of the Tehran-supported, Shi‘a-dominated United Iraqi Alliance in the elections for the Transitional National Assembly in January 2005” (p.
81). Milani sees a cautious Iranian policy where Iran fears the loyalty of the Shi‘a Arab parties it has supported, and also fears a powerful Iraq.
“This strategy is designed to decrease Iran’s chances of being unpleasantly surprised in Iraq” (p. 85). Iran has also used its policy to pressure the
Iraqi government against the Muhadin el-Khalq, the Iraqi based Iranian dissident group. Like many of the authors, Milani concludes that the Arab
Spring may change Iranian policy in Iraq in the future. As with other articles, it means that the reader is left without a clear conclusion, which
weakens both this article and the volume as a whole.
The entry on Iraqi-Saudi relations is of great interest because of the role the Saudis have played in Iraq over the last two decades. Saudi Arabia
helped encourage Saddam’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and bankrolled Saddam’s armies. At the same time, the Saudis became afraid of the
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