The Foreign Service Journal, March 2008

based system. They could be allowed some form of loose coor- dination short of autonomy to sweeten the deal. Or they could, as one constitutional expert sug- gests, be allowed the kind of autonomy Scotland enjoys, while the south remains fully unified. It is not at all clear that Iraqis have the political maturity to manage such a transition, the fifth in four years. But with large amounts of political, diplomatic and financial support, such a system could be imple- mented when the time is right. The key will be creating the right internal conditions for today’s power brokers to see moving in this direction as being in their best inter- est. If skillfully developed, such a course correction would not only facilitate but require a coalition withdrawal under conditions more favorable to the U.S. than in other poten- tial scenarios. This would serve us well in the global war on ter- ror. Our current policy works at cross-purposes: on a tactical level, U.S. forces are providing security and staving off sectarian fighting, while the images of occupation are stoking the flames of jihad globally. The key is to extricate U.S. forces from Iraq without evincing weakness or lack of staying power. A political plan that requires with- drawal in order to work would be one way of doing so. Only 18-state federalism can create a united and func- tioning Iraq, encouraging Iraqis to engage each other in the political arena and get on with the business of reforming their state in a way that it can function in the long term. F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 On a tactical level, U.S. forces are providing security and staving off sectarian fighting, while the images of occupation are stoking the flames of jihad globally.