Luttwak on Iraq: Divide and Conquer

Ever since being handed a copy of Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook, I have loved Luttwak, who, with the brilliant originality of an autodidact, consistently succeeds in coming out of left field.

His thesis is that America has accidentally achieved its war aims (whether these were secondary aims or not, these should have been and probably were its central, realpolitik aims).

When the Bush administration came into office, only Egypt and Jordan were
functioning allies of the U.S. Iran and Iraq were already declared enemies,
Syria was hostile, and even its supposed friends in the Arabian peninsula were
so disinclined to help that none did anything to oppose al Qaeda. Some actively
helped it, while others knowingly allowed private funds to reach the terrorists
whose declared aim was to kill Americans.

The Iraq war has indeed brought into existence a New Middle East, in which Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S. What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally. But the result is exactly the same.

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009521