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Iran will dominate the Shi'ite south. Iran's Iraqi allies already dominate Shi'ite southern Iraq. If the U.S. were serious about countering Iran's influence, U.S. troops would have to forcefully disarm the Shi'ite militias and dismantle the southern theocracies. But this would mean taking on a whole new enemy in Iraq and also require committing more troops. The Bush Administration has no intention of doing either. Right now, Iran's allies control both the central government in Baghdad and the south. Partition would limit Iran's influence to the southern half of Iraq.
A divided Iraq will be destabilizing to Iraq's neighbors. Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors all fear the destabilizing consequences of partition. But they fear an Iran-dominated Iraq even more. Turkey, Iraq's other powerful neighbor, has a population that includes at least 14 million Turkish Kurds. The Turkish nightmare has been the emergence of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq. But now that it is actually happening, Turkey has responded pragmatically: it is by far the largest source of investment in Iraqi Kurdistan and has cultivated close relations with its leaders. As Turkey's more sophisticated strategic thinkers understand, Turkey and an independent Kurdistan have a lot in common. Both are secular, pro-Western, democratic and non-Arab. Not only will Kurdistan depend on Turkey economically, but it can serve as a useful buffer to an Iran-dominated Islamic Iraq.
For many Americans, the biggest appeal of partition is that it makes possible a relatively rapid U.S. exit from much of Iraq. If U.S. goals no longer include preserving national unity or establishing Western-style democracy, there is no need for U.S. troops in the Shi'ite south or Baghdad. We would leave behind a civil war and an Iran-dominated south, but that outcome would be no different if we were to stay with the current force levels and mission. One overriding interest in Iraq, however, is still achievable: that Iraq's Sunni areas not become a base from which al-Qaeda and its allies might attack the West. With the security that comes from having their own region, the Sunnis might deal more effectively with the terrorist threat, since continuing violence would prevent economic progress in the Sunni areas. While local leaders are now unwilling to fight the most radical elements of the insurgency when the beneficiary is Iraq's Shi'ites, they may be more willing to do so when it benefits them.
The U.S. will still need an insurance policy against the threat of al-Qaeda in western Iraq. This could be accomplished by deploying a small force to Kurdistan, from which the U.S. could readily move back into the adjacent Sunni areas if necessary to disrupt al-Qaeda operations. This force would discharge a moral debt to the Kurds who fought on our side and could help consolidate democracy in the one part of Iraq that turned out as we hoped.