The axis of the formerly evil | Very well, let's talk | Economist.com

The axis of the formerly evil

Very well, let's talk

Mar 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition

Welcome America's decision to talk to Syria and Iran—but don't expect too much

BIT by bit, and with visible reluctance, George Bush is accepting the need to do business with the countries he tried at the beginning of his presidency to consign to an “axis of evil”. In February he said he was “pleased” by a deal that will send aid to North Korea even before it gives up the atomic bombs Mr Bush once said he would never allow it to obtain. Now Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, has told Congress that American envoys will later this month sit at the table with Iran and Syria at an international conference being convened in Baghdad by the government of Iraq.

Why he turned

Events have not lately been going swimmingly for Mr Bush either on the ground in Iraq or up at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Many members of the new Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, are eager to bring the boys home from a war they think America has already lost. In December the bipartisan Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton told Congress that one way to prevent further chaos was to include all of Iraq's neighbours in a new diplomatic offensive, and especially to “engage constructively” with Iran and Syria. Having rejected the group's other main recommendation—the beginning of a phased withdrawal of combat forces—Mr Bush has evidently decided to give his critics on the Hill a part at least of what they have been asking for.

Whether or not this about-turn helps to appease Congress (see article), its impact on Iraq is almost certain to be beneficial. The Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki has never received much support from its Sunni Arab neighbours, some of whom see it as the creature of an increasingly assertive Iran. Foreign fighters enter Iraq from Syria to help the Sunni insurgency; Iranian arms and agents flow across another border to support the Shia militias. No even moderately stable future looks possible without some sort of co-operation between Iraq's American occupiers and its Arab, Persian and Turkish neighbours. If all goes well, this month's meeting in Baghdad, and a second one planned at a more senior level for April, could blossom into a “contact group” of the sort that proved fairly helpful in Bosnia during the Balkan wars.

Talking is good. But it would be wrong to expect too much from this particular set of negotiations. For many of these interlocutors have sharply conflicting interests. One of Iran's aims is, bluntly, to make America fail. The two countries are locked in a trial of strength over Iran's nuclear ambitions. America, Syria and Iran are also on opposite sides in the conflicts between Israel and Hamas and between Hizbullah and the government of Lebanon. It is possible that in the margins of the talks in Baghdad American and Iranian envoys could broach such broader questions, including the nuclear one. But there is little evidence on any of these fronts of a grand bargain in the making. Indeed, this week's change of tack by Ms Rice coincided with a new push by America and Europe for tighter anti-nuclear sanctions on Iran.

In December Mr Baker and Mr Hamilton noted that none of Iraq's neighbours wants it to collapse altogether. That is true, and a small reason for optimism. But this is not the sort of civil war that any outside power or collection of them can now stop at will. Though foreign jihadists and meddlesome neighbours add to the violence, its main cause is the refusal of Iraq's own Sunni minority to accept a new order dominated by Shias—and the reluctance of the Shias to make the concessions that could change the Sunnis' minds. The Americans and the neighbours can help or hinder progress, but Iraqis themselves need to make the peace.

The axis of the formerly evil | Very well, let's talk | Economist.com