With its country in peril, the Iraqi government has nonetheless passed a significant milestone: a bloodless transfer of power according without armed American supervision.
A peaceful transfer of power is the main factor separating real democracies, where the will of the people is the source of political influence, from fake democracies, where controlling interests manipulate elections to legitimize their authoritarian behavior.
The Bush Administration empowered Nouri al-Maliki to lead Iraq’s permanent government after the fall of the Baath regime, but from the start he showed a worrisome authoritarian streak.Shrewd analysts thought it likely that, after American withdrawal, he would consolidate power and run the country as yet another strongman. And that's pretty much what he has done for the last few years, even as the Islamic State has conquered much of the country and his authority has come into question.
If the Iranians, the Iraqi military, and the police had continued to obey Maliki in the last several weeks, he could have used force to repress his opponents. The Islamic State might have continued its ruthless conquest with little serious challenge, while Maliki maintained dominion over a shrinking zone of influence.
Fortunately, this nightmare may not play out. With the support of Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders, Iran, and the military, Iraq’s president chose Haider al-Abadi to serve as the Prime Minister of a new unity government. Any number of things could derail the process of forming a unity government in the coming weeks, but for now, it looks like the forces of reason in Iraq’s government have pulled together to defend the nation against those who would break it apart.
I can’t really understate how big of a deal this is for a new democracy — that its most powerful institutions would choose to favor the interests of the nation as a whole over their tribal loyalties.
According to Stanford scholar Francis Fukuyama, writing in his 2011 book The Origins of Political Order, the defining feature of a modern state is the establishment of impersonalized power that is not subject to nepotism or other tribal practices. With Maliki's hold on power challenged, the tribal thing for the military and Shiite parties to do would have been to back him at all costs. But they decided that it was worth more to keep Iraq whole and free of terrorism than it was to defend a leader whose regime had pointedly excluded Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
Deferring to constitutional order, Maliki has submitted to the rule of law. The overarching goal of the politically powerful in Iraq has become, at least temporarily, to keep the country whole and unified, rather than to reward one's ethnic group.
A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have thought this would take place. Iraq looked to be on a path to becoming yet another sectionally fragmented regime, held together only by the force of a dictatorship that was perhaps less maniacally cruel than that of Saddam Hussein, but hardly worth all the blood and treasure lost in years of war.
And this may yet happen. Iraq has a terrible track record of inclusive governance. But it has taken a huge step that we should not overlook. The Islamic State may have accidentally done Iraqi democracy a huge favor by instigating leap forward for its political society. Let’s hope this holds.