Iraq As Finland?

Michael Burleigh makes the case:

...as President Bush recently acknowledged, the US needs Iran to leave Iraq in a long-term stable condition. It is currently Iran that is not turning up to the offer of meetings. One scenario I’ve heard about is the Finnish solution. At the end of WWII, the US and USSR agreed that while Finland would be a democracy based on liberal capitalism, it would not join NATO and major decisions would be subject to Soviet veto. Although the prospect seems unlikely, Iran is terrified of a revival of Sunni dominance and a renewal of the war which cost a million Iranian dead in the 1980s. The US is also adamant that Iraq’s oil will not fall under Iranian suasion. One solution is therefore for Iraq to become a latterday Finland. Independent, but incapable of menacing its neighbours. That would also assuage Saudi fears about a Shia dominated northern neighbour.

Something like this will be inevitable, if only because, like Finland and the USSR, the geographical proximity and regional pull of Iran on Shia-run Iraq is irresistible - and certainly more powerful than any distant hyper-power's influence. A more normal Iraq in a few years' time - and that's the best possible scenario right now - will be a major advance for Shia Iran. We will have succeeded in moving the faultline between Shia and Sunni a few hundred miles West. In the end, that's what 4,000 military deaths, probably close to 200,000 civilian deaths, and $3 trillion will have accomplished. If we're lucky.