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The time has come to think the unthinkable, about creating a Kurdish state in the north, an Arab Sunni one in the center around Baghdad, and an Arab Shia state in the south around Basra. Repeating mantras about territorial integrity -- the conventional wisdom of international relations -- is productive only as long as it ensures stability and averts chaos. Again, as Yugoslavia -- and the Soviet Union -- showed, once strife replaces stability, territorial integrity loses its strategic meaning and legitimacy.
This is not a universal prescription for ethnically homogenous states. The point is simply that there are moments in history when democratization and nation building coincide, and that in deeply divided societies the minimum consensus needed for both to succeed simultaneously is difficult to achieve. All this may run contrary to conventional wisdom, but who thought that the USSR would disintegrate? Creative and innovative thinking is needed about Iraq; otherwise today's mayhem will continue -- and worsen.
Shlomo Avineri is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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