Monday, April 12, 2004
A mad social scienced idea: Three-way bargain
From time to time, I'll post mad social science ideas on this site. I'm not endorsing these ideas, just thinking way, way out of the asylum.
Today's idea is to let Condi Rice do some of that big power bargaining she'd rather do than fight terror networks. We try to solve three problems at once. Iraq would be easy to deal with if the Kurds were out of the picture (okay, it would still be a mess, but at least not a three way fight). Give the Kurds their own state. Who won't like this? Turkey. So give Turkey a fast-track to EU membership in exchange for reaching a settlement with the Kurds (maybe even trying to set a decent permanent border to Kurdistan). Of course, the US can't speak to the EU. We'd need to give something big to the EU. So wrap up a list of gifts: sign Kyoto, regulate genetically modified food, heck, we could even provide some military hardware to help get that European Defense Force off the drawing board. Finally (and this helps everyone) we could let the Europeans into running Iraq in a big way.
Would this work? Nah. The Turks would never give up land, and as long as there are Kurds in Turkey, and an independent Kurdistan next door, they'd be antsy. The EU may not be persuadable on Turkey---there's a lot of racism and anti-Islamic feeling in the way. And the Bush admin would never give up any control of Iraq to France et al.
Today's idea is to let Condi Rice do some of that big power bargaining she'd rather do than fight terror networks. We try to solve three problems at once. Iraq would be easy to deal with if the Kurds were out of the picture (okay, it would still be a mess, but at least not a three way fight). Give the Kurds their own state. Who won't like this? Turkey. So give Turkey a fast-track to EU membership in exchange for reaching a settlement with the Kurds (maybe even trying to set a decent permanent border to Kurdistan). Of course, the US can't speak to the EU. We'd need to give something big to the EU. So wrap up a list of gifts: sign Kyoto, regulate genetically modified food, heck, we could even provide some military hardware to help get that European Defense Force off the drawing board. Finally (and this helps everyone) we could let the Europeans into running Iraq in a big way.
Would this work? Nah. The Turks would never give up land, and as long as there are Kurds in Turkey, and an independent Kurdistan next door, they'd be antsy. The EU may not be persuadable on Turkey---there's a lot of racism and anti-Islamic feeling in the way. And the Bush admin would never give up any control of Iraq to France et al.
