IRAQ'S MEJI RESTORATION?
Although Professor Dresner knows far more than I do about East Asia history, I am dubious about the usefulness of this comparison. Japan had tremendous advantages over Iraq in the nation building process.
Most importantly, it had the starting point of an ethnically/culturally homogeneous society. Despite internal clan and political divisions, the Japanese people had a strong and centuries-long common sense of nationhood. Iraq, by contrast, is a multi-ethnic/multi-religious artificial entity which was cobbled together in the twentieth century by the British. It is Bosnia writ large and, like Bosnia, probably cannot survive on its own as a unified democracy.
Although it too is a long shot, partition probably represents the best hope for freedom and peace in Iraq. Unfortunately, the U.S. state department can always be depended on to oppose such a solution (much as it did in the 1990s for Bosnia). The bloody demonstrations yesterday in Kirkuk between Turkmen, Sunnis, and Kurds do not bode well for those who wish to “build” a unified and democratic Iraq.
Finally, despite Commodore Perry and other foreign pressure, Japanese modernization was ultimately an indigenous process. Thus far, Iraqi modernization/democratization is a foreign imposed affair. As a result, Iraqi modernizers and democratizers, in contrast to the Japanese in the Meji period, are more likely to be tainted among their own people as lackeys of foreign imperialists.