As Iraq's political leaders crisscrossed the region holding meetings in various neighboring capitals in the run-up to and aftermath of the March 7 parliamentary elections, they provided a running display of the country's continued vulnerability to the actions, both benign and malign, of its regional neighbors. While these cordial meetings were described as friendly consultations and information-sharing exercises, they reflect a stark reality: Iraq's future is not solely in its own hands, and due to its weakness, the country's future course will be shaped by both the actions and interference of its neighbors.
Less clear is Iraq's contribution to the region's future. As the war in Iraq spiraled out of control beginning in 2004, the Iraq War's legacy was understood in the negative, largely in terms of the destabilizing spillover effects emanating from within its borders. Long gone were fantastical notions of the war paving the way for a new regional order, what the
Lebanese-American scholar Fouad Ajami described as "the spearheading of a reformist project [seeking] to modernize and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the starting point, and beyond Iraq [lay] an Arab political and economic tradition and a culture whose agonies and failures have been on cruel display." ...