--- title: Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves? | TIME description: Are the changes the US brought to Iraq likely to last? canonical: https://time.com/video/L185EqA9/ og:title: Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves? og:description: Are the changes the US brought to Iraq likely to last? og:url: https://time.com/video/L185EqA9/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/L185EqA9/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves? twitter:description: Are the changes the US brought to Iraq likely to last? twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/L185EqA9/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves? [Watch (HLS stream): Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/L185EqA9.m3u8) (4:22)  _Published 2011-11-21. Are the changes the US brought to Iraq likely to last?_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:19 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Iraq's Parliament Calls for Expulsion of U.S. Troops](/video/SRHTg0TF/) ### Iraq's Parliament Calls for Expulsion of U.S. Troops [U.S. Troops Leaving Syria Will Move to Western Iraq, Defense Secretary Says](/video/05UX0iqA/) ### U.S. Troops Leaving Syria Will Move to Western Iraq, Defense Secretary Says [U.S. Likely to Fall Short of International Climate Change Commitments](/video/5LsfUYgS/) ### U.S. Likely to Fall Short of International Climate Change Commitments --- ## Transcript This is Command Post, a series of discussions about military matters from Time and the Center for a New American Security. Michael, you went to the Brookings Institution, and have been putting together this Iraq index for years. That's a real neat chart that shows us how Iraq is faring. And in a lot of ways it's doing pretty good but it aint doing great. What are the risks, that whatever the gains are we have achieved in Iraq over the last eight years will come tumbling down, How secure do you think what we have built in Iraq is after we leave? I think the chances of it more or less holding together are better then fifty fifty. But certainly less than 90 %. And the question, therefore, I think is what happens if it starts to go south? Does it fail catastrophically or is there some sort of intermediate, you know, landing point where it arrives without us? Cuz I don't think we are going back. So, whatever is happening now, it's gonna be our last military role. And, if the Iraqis wind up going back to civil war, whether it's Arab- Curd or Suni- Shia, or some mix of all that, then I think you get some kind of a Bosnia like partitioning at the end. And, along the way, a lot of ugliness. You know, that's sort of the, the serious scenario. The more likely one, is, that, you get something well short of democracy. Maybe more like a, you know, Musharraf, or a Mubarak or something else even a little less benign. But it doesn't totally turn into war. But it's certainly is not something we are proud of or feel like even stabilizes the region in any way. So I was gonna You know, assign rough probability. 60 % that it's tolerable, gradual progress. 10 % disaster, and 30 % some kind of, you know, neither fish nor foul. Not democracy or dictatorship. Not war or peace. Well, I think it, it's really up to the Iraqi's now. We've done what we can. Key thing is, do they threaten the region? Whatever happens there, does it undermine the region? and provoke some sort of, you know, war. One of the things we learned in Libya, we're not the only ones impacted by what happens in, in that part of the world. And the international community needs to deal with it. But I, I can't emphasize it too much, it's really up to the Iraqi's. We've done what we can. It's out of our hands. And what the decisions that they make, basically we only have to look at them in terms of our national interest. Larry, you said, America did what it could. In Iraq. Final go around. Was it worth doing? Heck no. If you had told the American people we're going to Iraq and we're gonna lose 4500 Americans, 30, 000 wounded, hundreds of thousands with mental problems, kill several hundred thousand Iraqis. And spend, you know, a trillion dollars so Iraq could have an election, you'd of been laughed outta the ballpark. I can't disagree with that. I mean Larry does a great job of. Summarizing the horrible costs. And a lot of them were preventable. So I'm not gonna just say yes. I'm gonna say I hope that the balance sheet looks okay and passable over the next few years. For the reasons we've been discussing today, it's too soon to venture that. And even if Iraq turns out okay. I wouldn't wanna sound insensitive to the horrible costs, which were so high, and higher than they should have been. Measured against sorta the status quo of where Iraq was in the' 90s, it's hard to say that all this cost was worth it. But measured against what might have happened. And I don't wanna sound too much like Dick Cheney but nonetheless, things things were not necessarily stable, at their, 1990's level. And don't forget Iran is a much bigger country, much bigger threat. They have, their power's been increased in the region. At the end, the balance of power is less favorable to us than, than it was even with Saddam in power. I'm a little more hopeful on that point. I do think Iraqis are pretty nationalistic and that Iran does have influence but there's a check on it. And if the worst thing is that, you know, Iraq is somewhat Finland- ized, I can live with that. What I would have a harder time living with is Uday Hussein with a nucleur weapon. Measured against what might have been, there's a little better case for this, provided that Iraqis now make use of the oppourtunity they have. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Will Iraq Fall Apart after the U.S. Leaves?","description":"Are the changes the US brought to Iraq likely to last?","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/L185EqA9/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2011-11-21T15:04:45.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/L185EqA9.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/L185EqA9/","duration":"PT4M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/L185EqA9/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```