Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War

""Iraq is rapidly descending into all-out civil war. Unfortunately, the United States probably will not be able to just walk away from the chaos. Even setting aside the humanitarian nightmare that will ensue, a full-scale civil war would likely consume more than Iraq: historically, such massive conflicts have often had highly deleterious effects on neighboring countries and other outside states. Spillover from an Iraq civil war could be disastrous."" Thus begins this sobering analysis of what the near future of Iraq could look like, and what America can do to reduce the threat of wider conflict. Preventing spillover of the Iraqi conflict into neighboring states must be a top priority. In explaining how that can be accomplished, Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack draw on their own considerable expertise as well as relevant precedents. The authors scrutinize several recent civil wars, including Lebanon, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. After synthesizing those experiences into lessons on how civil wars affect other nations, Byman and Pollack draw from them to produce recommendations for U.S. policy. Even while the Bush Administration attempts to prevent further deterioration of the situation in Iraq, it needs to be planning how to deal with a full-scale civil war if one develops.

About the Author :
Daniel L. Byman is a nonresident senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He also directs the Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University's Edmund A.Walsh School of Foreign Service. His books include Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge, 2005). Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is research director for the Saban Center. He is author of The Persian Puzzle:The Conflict between Iran and America (Random House, 2004) and The Threatening Storm:The Case for Invading Iraq (Random House, 2002).

Review :
"This is a timely book that addresses an important issue with unmistakeable political and policy implications. Highly recommended." - CHOICE "Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack should thus be commended for considering the nature and consequences of a full-scale civil war in Iraq. Although supporters and critics of the George W. Bush administration might find it hard to imagine a further deterioration of the situation in that war-torn country, Byman and Pollack lay out a doomsday scenario that could embroil the entire Middle East in war. Things Fall Apart does not predict that a full-blown civil war will erupt in Iraq, but by surveying conflicts in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Lebanon, Congo, and Afghanistan, it identifies policies that have tended to exacerbate past conflicts." - James J. Wirtz, Naval Postgraduate School, Political Science Quarterly "Well-researched and written, Things Fall Apart is a useful exercise in thinking one step ahead... [it] provides an invaluable framework from which policymakers across the political spectrum might begin to develop strategies to contain a collapsing Iraqi state." - Michael Rubin, Middle East Quarterly