The United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 with the optimistic aim of remaking Iraq into a friendly, stable, democratic state. What went wrong? How did these grandiose objectives go so horribly awry? Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala provide a comprehensive history of the conflict in Iraq from the invasion through mid-2006, detailing the missteps of the U.S.-led coalition. The central argument is that the occupation's failures are not simply the result of errors and incompetence, pre-existing cleavages in Iraqi society, or the ongoing insurgency. Rather, the U.S. failed to engage in effective state-building because it sought to shape the outcome in a self-serving direction (pp. 260–61). The end result, the authors argue, is the fragmentation of the Iraqi state, meaning that “actors dispute where overall political authority lies and there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes” (p. 6).
The book is thoroughly researched and detailed; its chapters describe the effects of the occupation on the Iraqi state, regional actors, non-state actors, the economy, and the larger Iraqi population. This work is doubtless an important contribution to popular and scholarly understandings of post-invasion Iraq, particularly since the study of the occupation is only in its infancy, and careful research is essential for understanding both what has happened in Iraq and what the future might bring.
A key contribution lies in the book's discussion of just how political authority fragmented in the wake of the invasion. The authors provide a nuanced picture of politics in post-invasion Iraq, describing the multiple bases of political power. The third chapter in particular examines cleavages among Iraqi actors and argues that coalition authorities promoted division between local and national actors to prevent any actor from gaining enough power to challenge the occupation (p. 118). The chapter also contains an excellent discussion of how sectarian identities became politically prominent after the occupation began (pp. 147–59).
While the authors are to be commended for their detailed analysis of the occupation and the fragmentation that followed it, the book does not live up to its promise to speak to broader scholarly debates about state-building. The problem stems mainly from the sheer quantity of factors that the authors suggest led to Iraq's fragmentation. In seeking to retain control and build a particular kind of state, the U.S. committed numerous blunders that derailed effective state-building. These blunders included the decision to privilege exiles over domestic actors; de-Baՙthification; the indiscriminate use of force; low levels of interaction between Iraqi and U.S. officials; the failure to provide adequate public goods such as water, electricity, and employment; the privileging of U.S. corporations; high turnover among Coalition Provisional Authority personnel; re-remilitarization; and the use of torture.
It may be that the U.S. bungled the occupation so badly and in so many ways that it is impossible to discern which of the many missteps described mattered most. But the authors would have benefited from considering counterfactuals. What might have happened if the U.S. had not relied so heavily on exiles, but instead immediately sought to engage Iraqis with some popular support? What if the coalition encouraged its allies to reach out to Iraqi society? What if de-Baՙthification had not occurred? What if the U.S. had turned power over immediately, as it originally intended? Alternatively, what if the U.S. had announced a firm commitment to stay in Iraq from the outset? What if the U.S. had been less coercive and worked to engage the broader Iraqi public? Or, what if the use of force had been more effective and the coalition had been able to provide security to larger segments of the Iraqi population?
Undoubtedly, the U.S. made many mistakes, so any attempt to consider counterfactuals would be speculative. But without at least considering how alternative polices might have altered the course of events, the authors gain little leverage over the question of what constitute the critical components of state-building. The authors' attempts to consider how the occupation might have evolved differently are rather uninformative. For instance, they suggest that a legitimate Iraqi political center would have been possible if an authoritative Iraqi national institution capable of constraining the coalition forces existed (p. 82), but this simply begs the question of how such an institution could come into being.
Part of the problem is that the authors fail to define what, if anything, would have counted as effective state-building. They state that the Iraq case demonstrates what happens when the priorities of the sponsor diverge markedly from the requirements of a comprehensive state-building program (p. 276), but they never outline what such a program would entail. Knowing what successful state-building means would provide some way to determine which of the many mistakes were most consequential. By holding so many policies responsible for the outcome in Iraq, and by failing to consider alternatives that might have proven more effective, the authors make it difficult to know just what can be learned from this case. The reader ends up with a lengthy list of highly plausible causes of fragmentation, but no understanding of which were decisive, and therefore no general lesson about the broader requirements of state-building.
Despite this, Iraq in Fragments remains a significant contribution both because it provides a thorough history of the initial years of the occupation and because it suggests future avenues of research. Scholars of state-building will find this a valuable source of hypotheses and insights about the paths that lead to dismal failure. Comparative scholars will certainly want to compare the analysis here to other cases of foreign state-building. Perhaps most importantly, the damning criticism of the conduct of the occupation provides an important lesson for supporters of an interventionist, militaristic foreign policy.
