ABSTRACT
None of the proposals for extracting the United States from the debacle in Iraq recognise the root causes of the violence and instability that has plagued the country since April 2003. The origins of the Iraqi civil war lie in the complete collapse of both the administrative and coercive capacity of the state. The Iraqi state, its ministries, their civil servants, police force and army ceased to exist in a meaningful way in the aftermath of regime change. It is the United States’ inability to reconstruct them that lies at the heart of the Iraq problem. Until the state’s capacity is substantially rebuilt - if ever - Iraq will continue to be violently unstable. Unless the United States can commit to the generation-long project of rebuilding the Iraqi state, Iraq will continue to be a place of misery for its population and instability for its region. This is a defeat of historic proportions for US foreign policy.
