Everybody Needs Good Neighbours: Iraqi Foreign Policy after the Elections

摘要

Recent media reports tend to give the impression that Iraq is, if not quite an island, then certainly besieged from all sides. The present focus on the daily violence and the January elections understandably dominate the agenda, with attention being paid to the wider regional context only when it seems to relate to one of these two issues. Discussion of Iraq's relations with its neighbours rarely extends beyond the question of whether Syria and Iran are doing enough to seal their borders — and this question is only of interest because of the key role foreign fighters are alleged to be playing within the Iraqi insurgency. Yet this myopia is misguided, for present developments between Iraq and its neighbours are effectively laying down the foreign policy foundations for the postelection government. Given the turbulence Iraqi foreign policy has created in the past -from the invasion of Kuwait to the war with Iran to the hostility with the rival Ba'thist regime in Syria, the question of Iraq's relations with neighbouring states is rather more than idle academic speculation.