And then the Kurds in Syria, Turkey, and Iran will want to join their brothers in an all-Kurd state, and the region explodes into an ethnic war that leaves thousands dead. Yeah "much better".Eh... Iraq maybe not. It offers a pretty clean three-way break, plus, maybe ceding some bits to the neighbors.
Kurds get the Northern bit - be sure to include not just the Kurdish max claims, but the Assyrian bits near Ninevah - the Kurds have aways been the one group that got along with all the various groups that called it home, especially pre-ISIS. Better yet, give them as much as the northern oil fields around Tikrit as possible.
A giant chunk of the Sunni majority West goes can either be another Sunni Arab republic, or given to Jordan. More likely a combination of both.
A chunk of the South, especially the bits inhabited by the Marsh Arabs? Kuwait. They've had a claim on the area forever, they've been a faithful US ally, similar ethnic and religious mix, and they've got more money than god to spent on developing/integrating it. Plus, perfect karma for Sadam's attempt to do the reverse. Plus, not like Kuwait will complain about more oil fields.
What you're left with is a majority Shitte Iraqi rump state centered mostly on Baghdad. Frankly, if the Iranian's want to puppet this last bit, they can feel free.
Boom, you've beefed up two of our main allies in the region, created a third with the Kurds, and the new borders match political/religious/geopolitical lines much better than the abomination created by Sykes-Picot.
Sykes-Picot never got implemented as envisioned.The Sykes-Picot agreement messed up the region
That is not it.Lots of funf making new countries on a map. Not so much fun implmenting it.
Oh good because proper implementation of the attempt to carve up the Middle East along the original plan's lines would have been so much better.Sykes-Picot never got implemented as envisioned.
You don't get my point.Oh good because proper implementation of the attempt to carve up the Middle East along the original plan's lines would have been so much better.
Where people believed the invasion was a good idea.What world could he have been living in?
You don't get my point.
People going on about "ethnic composition" seem to forget that S-P did take it into consideration. If that is not good enough then neither is anything else.
Irrelevant to the question of partition.Colonialism and imperialism are pretty difficult to justify in the first place.
Yes, but "insiders" themselves are the ones who have made a mess of the place. People just find it convenient to blame something from decades ago that never went into effect.Ethnic identity is often fluid and difficult to understand by outsiders, thus any agreement imposed by imperial powers is unlikely to succeed.