Without that common history and tradition, can Iraq pull itself together after dictatorship and war?
Theoretically, they should have an even greater advantage because they have oil, but there is a major difference culturally. Poland has a 1,000-year history right smack in the middle of the community of nations. Iraq is not really a nation-state; it is a patchwork of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias. Those were three separate provinces of the Ottoman Empire and did not even belong to one territory. The state was arbitrarily created by the British and is only about 85-years-old. So there is cohesion, but it is fragile. America is a nation of immigrants, but it is common values that hold us together. I often get questions when I am lecturing in Europe about what makes Americans tick. It’s values; it’s our founding fathers. Q: Does the European Union have a promising future? The EU has stopped its growth for a while because, obviously, they have had a lot of problems with the new countries that have an uneven level of development. Right now they have a problem with the euro. Greece went deeply int
