In the middle of World War I, two European diplomats, Mark Sykes and Charles Georges-Picot, sketched out the borders for an entirely new nation-state system in the Middle East. The map they drew served European interests but did not reflect Middle Eastern realities. We all have been paying the price ever since.

A state is a government, recognized as having the sovereign right to rule over a specific territory. A nation is a group of people who identify with each other because they share some important characteristic -- a common language, ethnicity, culture or history.

	Christina W. Michelmore is chair of the History Department at Chatham College and a specialist in modern Middle Eastern history (michelmore@ chatham.edu).

In Messrs. Sykes' and Picot's Europe, these two entities tended to coincide geographically and work together. But in the Middle East, the Europeans drew a map that, on the one hand, created nations without states. Groups of people who felt they belonged together were stuck in other people's states and have been trying ever since to create states for themselves -- the Kurds and Palestinians, for example.

On the other hand, the map also ended up creating states without nations. After World War II, Syria, Iraq and Jordan suddenly emerged as states, with governments, borders and U.N. recognition, but with few people who identified themselves as Syrians, Iraqis or Jordanians. The people who lived in these states had no real sense of belonging together.

In the 86 years since Middle East borders were set, most Arabs have developed some degree of loyalty to the territorial states in which they live and to the bigger ethnic Arab nation to which they belong, but they have retained old loyalties to the sects, ethnic groups, tribes and families into which they were born.

These multiple political identities have practical implications. A territorial Iraqi nationalist may think of the oil and the water of Iraq as national resources belonging to everyone in Iraq. For an Arab nationalist, the water and oil belong to Arabs generally, but not to the Kurds living in Iraq. To a Sunni Muslim nationalist, they might belong to Sunni Arabs, Sunni Turks and Sunni Kurds, but not to Shiite Muslims who live in Iraq.

In fragmented societies like this, who controls the government is of existential importance because the fragments always worry about survival. They are attached to the state insofar as it can establish order and provide services. Violence undermines that attachment; insecurity strengthens group loyalties because close-knit clans seem to provide the only safe haven and comfort.

That is why, at least in the short- to mid-term, building up Iraqi security forces to pacify the country is a pipe dream. In the insecurity of Saddam Hussein's terror and in the terror of post-Saddam chaos, the "Iraqi" identity has disappeared. There now are only Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, and even divisions within those groups.

Therefore, if security forces are sufficiently mixed by ethnicity and sect, they fall apart when used. If, like the forces of the Ministry of Interior and increasingly the Ministry of Defense, they are not mixed, they are employed for ethnic and sectarian purposes. Other groups see them as a threat and are forced to strengthen their own armed groups. The violence intensifies, the state grows weaker and sub-national groups grow stronger.

The tragic irony is that you need security to build a security force.

We should have learned this lesson two decades ago in Lebanon. The Reagan administration planned to rebuild Lebanon by building a Lebanese army. But there were no "Lebanese;" when the government tried to use the army, it fragmented along confessional lines -- Christians went their way, Muslims went another. Lebanon's government still can't use the army to extend its sovereignty over the Hezbollah-dominated Shiite south. If it tried, the army, and perhaps the country, once again would fall apart.

This means that the much-touted idea to have "U.S. forces stand down as Iraqi forces stand up," is a pretend plan. Politicians pointlessly argue about whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is strong enough, or whether a timetable for U.S. withdrawal would focus Iraqi will to make the country secure. It is time to look the monster we have created in the eyes. When we do, we see two bad choices.

We can admit that the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis is irretrievably lost. Whether they ever were winnable or whether they were lost due to inexcusable ineptitude is irrelevant. We have lost, and we should leave. America has admitted defeat before -- in Vietnam, in Lebanon and in Somalia -- and has survived.

The real impediment to this choice is the almost universal belief that Iraq will fall apart, not neatly into three sections but into chaos. And that the chaos will spread through the Middle East. At least in part, the anti-war movement in the United States is feeble because leaving seems as immoral and dangerous as the initial invasion.

The other option is to stay in Iraq but acknowledge that current troop levels are totally inadequate to create the secure environment in which an Iraqi nation might reemerge. Given the strains on our armed services, we probably can't provide more troops. To get help from others, we would have to admit failure, if not defeat, and seek assistance from both allies and enemies. The world's oil consumers and Iraq's neighbors have every interest in a stable Iraq. But they won't help as long as a dithering and deluded United States is in charge of a plan with no chance of success.

Regardless of which of these two unpalatable alternatives find favor, the United States needs to discuss with Iraqi, regional and international actors the possibility that Iraq will break up along ethnic and sectarian lines. In the short term, we may not be able to stop it. In the long term, new borders, drawn to recognize local loyalties and identities, may be the beginning of a more legitimate and durable nation-state system in the Middle East.

In this midterm election season, U.S. leaders on both sides of the aisle have opted for the "pretend" plan. It is much safer politically.

But on the ground in Iraq it is not safer for Americans (thousands killed and wounded) or Iraqis (hundreds of thousands killed and wounded) as American leaders remain unwilling to admit mistakes or try to fix them. It is not safer for a volatile and important region of the world. It is not safer for American standing or security in the world.