I’ve recently returned from the RAND Corporation’s Graduate School in Santa Monica. RAND was created after WWII to help the U.S. analyze Cold War policy. It is surely the world’s premier think tank. (See their web site, www.rand.org, for the full breadth of their research.) Among applicants to their Ph.D. program, the most common score is a perfect 800 on the GRE Quantitative Test. Several of their senior scholars have contributed to our Montana judges conferences; all were well received. In sum, RAND is a most impressive place.

Eighty percent of RAND’s $100 million budget comes from federal government research contracts. A recent RAND study, “Burden of Victory: The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations” by James T. Quinlivan, analyzed America’s record bringing peace and order to war-torn countries. He concluded: “[S]uccessful strategies for population security and control have required force ratios either as large as or larger than 20 security personnel ... per thousand inhabitants. This figure is roughly 10 times the ratio required for simple policing of a tranquil population.”

Several RAND studies imply a need for half a million troops to achieve stability in Iraq, both unlikely prospects. Kinship and tribal loyalties drive this requirement. No one has discovered successful stabilization strategies that avoid large troop commitments.

Nearly three years ago, just after Saddam was captured, I wrote: “After we celebrate and praise our military and intelligence forces, let’s put our hopes and expectations in their proper boxes.... Sorting fervent hopes from prudent expectations requires understanding fundamental, immutable truths of cultures and political economy.” And here’s one critical truth: When tribal and kin loyalties trump the rule of law, efforts to achieve democracy, modernity, and civil society are doomed. Apparently Major General Thurman, senior commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, learned this when evaluating American efforts at peace and unification.

“Part of our problem is that we want this [unified Iraq] more than they do,” General Thurman said. “We need to get people to stop worrying about self and start worrying about Iraq. And that is going to take national unity.” But this is gross naïveté; for example, several police stations allied their forces with militias to fight the national government.

We can’t impose our ideal of government upon an incompatible culture. A government based on the rule of law can’t work in a society where clan and tribal loyalties dominate. The rule of law implies and indeed requires universal standards, not the particularistic allegiance inherent to kinship obligations.

In tribal societies, kin ties trump other obligations. When one cannot operate under the benefits of the rule of law, default reliance is on clan strength. This explains why nearly half of Iraqis are married to cousins. In such societies, blood really is thicker than water.

University of Baghdad sociologist Ihsan M. al-Hassan explained, “If one person in your clan does something wrong, you favor him anyway, and you expect others to treat their relatives the same way.” When you don’t have recourse to fair laws impartially administered, people have strong incentives to maintain personal and tribal militias.

It’s no accident there are nearly ten times as many independent countries today as in 1900. The use of government to plunder rather than protect explains high demand for more localized rule. While academics may reject this reality, peasants know that when governments allocate wealth and opportunities, relatives are rewarded.

Culturally and religiously dappled societies work only when government operates in accord with the rule of law, property rights prevail, and decisions are somewhat democratic. There are no such conditions in Iraq or, aside from Israel, anywhere else in the Middle East.

I fear we’ve squandered America’s blood and dollars while fostering corruption both here and in Iraq. Partition or extinction will ultimately occur, for the logic is compelling and forces relentless.

Creating a unified Iraq from three distinct groups, each divided by loyalty to ties of kinship (Kurds vs. ethnic Arabs) and religion (Shiites vs. Sunnis), is possible only through overwhelming and brutal force. My recent experiences with RAND personnel and publications convince me it’s possible to think clearly about such problems. But America’s challenge is to find a way to honorably and prudently leave Iraq. Alas, even RAND has not identified a viable strategy.