As the violence in Iraq drags on month after month, it appears increasingly unlikely that the United States will be able to achieve its preferred solution of establishing a unified, secular, democratic Iraq. We seem to be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. For the first time, some thoughtful people in Washington who believe that unseating Saddam Hussein was the right course of action are beginning to reconsider.

The ideas being discussed involve some kind of federation or partition of Iraq, taking into account the three major ethnic groups which make up the country, namely Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. The starting point for this thinking is that while there are foreigners from countries like Syria and Iran who are fomenting some of the violence, at the end of the day most of the violence is being driven by ethnic hatreds. Sunnis want to kill Shiites to prevent them from taking control of the government. Shiites want to kill Sunnis because it was the Sunnis, and their leader, Saddam Hussein, who killed Shiites for years. The Kurds have their own scores to settle with the Sunnis as well.

A new government is being formed and that is viewed by many as a positive step. It may be positive, but it won't get the job done. The Iraqi government will exist solely within a walled-off area controlled by the United States military. It will not be able to govern Iraq. The violence will not end.

If this pessimistic assessment is correct, then we must think about other alternatives. Federation or partition would go a long way toward solving the underlying problem of ethnic hatreds. This was the solution reached at the end of the Second World War between India and Pakistan, although it took a bitter war to get there. This was also the solution more recently reached in Yugoslavia, although again, a cruel and lengthy war was fought before we reached that result. If the United States, which still has influence because of its military, does not take the lead in forcing federation or partition, then a bloody civil war will produce that result.

One expert, Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College who has served two tours in Iraq as a reservist, has taken this position in a recent book. According to Hashim, the U.S. government's only two options in Iraq are letting a civil war occur or dividing the country. He prefers the latter as “the option that can allow us to leave with honor in tact.”

I recognize that the notion of splitting Iraq will be difficult and cumbersome. The city of Baghdad has residents from all three ethnic groups. Many other towns have various ethnic mixes. There has to be a plan for sharing oil revenues because the Shiites have control of the oil rich south and the Kurds could exercise control over oil in the north.

The solution to the oil problem is the division of oil revenues among the three communities in proportion to their populations. This is an accounting problem that can be easily resolved. Hopefully, there will be a de-escalation of violence with partition and it will be possible to increase oil production sufficient to handle not only Iraqi domestic demand, but also export. All three communities should benefit from this revenue stream.

The division of Baghdad is more complicated. There is no reason that people residing in the same neighborhood cannot be members of different political entities. In the period since the end of the Second World War, the United States and Western European nations have been obsessed with the nation state model, i.e., a single political entity within defined national boundaries. Our unwillingness to think creatively on this issue has led to bloodshed in many parts of Africa as well as in Asia and the Middle East. The time has come to think creatively about alternative political concepts. Iraq should be the first place to do that.

Whether in fact a division or partition of the country will lead to a radical cessation or even the end of the violence and ethnic killing is an open question. There are no guarantees that this approach will succeed. However, it is at least an alternative to the continued downward spiral with escalating violence. Trapped in the current quagmire, the United States should reach out to any other policy that might have a chance of success.