IN Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American" Alden Pyle, a CIA operative in Vietnam in the early 1950s, is convinced that the country could be saved if only there were a "third force" in the conflict besides the French and the communist Viet Minh. He picked this idea up from a globetrotting political theorist he worships named York Harding, who thinks third-world countries can be rescued from communism by promoting "national democracy". "Harding had been here once for a week on his way from Bangkok to Tokyo," says the novel's narrator, a sceptical British journalist. "Pyle made the mistake of putting his idea into practice. Harding wrote about a Third Force. Pyle formed one—a shoddy little bandit with two thousand men and a couple of tame tigers. He got mixed up." Alden Pyle was a fictional character, but Greene was a perceptive guy, and the American desire to create a non-existent democratic-nationalist third force in Vietnam was quite real. The incarnation of that third force, America's "shoddy little bandit", was Ngo Dinh Diem, a reasonably non-corrupt Catholic nationalist whom America backed to run South Vietnam after the French were driven out. America even managed to get Diem to contest an election in 1955, which he predictably stole. Diem's rule was ultimately based on patronage and cronyism, and his Catholic-led faction wound up persecuting Vietnam's Buddhists, which distracted him from the fight America wanted him to pursue against the communists. By 1963 the government's anti-Buddhist campaign had grown so vicious that America acquiesced when Diem's generals overthrew and murdered him. This led to a succession of other corrupt, incompetent military rulers ratified in fraudulent elections, whose government ultimately disintegrated in the face of the well-organised, politically coherent communists after America withdrew its military support. Exeunt Third Force.

Forty years later in Iraq, America found itself in a similar predicament. Having dissolved the totalitarian nationalist state of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, it found that there were no remaining political structures or constituencies to hold the country together. Political affiliations all seemed to divide the country along tribal or religious lines, with the largest divide between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority. (There were also the Kurds, of course, but it was more convenient for all concerned to simply allow them to establish their own pseudo-state in the north while pretending they were still part of Iraq.) In the Arab south, establishing a democratic government meant handing power to the majority Shiites, which triggered a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. America knew just what was needed: a Third Force, an elected leader who could run an inclusive government embracing both Shiites and Sunnis. With the help of a surge in American troops, that's what we got.

As Dexter Filkins explained recently in the New Yorker, American ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad effectively picked the new leader, Nuri al-Maliki, a reasonably non-corrupt Shiite nationalist, after post-election negotiations over forming a government stalemated. The Americans used their influence to persuade him to include Sunnis in the army and the government bureaucratic apparatus. American backing (and planeloads of American cash) ensured Mr Maliki stayed at the head of Shiite politics, while the Shiite majority ensured he would win elections. Then the Americans left, and Mr Maliki's government turned sectarian. Sunni representatives were kicked out. The Sunni-Shiite split ripped open again, and when a vicious, disciplined Sunni insurgent army attacked, Mr Maliki's flimsy state began to crumble.

Now America is being asked to return and save Mr Maliki's government from those Sunni insurgents. As a condition for military intervention, Barack Obama has demanded that the Iraqi state bring Sunnis back into government. Effectively, this means Mr Maliki must go. Once again, America believes that Iraq can be saved from the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis by something in the middle, an inclusive Iraqi leader, a third force. The fact that no such leader has appeared to date, and that the previous government quickly reverted to sectarian rivalry once American troops left, is chalked up to the personal ineptitude of Mr Maliki.

Perhaps this is right. Maybe Mr Maliki himself is at fault for the failure of Iraqi pluralism. Certainly, his government seems to have made a lot of dumb moves (including massacring Sunni protestors) that helped turn a once peaceful Sunni protest movement into a violent revolt. And yet it seems likely that the problem is not just the competence or character of Mr Maliki, but the political structure of Iraq, or lack of it. Mr Maliki has survived for eight years in a cut-throat political environment; he is not a stupid man. Why would he think it necessary to give up on including Sunnis in government, and instead strengthen his backing among Shiites? Why doesn't he think a pluralistic Iraq is a plausible option? If Mr Maliki does not think that an inclusive government can survive in today's Iraq, could it be that he is right?

I don't think there is anything wrong with the Obama administration's strategy of demanding an inclusive government in exchange for American military intervention. If Iraq does not form a non-sectarian, inclusive government, there is no particular reason why America should aid it. There is no reason for America to deploy deadly force to defend an ethnically repressive Iranian ally from security threats it has itself created. Either Iraqi Shiites will try to reconcile with the Sunni minority, in which case it may make sense to offer them help against ISIS's fanatics, or they won't, in which case America can stay out of a mess it helped create but has little hope of influencing for the better.

Meanwhile, it's time for us to lie on the couch and think about this pattern we keep getting ourselves into. Over and over in the wars America conducts we attempt to create political entities that meet our ideological criteria, but have no natural constituency in the countries themselves. Maliki, Karzai, Diem: we become infuriated at the leaders we install when they fail to carry out our vision of progress. We are the world's biggest Hegelians, analysing every conflict as a clash between two opposing principles that need to be resolved, and then trying to create that synthesis. We have the same longing in domestic politics, for that matter. If only some great moderate could bridge the gap between the two parties, and bring us all together towards the reasonable consensus! We cannot seem to understand that if there were a constituency for that middle position, someone would be occupying that space; if there is no one in that space, it is because the middle position has no constituency. We keep trying to create a third force that does not exist. We need to stop it. The forces on the ground are the forces on the ground. If we support one side, we should back that side, and if not, not. If the two sides want peace, we can help them reach peace. If they want to fight, they will.

(Photo credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP)