Everyone is wondering how America can either make Iraq work internally or exit Iraq with as little damage to U.S. national security as possible. The arguments in Washington boil down to this choice: Is the purpose of U.S. policy and strategy to hold Iraq together or to limit the ill effects of state failure?

On this question, the tea leaves are clear: Whatever the prospects of a strong, peaceful and united Iraq (which all of us want), a U.S. military presence cannot help achieve it. As recently pointed out by two senior analysts at the highly regarded Center for American Progress think tank, "Iraq's political transition and national reconciliation are stuck. Iraq's leaders at the national level are debating some of the same issues in 2007 that they have debated since 2003.

Iraq's leaders fundamentally disagree on what kind of country Iraq is and should be, and Iraq's political transition has not succeeded in bridging these divides. This lack of political consensus among Iraq's leaders has resulted in a violent struggle for power."

In short, the continued lack of agreement on the basics of Iraqi nationhood and governance gives no political basis for reconciliation. Instead of securing central government agreements on oil revenues, reconstruction of the armed forces, a common economic plan and so forth, most sides in the conflict seem to have decided that they can achieve their disparate aims more effectively through independently controlled and illicitly supplied sectarian militias.

In this environment, whatever our military does is bound to give an advantage to one side - or at least be perceived that way - and thereby earn the hostility of another side. And supplying arms to Iraqis will simply feed the civil war. Meanwhile, U.S. forces seem to be driving Iraqi Sunnis and the worst transnational Islamist extremists together rather than keeping the two apart.

Bottom line: It is time to stop talking about reconciliation and benchmarks. It does not make sense to wait for something that is not going to happen. Under current circumstances, there is not any clear way for an outside power to help keep the scales balanced in such a complex conflict. Our forces are drawing heat rather than contributing toward a durable solution.

As in any civil war, the best we can hope for in the near term is for the various sides to have areas under their effective control (as distinct from a formal partition, which is not in the offing) and a relatively low level of violence. While American civilian officials should work with provincial authorities and local leaders to maintain relative calm, the key is to enlist Iraq's neighbors to help make the inevitable U.S. withdrawal of troops go as smoothly as possible and minimize any damage to overall Middle East stability, prosperity and security.

Indeed, as the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group pointed out, an "outside-in" could actually help Iraq's internal situation.

In this regard, Iraq's civil strife is not unique. The regional security problems presented by Iraq's civil war are similar to other conflicts around the developing world, from southeastern Europe to Asia to Africa. If Iraq is viewed not as an isolated case, but as yet another instance of sovereign-state failure, the overall regional security challenge can be seen much more clearly: to keep the disorder from spreading further.

As in other regions, Iraqi's neighbors are at risk for numerous ripple effects associated with state failure: drug, arms and human smuggling; the stresses of hosting large refugee populations; increases in black market corruption; and transnational terrorism. In addition, Middle East states are vulnerable to the violent spread of the combustible Sunni-Shia sectarian rivalry, a cleavage that runs through much of the Arab world.

Thus, for the United States to make the best of a bad situation, the problem of Iraq should be redefined. Rather than salvaging a federal system of governance for Iraq that is already disintegrating, the United States should instead build an "outside-in" multilateral coalition to stabilize the neighborhood as a whole - thus inoculating Iraq's neighbors from the ills of a failing state laying a foundation, it is hoped, for eventual cooperation between Iraqi factions and inoculating Iraq's neighbors from the ills of a failing state.

Only by viewing the Iraqi conflict in these terms will the United States be able to safely withdraw its forces and avoid causing even greater damage to region-wide development and stability.

MICHAEL KRAIG is director of Policy Analysis and Dialogue at the Stanley Foundation. DAVID SHORR is a program officer in the department.