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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is scheduled to visit the White House on Nov. 1. It's a good time

for his country to crack the crowded regional agenda. Iraq is facing a rising death toll, with more than

5,000 recorded deaths from a horrific wave of car bombs, and attacks by a reinvigorated insurgency

driven by Syria's war and by Maliki's obstinately sectarian and autocratic politics. Washington needs

to do more on this visit than mouth pleasantries about security, pluralism, responsibility, and

enduring partnership. It needs to persuade Iraq's leaders to finally play the role in mediating the

region's brutal political divides -- a role only Baghdad can play.

Iraq's fate matters not only because of the thousands of Americans and reportedly half-million Iraqis

who died in the course of a decade of war. Iraq stands at the heart of the Gulf's tenuous balance of

power, sharing long borders with Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Its viciously renewed insurgency

already represents one of the most devastating spillover effects of Syria's war. And as a Shiite-ruled

semi-democratic Arab state, it crosses three of the starkest lines dividing today's Middle East: Sunnis

against Shiites, monarchies against would-be democracies, and the Gulf Cooperation Council against

Iran.

Without a new sense of urgency, the White House meeting will likely cover little more than

platitudes about the reinvigoration of the long-neglected Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA)

promising cultural, economic, and political relations, which was negotiated between the two

countries in 2008 alongside the deal that facilitated America's military withdrawal. That was the topic

of August's meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

The SFA certainly is important as a vehicle for building some kind of normal and positive relations out

of the wreckage of a decade of war and occupation. And it is clear that Maliki has some things in

mind that he'd like from Washington, such as renewed intelligence sharing and the delivery of arms

systems.

But high-minded, empty discussions of the SFA can't be the only thing Washington gets out of

Maliki's November visit. It should be a vehicle for Maliki and President Barack Obama to have a frank

talk about Iraq's domestic political crisis and its potential role in a changing regional order. Iraq's

ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, recently told a Washington audience that his primary

message to America is that Baghdad could be a reliable ally in a turbulent region. Such an ally is

sorely needed -- particularly one that stands to be deeply affected by the outcome of U.S.-Iraniannegotiations and by the trajectory of Syria's civil war. But for Iraq to play such a role, it will have to

reverse Maliki's long-standing exclusion of Iraq's Sunni minority and the centralization of his own

power.

Maliki might be forgiven for rolling his eyes at another lecture on the need for national reconciliation

-- a shared goal written into the SFA, for what it's worth (and something that some might hope to see

out of the U.S. Congress, too). American officials have been urging that upon the prime minister, as

well as every other Iraqi politician who would sit still for more than 15 minutes, for more than half a

decade. The political failure in Iraq is nothing new and has very little to do with the withdrawal of

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U.S. troops. Maliki ignored such advice when there were 140,000 American troops in Iraq; he ignored

it when those troops began to withdraw; and he ignored it after they left altogether. He was never

going to make such concessions unless he felt them absolutely necessary for his own survival. In part

due to the temporary security gains of the U.S. "surge" and co-optation of the Sunni insurgency, he

never really felt that he did.

Things might be different now, though. The harvest of his exclusionary politics has been long months

of sustained Sunni protest, renewed insurgency, and an increasing perception that the country is

coming apart at the seams. A dramatic increase in violent deaths has driven a widely held fear that

Iraq is unraveling and that the fire is again burning. The perverse consequence of this year's growing

violence and political crisis could finally be that the carnage is finally enough to push him to such

belated, reluctant concessions. His own political survival instincts, not American leverage, might

finally bring him around. With fateful elections looming next year and troubling signs emerging about

the contours of the new electoral law, the White House should do whatever it can during his visit to

nudge him in that direction -- and condition all of the incentives that might be activated under the

SFA (like the military and intelligence assistance Maliki wants) upon his doing so.

There is little question that Maliki's persistent exclusion of Sunnis and consolidation of power has

kept Baghdad's perpetual political crisis boiling. The initially peaceful protest movement that broke

out among Iraqi Sunnis earlier this year was driven by widespread grievances over his sectarian

politics, his government's corruption, and his consolidation of autocratic power. Frustrations grew

over his refusal to compromise, and exploded over the government's brutal crackdown on peacefuldemonstrations, such as April's bloody attack on protesters in Hawija. Realistically, Maliki could still

probably have gotten away with his power grab and selective co-option of Sunni elites were it not for

the spillover from Syria. But his obstinate political approach created a perfectly toxic environment for

Iraqi insurgents to build upon their successes in Syria.