He never described how long the United States would be willing to occupy Iraq or hold together a country that has long been divided by rival tribes and rival religions, and where the riches will go to those who sit atop Iraq's oilfields.
Those elections left the 200-seat Parliament evenly divided between rival coalitions.
The city became divided by rival factions and familiar faces were cast into different roles.
The next year saw the new republic increasingly divided between rival factions.
Libya, since then, has become a failing state, divided between rival governments and militias: Isis are in control of Sirte.
The Zanu-PF party has been divided between rival factions jostling to succeed Mugabe, who has avoided naming a successor.
Villages are divided into rival clans, and the society is organized into castes, with smiths and butchers ordinarily kept at a distance, and a serf (earlier slave) class.
The arid region remained politically divided among rival peoples until the mid-18th century, when it became the centre of the Wahhābī, a fundamentalist Islamic movement.
Eventually, you ascend to a United Nations-like perspective as you try to unify an entire planet divided between rival civilizations.
Amid the spectre of nuclear annihilation, the post-imperial world was once again divided into rival camps as the cold war took root and spread.
