Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
It is hard not to be tantalized by the notion that with one hard blow in Iraq the United States could unleash a tidal wave of democracy in a region long gripped by intransigent autocracy. But although the United States can certainly oust Saddam Hussein and install a less repressive regime, Iraqi democracy would not be soon forthcoming.
The Bush administration's new "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)," announced in December, is wise in some places, in need of small fixes in other places, and dangerously radical in still others.
Next week Jiang Zemin is expected formally to cede the presidency to Hu Juntao. Will China's low-profile foreign policy change too? It is time the leadership re-evaluated the geopolitical assumptions underlying Chinese foreign policy.
The Bush administration's plan for post-invasion Iraq is a blueprint for occupation but not for political reconstruction. Unless the profound difference between occupation and reconstruction is recognized early on, the U.S. will fail to create a stable Iraq, let alone one that serves as a model for other countries. Chaos there will mean the continued threat of terrorism and regional instability.
The United States’ policy of ignoring popular sentiment and depending on friendly iron men in the Muslim world might have worked until now. But with Al Qaeda and its ilk talking of a conflict that will last for generations, the United States needs to do more to win Muslim hearts and minds than it has done so far.
Protesters who marched around the world last week were wrong to assume that American inaction against Iraq will make their children safer or the Iraqi people better off. The protesters were right, however, to question whether war against Iraq will produce more security at home and real freedom for the Iraqi people.
There will certainly be a regional reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but it will not be a wave of democratic revolutions. We just have to look back at the previous efforts of empires with the best of intentions -- the British, the French, and the Germans -- to understand what happens when Western nations try to bring "civilization" to the Middle East on the points of their bayonets.