INSTALLING DEMOCRACY
Russett, Bruce
Installing democracy President George W. Bush concluded his final debate with John Kerry by declaring his faith in "the ability of liberty to transform societies, to convert a hostile world to a...
...Bruce Russett is Dean Acheson Professor od International Politics at Yale University, and author of Grasping the Democratic Peace(1993) and Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (2001...
...The economic and human cost, to Americans and to Iranians, is unlikely to be less...
...So Bush's goal of establishing democracy in Iraq (even had the occupation and reconstruction not been executed on the cheap with stunning incompetence) was a very hard case to make from the start...
...It is not clear how much, or what, the administration has learned since March 2003...
...a bit like many of the atomic scientists who developed the atomic bomb in order to defeat I litler, only to see it employed against Japanese civilians who were already near defeat...
...But what this president neglects to mention is that those of us who helped formulate the theory of democratic peace have consistently argued for a second core principle: that a model of "tight them, beat them, and make them democratic" is a very bad idea...
...But Germany and Iapan make poor analogies with respect to the contemporary Middle hast...
...But the last decade of sociai-sc ience research has produced abundant evidence, besides the-ory, that democracies almost never go to war with one another...
...Sometimes there is no choice but to defeat a dangerous attacker, and then try to impose a democratic government...
...Democratization by force all too rarely works, and violates the normative principles of sovereignty on which all weak countries depend...
...For George W. Bush to justify the Iraq war on that ground is yet one more distortion to vover a disastrous act...
...The Christian just-war tradition demands not just a costbenefit accounting, but a reasonable chance of success, borne or us who developed the democratic peace proposition now feel our creation has been pervert-ed...
...Now part of his rhetorical repertoire, this statement springs not just from the religious basis of his thinking, but more importantly it is a core principle of what is called the theory of "democratic peace...
...Most German and Japanese citizens no longer considered their own governments legitimate...
...Afterward they were willing and able to carry on a long occupation and to provide massive economic assistance...
...Members of the current administration cite the post-World War II experience ot ( iermany and iapan to holster their case tor invading and occupying Iraq...
...Certainly the victorious American and British occupation policv was built on the principle that the German and Japanese governments could ne\ or be peaceful without democratizing their systems...
...But that is quite different from going to war in order to impose democracy...
...In this respect and others, Germany and Japan met most of the conditions that political analysis has identified tor successful democratic transitions and consolidation...
...Such a project, in a country with twice the population of Iraq and only a little more favorable socio-political profile, would not be more promising...
...That was the case when we invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan...
...Installing democracy President George W. Bush concluded his final debate with John Kerry by declaring his faith in "the ability of liberty to transform societies, to convert a hostile world to a peacelul world...
...The United States and Britain went to war not in order to make Germany and Japan democratic, but to repel a direct attack...
...Policymakers from the administration of the first President Bush through that of Bill Clinton have also accepted it...
...In Iraq, the conditions obstructing democratization include low per capita income (at least alter years ot wars and sanctions), no previous history of democracy, major ethnic and religious divisions, the "resource curse" of an economy and political system dependent on petroleum exports that allow dictators to keep themselves wealthy and in power, and an authoritarian political and social culture...
...That theory does not insist that democracies are necessarily peaceiul in general...
...There is now talk in Washington of "regime change" in Iran as the next democratization project...
...In addition, of the six countries bordering Iraq, all but Turkey are dictatorships, have a history of violent conflict with Iraq, and resist the importation of democracy to their neighborhood...
Vol. 131 • December 2004 • No. 21
