Promoting Democracy is the Wrong Priority for Foreign Policy [?]

Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and published this analysis in the Washington Post:

The idea, stated forcefully by President Bush in his second inaugural, that the United States would henceforth support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture "with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" is by any yardstick an important declaration. A foreign policy doctrine, however, it is not.

This is not to suggest that democracy doesn't matter. There is, for example, considerable evidence suggesting that mature democracies tend not to make war on one another. Today's Europe best illustrates this phenomenon.

Promoting democracy can also be useful as one component of the campaign against terrorism. Young men and women who are more involved in their societies and less alienated from their governments might see more reason to live for their causes than to kill and die for them. With luck, they might choose to become teachers rather than terrorists. ...

To begin with, democracies are not always peaceful. Immature democracies -- those that hold elections but lack many of the checks and balances characteristic of a true democracy -- are particularly vulnerable to being hijacked by popular passions. Post-communist Serbia is but one illustration of the reality that such countries do go to war.

It is also difficult to spread democracy. It is one thing to oust a regime, quite another to put something better in its place. Prolonged occupation of the sort the United States carried out in Japan and West Germany after World War II is the only surefire way to build democratic institutions and instill democratic culture. But as Iraq demonstrates, the rise of modern nationalism and modern methods of resistance means that such opportunities will be rare, costly and uncertain to succeed, despite an investment of billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

Prospects for the democratic improvement of a society can prove even worse absent occupation. Those who rejoiced 25 years ago in the overthrow of the shah of Iran should reflect on the fact that unattractive regimes can be replaced by something far worse. ...

And even if "freedom" were somehow to come to Tehran, it is almost certain that free Iranians would be as enthusiastic as the mullahs are about possessing nuclear weapons owing to the political popularity of these weapons and their strategic rationale given Iran's neighborhood. more

TODAY'S FREE REPUBLIC THREAD & COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE!