The toppling business

Saul Singer, Jerusalem Post:

Last week I argued that Iran is a pivotal test for the Bush Doctrine because it is the leading supporter of terrorism, is racing to obtain nuclear weapons, and threatens Iraq's democratic future. The US, therefore, cannot afford to bypass Iran even if it were to push democracy more aggressively in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria.

Iran poses the most important test for George Bush's foreign policy revolution in another sense: Is invasion America's only means to topple rogue regimes? Is America still in the toppling business at all? READ MORE

There is a strong case that the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the reordering of American priorities, have already set off a revolutionary process in the Arab world. As Fouad Ajami quoted a Kuwaiti merchant saying: "George W. Bush has unleashed a tsunami on this region." A senior Jordanian politico explained Beirut Spring to Ajami: "The people in the streets... knew that Bush would not permit a massive crackdown by the men in Damascus."

The impression given is that with a little patience, the dominoes will continue to fall. This may well be the case. But the theory that the US can more or less passively reap what it has courageously sown implies that the other side remains static. This is hardly the case, given that each regime will always be more motivated to survive than the US is to topple it.

The Financial Times, commenting on America's democracy push last week, noted dryly: "Arab despots in any case believe the West will take fright once it sees that the victors of democracy are Islamists. Hamas, Hizbullah and the Da'awa are making big advances in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as would the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere if it were allowed to do so."

This precise concern, of course, drove the now supposedly defunct pre-9/11 mind-set, which feared not only "instability" in general, but what democracy would bring. Even if such fears should not have been an excuse for propping up dictatorships, neither can they be dismissed as trivial, and opponents of Bush's democracy revolution can be counted on to magnify them at every opportunity.

But there is an even greater stumbling block to this revolution than the danger of anti-democratic forces taking advantage of it. What is missing is a set of policy tools to fill the vast gap between talking up democracy at conferences and sending in the 82nd Airborne.

THE OPEN secret is that the invasion phase of the Bush Doctrine is essentially over. True, the threat of force is now more credible than it was. Yes, there is the amazing development that an American president has to convince allies, not that the US meant business, but that there would not be more invasions in the near future.

At a deeper level, however, dictatorships draw contradictory lessons from vigorous US action: both that it could happen to them, and that it won't because Americans quickly tire of war, change leaders, or otherwise divert their attention.

As Amir Taheri pointed out in our pages yesterday, the debate within Iranian leadership is whether to confront America more aggressively, not about pulling back. "The [revolutionary] guard commanders believe that Bush's campaign for democracy in the Muslim world is primarily aimed at Iran and should be thwarted by engaging the US in low-intensity warfare wherever possible," Taheri writes.

After Bush, Iranian generals think, the US will "revert to the defensive posture it had maintained in the Middle East since the Carter administration in the 1970s."

The salient question here is not so much what Iran decides to do, but its conclusion that, with its military arrows exhausted, the US has no other arrows in its quiver.

Bush's second inaugural address was the manifesto of the freedom tsunami of which the Kuwait merchant spoke. "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world... So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Four months later, Bush's ringing goal stands, but the world is waiting to see what it really means. He described the task as an "urgent requirement," but also as "the work of generations" and an "ultimate" goal. Which is it, and how will it be accomplished?

Iran is the place where these questions will be answered, one way or the other, because it is where the war against Islamist terrorism and a people's struggle for freedom most potently intersect. If the US is unwilling or unable to help a people that is champing at the bit to free itself, then all dictators and their victims will conclude that, now that the invasions are done, there is nothing the US can do but sit back and wait.

Bush said: "When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

In Iran, perhaps soon, we will find out whether he meant in the future and in theory, or now and in practice.