Bush, Iraq and the Wilsonian Delusion

"Democracy can never be forced by the sword from without, it must grow by the seed from within."
- Thomas Jefferson

Woodrow Wilson ushered in an era of nation-building when he intervened in The Great War "to make the world safe for Democracy."  He also put troops in Latin America and Eastern Europe to put in place liberal democracies by force of arms.  All of these efforts ended in utter failure.  His intervention in WWI is now seen by historians as destabilizing and setting in motion the chain of events that led to the devastation of WWII.  The few successes after WWII (Japan, Germany, Austria, Italy) are anomalies where the seeds of Democracy had already taken root.  Candidate Bush in 2000 railed against nation building, but got suckered into the Wilsonian Delusion by the neo-conservatives.  What can we learn from this?

According to recent research by James Kurth of Swarthmore, the keys to success in the four anomalies are:

1. An industrial society with a robust middle class
2. A prior liberal democratic experience
3. An ethnically homogenous population

He also says 4) utter defeat and 5) a bigger threat (Soviet Union) contributed.

The key distinction in the failures was a large disparity between rich and poor - the lack of a middle class.  The effect of a democratic election in nations not prepared for liberal democracy is to put in power either authoritative regimes or populist democracies.  Think Venezuela.  Worse, in the Middle East, elections put in power the most extreme groups.  Think Hamas in Palestine.

In addition, it seems very difficult to create democracy in places of ethnic diversity, especially (as in Iraq) the peoples are essentially still tribal in identification.  The attempt devolves into tribal warfare.  The natural forces are to split such entities into ethnic enclaves.  Think India/Pakistan after liberation from the British.

What is the alternative?  What worked in Europe two centuries ago was first to pass through a period of industrialization, from which an industrial class has common cause with the new middle class to liberalize politics and free the economy from past strictures (tariffs, regulation, government-owned entities).  What worked in the Asian Tigers more recently was the Singapore Model - a visionary strongman who pursues economic liberalization before political liberalization.  Many thought the Singapore Model only worked in small units (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan) but it also worked in Korea and appears to be working in China, an much more diverse and complex nation than the Tigers.

If we compare the Russian and Chinese models since the Berlin Wall fell, China has done much better.  Russia's dalliance with democracy led to a Kleptocracy of the Nomenklatura (the former Communist leaders) homesteading on major State industries (oil, air force, steel) and becoming Billionaires, while the government has steadily drifted back to an authoritarian leader (Putin).  The major dynamic is between the Billionaires and the Government.  In contrast, the major dynamic in China is the remarkable rise of the middle class.

The conclusion for Bush and Iraq is utter failure, which is already clearly apparent.  The country is at least spinning into its ethnic subdivisions, and maybe further apart.  The seeds of democracy were no where apparent, and the result is chaos and a further devastation of the American Democratization Model.  Europe appears to be doing better in Eastern Europe by demanding liberalization before entry into the EU.

Democracy will not defeat radical Islam. 

To Iraqis, democracy is an utterly new and bizarre construction that has no foundation in the local reality.  Professor Kurth's strategy to defeat radical Islam: get them to fight each other rather than us.  This is what Rome did at the edge of their Empire in that part of the world, and what the French did to the German Fiefdoms for hundreds of years.  Nixon went to China and split the Communist hegemony in 1971.  Maybe Hillary can pull the same trick in reverse by abandoning Iraq and letting it fall into Shi'ite vs. Sunni in-fighting.  Harsh but better than idealistic and naive democracy projects that lead to hostile, broken countries. 

Comments

[rdneu56]

How convenient it would be to have a Sunni controlled Iraq as a natural neutralizer of the Shi'ite state in Iran?
I am curious as to what the Baker commssion will come up with - what will they announce publically - what will they say behind closed doors (will probably never know)?

[Sibley]

Peter Galbraith makes another interesting comparison in The End of Iraq. He points out that since WW2 four countries comprised of multiple ethnic groups forced together by political forcers and held together by authoritarian rule have had shed those rulers, the Soviet Union, Ygoslovia, Checkoslovokia, and Iraq. Of the first three, all broke up into ethnicly defined seperate states. Iraq, the fourth is clearly in that process now. The odds of a combined sunni, shiite,Kurdish Iraq emerging out of the current process (let alone a democratic one) seems very slim.