DIDN'T IT ACTUALLY BEGIN WITH THE OIL ENBARGOES IN THE '70s?:

World War IV Begins Here (James Woolsey, April 6, 2003, Boston Herald)

Today, 120 of 192 countries in the world are democracies. These 120 countries all have some popularly contested elections and some beginnings, at least, of the rule of law.

That is an amazing change in the lifetime of many individuals now still living. Nothing like that has ever happened in world history. Needless to say, American had something to do with this, both in helping to win World War I, in prevailing, along with Britain, in World War II, and eventually prevailing in the Cold War.

Along the way, a lot of people said very cynically at various times that the Germans, Japanese, Russians or those with a Chinese Confucian background would never be able to run democracies. It took some help, but the Germans, Japanese and now even the Russians and Taiwanese seem to have figured it out.

In the Muslim world, outside the 22 Arab states, which have no democracies, there are some reasonably well-governed states that are moderating and changing, such as Bahrain.

Of the 24 Muslim-predominant non-Arab states, about half are democracies. They include some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Bangladesh and Mali. Nearly 200 million Muslims live in a democracy in India. Outside of one province, they are generally at peace with their Hindu neighbors.

There is a special problem in the Middle East, however. Outside of Israel and Turkey, there are essentially no democracies. Rather, there are two types of governments: pathological predators and vulnerable autocrats. This is not a good mix. [...]

Clearly, the terror war is never going to go away until we change the face of the Middle East, which is what we are beginning to do in Iraq. That is a tall order. But it's not as tall an order as what we already have accomplished in the previous world wars.

Change remains to be undertaken in that one part of the world that historically has not had democracy, which has reacted angrily against intrusions from the outside - the Arab Middle East. [...]

This war, like the world wars of the past, is not a war of us against them. It is not a war between countries. It is a war of freedom against tyranny.

America has to convince the people of the Middle East that we are on their side, just as we convinced Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sakharov that we were on their side. This will take time. It will be difficult.

We understand we are making the terrorists, dictators and autocrats nervous. We want them to be nervous. We want them to realize that America is on the march, and we are on the side of those whom they most fear - their own people.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 6, 2003 1:04 PM