START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT YOU

War of the second American revolution (Dominique Moisi, June 4 2003, Financial Times)

"We could not declare war on Egypt and Saudi Arabia, so we made war on Iraq." These words belong to a prominent intellectual close to the Bush administration. They were formulated as a provocation at a gathering of Americans and Europeans in Washington last month. But they reflect the deep intellectual and political gulf that exists between Europe and the US.

Europeans have failed to take on board the political revolution that has taken place across the Atlantic in the past few years, a radicalism confirmed by the attacks of September 11 2001 and victory in Iraq. A combination of deep frustration and great ambitions has transformed the way Americans now look at the world.

For Americans, the only way they can protect themselves is to change the world by imposing democracy wherever it does not yet exist, starting with the Middle East. Peace will not bring democracy; it is democracy that will bring peace.

What we are witnessing in action is the coming together of revolutionary military means and revolutionary ideas with Iraq as the ideal testing-ground. With its natural wealth, established middle class and strong state, the country offered real hope beyond a cruel, despotic regime. It was a good place to start the remaking of the Middle East and would serve as a model, or perhaps a lesson, for other Arab nations.

To describe current American thinking as "muscular Wilsonianism" is to miss the point. The Bush administration's foreign policy is less a refinement of traditional liberal internationalism than a new ideology. It is best described as democratic bolshevism. Its origins lie in President Ronald Reagan's success in confronting the Soviet Union but it was brought to life by the emotional shock of September 11. Why not use democracy to defeat terrorism as it was used to defeat communism?

Never trust a government that does not trust its own people. The former dissident Nathan Sharansky's celebrated formula about the Soviet Union has been endorsed by the neo- conservative intellectuals in and around the Bush administration. Despotism feeds terrorism. Autocracies must be turned, if not into liberal democracies, into regimes that respect the rule of law, without rampant corruption, where the army is not used to protect the regime from its people.

Yet there is a large gap between the global role the US wants to play and the price it is willing to pay. During the cold war, the US was, essentially, an imperial power without being imperialist. Today's America has become imperialist but Americans have not turned into imperialists. They lack the appetite for further military adventures or for the lengthy deployment of US troops abroad. They do not seem to have the imperial instincts of their British forefathers. They do not enjoy what they are doing.

No one enjoyed the Cold War either, but we fought it for fifty years. The lesson of Afghanistan/Palestine/Iraq however is that we can depose unfriendly governments in weeks at minimal cost in men and material, rendering them harmless, though probably not democracies. We could get the same benefits of the Cold War in just a couple years at vastly reduced expense--why not do it? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 7, 2003 5:22 PM