By Stephanie Abbajay

Sixteen years ago, the Cold War had ended and the U.S. was triumphant. There was a great and spirited debate among politicians and thinkers over what our interests were, what our priorities should be and how the U.S. should conduct its foreign affairs. Voices ranged from Isolationists like Pat Buchanan, who said the U.S. should come home; to Realists like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who said we should let our core interests be our guide and act only when necessary; to Neo-conservatives like Joshua Muravchik and Paul Wolfowitz, who felt the time was perfect for the U.S. to press its advantage and export democracy, believing that a safer world is one that looks and acts just like us.

In 1988 to 1992, I was managing editor of a foreign policy magazine called the National Interest, and we published a great many of these ideas and debates. One idea, that of exporting democracy, was especially popular among neoconservatives where I worked, and though this concept did not gain any practical traction in the Reagan and Bush years (who were both, despite the occasional rhetorical flourishes to the contrary, Realists when it came to foreign policy), it is front and center in the current administration’s foreign policy objectives in Iraq and was promoted by the same thinkers, namely Wolfowitz, who served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense and was the architect of the Iraq War.

I did not, and still do not, think that democracy can be exported, either by bayonet or bank note. There are preconditions for “exporting” democracy and for it to take root, at least based on our experience in Germany and Japan after World War II. It worked there because there was utter destruction of a preexisting political order, a willing populace that was able to put country before religion or region, secularism, long-term investments of billions of dollars coupled with a game plan for economic growth (the Marshall Plan), and a long-term occupying force (the U.S. and its allies).

That is not, of course, to say that democracy cannot take root and flourish anywhere in the world and it is not to suggest that promoting democracy around the world isn’t in the national interest (it is). But it is to say that democracy doesn’t come in a can: there are serious obstacles to implementing it and to our “exporting” it, and one of those obstacles is religious fundamentalism, which in Iraq is taking the form of extreme violence that threatens to undermine and possibly destroy the new democracy there.

The current world, with the very real threat of attack from al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups, presents a far greater threat to Americans than the one that existed during the Cold War, when an icy détente (and mutual assured destruction) actually kept the world safe for Americans here and abroad.

Today, the new cornerstone of Bush’s Iraq policy is to establish a democracy there as a bulwark against al-Qaeda and the opportunistic and undermining advances of its neighbors, Syria and Iran. The democracy that is functioning now in Iraq does so only with 168,000 American troops on the ground. And now, with the public, politicians and many presidential candidates calling for troop withdrawals and even a complete pull-out, with an American public increasingly tired of spending $80+ billion a year on a war that has devolved into a civil war, we really have to ask ourselves if the fledgling democracy can survive in Iraq. And can it survive without us?

As Colin Powell warned before the invasion, if we break it, we buy it. But do we have the stomach for what it will take to see this through? In other words, are Americans willing to go it alone (we have received little real help, financial and otherwise, from anyone else), to keep what must be a considerable force there for years to come and to continue to expend hundreds of billions of dollars?

Even if Americans sign on to long-term occupation and investment in Iraq, can democracy survive against the daily and deadly violence there? And how can we prevent ourselves from being drawn into a much larger, and much more dangerous, conflict with Iran and Syria? The geopolitical situation is moving dangerously close to not just trying to export democracy to Iraq but to battling fundamentalism across the Middle East.

Yet many preconditions for democracy do exist in Iraq -- the old political order was destroyed; the economy and infrastructure are ripe for (and desperately await) restructuring; there is an educated, motivated group of citizens who have come forward to serve (at great personal peril, too). But how willing are the sectarians to set aside their differences and work toward keeping the infant democracy alive? If Moqtada al-Sadr, for example, is the only Iraqi who can deliver electricity, clean water and safe passage to the corner market, what incentive do average citizens have to back a democratically elected government and its occupying allies?

Given the deadly sectarian violence, which is gaining strength and breadth from the American occupation, the fighting between the Sunni and Shiite extremists looks like it will not end in a democratic compromise. But Sunni or Shiite, Protestant or Catholic, Christian or Jew, it cannot matter in a democracy – you have to be a citizen of your country first.

Will this war end in a truly democratic and independent Iraq? Or will the only thing exported be more Islamic extremism? Will be drawn into a much larger, and much deadlier, regional war? Instead of talking about troop withdrawals, policy makers should be asking much tougher questions about what happens after the troops come home, if they can come home at all and whether democracy can survive when religious extremism is the leading force.

Stephanie Abbajay, a columnist for the journal, is the former managing editor of the National Interest magazine and was a political appointee to the United States Information Agency in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

The Jersey County Journal
Nov. 18, 2007