As it became clear that Iraq didn’t harbor any WMD and stable democracy was elusive, neoconservatives and supporters of the Bush Doctrine seemed to sink into the shadows and disappear. Now that our troops are leaving Iraq to its elected government and the Middle East and North Africa have erupted with democratic movements, the tides are once again turning as the neocons reemerge and attempt to validate and redeem the last decade’s foreign policy choices. Charles Krauthammer is leading the charge in a recent article where, in reference to calls for intervention in Libya, he proclaimed, “…everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda.”
Ever since WWII the US has made significant efforts to promote democracy around the world. WWII, the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, Vietnam War, Korean War, and many more of our foreign policy decisions have been rooted in this effort. From tacit support to full military involvement, the United States has believed, and acted on their belief, that we must support and defend democracy outside our borders. I completely support the idea of promoting democracy around the world, for both practical and moral reasons, and am not challenging that idea. However, the Bush Doctrine led us to take the promotion of democracy a step further, invading two Islamic nations that were not, at the time, actively hostile to any other nation. Furthermore, we opened a new chapter of unilateralism, disregarding the importance of multilateral institutions and action in our presumed efforts to make the world a safer place even if we didn’t get international support. So now it’s time to write history and ask the most important question of the last decade: did the Bush Doctrine work?
There are already many people saying that history is beginning to prove President Bush right. They are claiming our go-it-alone strategy of instilling democracy in Iraq paved the way for democratic change throughout the region – and we’re beginning to see the fruits of that effort. If they’re right, then perhaps we need to keep the momentum going through active intervention in Libya and possibly other locations, even if we have to do so without international backing. Though our military and nation have been at war for over a decade, if our intervention was really the catalyst of democratic movements then we ought not to let ourselves tire so quickly. Perhaps this is our chance to be the next Greatest Generation, to pay the price for a safer world for generations to come. Though wary of our already long fight, maybe we have a chance to push forward and sacrifice more to make the world safe for democracy – including the Muslim world. But before we write that history we need ask some difficult questions. Is democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan sustainable or will these nations be no better off a decade from now than they were a decade ago? Is a similarly aggressive strategy of instilling democracy in failed states feasible in other places or have we already cashed in all our chips? Did our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan actually make the world a safer place, or did they just increase the tension between Islam and the West? Did our intervention in Iraq serve as the catalyst for democratic movements in other nations, or did it potentially slow a process that was already inevitable?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to these questions, but I will share the opinion that I don’t think the invasion of Iraq in any way accelerated the democratic process in other nations. To make that association, in my opinion, is arrogant and dangerous. I believe that the promotion of democracy is a worthy and even morally necessary cause, but I don’t think the way we went about it in the last decade will achieve the end goal of creating a safer world. If we begin to write the history of the 21st century with the idea that unilateral military action paved the way for democratic change we may be teaching future generations the wrong lesson.