The Democrats' Democracy Problem

One key lesson is that trying to impose democracy at the point of a gun, without the right preconditions on the ground or a competent plan for the day after, is a recipe for disaster. But let's not forget the lesson of 9/11, either -- that the failure of Arab politics to produce decent, democratic governments helped spawn homicidal opposition movements such as al-Qaeda.

It was also a major error to walk away from Afghanistan after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, thereby allowing the Taliban and al-Qaeda to seize power. And the cozy deals we have made with authoritarian regimes such as those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia may have looked good at the time, but they wound up fanning the flames of Islamic radicalism and stoking the strategic nightmare we now face.

Democracy promotion is often messy and hard. You need to work with authoritarian governments even as you try to encourage change in their societies; aid sent to democrats abroad can be wasted; elections don't always produce the results we'd like. Still, the long-term benefits -- as we see in Europe today -- are worth it. The answer to Bush's mistakes must be to develop a more realistic and credible democracy-promotion strategy, not to abandon the goal.

Doing so is also smart politics. Democrats won last year's midterm elections by tapping into the public's disenchantment over Iraq, corruption and other issues. For the first time in decades, polls show the GOP's traditional advantage on national security issues evaporating. But this reflects a collapse in the public's trust of the Republicans, not any particular enthusiasm for the Democrats' ideas. Large parts of the American public still doubt our core convictions on foreign policy. Pointing out Bush's failures won't be enough to win the White House. The American public wants to know what we stand for if it is to entrust us with the ship of state in today's perilous world.

ronasmus@yahoo.com

Ronald D. Asmus was deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs during the Clinton administration. He is the author of "Opening NATO's Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era."