Iraq and Afghanistan

I take this occasion to go back a little and consider the Op-Ed of Daniel Pletka ("Arabs on the Verge of democracy", August 9). Pletka criticizes John Kerry for valuing "stability" above "democracy" in the Middle East and President Bush for not more aggressively pursuing his announced goal of democratizing the region. What Pletka does not seem to understand and what the Bush White House has come belatedly to understand is the cost to the United States and the region of pursuing an effective democratization policy. It would be possible to democratize the region in a generation. But it would require several times the expenditure in dollars and lives that we have so far incurred. It would require the imposition of a peace settlement on Israelis and Arabs. It would require the conquest of several major countries in the area with attendant casualties. It would require the training of a new political class in the standards and procedures of democracy. And it would require maintaining a massive and effective occupation force able to maintain order in the face of the inevitable opposition of the religious and political classes that now rule the area.

Where people have generations of experience with democracy and identify with liberal society, as in Eastern Europe, a minimal level of democratic assistance can transform an area. But where, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, or Pakistan, this background and identification is absent, we should not imagine that we can democratize on the cheap.