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The Daily Utah Chronicle

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Iraq is not a test case for democratic peace

By William Pingree

As the most pressing concern for American foreign policy, Iraq has been proposed to be the most recent candidate for reformation under the doctrine of democratic peace.

President George W. Bush has announced on numerous occasions that transforming Iraq into a vibrant democracy, along the lines of a post-World War II Germany or Japan, is the central goal of Gulf War II.

The democratic peace theory postulates basically that states committed to the principles of democracy and liberal pluralism are very much less likely to war with each other and therefore, in a region like the Middle East where real democracy is rare, a democratic Iraq will have a natural affinity to the other democracy in the region, Israel.

It would follow then, theoretically, that these two democratic states would be less likely to go to war with each other and further, it is hoped, that once the democratic peace succeeds between Iraq and Israel, and economic cooperation creates wealth and prosperity between the two, that other Arab states will see that it is in their interest to follow suit.

This hope may fade when such hope is confronted with previous successes or lack thereof in creating democracy in multinational states like Iraq.

One significant factor has not been addressed in this theory and that factor is nationalism.

Liberal nationalism holds that, far from being a threat to democracy, nationalism-the correspondence of cultural nation and state-is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for democracy.Modern democracy presupposes a degree of harmony of interests in such areas as language, customs, tradition and law.

Such are generally accepted as the basis for the political community because they command loyalty and even in the smallest comprehensive community, they create a sense of unity.

The nation, not the state, is a small humanity and a large association.

“Few will burn with ardent love for the entire human species,” Toqueville observed. “The interests of the human race are better served by giving every man a particular fatherland than by trying to inflame his passions for the whole of humanity,” Toqueville continued saying.

Democratic peace theory combines the nation and the state into one entity.

This works if the nation has built a sense of loyalty to and unity with the homogenous political community identified above.

In most of the world, however, nations are considerably older than states.

This is certainly true of Germany and Japan.

In fact, it can be argued that the first attempt to transform Germany into a democracy failed.

The demise of the Weimar Republic into the totalitarian Nazi state was produced by Hitler seeking legitimacy in German culture and historic tradition.It was when this tradition was defeated that the nation was ready to accept a democratic state.

One is usually born into a cultural nation for life, but the state to which one owes allegiance may alter its borders, change its constitution, change its name, even cease to exist through conquest or merger.

National communities, while by no means immortal themselves, tend to be more stable and long-lived.

This being the case, to identify primarily, not with a historic linguistic-cultural nation, but with a possibly transient government or a paper constitution, would be the height of irrationality.

The evidence that democracy almost never works in societies that are highly divided along linguistic and cultural lines is absolutely overwhelming.

Examples of multinational countries that have failed are numerous.Cyprus, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Sudan, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia come to mind.Nevertheless, many in this and other administrations persist in arguing that multinational democracy not only is possible in Iraq but represents the wave of the future.

Multinational despotisms, of which Iraq is a good example, they argue, should not be partitioned into nation-states that in some cases may become democracies.

Rather, they should be transformed from this multinational despotism into multinational democracies.

Those who argue this point use such examples as Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.

The very fact that only three successes can be found, out of dozens of multinational states, in itself suggests the difficulty of getting linguistically and culturally distinct nations to coexist peacefully under a common democratic constitution is very difficult at best and at worst, impossible.

The situation in Iraq is much different than the one the United States confronted in Europe and the Far East after World War II.Nation-building in the Middle East is fraught with danger.

None of the cultural and linguistic similarities found in Germany or Japan are present in Iraq.

In other words, Iraq does not present to the United States a unified political community on which democratic success is so reliant.

The nationalism that is present in Iraq today is not the kind of which democratic traditions and institutions are made.

In the anarchy of our present situation, not only are American soldiers killed, but such actions underliethe unstable political community from which a democratic state is to be built.

As mentioned above, nations are significantly older than areas we call states.

In Iraq, where there appears to be three nations, all in conflict with one another, the prospects for building a democratic peace are deeply diminished.

The plain fact is this: The United States has defeated a horrible dictator and the world is a better place for it.

The means of Saddam Hussein’s departure can be debated, but no one will claim the world is not better off because he is gone.

Now, the United States needs to continue to identify its own national interest and realize that as part of a post World War II tradition, institutions such as the United Nations were established by the United States as part of that tradition-to deal with situations much like Iraq today.

America needs to acknowledge that Iraq is not the place to build a model democracy.

The United Nations has provided a way in the past in which countries not ready for democracy can in fact be developed into democracies.

Within the confines of the trustee system, many countries were developed and reshaped, partitioned and combined into successes as democracies over time.

These same kinds of determinations could be made as to the viability of Iraq as a nation state and recommendations from the international community could be made on the final disposition or partition of the country that would best serve the interests of peace and democracy for all the people of Iraq.

The United States needs to see this kind of solution in its best interest and allow the international community to give input into the solution.

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