After initial success, democracy has not taken hold in Haiti - nor has it been in many of the places where America has intervened, says Minxin Pei, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Aside from the post-World War II success stories - Germany, Japan, and Italy - "the US record of installing democracy is very dubious, with less than a 20 percent success rate," he adds.
That record bodes ill for Iraq, says Dr. Pei, should US troops invade that country to overthrow Hussein.
Panama, where US forces overthrew and captured Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1989, offers some parallels with Iraq: a dictator sitting on a strategic asset (in that case, a canal), who had previously enjoyed US support, falls afoul of Washington and defies the authorities there. General Noriega was also offered an exile deal but refused. Still, Panama, where America restored a relatively democratic regime, is a tiny, relatively homogenous country within the US sphere of influence.
Iraq is none of those things. There are three major factions - Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites - with no tradition of democratic rule. "On the basis of past experience, I would predict that the US will fail miserably at building democracy in Iraq because America's heart is not in it," warns Pei. "The primary goal is getting rid of a very brutal dictator."
Most experts agree that the US record of building a democratic regime after ousting a leader is poor. "If we replace Saddam, the biggest unresolved question is: What do we do afterwards?" says Lawson. "We've only succeeded when we're willing to occupy the country and make fundamental changes from the bottom up, as we did in postwar Japan and Germany," he says. "It required an enormous investment of resources and a decade of occupation. We have yet to find a less costly formula for stability, let alone building a democratic, free-market state."
Iraq is not Haiti
But some say Iraq has better prospects than countries such as Haiti or Afghanistan. "Iraq is not a poor country. It has the second largest oil reserves in the world," says Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The US Congress will see Iraq as a better investment than, say, Haiti, Bosnia, or Afghanistan, he says. "It has an educated populace, lots of technical skills, and the potential to have good relations with Washington and international financial institutions."
Some scholars argue the US shouldn't be trying to transplant Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq or elsewhere. Grafting might be a better approach.
"First, you have to ask what the basic unit of politics is," says Hulsman at the Heritage Foundation. "In Afghanistan, it's the tribe. You can't have a successful central government without including a tribal role. In Iraq, you have three groups that must be part of any government. If you take the top- down approach - bringing in viceroys from abroad, trying to impose a new government on the masses - that's not going to work. "This should be about stability first," says Hulsman. "If we aim lower, we can hit the target."
