U.S. doctrine calls for spreading democracy through the Mideast. Do we have the will for it?

As the Bush administration assumes the burden of building Iraqi democracy, talk of a new American empire is in the air.

U.S. military power is unchallenged, and the number of U.S. bases abroad is expanding. U.S. doctrine calls for spreading democracy from Iraq through the Mideast and elsewhere, a breathtaking ambition.

So it’s not surprising that a hot new book compares America’s current global domination with the heyday of British empire.

But the message of Niall Ferguson’s “Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power” is that the United States is not equipped to play the role.

Ferguson argues America has assumed an imperial-sized role without being willing to recognize what it has undertaken. “It is an empire that dares not speak its name,” he charges. “It is an empire in denial.”

Those who care about the outcome of America’s Iraq venture should at least read Ferguson’s article in the April 27 New York Times Magazine: “The Empire Slinks Back: Why Americans don’t really have what it takes to rule the world.” He’s no dove; he believes America “ought to organize a Pax Americana, not unlike Queen Victoria’s Pax Britannica. The goal: to tame terrorism and promote democratic institutions in countries where alienated youths may become suicide bombers.

But he thinks the American attention span is too short to do the job.

Ferguson points out that “when the British went into Iraq” in 1917, “they stuck around” through rebellions and assassinations of their client rulers, until the revolution of 1958. The British made no bones of the fact that they were an occupying power, and the British public was proud of its “civilizing mission.”

Britain exported huge amounts of military and civilian manpower – and capital – to its imperial holdings. It had an official Colonial Service that attracted the brightest graduates from Britain’s most elite universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and employed thousands of bureaucrats who served decades overseas.

As one Iraqi Shiite opposition member said to me recently with some admiration: “The British knew how to be occupiers. They knew languages, they knew the culture, and they didn’t expect you to be grateful.”

But Americans, as Ferguson notes, are far more parochial. Their military is based mainly at home, or in Europe; their elite is not yearning to serve in the tropics.

Nor, I would add, have they shown much appetite for large outlays to help developing countries. The United States is last in foreign aid among developed countries. Our reconstruction aid to Afghanistan has been paltry, and funds so far for Iraq’s rebuilding are a meager $2.5 billion.

The dilemma, says Ferguson, is that “Americans yearn for the quiet life at home” but since 9/11 “have felt impelled to grapple with rogue regimes” in hope of preventing future terrorist attacks. “The trouble is that if they do not undertake these interventions with conviction … they are unlikely to achieve their stated goals.”

I think this neatly sums up our Iraq conundrum. To achieve President Bush’s goal – building Iraqi democracy – would take a serious and lengthy occupation under conditions that can’t be replicated: those of the British Raj or America’s lengthy post-World War II occupation of Germany and Japan.

The President seems to recognize that the colonial era is over and Iraqis will rebel against a lengthy U.S. stay. He insists the United States has come to Iraq for liberation, not occupation. He says U.S. military forces will go home as soon as America has helped Iraqis build “a peaceful and representative government” that protects human rights.

But Ferguson says this is self-delusion: “Anyone who thinks Iraq can become a stable democracy in a matter of months – whether three, six or 24 – is simply fantasizing.”

This, then, is the Iraq challenge: Can the United States remake a developing country without overt imperial rule?

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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