The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

against a sovereign country that posed little if any threat to the United States (e.g., Iraq, circa 2003) yet were fully supportive of attacks against another country that posed absolutely no threat to the U.S. (Yugoslavia, circa 1999). Many Americans are committed to the principle of humanitarian intervention. They see war as a necessary evil, but they also see the U.S. military as an effective tool for promoting change abroad. They are less clear about the true costs of such interventions. Accordingly, although there is popular support for deploying U.S. mil- itary personnel to places, and in ways, that are not direct- ly related to defending vital interests, there is precious lit- tle support for paying the costs for these operations. If Rice pushes the Bush Doctrine to its logical conclusions, and makes good on her own pledge to transform the Middle East, she will both test the patience of the American people and further arouse the ire of those in the region who prefer to be left alone. An Instinctive Realist? The Bush administration, we now know, is not content to leave well enough alone. A standard line in the presi- dent’s speeches contends that the spread of democracy around the globe is a national security concern for the United States because terrorism cannot flourish within democracies. Undemocratic regimes, therefore, are legit- imate targets for overthrow. Rice herself has become a leading advocate for this posi- tion. In an op-ed in the Washington Post in August 2003, Rice called for a long-term commitment for transforming theMiddle East, similar to that made toward Europe in the post-World War II era, to close the “freedom deficit” that contributes to hopelessness and despair in the region. Rice argued that Hussein’s Iraq posed a threat to the United States, and his removal from power was warrant- ed on those grounds. At the same time, however, Rice echoed President Bush in arguing that a just and humane Iraqi government, one “built upon democratic principles,” could become a linchpin for transforming the entire region, much as a democratic Germany was at the center of Europe’s revival following World War II. This worldview is all the more remarkable given that Rice cut her intellectual teeth studying the Soviet Union and the dynamics of the Cold War. In the context of that great struggle, ideology was important but secondary to the preservation of U.S. security. Peripheral concerns were routinely ignored, and tacit alliances cut with unde- mocratic tyrants, to advance perceived U.S. interests. Following the end of the ColdWar, however, the foreign policy coalition within the Republican Party cracked and broke apart. As Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke explain in their recent book, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order , realists and neo-conservatives waged an ideological battle in the 1990s, both seeking to claim credit for the peaceful end of the Cold War, and to craft a narrative that reflected most favorably on their ideology. For a while, Condoleezza Rice seemed content to side with the realists. She was openly disdainful of the types of military operations that would divert the focus of U.S. forces away from defending U.S. national interests. She was particularly scornful of the use of the American mili- tary for nation-building, famously declaring at one point that it was not the business of the 82nd Airborne to escort schoolchildren to kindergarten. Rice’s initial instincts were sound, but she erred in believing that the U.S. military could restrict itself to war- fighting, with minimal post-conflict obligations. We have learned in Iraq that our allies are not content to assume responsibility for cleaning up after us. But a foreign poli- cy organized around the principle of destroying illiberal governments by force as a means for improving American security is flawed on at least two other levels. First, even the “cleanest” wars that produce the small- est possible number of casualties, and thus require a min- imal level of post-conflict stabilization, can only perform the first of two tasks necessary for democratization to take hold. Brute force may succeed in removing tyrants from power, but cannot teach people to “elect good men,” as Woodrow Wilson declared he was going to do, starting with his invasion of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914. Second, any military intervention, even when practiced with the precision and skill of the U.S. military, involves killing. Such killing can never be limited solely to the sup- porters of the regime that is being punished, particularly given that so many of these regimes force people to serve the state against their will. Each victim of this violence leaves behind a legacy of bitterness: parents, spouses, chil- dren, friends — few of whom may have actively support- ed the former regime, but all of whommay well forget the noble intentions of the invading force. The Wages of Pre-emption The limits of American power have been obscured by the euphoria of America’s post-Cold War “unipolar F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47