Guest columnist
Despite our efforts in Iraq, odds are against democracy

By Erik Wibbels
Special to The Times

Erik Wibbels

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But in the background are larger, longer-term issues that have been lost among the pressing daily news of bombings and partial sovereignty.

Chief among these questions is what the prospects are for democracy in Iraq not next month, nor the month after that, but five or 10 years from now. On that front, the news is bad — even if the U.S.-Iraqi leadership manages to quell the ongoing uprising.

Social scientists know an awful lot about the underlying social, political and economic factors that are associated with democracy. We have reasonably good data for most nations in the world over the past 50 years. Analysis after analysis points to a number of factors — poverty, ethnic or religious divisions, oil dependence, a colonial past, a history of authoritarianism — that consistently contribute to democracy's absence or failure.

The problem for Iraq is that it falls on the wrong side of all of these factors. It is too poor, too internally divided, too dependent on oil and with too little history on its side for any objective thinker to expect it to be democratic.

Using a standard statistical approach, my own analysis of all of the available data suggests that there is a paltry 2 percent chance that Iraq will be democratic on the basis of domestic conditions alone. Taking the favorable international conditions for democracy into account does nothing to improve those odds.

There are exceptions. The data suggest, for instance, that India should not be democratic, but it is. Were Iraq to be democratic a decade from now, however, it would be a tremendous outlier swimming against 50 years worth of history around the world.

Well, if domestic conditions within Iraq are far from ideal, perhaps the U.S.'s external prodding can tip the scales in favor of democracy. Indeed, the Bush administration fervently professes the belief that with a helping hand from the outside, Iraq will become a shining democratic beacon in the Middle East.

But once again, history would suggest otherwise. In the past 100 years, the U.S. has engaged in 18 cases of "nation building" — cases in which it had troops on the ground and an extensive role in the design and implementation of a nation's policies. In 16 of those 18 cases, the nations were not democratic 10 years after the U.S. left. The two successes are Germany and Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Aside from the fact that military victory in Iraq has been nowhere near as complete as it was in those two cases, what can we learn from them? First, the U.S. commitment has to be very long-term. Note that the U.S. has bases in both Germany and Japan to this day. Second, the commitment is not just about time, but troops and money.

To meet the famous German benchmark, the U.S. and allies would have to have 2.5 million troops on the ground in Iraq right now. Instead, there are about 160,000. To meet the same level of economic aid, the American public will have to provide 20 percent of Iraq's gross domestic product in the coming years. Instead, economic reconstruction has all but halted in the face of ongoing violence. Absent a radical shift in American public opinion in favor of a long-term and costly intervention, the odds again are against democracy in Iraq.

If Iraq is unlikely to be democratic five or 10 years from now, what is it likely to be? Is democracy a reasonable goal for U.S. foreign policy? Might the U.S. help provide stability in Iraq even if it is not democratic? How should U.S. foreign policy change if democracy becomes untenable? Who is likely to govern if democracy fails in Iraq? Why did the U.S. invade if democracy is a pipe dream?

It should be clear at this point that too much of this nation's leadership and citizenry failed to ask some hard questions in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Regrettably, we all seem to be doing the same thing with respect to post-war Iraq. In focusing on the short-term handover of partial sovereignty, development contracts and the prospect for elections in January, policymakers, the press and the public are failing to ask these important questions.

The coming election season offers a tremendous opportunity in this regard. Unfortunately, our two presidential candidates show little intention of asking the tough questions. President Bush has repeatedly shown that his faith in the future of democracy in Iraq is unshakeable, regardless of the evidence. John Kerry has chosen to cede the broad scope of foreign policy in Iraq to the Bush administration, preferring instead to focus on getting more international help in the effort to design a democratic Iraq.

If the Bush administration's unfulfilled vision of Iraqis welcoming the U.S. as liberators teaches us anything, it is the importance of backup plans. Right now, that means thinking seriously about the very real possibility that Iraq will not be a democracy. And if our presidential candidates are unwilling to lead us in that discussion, we the citizenry should be discussing it amongst ourselves.

Erik Wibbels is an associate professor of political science at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the relationship between democratic governance and economic policy in the developing world.