1

"Imperial Liberalism"
by Robert Cooper
1
,
The National Interest, n79, Spring 2005, pp. 25-34

It is difficult both to be good and to be powerful. This seems to be
the common view among statesmen, sages, poets and thinkers. A core
thesis among thinkers of the realist persuasion has been that in foreign
affairs, being good may in the end be bad for the people you serve, and
that moral ends may best be served by thinking in terms of power and
how it should be preserved instead of aiming to do directly what seems
morally good. This lesson is repeated in the works of Machiavelli,
Morgenthau, Kissinger and many others. Realism is about power, and
though barren and inadequate as a description of the way international
society functions, it is at least consistent. Likewise, liberal
internationalism, though its proponents have sometimes mistaken
aspiration for reality, is also consistent. But the attempt to combine the
two, as Charles Krauthammer does ("In Defense of Democratic Realism",
The National Interest, Fall 2004), presents difficulties in both theory and
practice.

One difficulty with democratic realism is the problem of power in a
democratic age. Once we knew what power looked like. It possessed a big
army and a big navy. You exercised power by beating someone elses
army and taking their land, their money, their women. Sometimes you
took over their territory and ruled it and them. In the last decades these
habits have died out among democracies: In an advanced industrial
society, land is more a burden than an asset. We have left behind the
static aristocratic society in which wealth appeared to be fixed, so that
you could become rich only by robbing others: Today peace and trade
provide a better return than war and looting. From the point of view of
wealth creation, war is a double negative. It destroys assets and does so
at great expense.

In a democratic age, ruling others is problematic. The notion that
all men are equal does not sit comfortably with empire. Nevertheless, the
idea of spreading the democratic system of government has great
attractions. We need an orderly world, and democracies are in the long
run more stable than dictatorships. Besides, like it or not, our
democratic values are universal. If all men are equal, then oppression
anywhere is offensive: it may not threaten our security, but it threatens
our self respect, for we are involved in mankind.


1
The author is Director-General for External and Politico-Military Affairs in the EU Council Secretariat.
He writes in a personal capacity.

2
The theory that democracies do not fight each other attracts
adherents as different as President Bush and Immanuel Kant. There are
also skeptics like Alexander Hamilton, who pointed out that Rome and
Athens were no less warlike for being republics. These were imperfect
democracies, it is true, but so in one way or another are all democracies.
Perhaps the fairest conclusion is that the no-war-between-democracies
thesis needs more time to establish itselfup to the present, the sample
of modern democracies has been too small. But for mature democracies
it does at least seem to have a plausible logic: Most people are cautious
about voting for policies that may involve them risking their lives. And
the evidence continues to accumulate.

The theory that well-governed societies will not produce terrorists
is manifestly not true: Timothy Mcveigh, British-born suicide bombers
and the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo are among the many
counter examples. But in a well-governed country there will be a better
chance of obtaining the support of the majority of the population against
the terrorists. Legitimacy is usually one of the keys to success.
Accountable police and intelligence services ought in the end to be more
efficient. But here also evidence is too thin for much certainly.

Nevertheless, a world of well-governed countries with accountable
executives, responsible assemblies and independent judiciaries seems
instinctively preferable to any of the alternatives. We feel more
comfortable with Japan mastering nuclear technology than with someone
like Saddam Hussein doing the same. Europe at the end of the 20
th

century is safer than Europe at its start; East Asia looks to be on the way
to being happier and safer than the Middle East.

The argument of the democratic realist thus has a compelling
simplicity and logic: Democracy is desirable, perhaps even imperative, for
our security, and America is now a dominant power in a way that is
without precedent. So American power should be used to promote
democracy. The problem with this argument is that American poweror
at least the dimension of power in which America is most evidently
dominantis military power and it is questionable how useful this is in
creating democracies. There are several systemic reasons for thinking it
may not be the best instrument for this goal.

Democratic systems and military systems are in many respects
opposites. Democracy is bottom up; military is top down. In military
systems hierarchy and rank are fundamental: in democracy the starting
point is that all men are equal. Democracy is about due process, rights,
limits to power; military systems work, necessarily, on the basis of
obedience to orders. These differences become even more marked when

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an army has invaded someone elses country. An army gets its way by
violence and by the threat of violence, very different from the processes of
law that are embodied in democratic states. And whereas the principle of
equality before the law is basic to democracies there is nothing less equal
than the invading soldier and the local civilian. Thus although a foreign
country may invade with the best of intentions and may bring with it
professors of politics to explain democratic theory, what it does is
fundamentally undemocratic. Its words may say the right things but its
actions tell exactly the opposite story.

Behind this lies an even more fundamental question. How much
use is military power in a democratic age? What is the point of being the
solo superpower, the sole owner of the unipolar moment, if you cannot
maintain control of a single medium sized state, even over a medium
sized town? Of course the story in Iraq is far from over and the United
States, with Iraqi help, may well in the end establish order throughout
the country. Butand this is the pointif it does so it will be with Iraqi
help. No doubt even without Iraqi help the U.S. could take full control by
flooding the country with troops and using whatever degree of force was
required. This would be in the logic of military power, which after all is
about violence and threat. But it would not work. First of all it would not
work because the United States itself is democratic and its people would
not permit it: and secondly it would not work because Iraq, like every
other part of the world, is infused in a primitive way with a democratic
ideology. At the beginning of democracy is the idea of self determination,
the idea that you should be ruled by your own people and not by
foreigners. In the violent culture of the Middle East this may be
expressed in insurgency or support for insurgents; in Central Europe for
years it was expressed in sullen resistance, underground movements and
ironic humor. There too forty years of rule, through surrogates but
resting ultimately on military force, demonstrated the weakness of
military power in a democratic age.

As an authoritarian state the Soviet Union had less difficulty in
being brutal, though even its willingness to use force declined over the
forty year occupation. For America it is not so easy. The United States
may be the most powerful state since Rome but unlike the Roman
Empire it is democratic and its people will not tolerate Roman methods
(solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant)
2
. Military force still had its uses but
running or transforming other peoples countries is not one of them. To
see power only in military terms is a fundamental error in world politics.


2
They make a desert and they call it peace: Tacitus, Agricola

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Charles Krauthammer might reply that the theory might not work
but the practice does. We have succeeded in the monumental task of
reconstructing Germany, Japan and South Korea. It is true that all of
these countries have had an American force presence over a long period
and also that during this period they have become stable democracies;
but the causation is not as simple as Krauthammer suggests. In fact the
three countries mentioned had very different histories and the United
States played a different role in each.

Germany under the Nazi Party was a tyranny and its overthrow
was a requirement for the reestablishment of democracy. Without the
American contribution in World War II this would probably never have
happened. The same is true of the Soviet contribution. With the
occupation, the difference between the American and Soviet approaches
became clearer: in the Western zonewhich was British and French as
well as American - democracy and the open society were refounded; in
the Soviet Zone a communist dictatorship. But in the West democratic
institutions were not established but reestablished. They were not new.
Different parts of Germany had different histories: the state of Baden had
universal suffrage from the early nineteenth century while Prussia was
still an autocracy. It is not clear whether the German state in the time of
the Kaiser should be called a democracy or not. Every one had a vote but
they were of unequal weight: by modern standards it would not qualify
as democratic; but that is also true of most other countries of the period.
The Weimar constitution, however, was undoubtedly democratic: for
example it gave votes to women a year before the 19
th
amendment did the
same in the United States and some decades before many other
European states.

U.S. policy in occupied Germany after World War II was not
directed primarily towards democratization. The Morgenthau Plan for the
deindustrialization of Germany was, fortunately, abandoned before the
occupation began. Nevertheless some of the thinking that inspired it
remained; JCS1067, the document that set out the main policies for the
U.S. occupation, states: Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of
liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.
3
Fraternization was
forbidden; agricultural reconstruction was to be encouraged and
American support for rebuilding German industry was prohibited. Lucius
Clay, the American Military Governor, wisely ignored both the spirit and
the letter of U.S. policy. His main motivation for seeking to transfer
authority to German politicians seems to have been the wish to end his
responsibility for tasks for which he felt thoroughly unprepared. His

3
Department of State: Documents on Germany

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efforts to get guidance from the State Department on what exactly was
meant by either democracy or federalism were fruitless.

This did not matter much. Adenauer and Schumacher not only
knew more about Germany than did any of the occupation forces; they
also knew more about democracyhaving watched and suffered under
its decline in the 1930s. Perhaps Americans in general, coming from the
only state to have been born democratic are less aware of the difficulties
and travails of the process of becoming a democracy, Clay himself made
this point: I think we have a peculiar idea of our government being
perfect without knowing really and truly how it works.
4
The process of
creating a new German constitutionbased largely on Weimarwas
essentially a German one. The British had concluded that the best way to
deal with post war Germany would be to ensure that its government was
decentralized but it was Adenauers commitment to federalism that
mattered. In the case of Trade Union legislation, although it was the
British Military Government that first agreed to the creation of Unions
these were created on a German model, which learned some lessons from
the prewar period, rather than following British ideas. In education also
the Germans had their own ideas: the Minister for Culture in Lower
Saxony complained at receiving orders from foreigners when the best
vision of reform was German. In Bavaria they simply ignored allied
directives in this area. And so on.

The allies (not just America) played a part in reestablishing
German democracy. First they defeated Hitler, then they occupied
Germany in a largely benign fashion and took a benevolent attitude to
the rebirth of democratic institutionsboth quite different from what
happened in the Soviet zone. But the democratic development of
Germany after 1945 was first and foremost a German event. To claim
otherwise is not only to underestimate the Germans but also to
overestimate the degree to which an occupying military power can
control developments.

The constitution of post war West Germany was a German
product. The same cannot be said of the Japanese Constitution, which
was drafted by Americans working for the Supreme Commander for the
Allied Powers (SCAP), and - according to some Japanese - still reads like
a translation. Nevertheless the politicians who made it work were
authentically Japanese. In an analysis of the occupation period the
scholar Thomas A. Bisson, who himself had worked for SCAP, wrote:


4
Quoted in Niall Fergusson: Colossus, page 74, Allen Lane 2004

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(T)he occupation authorities came prepared to play the role of
firm but benevolent guardians of a docile and oppressed people that
had no conception of the meaning much less the practice of
democratic rights and responsibilities. The general consensus of
opinion was that the majority of the Japanese would be meek and
apologetic and would willingly accept the tutelage of their
liberators. As it turned out however, the release of political
prisoners from jail, the granting of free speech, freedom of the
press, freedom of organization, and other rights produced a popular
movement that startled the occupation by its vigor and
independence, and by the far reaching character of its demands for
political and economic reform.
5


On the whole the reformers were disappointed by the extent to
which the old political and economic structures remained. The purge of
politicians and officials thought to be undesirable had limited effects.
The Japanese Government originally identified some 200,000 candidates
but by the time the occupation ended in 1952 only just over eight
thousand were still banned from office (including some communists who
had opposed Japanese militarism). Many of those banned, like Prime
Minister Hatoyama, subsequently returned. Two measures did have a
lasting impact: the dramatic land reform which changed the structure of
village societyand also helped ensure a permanent conservative
majority in the countryside; and the effective abolition of the armed
forces. This measure made a real difference since the army had been at
the root of the instability that brought down Japanese democracy in the
1930s. It is doubtful if the Japanese people would have done either of
these things on their owneven if they have been happy to accept the
results.

As in Germany, U.S. policies played a part in the restoration of
Japanese democracy; but anyone examining the whole period will reach
the conclusion that Japan was rebuilt as a successful democratic society
by the Japanese themselves. On reflection it is difficult to imagine
anything else. A few hundred foreign officials, most of them initially
ignorant of Japan, few of them speaking the language, were hardly likely
to bring about the complete transformation of Japanese society in a
seven year period.

The third example quoted by Krauthammer, Korea, is more
complicated. The United States never had the role or powers of an
occupying authority in Korea though it did have operational command
over the Republic of Korea's armed forces. How far the United States can

5
T A Bisson: Prospects for democracy in Japan. New York, Macmillan, 1949, p.74

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claim credit for South Koreas democratic transformation over the forty
years from the end of the war is questionable. On the one side the State
Department and the U.S. Embassy in Seoul urged progress towards
democracy from time to time; and the United States probably saved Kim
Dae Jung from execution (and then gave him asylum in the United
States). On the other, the United States seems to have had little difficulty
in working closely with successive corrupt and authoritarian regimes,
and at critical moments did nothing to prevent the use of the military
against demonstrators
6
. Given the complexity of its security
responsibilities and the relationship between Washington and Seoul
there was perhaps little alternative. Nevertheless this does not look like
an active policy of promoting democracy. But while U.S. military power
may have done little directly for democracy in Korea, American influence
worked a slow and lasting transformation: the contact with American
society and government over the forty years following the end of the
Korean War played a positive, possibly a transforming role in Korean
thinking. And the transition to democracy is above all about changes in
ideas.

It should not be surprising in any of these cases that democracy
came from within rather than in the baggage train of a foreign army.
Democracy is rule by the people and who else but the people
themselves could be responsible for its establishment? You can use force
to impose your sonnovabitch but not to impose democratic politics.

This does not mean that foreigners and military power, have no
role at all. The first role that foreign armies may play is in the defeat of
an undemocratic regime. Few regimes survive a major military defeat.
What happens then depends on local circumstances. Often there will be
a reaction to the values of the regime which has lost the war and so
failed in its primary duty of providing security. The Prussian defeat of
Napoleon III brought the return to democracy in France. And when the
Third Republic was defeated it gave way, briefly, to Vichy amid disillusion
with democracy. The defeat of the Czar in World War I brought a
revolution which started with an incompetent attempt at democracy
and finished with Lenin. China in the twentieth century suffered
innumerable defeats at the hands of the Japanese and the West bringing
a series of revolutions that culminated in that of Mao Zedong. The defeat
of the Kaiserreich brought a period of democracy; but the incompleteness

6
General Magruder gave the Korean military permission to deploy troops to restore order when protests
broke out against Syngman Rhees fixing of elections but offered nothing more than verbal support when
the army chief of staff asked him to deploy American forces against Park Chung Hees coup overthrowing
a democratically elected government. In 1980 General Wickham agreed to release the Twentieth Division
from its duties in the DMZ. It was subsequently responsible for the deaths of perhaps a thousand
demonstrators in the Kwanju massacre.

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of that defeat also gave legitimacy to the extreme right. After World War
II, Italy reacted against fascism and created a shaky but ultimately
enduring democracy. In Germany force was indeed necessary to establish
a new regime in Germany but that was in the East where the role of the
military was to suppress moves towards democracy. In Greece in 1974
the Colonels wisely did not wait to be defeated by Turkey but resigned
preemptively. In the same year, facing unwinnable wars in its colonies
the Portuguese army revolted and began a revolution against the right
wing authoritarian government. The result was very nearly a communist
government but in the end settled into a democracy. Thatchers victory
in the Falklands War brought the overthrow of the military regime and a
return to democracy in Argentina, an event that seemingly unleashed a
democratic domino effect in South America. Military defeat is not the
only kind of shock that can destabilize a regime in the Soviet Union it
was loss of empire; in Indonesia it a financial crisis but it remains
perhaps the worst shock a country can suffer and one of those most
likely to delegitimise a regime.

The second contribution that foreign forces can make is to bring
security. War is one of the great enemies of democracy. Control of the
military is fundamental to the rule of law. But in situations of national
emergency, under threat of attack or under popular enthusiasm for
righting the wrongs imposed by foreigners, democracy is at risk. It was
the dominance of the military in Japan in the 1930s that undermined its
struggling democracy. In Europe both fascism and communism came out
of war: communism through revolution brought by defeat. Fascisms
appeal in Germany was to those who believed Germany had been
betrayed rather than defeated; in Italy it was to former officers who felt
they had won Italys first victories only to surrender them to a cowardly
parliament and a peace-mongering church. In both countries the slogans
and imagery of the anti democratic movements were warlike (as was also
the case for communism). In Korea military coups have characteristically
been justified by the need for a strong government to deal with the
threat from the North. Perhaps, in this light, it could be argued that it is
not an accident that democracy has best developed and survived in
countries whose geography gave them some natural protection: Britain
and the United States relied on navieswhich are inherently less
destabilizing than armies: Scandinavia was remote; the Netherlands had
the option of defending itself by breaching the dikes.

Thus the United States made a vital contribution to democracy in
post-war Europe through the creation of NATO. By giving assurance of
security to the countries of Western Europe it removed the military from

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domestic politics and herded them into a multilateral world. This was not
entirely successful in the case of Greece where the perceived threat from
Turkey remained a source of insecurity, and in Turkey where some
combination of external threat and the Kemalist legacy gave the army a
special position. But for the rest of Europe armies became increasingly
removed from politics
7
Later on a similar process was applied in Spain:
following the death of Franco Spain left fascism behind by entering into
the European Union while the Spanish army escaped its anti-democratic
past through integration into NATO. The importance of the external
environment, including its security dimension, was demonstrated again
in 1989 The revolutions of Central and Eastern Europe were not
democratic by chance. That most of the countries concerned had some,
albeit short, democratic experience probably helped; but what mattered
most was the security offered by the United States in the form of NATO
membership and the existence of a community of democracies in the
shape of the European Union (which also offered both incentives and
practical help with reform). As a result the outcome was very different
from that of the 1920s and 30s when the same countries were
sandwiched between communism and fascism and were threatened by
both.

In Japan when introducing the peace constitution General
MacArthur said: By this undertaking and commitment Japan
surrenders rights inherent in her own sovereignty and renders her future
security and very survival subject to the good faith and justice of the
peace-loving peoples of the world. Fortunately for Japan it has been the
United States rather than the peace-loving peoples of the world that has
safeguarded its security. Possibly Japanese democracy would have done
well without the Security Treaty but by taking responsibility for Japans
security the United States removed the military threat to democracy that
had been so destructive in the 1930s.

This raises the question why the transition to democracy was
so slow in the Republic of Korea. Unlike postwar Japan Korea's
external environment remained a negative factor, in spite of the US
security presence, resulting in a state that was too militarized to make it
easy for democratic aspirations to bear fruit, even when had it achieved
the high-income levels that seem normally to point towards democracy.
Yet without the secure environment provided by U.S. guarantees and
their visible embodiment in the U.S. force presence, the process might
have taken much longer.

7
The case of France is somewhat different but nevertheless illustrates some of these points: theloss of
Algeria brought France to the brink of a military coup. But even if this had succeeded and it did not -it is
difficult to imagine that it could have resulted in a lasting undemocratic regime.

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The Korean experience, like that of many countries, illustrates
that democracy faces external threats as well as internal challenges.
The latter are of course essential. No matter how favourable the
external environment democracy will not take root unless some
basic compromises can be reached between different groups, classes
and ethnicities that establish the rules of the game. The losers in
elections must believe in the constitution sufficiently to accept defeatin
the confidence that they will get another chance later on to contest
elections. The winners must be sufficiently committed to the
constitution not to abuse it and use their power to oppress or
disadvantage the opposition. In achieving a settlement of these
fundamental questions outsiders cannot play much of a role.

Some of the enemies of democracydictators and their military
backingcan be defeated by armies. But not all. Sometimes the real
enemy is traditional society in its different forms; sometimes it is a
modern oligarchy bringing together politics, especially nationalist or
ethnic politics, and economic interest. The spread of ideas and the
spread of the market are the most important means to defeat these
(which is why modern oligarchs seek to control both). Assisting those
who are seeking fairer courts, freer media, genuine elections
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, better
protection for human rights, better commercial law, may not produce
instant success but it must be worth trying. Scholarships, libraries and
other ways of spreading ideas may also have a part to play in the Middle
East, as they did in Korea. Slow, pedestrian, uncertain but no more
uncertain than the use of force. In the long run democracy succeeds
because of its success. Its product is the Mercedes Benz rather than the
Trabant, the PhD and foreign travel in South Korea rather than isolation
and starvation in the North. People want democracy because they want a
better life; consumerism is not beautiful but it too is an image of liberty.

Every country is different and there are as many routes to
democracy as there are countries. India took to it naturally; Pakistan has
struggled. Indonesia looks increasingly like a success story, against all
expectations. Thailand, Chile, Taiwan, South Africa, Spain all have
different stories. In many cases the position of the army has been a vital
factor. It may be that foreign forces will succeed in bringing democracy to
Iraq: it is always a mistake to underestimate either Americas will or its
capacity for getting things done - and the enthusiasm of most Iraqis for
elections is clear. But the choice will in the end be for the Iraqis and

8
It is striking how often the tribute despots pay to democracy in the form of elections can eventually
undermine them. It was elections that brought down Milosevic, not war or sanctions. As we have seen in
Ukraine the idea that you are being cheated in an election can mobilize popular feeling to an extent almost
nothing else can..

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there is no way even the most powerful of foreign powers could guarantee
the outcome. We all hope for success but in historical terms it would be a
rare case, and it would be unwise to build too much on it. Indeed we
should be careful about using the threat of force to press for democratic
change: nothing is more likely to strengthen the tyrant and legitimize the
illegitimate than a foreign threat. No communist regime collapsed as a
result of outside pressure; internal change comes easier when people feel
more secure externally.

It is not a question of abandoning the Wilsonian vision of
encouraging the spread of democracy so much as being realistic
about what an outside actor can achieve. Foreigners, especially
foreign armies, are not equipped to broker domestic constitutional
settlements but they can create a positive external security
environment in which such a settlement will have more chance of
prospering. The inability to create an adequate security
environment in the 1920s and 1930s was a major reason for the
failure of the original Wilsonian package. At that time the failures
included the incomplete defeat of Germany, the defects in the
Versailles Treaty; the absence of the United States and Soviet
Russia from the League of Nations, the failure to put muscle behind
its somewhat cloudy ideas, and the cloudy nature of those ideas.

But the basic Wilsonian package was not wrong. Self-
determination, democracy and the institutionalization of international
security go well together. Self-determination is a precondition for
democracy: unless there is a sufficient sense of community, democracy
on the basis of majority voting will not work. Democracy in turn
contributes to peace. The idea that the peace will be kept by the force of
international public opinionon which ultimately the hopes for the
League restedmakes sense only if public opinion has a chance to make
itself heard, i.e. in a world of democracies. But democracy itself is most
likely to prosper in an international environment that creates trust
between states.

Trust between states, the classical realist may scoff, is
impossible. One of the (many) weaknesses of Wilsons rhetoric is that he
seemed to base his plans on the idea of a natural harmony of interests
among nations. Nothing of the sort exists. Nor, however, is there any
natural harmony of interests among men. The triumph of the rule of law
is that it manages these natural conflicts. It is the legal framework that
enables markets to channel greed into constructive economic activity. In
the end men discover that for all their natural conflicts they have a
common interest in upholding the law. But markets are not natural: they
are the outcome of man-made laws.

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Nor is democracy the natural condition of mankind. It is simply
that experience has taught us that nothing else makes the rule of law
sustainable. The compromises necessary to make constitutions work are
the price we pay to channel ambition into constructive political activity.
Institutions exist to create trust, that indispensable element in human
society. The rule of law creates the trust that enables markets to
function. Democracy is a way of compensating for the fact that no one is
to be trusted with too much power for too long.

International institutions are needed for the same reasons: to
provide continuity and predictabilitythe next best thing to trust - in an
uncertain world. They are needed precisely because states, like men, are
not to be trusted. It would be logical for those who press the case for
domestic institutionsdemocracy and the market economy to want
institutions at the international level too.

We are now in a democratic era. This may be seen not just in the
growing number of democracies many of them rather shaky but also
in the homage paid to the idea of democracy by those like President
Mugabe who fix elections to give themselves a pretence of democratic
legitimacy; or by authoritarian countries like the DPRK who nonetheless
find it essential to include the D for Democratic in their name. The idea
is acknowledged even when the reality is denied.

This has consequences for the international system. The realist
world of rational policy making, equilibrium, alliances of convenience
and the balance of power, worked best when we were governed by
rational, oligarchsRichelieu, Pitt, Palmerston or Bismarck. Democratic
ideas mean that policy requires a moral basis. The idea of the dignity of
man will not go away; and policies have to be based on ideals and human
sympathy as well as on interest. In a democratic world, the use of force
becomes more difficult to handle. Wars need greater moral legitimacy
than in an autocratic age. To sell them a Roosevelt or a Reagan is
needed. And once started they are more difficult to end. Every war risks
becoming a crusade. This was not a problem in the cases of World War II
and the Cold War in both unconditional surrender was the only
acceptable outcome but it does not suit the conduct of lesser
campaigns. Democracy made it difficult for America either to prosecute
the Vietnam War with as much ruthlessness as the North did, or to cut
its losses and get out.

The balance of power, which calls for the application of power with
calculation and restraint, is no longer sustainable in a democratic age.
Nor is the exercise of hegemony by force which has been the other

13
source of stability in the international system. In a democracy
domination by the ruthless use of force ceases to be an option in the
international field as it is in the domestic - as Gandhi well understood
when he began the process of dismantling the British Empire.

Neither equilibrium nor domination works well in a democratic
age. And if democracies are inherently less bellicose, then basing the
international order on a system logically dependent on wars and force is
intellectually incoherent and practically mistaken. Nothing is left but to
manage international relations through institutionsas Woodrow Wilson
foresaw. Those that we have at the moment function poorlywhich is
hardly a surprise, given how short their history is. Even the most
competent, such as NATO and the EU come nowhere near matching the
national governments that make them up in either efficiency or
legitimacy (the two frequently go together). We have learned something
from past failures but there is much further to go.

Force remains indispensable in international affairs both because
we have not yet achieved the democratic dream; and even if we do it will
still be needed as the ultimate enforcer of law. In the meanwhile we need
force to protect ourselves and help create a favourable environment for
democracy. But as the world becomes more democratic, and so more
civilized force will be less visible and less prominent in international
relations.

We have chosen to be good rather than to be powerful. Torture is
unacceptable, not just because it is ineffective but because our system is
based on respect for individual people. Europeans talk of human rights
and the rule of law; Americans talk of freedom and democracy; but they
mean the same thing. For America the way to be good in a world of power
used to be to isolate itself. That is no longer possible. Instead it seeks to
remake the world in its own image. This is the European project also,
though on a more modest, regional basis. We are all Wilsonians now.
And we should understand that the true Wilsonian institutions are not
bodies like the UN but rather NATO and the European Union, embodying
the values of democracy and law.

Charles Krauthammer is right to want to accelerate the spread of
democracy, and he is probably right to be selective too - though in
practice what happens most often is that countries select themselves. It
would indeed be nice to remake the world; but some things are beyond
the control even of America. Democracy is one of them. Democracy
means rule by the people and no one else can make their choices for
them. The spread of the idea and the spread of the practice are
nevertheless impressive. There are many ways we can assist short of

14
employing force - using military power to provide security is one of them;
but in the end it is the force of the idea and the power of its practice that
conquers. Liberal imperialism may be an oxymoron but imperial
liberalism
9
is the reality of today.





9
The phrase, and the thought are not mine but belong to Professor Joachim Krause of Kiel University.