President George Bush's promotion of democracy has become the unifying and driving principle of his administration's global foreign policy and the stated objective of the costly and controversial military effort in Iraq. The administration has talked about enfranchising individuals in all corners of the world, admittedly with a growing sense of unease, from Venezuela to Zimbabwe to Palestine.
Enthusiasm for democracy is not limited to the corridors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Many Americans have come to see the spread of democracy around the world as part of their national identity, even though that pursuit has never been the driving force of foreign policy in the past. A zeal for spreading democracy is the emerging zeitgeist of the 21st century, replacing the egalitarian imperative that prevailed in (and convulsed) the later 20th century.
Policy analysts today are less inclined to wander into tactical-strategic muddles in which "good" dictators are supported against bad ones and alliances with enemies of our enemies are promoted. The realpolitik approach has lost currency and is no longer the benchmark against which to measure foreign policy strategies. It is also being aggressively fought as an applied theory and as a cultural force.
And yet there is still no consensus, either within the administration or American society, about what constitutes a democracy. The world's only superpower is rhetorically and militarily promoting a political system that remains undefined--and it is staking its credibility and treasure on that pursuit. Little wonder that the administration's democratic strategy for establishing stability and equity in the Middle East invites confusion, if not outright derision.
