Regime change

Over the past decade, Washington has justified military interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan on the grounds that human rights had to be defended and democracy promoted. Those explanations "were not organized in a rational way, and sometimes the US was forced into interventions by circumstances," argues Karin von Hippel, author of "Democracy by Force: US Military Interventions in the Post Cold War World."

In 1994, for example, the wave of Haitian boat people landing daily on the Florida coast prompted President Clinton to launch "Operation Restore Democracy" to reinstall elected President Bertrand Aristide, who had been overthrown in a military coup. Clinton felt compelled, however, to justify the invasion on the grounds that the situation in Haiti caused "the total fracturing of the ability of the world community to conduct business in the post-cold war era."

After initial success, democracy has not taken hold in Haiti - nor has it been in many of the places where America has intervened, says Minxin Pei, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Aside from the post-World War II success stories - Germany, Japan, and Italy - "the US record of installing democracy is very dubious, with less than a 20 percent success rate," he adds.

That record bodes ill for Iraq, says Dr. Pei, should US troops invade that country to overthrow Hussein.

Panama, where US forces overthrew and captured Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1989, offers some parallels with Iraq: a dictator sitting on a strategic asset (in that case, a canal), who had previously enjoyed US support, falls afoul of Washington and defies the authorities there. General Noriega was also offered an exile deal but refused. Still, Panama, where America restored a relatively democratic regime, is a tiny, relatively homogenous country within the US sphere of influence.

Iraq is none of those things. There are three major factions - Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites - with no tradition of democratic rule. "On the basis of past experience, I would predict that the US will fail miserably at building democracy in Iraq because America's heart is not in it," warns Pei. "The primary goal is getting rid of a very brutal dictator."

Most experts agree that the US record of building a democratic regime after ousting a leader is poor. "If we replace Saddam, the biggest unresolved question is: What do we do afterwards?" says Lawson. "We've only succeeded when we're willing to occupy the country and make fundamental changes from the bottom up, as we did in postwar Japan and Germany," he says. "It required an enormous investment of resources and a decade of occupation. We have yet to find a less costly formula for stability, let alone building a democratic, free-market state."

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