Iraq and the Democratic Peace

Brian Frederking

March 15, 2006

            So why are we in Iraq? The Bush administration now routinely invokes the democratic peace theory to justify the war. The democratic peace theory is based on an abundance of historical evidence that democracies almost never go to war with each other. The war and subsequent democratization of Iraq is in US interests, the argument goes, because the future US-Iraq relationship will be as peaceful as, say, the current US-Japan relationship.

We should not forget that the democratic peace argument was in the bullpen and only used in relief after the initial justifications of weapons proliferation and links to al-Qaeda were no longer plausible. We should skeptically evaluate this post hoc justification for the war. And unfortunately for President Bush, little of what history and social science tells us supports this argument.

First, post-WWII Japan is not a good analogy to contemporary Iraq. Japan had a homogenous population, a defeated leader who encouraged the population to cooperate with the US, a set of existing institutions that could be reformed in a democratic direction, and an occupying power committed to spend the resources for a long-term occupation.

Iraq has an ethnically and religiously divided population, the remnants of the defeated regime are engaged in an insurgency against the occupation, there are no pre-existing democratic institutions, and it is questionable that the US is willing to stay for the long haul. We were in Japan for over a decade following WWII. Given these differences between the two cases, how much longer might Iraq take?

Second, what we know about democratization does not suggest optimism for Iraq. Countries that successfully make the transition to democracy have the following characteristics: 1) relatively high GNP per capita; 2) relatively equal distribution of resources; 3) a political culture that supports debate, moderation, and toleration of the loyal opposition; 4) elites who agree on the legitimacy of the system; and 5) certain functioning political institutions (political parties, civilian control of the military, independent judiciary, honest bureaucracies, etc.). Before the war Iraq had none of these characteristics, and there has been at best marginal progress in three years.

Democratization in the Middle East poses particular obstacles. There is no previous history of democracy in the region. There is a history of war and conflict. It is populated largely by dictatorships who do not wish democracy well. Many analysts doubt whether the authoritarian nature of Arab and/or Islamic culture is amenable to democracy. And many political scientists write about a “resource curse” in which countries dependent on oil exports are often ruled by dictators who use the oil revenues to keep themselves in power. So at best, the US goal of democratizing Iraq is an uphill struggle.

Third, previous attempts to forcibly remove a regime tend not to result in a future democratic system. One study of 90 US military interventions from 1898-1992 shows that only 15% of those countries were democratic ten years after the intervention. Another study of 92 military interventions by the US, Britain, and France from 1946-1996 showed that democratization was an explicit goal in 29 interventions, but only 13 succeeded. The key variable was the military: when the occupying power tried to strengthen the military, democratization failed. Of course, this is a central US policy right now: to train the Iraqis to eventually fight the war themselves.

Bruce Russett, a Yale political scientist and one of the pioneers of democratic peace theory, argues in a recent article in International Studies Perspectives that “our creation has been perverted” to justify the war. He cites a 1993 article in which he wrote: “The model of ‘fight them, beat them, and make them democratic’ is irrevocably flawed as a basis for contemporary action.”

As a political scientist, the infuriating thing about the war is that everyone in my profession knew all of this before the war started. And when many of us tried to tell the Bush administration, they would not listen. In today’s politics, ideology is more important than evidence. But the real world is still out there, regardless of our ideological predispositions. We ignore it at our peril.