Let's force them to be free

Pluralist liberal democracy can only be effectively exported in two ways. First, by example where it has been successful; or where it is successfully restored (as in, say, Chile) its success can be an advertisement. “See, it is possible to run a country on liberal democratic lines without inviting anarchy or economic collapse.”

Most importantly, what should be exported are not the forms but the necessary preconditions of democracy. If a people are consumed by some form of internal division, if jealousy, hate and intolerance are the rule, the forms of democracy will either serve to cloak tyranny and oppression or simply be discarded, as Mugabe is now doing in Zimbabwe.

Sometimes economic liberalisation can foster the growth of democratic values, even under an authoritarian regime. China experienced the first symptoms of this at Tiananmen Square, but as the economy grows and the so-called "middle class" expands as a percentage of the population, it will make increasing demands on the authoritarian state. A pro-democracy movement based on such a class could not be suppressed by driving tanks over student demonstrators in Beijing. Nor could the new class be destroyed without jeopardising China's future economic progress.

What should be clear is that democracy cannot be forcibly imposed. It can be forcibly restored where it has been lost by conquest (as in several European countries occupied by the Nazis), but this is because the conquered people want their accustomed freedoms back. But to march in and impose democracy where there was none before seems a futile exercise. Iraq is well rid of Saddam, but if the US seriously thinks its invasion and conquest will proof the country against future authoritarianism and anti-western attitudes it is going to be seriously disillusioned.