The Folly of Imperialism as Explicated by John B. Judis

James Chace, in the NYT (Sept. 12, 2004):

The debate over why the Bush administration launched the war in Iraq is now at full tide. The American people were told that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi regime was in contact with the international terrorists of Al Qaeda and that the most effective way for the United States to prevent Hussein from attacking America and its interests in the Middle East was to wage a preventive war. We now know from the Senate Intelligence Committee's report that the Bush administration's key judgments were wildly overstated and unsupported by the underlying intelligence information.

John B. Judis, a senior editor for The New Republic, proposes a deeper reason for the war, one that the president and his entourage have cited as central to their thinking: their belief that America could bring democracy to Iraq. A democratic Iraq would then serve as a model for its neighbors, almost all of which are authoritarian states. Judis sees this new democratic imperialism as a throwback to the imperialistic policies of Theodore Roosevelt before becoming president and of Woodrow Wilson's interventions, especially in Mexico, during his early years in the White House. In an enlightening interpretation of American history, Judis expresses the hope that George W. Bush and his successors will soon understand the folly of imperialism as did Roosevelt and Wilson.

Roosevelt, Judis writes, regretted the annexation of the Philippines, and showed no further interest in acquiring territory. (The revolution in Panama, which the United States backed in return for using Panamanian land on which to build the canal, was not an imperialist venture, according to Roosevelt; the Panamanians may have had a different view, but nobody asked them). A firm believer in regional balances of power, Roosevelt also suggested well before Wilson did that the great powers should form a ''League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.''

In his imperialist moment Wilson said his aim was to make sure ''our neighbor states in this hemisphere'' would give liberty to their peoples. But when Wilson sent 6,000 troops to Veracruz to replace the Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta, he discovered that the American forces, instead of being greeted as liberators, ''inspired riots and demonstrations all over the country, and united Huerta with his opponents.'' Wilson finally gave up on his military adventurism in Mexico. ''The country is theirs,'' he concluded. ''Their liberty, if they can get it, is theirs, and so far as my influence goes while I am president, nobody shall interfere with them.''

Wilson, however, never gave up on his belief that the United States had a special mission in the world. As he said a few years before he became president, ''every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America.'' In World War I he came to believe America could not spread its ideals or system of government simply by setting an example for others. People everywhere, he declared, ''are looking to us for leadership and direction.'' The League of Nations was to embody his hopes for remaking the world in the American image. But Wilson's dream died in Congress, when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty establishing the League....