The Gaza Effect

Gaza also poses a lesson in the limits of imperial power in the 21st century. Let's face it: Americans have always made crummy imperialists. A century ago Teddy Roosevelt complained that "America lacked the stomach for empire." A senior White House official echoed that lament early in the Iraq occupation, noting that America has the power of a true empire, like Rome or like Britain in the 19th century, but not the taste for acting like one. "Look at us in Iraq—how much difficulty we have in saying we will anoint people to run the country. Does anyone think the Romans or the Brits would have been deterred?" he grumbled.

Nor did many hard-liners in Washington ever fully understand that using raw power to "impose" democracy on peoples who were not ready to seize it for themselves was a chimera. By insisting on cure-all elections in countries and territories that had no institutions of justice and security, or a politically aware economic middle class, to sustain democracy, the Bush team clearly seems to have overreached.

The next American president will have to grapple with a Middle East that is messier and quite possibly angrier than before 9/11. But also, in a larger sense, he or she will have to confront anew a harsh lesson in the limits of power. America can only be, at best, a guiding hand behind an international system that is disposed to democracy and open markets. Bush is himself coming to acknowledge this, especially by maintaining a multilateral front with the Europeans to deal with the nuclear threat from Iran. Rice, in her NEWSWEEK interview, acknowledged that the administration had scaled down its hopes for "transformational" policy. "We're laying the foundations for someone else to succeed in the future, and I think that's fine." But right now, success looks very far away indeed.

© 2007