If Ronald Reagan were president today he would welcome Angela Merkel of Germany and especially Nicolas Sarkozy, president-elect of France, along with Great Britain and others to a summit aimed at working out a new 21st-century plan of action that would initiate market-oriented economies for Central Asia and the Middle East. He believed that free markets and free people were the greatest resource the world could have in building a newer and more orderly world trading system.
Government programs and military might alone, however, cannot establish the conditions necessary for economic growth to occur and for democratic self-rule to take root in these troubled lands. There are, to be sure, several critical activities and services that only government can undertake, such as providing large-scale financial assistance and re-establishing order and security, being primary among them. But even with such fundamental public-sector responsibilities as providing security, national governments cannot go it alone; they cannot succeed without a cooperative and vibrant private sector and a strong system of local governance working beside them.
Reagan believed the transformation to democratic capitalism can be accelerated but it will require careful and delicate nurturing and cultivation of the human spirit. For when the human spirit has been damaged by years of tyranny and terror, it is necessary to give people special attention and assistance to help heal their wounds, restore their confidence and give them a leg up on the road to economic success. That is what America did in Europe and Japan after World War II, and it will be necessary again today in Central Asia and the Middle East.
To the extent that Afghanistan and Iraq are more difficult challenges than postwar Europe, however, it is more reason, not less, to tackle the problem of reconstruction with resources and reform. American failure in Iraq not only would damage the prospects for Middle East peace, but also deal a crippling blow to the war on terrorism and American economic leadership throughout the world. We cannot afford to fail.