Representative governments, he argued, do not intrigue against other nations. "Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class," Wilson said. "They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs."
Of course, World War I did not usher in an age of universal democracy and peace any more than last week's democratic vote for a Palestinian legislature ushered in leaders who disdain "plans of deception or aggression" or who even feel the need to keep such plans "carefully guarded."
Today, however, it is a Republican president bidding to revive Wilson's Utopian vision.
Even more than Wilson, President Bush has had compelling reasons to wage war as a matter of national self-defense, and, in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he has conducted the self-defense of this nation with courage and manifest effectiveness.
But a year ago, in his second Inaugural Address, Bush out-Wilsoned Wilson. "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he said. "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal, instead, is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way."
Last week, Palestinians found their voice in Hamas. If the United States were to push democratic movements across the Middle East, where Islamist ideology is on the rise, it could mean more Hamas-type victories. In nuclear-armed Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf overthrew an elected government in 1999, but has been a good friend to the United States in the war on terror. Should we foment a democratic movement against him?
Our CIA could not accurately answer the concrete question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Where are the government analysts who now can accurately parse and predict the political passions of Pakistanis?
The real question for U.S. foreign policy is not ideological, but practical. It is not: How do we advance democracy globally? It is: How do we keep our own country safe, prosperous and free?