Many in the Bush Administration believe that national and international security will be best guaranteed by imposing democratization on all nondemocracies, starting with those states that have the worst human rights records or are most likely to harbor weapons of mass destruction or terrorists. Their solution is instant and universal democracy under American auspices. While much of the world has been appalled at how this strategy played out in the case of Iraq, we could be only at the beginning. Two recent works by persons associated with the administration argue for a much more interventionist policy than the Bush administration has so far adopted.*

This stance reflects two problems that face American leaders. The first is a pervasive impatience with ambiguity and an equally pervasive naivete infecting both leaders and followers. President Bush came into office with little acquaintance with world affairs and preceded to surround himself with knowledgeable ideologues. Against such persons, the always timid State Department was rendered inconsequential in spite of the extensive knowledge and experience of its staff. Under previous administrations, self-confidence and ideological purity were also too often allowed to trump common sense. The difference is that the ideology of the previous administrations confined itself largely to attempts to impose American capitalism regardless of the needs or natures of the economies affected while George W's has added a fervent if partly rhetorical commitment to democratization. We should applaud the commitment to human rights that lies behind the fervor. (Economic interests provide additional support for the administration's interventionist  policies, but since some people and institutions always gain from government policies, domestic or foreign, this fact cannot be used to distinguish one policy from another.) But we cannot applaud the application of good principles in the absence of forethought and regardless of the consequences.

The second problem is that ever since it became fashionable to speak of democratization rather than nation building or opposing international communism (remember the "free world"), it has been difficult for American leaders to characterize foreign governments except along the democracy dimension. This is a critical vocabulary deficit. The fact that a country's nondemocratic leaders might be doing a good job in a bad situation, overcoming, for example, the evils of national and religious sectarianism, seems to be given little rhetorical weight. Regardless of the situation, our human rights agenda is too often reduced to demanding elections or casting doubt on the fairness of those elections that are held.

In practical terms, our leaders must understand that Singapore has done more for its people and for the peace of Southeast Asia than more democratic Malaysia or Philippines. They understand that we do not really know how China would make a transition to democracy without great danger to the stability of East Asia. They understand that the self-appointed President of Pakistan is more likely to serve American and world interests than would elected political leaders — when these have so often failed in the past. In Africa, Uganda has not been an island of democratic rectitude, but the political performance is superior to that of many neighboring states, or to the regime that preceded it.It has, for example, been notably successful in its campaign against AIDS.

The conclusion is that instead of talking of instituting instant democracy, we need to return to talking again, as we did in the fifties and sixties, of the "preconditions for democracy" and to assisting in the creation of these preconditions. In many states, our first task should be not democratization per se, but assisting responsible authoritarian leaders move toward a more complete acceptance of international human rights.

From an international perspective, we also need a linguistic breakthrough. We need to establish a practice of regularly distinguishing "responsible" from "irresponsible" leadership.

"Responsibility" has both a moral and a practical aspect.

Practically, a "responsible administration" is one that is able to control the country it ostensibly rules. This means that it is able to establish and enforce laws on all segments of society, including large corporations, even international corporations, the country's military forces, and its often far-flung rural sectors. It is able to a make a more or less effective effort to control its borders, to limit the ravages of national and international criminal conspiracies, and to effectively assist others in combatting international terrorism. A responsible government is able to limit, if not eliminate, bribery and corruption. Responsible governments are, then, governments that the United States and the international community more generally can "count on." If a bilateral or multilateral agreement, or a world wide agreement, is reached, then we can assume that the responsible governments of the world will act with some effectiveness to carry out the terms of the agreement.

Morally, a responsible regime is one that takes seriously its commitments to improve its human rights performance.

Distinctions should be made among levels of human rights nonperformance. North Korea's moral irresponsibility is particularly egregious in that it not only abuses horribly those it mistrusts, but seems also to countenance the widespread starvation of its general population. Massive imprisonment and slave labor are institutionalized on a large scale. In recent years, Iraq was nearly as irresponsible. These behaviors are little superior to those governments that have been conducted directly or indirectly massive genocides in recent years. On a lesser level of moral irresponsibility are those regimes that have resorted to extreme violence to maintain themselves in power. One thinks of past massacres in Syria and the actions of Indonesia in East Timor before the United Nations intervened. On a still less reprehensible level are regimes that regularly imprison their opponents and use torture to maintain their control. Morally superior to this level are those governments whose primary offenses are the muting of opposition voices through massive censorship and the control of essentially all media outlets. Finally, there are irresponsible governments whose primary political crimes are devising ways to stay in power more or less continuously regardless of what appear to be free elections. Moral social irresponsibility means offenses against international human rights standards through actions that reduce women to second class citizenship either by law or through acceptance of age-old standards of behavior. The United States stands convicted in the eyes of many countries for many lesser offenses in the moral area, particularly our continued application of the death penalty and the way in which we have handled detainees after the war against the Taliban. So in speaking of irresponsibility we must be careful to not take insist on too high a standard of blamelessness.

In judging responsibility, the critical issue is whether a regime takes seriously in its words and deeds the international standards that the international community has promulgated. As long as we can assume that governments meet this standard, then we can work with and talk to one another as we work toward a better future.

The primary need of the Group of Seven (or Eight) in the twenty-first century is a world of responsible states with which they can work on common problems. To the extent that countries remain outside this world, then it is incumbent on the world community, led by the United States, to remedy this situation. The remedies will take many forms.

In failed states such as Somalia, this will require international intervention, perhaps for a period of years. It should not be assumed that the borders of failed states should be the basis on which rebuilding takes place. There may simply be no feeling among the affected people for the established "national unit". In these cases, the international community might decide to work with emergent regimes that are able to rule effectively within parts of the previous state.

In less extreme situations where the weakness and ineffectiveness of an existing government is more than evident, the international community must shore it up through economic, political, and educational assistance of a size and quality that matches the seriousness of the problem. In these cases, where conditions for democratic progress are present, and other considerations do not stand in the way, the United States and its allies must make every effort to reward moves to strengthen democracy and "punish" deviations from this path. This must be a concerted, multilateral effort, so that democracy does not become identified as simply American imperialism. Where these conditions are not present or we must take into consideration other factors (such as Pakistan in 2004), we should concentrate on investing in education and institution building, in developing the communication channels on both popular and elite levels that are essential in this century for future responsible development.

There will be, and have been, situations in which the United States must concert its effort with the "willing" to threaten and even use major force to create responsible political systems. In the first instance, these will be situations in which the world is in imminent peril from the irresponsibility of the regime in question. The world applauded America's move into Afghanistan. The connections between the Taliban and Al Qaeda were clear, and the human rights offenses of the regime were extremely serious and well-known. In addition, there was a local resistance force still in the field that could be assisted effectively. Our move into Iraq was not as universally applauded. The danger was not imminent. More time might have led to alternative paths to the common goal. This is the path we should have followed. However, whatever we may think of this particular case, the American administration's position that there are cases in which the United States must act forcefully, and if necessary without full international cooperation against irresponsible states is certainly correct.

More difficult will be those situations in which the "danger" to the world is confined to a regime's extreme disregard for human rights. My personal opinion is that the international community cannot simply stand by and watch forever in these cases. For example, the erosion of the life of the North Koreans has gone on for far too long. To simply stand by encourages tyrants in other countries to thumb their noses at international opinion. Since we have had too much of unilateralism, and we need multilateral institutions to be strengthened, we are still precluded from taking on the task alone. This being the case, the problem must be resolved by the United States making a concerted effort to rapidly develop an international consensus on the conditions for common international intervention in the affairs of other countries in cases of this kind.

This will be a hard sell, given the present structure of international opinion, but we must make a consistent effort. It should be clear as we make this effort that we are only suggesting that a basis be established for intervention in extreme cases. For example, conditions in Iran, China, Egypt, and Burma are serious in 2004. They are serious enough for us to act to ameliorate conditions. But the behavior of these states should be understood to be very far from that which should in itself initiate intervention by force or the threat of force. Perhaps far in the future, we will have a world in which such cases would be considered for such intervention. But the overall level of stable responsibility in the world will have to be much higher than we find it today for this to be the case.

* Mark Palmer, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, Oxford, UK: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003, and David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, New York: Random House, 2003.