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must make room for the equality of the sexes and the rights of religious minorities. Property rights must be rooted in law and protected by an independent judicial system. While governments have a role in the economy, the mechanisms of the market must ultimately be allowed to work their way.
We do not agree among ourselves about the proper sequence of these changes. We know that in the short run, democratic voting procedures may not produce liberal governments. We know that demagogues and aspiring despots can use the language and even the mechanisms of democracy to build personal dictatorships (Napoleon III and Hugo Chavez, for example). We know that popular opinion is sometimes more nationalistic than elite opinion and that gains for democracy do not always lead to more foreign policy cooperation. In most cases, progress toward stable and peaceful democratic government comes slowly if it comes at all; even if you believe in ‘democratic peace theory, hoping that the democratization of other countries will solve American foreign policy problems is a fool’s game.
Yet we also know — or at least we believe — that in the long run a more democratic world is a better if not always a safer world, and that it would be immoral as well as impractical to stand in the way of the changes that need to come.
If we add the conservative mission of the United States to the revolutionary agenda, the problems of American foreign policy become more complex still. We are trying to carry out a vast reordering of global society even as we preserve the stability of the international political order: we are trying to walk blindfolded on a tightrope across Niagara Falls — while changing our clothes.
The uncertainties and risks that surround us should not be underestimated. There has never been a worldwide revolution of this kind before; nobody knows for sure how best to speed the plow.
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