The American leading journalist, Mr. Zakaria, a thirty-seven-year-old Indian Moslem graduate of Harvard, whose instant American bestseller "The Future of Freedom" will soon come out in Russian, dwelt with Izvestia on Bush Administration image in Iraq.
Asked whether his attitude toward decision-making on problems in the Middle East and Iraq differ from that of the Bush Administration, Mr. Zakaria was laconic: "Definitely." This however has nothing to do with the objectives proclaimed by the president. Mr. Zakaria shares the president's view that helping the Middle East to develop its democracy is a positive move and admits that terrorism is coming from the Middle East. Civil laws, he says, have ceased functioning there, thus giving rise to all manner of violence-guided radical movements.
The main discrepancy between the Newsweek editor and the Washington administration is the choice of means for achieving this objective. Mr. Zakaria is confident that genuine democracy shapes up as a result of a long and painstaking process in which military means are least productive. Democracy, according to him, should be based on a gradual construction of institutions defending human rights from arbitrary rulers.
In the opinion of Mr. Zakaria, the Bush Administration has been misled by the assumption that if it kills "a bad guy", democracy will flourish, - a kind of a "silver bullet" for attaining democracy. But Iraq has shown that neither the killing nor the capture of "a bad guy" leads to democratic prosperity. A longer period and strenuous efforts are required. This is evidenced by the history of successful democratic construction in Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Chile that lived first through economic change, than legal reform, than the growth of the middle class, etc. Hasty solutions and short roads do not lead to democracy, he thinks.
In all cases, public order precedes democracy, freedom, etc. Unfortunately, the coalition provisional authority, and above all the Bush Administration and the Pentagon, have not considered this in Iraq which requires that all the world help it in democratic construction. Iraq's chance to gain democracy is very small because of the USA having committed lots of errors and created anti-American moods.
Mr. Zakaria is still certain that Saddam Hussein presented a major problem for the United States in the region. He had to be taken care of anyway. But the American editor believes that this could have been done later, by an international coalition and with UN sanctions. Mr. Zakaria is most unhappy about the US postwar policy in Iraq-he refers to it as disastrous. The Americans have not taken into account that other countries too can have their interests in Iraq, said Zakaria.
Izvestia wondered if Mr. Zakaria shared the view that the United States has suffered a political fiasco in Iraq. He said that though the developments there were from bad to worse but it is not the end-the last chapter in that story will be written in several years. He thinks that if the United States revises its policy, starts cooperating with the world community, transfers sovereignty to the Iraqis and, what is most important, builds up security, then there is a chance of an improvement. But anyway, this won't be a spectacular success-just a modest achievement.
The Bush Administration is being criticized for its consistently unilateral policy, especially after September 11, 2001 when Washington declared its freedom from any former restrictions. The consequences have been disastrous. The matter is that America's status on the world scene had been defined not simply as a powerful military and political state but as one with the moral right to use legitimate force not only in its own interests but for the benefit of other nations as well.
If you possess such enormous strength, you should restrict yourself by definite rules otherwise your behavior will frighten the world, concluded the Newsweek editor in his Izvestia interview.
