WASHINGTON -- On paper, the exercise in democracy was impressive.
Fifty-seven Bosnian political parties fielded more than 7,500 candidates for local and federal offices, including the three-person rotating presidency.
If there was a somewhat jarring note in the campaign, it was supplied by Bosnia's foreign patrons who lobbied against the three militant ethnic parties that originally were responsible for the 1992-95 civil war.
Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Bosnians to support political parties committed to building a multi-ethnic democracy. The vote for the militant nationalist parties, he warned in a televised address, would take Bosnia back "down the dark and dangerous road to ethnic division, economic stagnation and international isolation."
It came as something of a shock when the tribal parties -- Muslim, Serb, Croat -- won virtually all the races. After billions of dollars and thousands of aid workers trying to "make Bosnia work," the former Yugoslav province is back to square one. Its ethnic divisions remain frozen solid.
The facts on the ground -- the three religions, three ethnic armies, three secret intelligence services, three mini-states unable to agree on most issues ranging from border controls to the design of the Bosnian flag -- reveal a Potemkin country that lives off foreign donations and is run by a colonial governor, Paddy Ashdown of Britain. He has the authority to rule by decree and remove politicians from office.
What next? Even as he was trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing, Mr. Ashdown sounded pessimistic, conceding that "time is not on Bosnia's side."
We should consider the depressing story of Bosnia's nation-building -- and the one under way in Afghanistan -- now that the United States stands on the brink of extending its war on terrorism to Iraq.
In a recent speech in Cincinnati, where he set out his reasons for a regime change in Baghdad, President Bush explicitly pledged to help the Iraqi people to "rebuild their economy and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq."
With years of hindsight, Bosnia underscores the unique military prowess and glaring political weaknesses of the world's only superpower.
The same can be said of then-President Bill Clinton's expulsion of the Haitian junta in 1994, or later interventions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. While the U.S. military knows how to fight wars, U.S. political leaders underestimate the need for the grinding political work that is required to secure ultimate victory. How serious were we about helping build a democratic government in Haiti or in Bosnia?
The preponderance of American power is such that the fighting in Iraq should be brief, the casualties few and the risks limited. Saddam Hussein's army may not even fight, some experts suggest, and the rest of the population would cheer liberation from the tyrant. But that's where the hard part begins. What exactly are the institutions of liberty? Who is going to keep a unified Iraq?
Like Bosnia, Iraq is a multi-ethnic state created out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. It has been ruled by Sunni Muslims, who account for about 20 percent of the population. They have mercilessly persecuted the other two groups: the Kurds in the north, who account for about 20 percent of the population and who are yearning for a state of their own, and the Shiites in the south (60 percent), who are receiving support from their co-religionists in Iran. This offers no immediate options except a Sunni-led dictatorship, according to some studies.
The Bush administration recently has begun disbursing funds and expert advice for the post-Hussein Iraq. About $400,000 was allocated to an Iraqi Jurists Association to draft legislation and legal decrees so that they will be readily available to a new government in Baghdad. The State Department is hiring Iraqi exiles for a Future of Iraq Project, backed by $5 million in federal funds, trying to plot the ways for a humane government to follow the departure of the tyrant in Baghdad.
But such projects are public relations ploys intended to create an illusion that it is possible to unify the three Iraqi communities into a viable democratic state on the cheap.
One thing that we have learned from Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan is that all three efforts are conducted at the lowest levels of financial and political expenditures. This is one reason that all are foundering. It is aggravated by the discrepancy between the public justifications offered for the policy of nation-building and the real motives that drove it.
Mr. Clinton was reluctant to use power in Bosnia and did so under enormous public pressure.
He sent troops for a year to Bosnia, where they have become stuck with no exit strategy. Their numbers have been reduced over the past seven years (the American contingent is down to about 3,000 from the original 20,000) but their presence keeps the Bosnians from sliding back into civil war. (A senior Western diplomat recently asked Gen. Atif Dudakovic, the Muslim commander of the Bosnian army, whether he could maintain peace if the entire contingent were withdrawn. The general quipped that "we would be at each other's throats within 140 days," adding that he would defend "my people.")
At the same time, the Clinton administration had no plan for the economic reconstruction of Bosnia. A good deal of money was spent mindlessly, yet Bosnia today is hopelessly destitute. Reconstruction efforts have stalled. The unemployment rate ranges between 17 to 40 percent, depending on differing calculations. In small towns, the percentage is higher. A staggering 62 percent of young people want to emigrate, according to a recent study.
The situation in Afghanistan is not much better despite the swift and decisive military victory over the Taliban.
A year later, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is little more than the mayor of Kabul, the only place patrolled by 4,700 foreign peacekeepers. Of the $4.5 billion pledged by international donors for the reconstruction of the country, barely $600 million has arrived. The whereabouts of the top Taliban and al-Qaida leaders remain uncertain, although many of them appear to be operating near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Al-Qaida operatives are suspected of a series of recent terror attacks, including the one on Bali. The prospect of war in Iraq raises concerns that Afghanistan will fall to neglect.
Nation-building is a process that requires decades, rather than years.
America helped rebuild Germany and Japan as liberal democracies, but these were established ancient states built on firm foundations. Both were under long U.S. military occupation.
Iraq, by contrast, is an artificial state created by Britain in 1921; none of its ethnic and religious communities had any experience at democracy. That reality is certainly complicated by the country's bloody political history and absence of strong political institutions. How long is the United States prepared to stay in Iraq?
The administration has been silent on what its deep strategic motives are. There is, of course, Iraqi oil. Some hard-line ideologues such as Richard Perle, a key adviser to the administration, also see the Iraq conquest as a precondition to a settlement of the Palestinian question.
Others see Iraq becoming a principal Arab ally of the United States, replacing Saudi Arabia. In this view, America is on the verge of a new imperialist phase to reflect the unparalleled supremacy of its military. Iraq would signal the shift of American power from Europe to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
But none of this is aired publicly, presumably because most Americans do not like to think of the United States as an imperial power even though it became one a century ago with the conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa and (indirectly) Panama within five years (1898-1903).
Instead, the administration has tried to link Mr. Hussein and al-Qaida and justify a pre-emptive attack as necessary to head off an imminent threat to U.S. security. The arguments put forward seem strained, however. This has led to suspicions that Mr. Bush's Iraq policy is driven by the forthcoming elections.
This, of course, is not the case. Mr. Bush had talked about a regime change in Iraq before he ever became president. In January, he had the war against Iraq as a key element of his war on terror. But the president and his top aides have played the issue for political gain. The timing was clearly intended to shift the focus away from a sagging economy, corporate greed and corruption.
Even the Iraqi debate is tailored for this purpose, since neither the president nor anyone in his administration has honestly addressed the question of whether war is necessary and worth the risks. Instead, the debate has been confined to secondary issues such as whether the United States should work through the United Nations, how close Iraq is to acquiring nuclear weapons or whether arms inspectors can uncover Mr. Hussein's secret weapons.
So far, this strategy has been very successful. Yet failure to speak frankly about the magnitude of risks involved -- the possibility of a wider war and chaos in the Middle East, the likelihood of more terror against America and Americans, a grave energy crisis, just to name a few -- may come to haunt the administration.
Its public support is a mile wide and an inch deep. It may be eroded quickly by initial setbacks or inevitable difficulties.
Dusko Doder is a Washington-based author and journalist.