Everything but war made the difference.

• Author: Hurlburt, Heather
• Position: Middle East Democracy: Who gets the credit? What are the lessons?

If President Bush is right about the way to build democracy in the Middle East--to eject forcibly a bad government, install a formally democratic replacement, and let the spillover begin--then we know where we should look for democracy's greatest triumphs over the last two decades:

Cambodia, where the United States supported Japan, Australia, and the United Nations in a massive post-conflict exercise in free elections and democracy-building. We would expect spillover to Cambodia's unfree neighbors Vietnam and Laos;

Bosnia and Kosovo, where conflicts were followed by free elections and newly-democratic structures of governance, overseen by U.S. soldiers and international funding at much higher per capita rates than in Iraq. Popular democracies there should have spread calm to troubled neighbors Serbia and Macedonia;

Liberia, which by now should be exporting high quality democracy to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire; and the all-time champion,

Haiti, where, after U.S.-led interventions under both Presidents Clinton and Bush, waves of Haitian democracy should be lapping at the shores of Cuba by now.

If President Bush is right about the best way to promote democracy in the Middle East, then you'd expect the signal triumphs of democratization in the last 20 years to be clustered around other places where bad governments were replaced through international force.

Indeed, good-faith efforts were made to build democracy in all those places. The results, though, are mixed at best.

What has been missing from most post-conflict situations is time and trust. Time for domestic coalitions to organize, shake themselves up, prove they can recover from setbacks, and develop the expertise necessary to govern a country successfully and democratically. Trust among reformers, but also among citizens, that an arrangement as fluid as democracy can successfully protect them from danger--often their fellow-citizens.

Major steps in democracy's march since the end of the Cold War have come when indigenous activists have had the time, and the trust of citizens, to build up the networks and expertise that make them savvy campaigners and credible alternative rulers.

Democracy comes dropping slowly, after years of determined domestic opposition and international support have worn down or modified authoritarian regimes. Think South Africa, South Korea, Chile, Ghana, Mali, and Benin.

Or democracy seems to come quickly, even opportunistically, after the death of a...