Amerika en Irak: van interventie tot isolement

Thomas von der Dunk looks back upon the main and basic causes of the outright failure of the American military intervention in Iraq, now more than four years ago. Setting aside the false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and the war against terrorism it is still relevant to assess the causes of the inevitability of the failure of the democratization process as such. Three crucial factors stand out in this respect: (1) the character of Middle East societies in general and of the artificial construct Iraq in particular; (2) the incredibility of the project based on a wrong assessment of Arab attitudes; and (3) the nature and self-image of the United States which may have the practical tools to export and impose programmes of modernization but does not have the right and balanced psychological orientation.