"We have been our usual inept and disorganized selves in planning for and carrying out the reconstruction, something that was predictable in advance."

Curiously, however, Fukuyama never predicted it in advance. He waited a year to ascertain wind direction, then predicted what had already occurred. At the time of decision before the war, Fukuyama now tells the New York Times, he had private doubts which he kept to himself: He did not think the war was wise, but "for all I knew, it might have worked." At the time, then, failure was not "predictable in advance", after all.

And how does he come to predict now? He writes as if the history to come has already been written. It has not. Iraq is rid of Saddam, and its future is in play. We are in the midst of a generational struggle, both in the War on Terror in general and in the reconstruction of Iraq. Fukuyama's unmistakable conclusion that Iraq is lost is, to put it mildly, premature. It is reminiscent of John Dos Passos's famous 1946 essay, "Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe." We have made serious mistakes in Iraq. We may yet fail. But Fukuyama's conclusion that Americans are simply no good at nation-building is retrospective presumption. We have succeeded in the monumental task of reconstructing Germany, Japan and South Korea. We failed in Haiti and Somalia. What was the principal difference? Great knowledge of the local culture? Democratic tradition? In Korea we did not have any great knowledge of the culture nor did Korea have a democratic tradition upon which to draw. Yet South Korea is a remarkable success.

What was the key? Strategic value. When the stakes were high, and correctly perceived at home as such, we stayed the course and devoted the requisite effort and time to succeed. Where the strategic stakes were minimal, as in Haiti or Somalia, we failed because we correctly understood that nation-building is a huge task and that these places were not remotely worth the cost. The single most important factor in the success of nation-building is seriousness.

To say that the country that rebuilt Germany and Japan and South Korea from rubble--perhaps the three greatest achievements in nation-building ever--is intrinsically no good at the job is silly. And if that is the case, by the way, should we not be cutting our losses in Afghanistan as well, since it is far more tribal, primitive and underdeveloped than Iraq?

What is remarkable about Fukuyama's pessimism about the spread of democracy in an enormous swath of humanity and amid one of its most venerable civilizations is that not long ago he declared that all of humanity had already made the critical turn toward democracy and its triumph was inevitable.

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, an essayist for Time magazine and a member of the editorial board of The National Interest.

Essay Types: Essay