The lesson taught by Egypt and Iraq … is that real political reform only occurs when a new balance of power emerges in a country.

In the past several decades, the international community has relied on three approaches to deal with countries that descend into chaos. It has supported strongmen capable of reimposing order by force; it has given up in despair, leaving the country to sort out its problems as best it can; and, most recently, it has embarked on ambitious projects to reconstruct the country in the image of a modern secular, multiethnic, and democratic state. None of these approaches should be used in Afghanistan.

The international community should rethink the applicability in the short run of some of the high principles that guide its demands, and accept instead the basic lesson of democracy: democratic governments succeed and indeed only survive when they strike a compromise between what they should do ideally and what their constituencies demand.