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Larry Diamond delivers inaugural lecture in Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series

Posted on: 5/1/2006

Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, spoke at Cornell University on April 11, 2006 in a public lecture on "Prospects for Democracy in Iraq and the Middle East". He was the inaugural speaker in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series.

Diamond’s lecture focused on the current situation in Iraq: why the prospects for democracy are gone from Iraq for at least 5 to 10 years, whether the conflict can be averted and what it may mean for democracy in the Middle East. He expressed his fear that Iraq is becoming one of the worst foreign policy disasters in the history of the United States. "We are in very deep trouble in Iraq. (…) This thing is so complicated, so volatile, so deeply interactive and so fraught with danger that it’s almost impossible to comprehend. (This is) the most complicated, the most fateful foreign policy situation we have faced, since the Cuban missile crisis.”

Diamond criticized the Bush administration, its new American effort to promote democracy in the World and Presidents Bush’s “messianic vision” of America’s role. “My conclusion is (that) the way (President Bush) has gone about promoting democracy in Iraq and the broader Middle East has been disastrous and self defeating.” Diamond gave little hope for the future. “If Iraq can be stabilized – not democratized but stabilized – through a power-sharing agreement that pulls the different parties back from the path of drenching violence on which they are now embarked and towards restraint through constitutional compromise (which is a new constitution that provides for a new secure and stable federal system and a fairer balance of power and distribution of oil revenues than the existing constitution of last October provides for) then I think it will be possible to catch our breath and to think again how democratic change can unfold in the region.”

Diamond used his depth of experience in the region as Senior Adviser on Governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in early 2004 to offer his analysis of the crisis in Iraq. In 2005, he published a powerful critique of the post-conflict state-building efforts in Iraq, "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq" (Times Books, 2005). His latest analysis of the civil war in Iraq, "Slide rules: What civil war looks like," appeared in The New Republic (March 13, 2006). Larry Diamond is co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. At Stanford University, he is Professor of Political Science and Sociology by courtesy and coordinates the democracy program of the new Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond has worked extensively as a consultant and is the author and editor of numerous books and articles.

In his introductory remarks, Professor Nic van de Walle, Director of the Einaudi Center, positioned the Distinguished Speaker Series as part of a new Foreign Policy Initiative. Led by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (www.einaudi.cornell.edu/) the initiative’s goal is to maximize the intellectual impact of Cornell’s outstanding resources in this area.

Contact Information
Heike Michelsen
Einaudi Center
257 9044
hm75@cornell.edu

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Larry Diamond delivers inaugural lecture in Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series