To create a law-abiding state in Iraq, Washington will have to show patience, resist the temptation to set up a surrogate government and involve the international community in the reform process, according to US analysts who look back at lessons of history.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the leading US foreign policy think tanks, has just published a study, which examines 16 US military interventions carried out over the past century primarily with the goal of defending US national interests, but also in the name of democracy.

Only in four cases the goal of promoting democratic values has been achieved.

Germany and Japan represent two key US successes in the wake of World War II, and it is not by chance that Washington often brings up these examples in connection with Iraq.

The 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1983 military operation in Grenada have also produced positive results in terms of democratic achievement, according to the study.

But 11 other US foreign military operations carried out in the name of democratic freedoms have not produced expected results, or ended in fiascos.

They include Haiti (1994-1996 and 1915-1934), Cambodia (1970-1973), Vietnam (1964-1973), the Dominican Republic (1965-1966 and 1916-1924), Cuba (1917-1922, 1906-1909 and 1898-1902), Nicaragua (1909-1927) and Panama (1903-1936).

As for Afghanistan, the study concluded, it was still too early to draw conclusions about the political evolution of that country.

Military operations where democracy was not explicitly sought, such as in Kuwait in 1991 and later in the Balkans, were not taken into account.

Every time Americans installed surrogate governments, the long-term political outcome was "complete failure", according to Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, the authors of the report.

"No American-supported surrogate regime made the transition to democracy and only one case of direct American administration (in Japan) succeeded in ushering in democracy," the authors pointed out.

They warn the administration of President George W. Bush against the risk of acting alone or assuming most of the burden of setting Iraq on the path of democratic transition.

"To heed the lessons of experience, the Bush administration should support a multilateral reconstruction strategy centered on bolstering political legitimacy and economic burden-sharing under the auspices of the United Nations," the report points out.

James Dobbins, a former diplomat who served as US special envoy to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, advises patience in Iraq.

"I've never seen a nation building operation of this dimension succeed in less than five years," said Dobbins, who now works for Rand Corporation.

He said the United States stayed less than five years in Somalia and in Haiti, and in both of these cases reforms did not take hold.

"It's only where we stayed longer, made a long-term commitment that we had a lasting effect," said Dobbins, who spoke at a conference at the Brookings Institution here.

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