The Bush administration can derive satisfaction, in its own terms, from the Sharm el-Sheikh summit to discuss the future stability of Iraq. As so often before, its most bitter adversary in this undertaking was France, which sought to forge a rag-tag alliance of oppositionists and political talking heads of terrorist organizations in order to engineer the overthrow of Premier Allawi. The French were successful enough in denying the Americans a pre-election summit – thus preventing the president from donning the mantle of multilateralism during the campaign – but failed in their joint venture with the Syrians to shoehorn “non-governmental” Iraqi groups into the conference and to set a deadline for the departure of American troops from Mesopotamia.

“Non-governmental” in this case does not mean some nascent Baghdadi affiliate of the Sierra Club or the Rotary Club. Rather, it is an almost Orwellian euphemism for an unwholesome galere composed largely of unrepentant ex-Baathists and insurgent – that is, enemy – spokesmen. In the end, the conference has been composed solely of government delegations from the Group of Eight, the E.U., the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and Red China. Senators Biden, Kennedy, and Lugar will find it harder to argue after this that America under Mr. Bush heads a “rogue state” that flouts international norms.

The Sharm el Sheikh summit may thus be good politics, at home and abroad. But is it such good policy for the people of Iraq? Certainly, some of the surrounding Arab and Islamic states may want to “stabilize” Iraq, fearing the consequences of a Baathist-jihadi victory for their own rule. But “stability” does not necessarily mean democracy: indeed, in the Arab world, it means the opposite. President Mubarak may well fear the consequences of a radical triumph over the Americans in Iraq, which could set the region ablaze.

But Mr. Mubarak and his advisers are well aware that at a military level that eventuality is unlikely. An even greater threat to the logic of his own tenure stems from a new pluralistic Iraq in which property rights are secured, the rule of law is consolidated, a separation of powers is effected, a free press speaks out, and genuine elections are held that yield a legitimate governing class. Imagine what ordinary Egyptians – and Iranians, Saudis and Syrians, for that matter – might start demanding if all this comes to pass.

That is why the bulk of the predominantly Sunni states of the region want to emasculate the nascent Iraqi democracy. However different the Shia mullahs in Tehran are from the secularist commissars in Damascus or from the portly kleptocrats of Riyadh, they are all united in wishing democratic Iraq and its American midwife ill. At a minimum, they want to attenuate the scope of free Iraqi institutions so as to make the emerging polity relatively unthreatening to their own structures of rule. This entails placing a limit on de-Baathification (or enforcing what the British quaintly call “affirmative action for Sunnis”), ensuring that Iraq does not provide an alternative model of political development that breaks with the canons of Arab nationalist orthodoxy.

That is also the raison d’etre of the U.N. co-ordinating group set up late last year by Secretary-General Annan. Not to mention the mission to Iraq of his special envoy, Ambassador Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister. Yet bizarrely, liberals thrill to any arrangement with a multilateralist imprimatur. Why the administration wants to cater to them is beyond us. Fortunately, under protection from our troops and the Scottish regiment still known as the Black Watch, Iraqis seem to be making their own choices and forging their own alliances without any assistance from the Turtle Bay, Paris, Brussels, or any other headquarters of the “international community.” What makes anyone suppose that they would want surrounding states and the U.N., which were either bribed or blackmailed by Saddam, to enjoy a measure of “ownership” over their own country?