COLUMN RIGHT/ F. ANDY MESSING JR. : Democracies Need Nurture to Succeed : Without U.S. intervention, the ‘new order’ could be chaos.

No politician can give a speech these days without referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growth of democratic institutions around the world. However, dozens of countries like the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, India, Nicaragua and South Korea are finding that they are not able to swallow the watermelon of democracy whole; each is experiencing a partial or near-total failure of its governing abilities.

This phenomenon is demonstrated in the political, socieconomic and military turmoil now reverberating worldwide. Thirty-two wars were recorded last year, most of them categorized as “low-intensity conflicts,” or small wars. Even more may erupt in 1991.

Expanding populations, reduced resources, pollution, disease and skyrocketing expectations brought on by global media development will combine to magnify problems at a quantum rate. The catalysts for conflict will be predominantly man-made. Even now, malevolent economic vectors are racing toward a collision in early 1993 that has the potential of dwarfing the 1929 debacle. Once again, in almost a cyclical fashion, a crash could cause an implosion of the democratic, free-enterprise expansion.

How the United States prepares for these events will determine whether countries continue with, or adopt, our form of government and business in the 21st Century.

Changing governmental systems from a directed to a participatory form requires time, resources, a strategy. Up to this point, many transformations were initiated by chance, attracted to democracy based on privileges, not on responsibilities.

Clearly, some of the elementary lessons of pre-World War II Europe should be resurrected. The experience of Germany and Italy showed us that without the proper nurturing, the best democratic intentions and hopes of peoples can go wrong.

For today’s emerging democracies, slicing the parts of the whole into digestible portions, much as Gen. George Marshall did in Europe in 1945, is what must be accomplished. Not doing this at the outset causes the type of disharmony and wasted effort we are witnessing in Nicaragua and the former East Bloc countries. Otherwise, the continued or accelerated malfunctioning of these fledgling democratic processes will cause a host of regenerated authoritarian elements to rise and assert control. That authoritarianism could be manifested in ways that thwart established democracies’ combined efforts to neutralize them. This phenomenon could happen quickly in a reverse domino effect, giving the impression that democracy is on the wane.

We must remember that the United States was the beneficiary of 5 1/2 centuries of participatory government, dating from England’s Magna Carta of 1215 and Bill of Rights of 1689, and our own colonial charters and declarations. The United States also benefited from the parallel development of a sophisticated free-enterprise system. Obviously, assisting countries in short-cutting this process requires extra effort on the part of established free-enterprise democracies.

Accordingly, we must first be the best model possible. When asked for help, we must encourage a multidimensional approach to national renovation, not just limited economic aid. Restructuring political, socioeconomic and security elements to fit existing cultural parameters will require imagination and flexibility.

America may be faced with the proposition that, for our very survival, our nation has no choice but to lead in the organizing of an effort to feed, heal, employ, educate and civilize the planet, using the strengths of our government, the private sector and the ideals of our forefathers.

No new organization need be created, only the recognition that the task is ours, and that the best strategy involves all sectors of our society. The canard that America can do this only with help from groups like the United Nations brings to mind a picture of a runner being handed an anvil for this race into the future.

In early 1990, in a private meeting on Capitol Hill, former President Richard M. Nixon cautioned Republican members of Congress that the “greatest responsibility that the United States has today is to see that, after the defeat of communism, freedom works.” Failure to heed this prudent call to leadership now will mean generations of conflict to come. The resulting negative metamorphosis could mean the collapse of our own society. We could then be victims of a truly “new world order,” shaped not by our hands at a time not of our own choosing.