Are we losing the global war on terror? The shocking numbers contained in a new State Department terrorism report released Monday suggest that victory may be receding from view. And contrary to the Bush doctrine, the surprise culprit is democracy itself.

Patrick Basham is the director of the Democracy Institute and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute (pbasham@democracyinstitute.org).

More than 14,000 terrorist attacks took place in 2006 -- a 29 percent increase over 2005 -- killing or wounding 58,000 people. Forty-five percent of the attacks, the State Department said, took place in Iraq. Last year, Afghanistan experienced a 50 percent rise in terrorist attacks. The number of attacks went up slightly in the rest of the world, too.

The figures were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center, the federal government's knowledge bank on international terrorism. The NCC data are an imperfect metric, but they paint a bleak picture -- bleak enough to prompt us to revisit a fundamental policy question: What if the war on terror's architects grossly misread the terrain upon which we fight?

Since Sept. 11, 2001, our approach has emphasized two policy instruments, namely pre-emption and democratization. In his April 19 speech on counterterrorism policy, President Bush reiterated the view that, "The best way to protect us is to deal with threats overseas."

"Forms of government matter ... " Mr. Bush stressed. "Therefore, I have put as part of our foreign policy an aggressive plan ... to help people live in liberty."

What if President Bush is simply wrong and that exporting democracy does not stamp out terrorism? We need to consider the discomforting possibility that, in truth, terrorism is an unavoidable byproduct of nascent democracy, especially when an attempt is made to plant it in alien soil.

Democratic government requires the citizenry to accept, peacefully, that their individual views will not necessarily carry the political day. The plethora of religious and ideological grievances that characterize Middle Eastern political culture ensures that many do not accept defeat gracefully. Instead, they pursue a violent path to power.

The fact that the campaigns to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan have worsened the terrorist threat should come as no surprise. In recent years, strong evidence has accumulated to suggest that conventional wisdom on this issue is dead wrong. The introduction of democracy does not help pacify a population.

A new study published in the scholarly journal Conflict & Terrorism illustrates the severity of the implications for current counterterrorism policy. James Piazza, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, provides an exhaustive analysis of 19 countries over a 21-year period, in which he finds that the more politically liberal Middle Eastern states, such as Egypt, actually are more prone to terrorist activity than Middle Eastern dictatorships.

Mr. Piazza's research confirms investigations of the relationship between terrorism and democracy conducted by terrorism experts William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, co-authors of the forthcoming book, "Democracy and the War on Terror."

Messrs. Eubank and Weinberg find that terrorism is far more likely to occur in democratic settings than in any of the alternatives. They also find that both the perpetrators and victims of terror attacks usually are citizens of those democracies.

For the moment, however, let us accept the Bush administration's premises that, first, we are in an actual "war" against terrorists and, second, we can win this war in a measurable sense.

Given his criteria, President Bush needs to recognize a deeply unpleasant battlefield reality, one documented by his own State Department. In addition to its potentially liberating effects, his democratization project to date has made the world a more, rather than a less, terrifying place.

We simply cannot combat terrorism with conventional military instruments. The new State Department report confirms that both Americans and non-Americans suffer the most terrorist attacks where we are militarily engaged.

That said, our continuing presence in Iraq has succeeded in one respect. We have united otherwise dissimilar Muslims in opposition to our occupation of a Muslim country. Vast swathes of Muslim opinion now consider violence against us a legitimate political option.

A new approach to both counterterrorism and democratization is necessary -- one that emphasizes improved intelligence gathering, more astute diplomacy and greater international cooperation. We also need to mix our democratic ideals with a healthy dose of realism. Democracy results from an evolutionary process rather than an overnight transformation. We cannot just transplant stable liberal democracy to a nation like Iraq.

The long-term survival of democratic institutions requires the development of an amenable political culture, which is absent throughout most of the Middle East. The United States can only nudge this process along. Coercion is counterproductive.