Reconciling Our Rhetoric and Our Actions on Democracy Promotion
We have to do better!
Today, I am posting an excerpt from a book I finished writing in 2009, right before I joined the Obama Administration. It is called Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should. How We Can. Tragically, almost every word of recommendation I wrote in 2009 is still true today. We have to do better.
Over the course of American history, presidents, diplomats, and non-governmental leaders have delivered speeches that frightened autocrats and emboldened democrats throughout the world. Thomas Paine’s writings and activities to promote liberty might constitute the first one-man American NGO dedicated to democracy promotion. Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton all delivered speeches about the virtues and benefits of freedom that resonated well beyond America’s borders. Martin Luther King’s observation that a threat to justice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere echoed all the way to South Africa.
After September 11th, President George W. Bush delivered some very ambitious, breathtaking speeches about the importance of defending and promoting freedom around the world. As texts, they cannot be criticized. Yet, however well-intended, George W. Bush’s sweeping speeches did more harm than good, raising expectations well beyond what he and his administration were prepared to pursue or capable of doing. Inspired by Bush’s rhetoric, democratic activists in Egypt, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Russia, and Azerbaijan took chances and challenged their regimes, believing that Washington would come to their defense. They were let down. Nowhere is this tragedy more apparent than in Egypt where Ayman Nour had the opportunity to become a presidential candidate in part because of American pressure for democratic change, but now sits in jail essentially for the crime of standing as a presidential candidate.[1] President Bush and his administration not only failed to bring democracy to Egypt, but they did not even succeed in getting Nour out of jail.
President Obama must continue to speak out in support of democracy and human rights. Shying away from the “d” word in favor of more euphemistic phrases like “good governance” or “human dignity” would send a terrible signal to the activists around the world fighting for human rights and democratic change. American diplomats also must not go out of their way to praise autocrats as “good friends” or worse yet “democrats” when seeking to do business with these regimes. The United States must cooperate with illiberal and authoritarian regimes on a wide range of economic, security, and political issues. Americans need Saudi oil, Russian cooperation on reducing the world’s nuclear arsenals, and Chinese computer chips and textiles. In pursuing these transactions, however, American diplomats do not have to check their values at the door. Consistency also matters. Dictators still bend over backwards to find evidence that the United States is willing to tolerate their regime. The worst of all worlds is when one cabinet official gives a speech about democracy promotion as a U.S. priority, and another downplays its significance.
All too frequently, there is also a tendency for diplomats working in a country or closely with a specific country over time to soften the message of democracy from higher ranks in the government when dealing directly with their counterparts from other countries. These lower-level officials believe that they need good contacts in foreign governments to get “more important” business done. The unintended consequence of their winks and nods about democracy is to undermine the credibility of their superiors, an especially troubling outcome when the superior in question is the president of the United States.
Rhetoric about democracy, freedom, and liberty can be tamed, without losing focus or intent. Too much talk without commensurate action hurts the democratic cause. Likewise, expectations about the speed and magnitude of democratic change have to be managed. Most importantly, the Obama administration must focus on promoting concrete steps towards political liberalization or democratic consolidation and move away from grandiose pledges of fostering full-scale regime change in autocracies or creating overnight liberal institutions in new democracies. As Anthony Lake wrote over twenty years ago, “By promising less, Washington can accomplish more. U.S. influence is diminished only when results fall short of rhetoric.”[2]
American officials also must adopt a broader definition of democracy and use a wider vocabulary of related concepts to promulgate democratic ideas more effectively. Over the past eight years, senior foreign policy officials in the Bush Administration rarely mentioned ideas such as equality or justice, values that past American leaders have considered fundamental to shaping our system of government. Fostering accountability, transparent government, and human dignity also must assume greater priority. Western definitions of liberalism must be stretched to allow for more universal notions of human rights as well as more specific regional and cultural conceptions. In particular, the reverential focus on the individual prevalent in Anglo-American thinking cannot be exported blindly to cultures that place greater value on collective and communal practices.
The promotion of economic development also must accompany efforts to advance democracy, since simultaneous progress on both fronts can create a virtuous circle of sustainability. In the developing world, new democracies without economic growth are much more likely to fail than democracies which produce economic growth.[3] Likewise, “democratization and, particularly, democratic consolidation have been systematically bolstered by high levels of income equality and a fair distribution of property in the countryside across the world in the last two centuries.”[4] In other words, the reduction of poverty and even the promotion of economic equality are policy goals that also can support democratic development. The same intertwined relationship holds true for the rule of law and democracy.
The ambition to sequence a reform process – such as, state building first, economic development second, and democracy third – is often misplaced both because our own theories about what should come first are contradictory but also because the United States rarely has the power or influence to dictate to another country a particular sequence of change. At the same time, rhetorical recognition of the interrelationship between these various goals could help to make democratization sound more like a development goal and less like an imperial mission.
Note: This excerpt is from a penultimate draft of the book and therefore may differ from the printed section in the book.
[1] He has been released on February 18, 2009, and now lives in Istanbul, Turkey.
[2] Anthony Lake, “Do the Doable,” Foreign Policy, no. 54 (Spring 1984), p. 121.
[3] Przeworski et al, Democracy and Development.
[4] Carles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 11-12.
To what degree do other Western democracies (e.g., in the EU) promote democracy in similar ways to what you describe for the US? Could/should we not team up and try a group campaign? Genuinely curious who else does what, where, how.