AS MY SWEATY pen scribbled ferociously at a Middle East Institute conference in Washington, D.C., the panel moderator Graeme Bannerman pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, and unleashed a stinging rebuke of U.S. foreign policy. Quoting Michael Jackson’s hit “The Man in the Mirror,” Bannerman urged the United States to renovate its own image instead of championing radical reform abroad. “The election we just had probably did more to promote American views of democracy in the Middle East than eight years of the Bush administration,” he quipped. The crowd erupted in an applause so euphoric that even the King of Pop would have been flattered.
Brief diatribes about democracy promotion have become commonplace in academic conferences about U.S. foreign policy. They do have a grain of truth: Democracy promotion has had a pretty agonizing last eight years. The United States’ model as a beacon of freedom has been tarnished by secret prisons, ghost prisoners, and forcible rendition. Its grandiose rhetoric conflating the war on terror with a global liberty crusade has run into charges of hypocrisy when weighed against its coddling of friendly autocrats in Pakistan and Egypt.
Meanwhile, Bush’s Freedom Agenda has failed to even produce stable governments (let alone democracies) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has strengthened forces working against U.S. interests like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Globally, the “Third Wave” of democracy has virtually stagnated. Given all this, it is no surprise President Obama has eschewed the rhetorical use of “democracy promotion” altogether (he prefers the more modest “dignity promotion”).
Nevertheless, significantly downgrading the place of democracy promotion in U.S. foreign policy would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Spreading liberty is a U.S. tradition, not a Bush innovation. The Declaration of Independence, according to Abraham Lincoln, gave liberty “not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.” The United States has always believed that its political ideals are universally applicable and that it has a unique moral role in international affairs.
From Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty” to Wilson’s “Fourteen Points,” blending national identity with foreign policy in rhetoric and enunciating goals in moralistic terms are as American as apple pie. Downplaying democracy promotion would weaken bipartisan support for and the moral foundation of U.S. involvement in foreign affairs.
Stifling democracy promotion would also undermine vital U.S. interests. Actively advancing liberty facilitates the rise of democratic governments, which have the best track record of any regime-type in bolstering individual liberty, sustaining political stability, boosting stable long term economic growth, curtailing the risk of famine, and containing state-sponsored violence. The United States would benefit from a more stable and prosperous world order with more transparent and accountable allies.
And though democracy has seen some erosion recently in places like Russia and Venezuela, history shows that the international community can have a limited but real impact in nurturing its development. Assisted democratic transitions in South Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, and Spain deepened these nations’ ties with the United States, while the U.S.-led transformation of powerful autocracies into democracies in Germany and Japan form the basis of its military alliances in Europe and Asia today.
Sure, the Bush administration has wrecked America’s efforts to spread liberty. But President Obama need not significantly de-emphasize democracy promotion in order to repair its image. After all, lofty rhetoric aside, the place of liberty in the Bush administration has had remarkable continuity with administrations past — it was a substantive but not central concern, praised in rhetoric but often shelved in reality in pursuit of more realist considerations.
Even some of Bush’s most destructive innovations can be met by shifts in tone or changes in strategy, rather than a reordering of priorities. If democracy promotion is too closely wedded to regime change, then stop holding out Iraq and Afghanistan as paragons of this goal. If some policies have eroded the United States’ image in the mirror as a beacon of democracy, then restore the rule of law by reversing them. And if America faces allegations of hypocrisy, badger some friendly autocracies like Egypt or Saudi Arabia into serious reforms.
Or take a page out of Bush’s more favorable democracy initiatives — like the Millennium Challenge Program, which links development to good governance, or his meeting with more than 100 dissidents across the world, including the Dalai Lama. These reforms require refocusing, repositioning, restoring, and renewing elements in the democracy promotion toolbox, rather than simply downplaying the place of a vital U.S. goal.
Democracy promotion has become a dirty word after the Bush years. But I sincerely hope President Obama doesn’t listen to those who claim we now need a solely interest-based, “realist” foreign policy. Because American statecraft has always been about how to balance our ideals and interests, not choosing between delusional moral crusades and hard-nosed strategy. What we need now is a pragmatic, modest and comprehensive strategy for democracy promotion. For nothing less than the future of liberty is at stake.
Prashanth Parameswaran’s column usually appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at p.parameswaran@cavalierdaily.com.
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