Archive for the ‘Democracy’ Category

What Trump and Tillerson don’t get about democracy promotion – Washington Post

Joshua Muravchik is a distinguished fellow at the World Affairs Institute.

The State Department is reportedly considering a new mission statement that will make no mention of encouraging democracy abroad. A White House aide recently suggested similar thinking would guide the presidents pending National Security Strategy statement.

If Trump administration officials move forward with these plans, they will be breaking sharply with decades of U.S. foreign policy. They may believe that democratization is a vague and ineffective goal with no place in a hard-bargaining approach that puts America first. But that conclusion defies the experience of presidents Ronald Reagan and Harry S. Truman, two of the toughest and most effective guardians of American national interests.

When Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, he promised a more hardheaded foreign policy. Some of his supporters thought this meant jettisoning Carters emphasis on human rights, which they saw as a symptom of weakness. Alexander Haig, Reagans first secretary of state, declared: International terrorism will take the place of human rights in our concern. Accordingly, the Reagan administration proposed as assistant secretary for human rights someone who had declared flatly that human rights had no place in foreign policy.

When the Senate shot down that nomination, Reagan left the post vacant for months while his team deliberated more carefully over the issue. In the end, it repudiated Haigs view, declaring: Human rights is at the core of our foreign policy. Other aides more sensitive to soft power than Haig, whose background was military, persuaded Reagan to overrule him.

Reagan, however, refined the policy to place more emphasis on democratization. There was often little to gain, he concluded, by merely criticizing or punishing autocrats for abuses here and there. The more meaningful goal was to erect systems of government in which abuses were rarer and subject to redress in other words, democracy.

Thus, our government set to work more systematically than ever to foster democratization. The policies and mechanisms Reagan put into place furthered a global tide in which the world went from about one-third democratic to nearly two-thirds, according to Freedom House and various scholarly studies. Of course, U.S. actions alone did not cause this transition, but they contributed to this. U.S. support for Polands Solidarity movement and dissidents elsewhere in the Soviet bloc helped bring down that empire, while American arm-twisting persuaded generals to abandon military rule in El Salvador and other Latin countries. More gentle pressure did much the same in South Korea and the Philippines.

This tide brought better life chances to millions. It also made the world more peaceful, prosperous and friendly to the United States. And it washed away the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War. That denouement was the greatest boon to American security since World War II.

Nor was this the first instance in which the spreading of democracy overseas redounded to Americas profound benefit. Following World War II, President Truman faced the question of what to do with Japan and Germany, the defeated enemies that we now occupied.

Germany had experienced democracy only once, briefly, during the Weimar Republic. The closest Japan had come to democracy had been an era in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when political parties came to the fore. In both countries, these progressive experiments had collapsed, enjoying too little popular support. Thus, knowledgeable observers doubted that democracy could be implanted in either country. As the eminent anthropologist Ruth Benedict put it, the United States could not create by fiat a free, democratic Japan.

Nonetheless, Truman decided on a policy of democratization, and it succeeded beyond expectation. As the scholar Robert Ward quipped about Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his aides who transformed Japan, had they known more [about Japanese history and traditions] they would have accomplished less.

Aside from making it possible for generations of Japanese and Germans to live in freedom, their democratization turned them into cornerstones of Americas security policies in Asia and Europe and of the post-World War prosperity on which America battened.

Needless to say, Americas democracy-building efforts, whether during the occupations or the Reagan years or since, have been replete with failures and mistakes. Errors abounded even in the great success story of Japan, and they were even more abundant in the debacle of our more recent occupation of Iraq.

No formula explains adequately why democracy takes hold some places and not others. Some countries where conditions seem ripe say, Russia or China with high education levels and growing economies prove stubbornly resistant. Others where the odds seem daunting say, India or Botswana have long practiced democracy.

Nor is democracy promotion a science. Some approaches have proved fruitful in some places, not in others. We can all agree that, despite the brilliant success of the period immediately after World War II, America should not invade countries solely to impose democracy. Rather, this project must advance by peaceful means, and often in ways that will be constrained by other considerations, since democratization will rarely be our only objective.

Slogans aside, every American president has naturally put America first. But our wisest and most effective leaders have recognized that a more democratic world does not merely gratify our ideals but also admirably serves our national interests.

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What Trump and Tillerson don't get about democracy promotion - Washington Post

Democracy & U.S. Foreign Policy: The Link Is Crucial | National … – National Review

Does putting America first mean eliminating the promotion of democracy as a foreign-policy objective? According to a report from the Washington Post, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to believe it does.

Tillerson recently ordered the State Department to reconsider and rewrite its mission statement. A leaked draft of the result is fascinating: All references to democracy have been removed. Otherwise the new document looks similar to the old one. It seems the only real purpose of the revision was to de-emphasize the importance of democracy to U.S. foreign policy.

This suggests that the Trump administration, like its predecessor, has learned the lessons of the Iraq War too well. In Iraq, the U.S. attempted to use military force to install and export democracy. In its rush to hold elections, the Bush administration did not leave time for Iraq to develop the institutions necessary to sustain a democratic system. Though these are mistakes from which policymakers and military planners need to learn, they should not be construed as proof that the promotion of democracy itself which does not require military force is a misguided aim of U.S. foreign policy.

Yet Tillerson continues to provide signal after signal that America is no longer interested in promoting democracy, human rights, or anything else that could fall under the label of our values abroad. In his widely publicized first speech to the State Department, for example, he claimed that promoting American values creates obstacles to the pursuit of our national-security interests.

Honest observers must admit that this is sometimes true. Keeping America safe often requires the help of dictators and tyrants. If we refused to work with such despots in all circumstances, we would be choosing to abandon our own interests; we wouldnt be putting America first.

However, there are plenty of occasions in which promoting American values is in the American interest. First, it is no accident that Americas best alliesaround the worldare established liberal democracies, because these nations do not fight one another. They are able to work together toward common security and economic goals. That is why American presidents have for decades encouraged allies as well as enemies to make democratic reforms, become more accountable to their people, and treat their internal minorities more fairly. These are not only the right things to do, but also important steps to decreasing aggressiveness and accepting the American-led, liberal world order.

There is also plenty of evidence that good, democratic governance fosters predictability for investors and promotes economic development. This, too, is good for America: We want to trade with developing nations, not fight them.

Moreover, the U.S. benefits from being seen as a beacon of democracy and freedom. Our support for free people all over the world wins us friends in a way that hard-edged oppression could not. Indeed, turning our backs on the cause of liberty often means surrendering an important advantage over our adversaries.

There are endless reasons to continue to promote democracy by supporting important institutions, civil-society groups, NGOs, and dissidents abroad. As Ted Piccone, senior fellow at Brookings, has persuasively argued:

The Trump team will soon learn that supporting democratic institutions, rule of law, justice, accountability, and transparency are critical to protecting core U.S. national security interests. Strong democracies, after all, do not go to war with each other, do not spawn refugees, experience less civil conflict and terrorism, have more open and prosperous economies, and have a higher respect for international law and borders. In other words, if you care about defending U.S. national security, its your job to support the spread of democracy.

In continuing to express ambivalence toward democracy and human rights, the Trump administration is making a mistake. It needs to distinguish between failed efforts to export democracy and valuable efforts to promote democracy. Trump is right when he decries the folly of the former. Too often, they get us nowhere at great cost in lives and treasure. But the latter should remain a core part of U.S. foreign policy, because it is in our interests as well as in accordance with our values to encourage the diffusion of freedom and prosperity around the world.

Luckily, it is not too late for Rex Tillerson and the Trump administration to turn things around. An affirmation of the importance of democracy and human rights can and should be reinstated into the final version of the State Departments mission. No America First foreign policy could be complete without it.

READ MORE: Europe Between Trump and Putin The Great Muslim Civil War and Us Whos Ready for Peace? Trumps Unfounded Optimism about the Middle East

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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Democracy & U.S. Foreign Policy: The Link Is Crucial | National ... - National Review

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: Not ‘Not Normal’ – Planet Jackson Hole


Planet Jackson Hole
DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: Not 'Not Normal'
Planet Jackson Hole
I went down to the White House to see Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner give his excuses surrounding the meeting that he, Trump's son, and Paul Manafort, among others, had with Russians, hoping to get dirt on Hillary. This is not normal, echoes ...
McCain to Trump: 'Thank Putin for Attacking Our Democracy'Newsmax

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DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: Not 'Not Normal' - Planet Jackson Hole

Maduro has stopped torturing democracy in Venezuela by killing it – The Guardian

President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores - a national assembly deputy celebrate after last Sundays election for his new constituent assembly. Photograph: Nathalie Sayago/EPA

Its hard to pinpoint when democracy died in Venezuela. Its been a long, slow, painful though predictable slide to authoritarianism. Now, though, that slide is bringing the country to anarchy and potential civil war, risking a black hole of a failed state in South America in an oil-rich nation.

Was democracys death knell in 2004 when the then president, Hugo Chvez the founder of the Bolivarian revolution expanded the supreme court by 12 seats, from 20 to 32, in order to pack it with loyalists, so undermining the independence of the judicial system?

Was it in 2015 when the democratic opposition won a two-thirds super majority in the national legislature, only for the pro-government electoral commission to block three legislators from taking their seats under false claims of elections violations?

Was it in 2016, when President Nicols Maduro appointed a loyalist Chavista general, Vladimir Padrino Lpez, to occupy the positions of both defence minister and state tsar for food and the economy, and stipulated that all state ministers should report to the general? (Current or former military officers run 11 of Venezuelas 32 state ministries.)

Or was it in October that year, when the electoral commission indefinitely suspended state and local elections leaving Venezuelans without locally elected officials and blocked a constitutional referendum on the government out of fear the governing party would be defeated?

These slow-motion acts eroded the checks and balances of democratic government and accountability and created a military-controlled government, the likes of which the region has not seen since the dark days of juntas and dictatorships in the 1960s and 70s. Worse, with each action the government closed off crucial channels and mediation, competition, choice and accountability until, in October 2016, it shut down the most fundamental claim to legitimacy: elections.

Even if it somehow survived all those though, theres no doubt that Venezuelan democracy was finished off last Sunday: on 30 July, despite popular opposition and international condemnation, the Maduro government ploughed ahead with an election to choose delegates to write a new constitution violating the constitutional right of citizens to say whether they even wanted a new constitution. And, indeed, a broad majority didnt. In public opinion surveys, 80% of Venezuelans expressed support for their 18-year-old constitution, and 75% opposed the entire effort.

The exercise was a farce, intended to distract the country from its economic and humanitarian crisis. GDP has contracted more than 20% in three years, inflation is raging at over 1,000%, citizens face severe shortages of food and medicine, and more than 100 people have been killed during four months of popular protests.

How a new constitution would solve those problems was never clear. In fact, what the constitution under a government that had shown a singular, anarchistic disregard for any type of institution or rule would look like or accomplish was never clear.

What was clear was that Maduro and his allies intended to use the body to assume total control over the national assembly and the government, and to pursue enemies including its general prosecutor, Luisa Ortega. She is a former Chavista who has become a vocal opponent. In the days leading up to Sundays vote, government officials declared proudly that after the balloting process they would turn to pursuing and prosecuting political opponents.

They wasted no time in doing so. Two days after the vote, police rounded up two leading political opponents: Antonio Ledezma, the former mayor of Caracas; and Leopoldo Lpez, the former mayor of Chacao. They had been under house arrest, but were now returned to military prison.

The international community needs to realise that its been played

Efforts by former presidents in the region and the Vatican to mediate a much-needed consensus have permitted the Maduro government to continue its efforts to consolidate power with a fig leaf of legitimacy. The strategy worked. While the region bet on mediation, the Maduro government killed democracy, but for an unknown end totalitarianism? Chaos? Anomie? Its not clear that even Maduro knew or knows.

The international community needs to realise that its been played. Fortunately, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the European Union have expressed their displeasure with and their refusal to varying degrees to accept the illegal constituent assembly. Now, finally, those countries need to step up. The US has so far avoided the temptation to impose broad economic sanctions on Venezuela, which could have tragic consequences for the population, preferring targeted individual sanctions. The regional community needs to follow that lead and impose sanctions on certifiably corrupt, human-rights-abusing public officials: but also go further by pulling back diplomatic recognition of the government, and tightening the noose around government and corrupt officials assets and bank accounts.

Responding to the accelerating downward spiral in Venezuela requires credible but scaled threats. The past has shown that naive exhortation doesnt work, but nor does the nuclear option of all-out sanctions and an embargo. The US going it alone isnt enough.

The regional failure to act collectively and decisively to threaten costs and present carrots will accelerate the path that Venezuela is on. Its time to step up, collectively and selectively.

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Maduro has stopped torturing democracy in Venezuela by killing it - The Guardian

Democracy is dead – Spectator.co.uk

Ive stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super yachts that terrorise sea life. In fact, dolphins escorted us in to Kyparissi, a tiny village on the eastern Peloponnese 60 kms from Sparta, my grandmothers birthplace. German and Spartan; not a bad combination, especially if one thinks democracy is a biological contradiction, which I do. Just look at the Remoaners and youll see what I mean.

Back in the good old days, we Athenians knew how to practise real democracy. All Athenian males over 18, irrespective of wealth or status, had the right to attend the Assembly, which met every nine days and was where they decided how Athens should be run. War, peace, taxes, who remained in power and who was deprived of it were decided by vote. The strength of the system depended on the ferocity with which the Assembly punished anyone who let the side down. Hammond wouldnt have lasted, and Corbyn would have been put to death at the start for high treason.

The system lasted from 508 BC to 322 BC, when the Macedonians ended it. Its magnificence, wisdom and fairness have never been replicated. But Im not here to tell you about democracy, a sham if ever there was one. All one has to do is look at the EU, the most undemocratic institution since the Russian government under Lenin. People actually believe that by paying their taxes to Brussels they will have a say in what the bureaucrats over in that rainy little place decide. It reminds me of the kind of big lie practised by the New York Times, when its own columnists quote a fact invented by its own hacks. (The latest emetic vulgarity is the promotion of freak lifestyles.)

What ruined the greatest democratic experiment ever was the civil war between Athens and Sparta that lasted 27 years, from 431 BC to 404 BC. When I was a child, I rooted for Sparta, a military oligarchy of which both my teachers and family approved. The war was fought because Sparta feared Athenian imperialism and cultural dominance. Does this sound familiar? One could compare Athens to Uncle Sam, except the good uncle exports porn, celebrities, rap music, sci-fi horrors, and other useless mechanisms to keep the masses from thinking.

Athens showed hubris by lording it over islands and states not strong enough to defend themselves, just as America is inviting nemesis by trying to export her corrupted democracy to faraway places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention Syria. Victor Davis Hanson, an American military historian of great wisdom, compared 5th-century Athens to America in the 20th. He also compared the Peloponnesian war to the first world war. Both were needless conflicts that brought about great disasters and change for the worse. Athens suffered terribly from the war against Sparta. Pericles died of the plague that swept the city, which became overcrowded once the Spartans laid siege to its environs. One in four people perished. The splendour that was Athens disappeared, as did its extraordinary achievements never since matched in science, art, philosophy and the art of living.

When I was a child, I lived ancient history and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Leonidas in Thermopylae, with fellow hoplites in Marathon, and with Alexander the Great in chasing the Persians. Those were the first westerners. I never imagined myself as an Egyptian fighting the Hyksos invaders or in combat alongside Sumerians against the Amorites. No siree, we Greeks were the first to share values of justice, the law and humanity; the rest were barbarians, and most of them have remained so. Heroism always took first place. The archers and javelin-throwers who launched their weapons from afar were not held in high esteem because they could kill with little risk to themselves. Eat your heart out, archers at Agincourt and snipers in Iraq. Only those who clashed with swords and spears, defying death and refusing to retreat, were considered honourable. Think of those great men, then spare a thought for the EU bureaucrooks and puke long and hard.

And what about women, you may ask. Well, what about them. We Greeks produced the first and greatest heroine of all time, Helen of Troy. Achilles and Odysseus aside, no figure from that age has won a more worshipful following than Helen. The queen of Sparta became a cult figure and continues to be one. She was Homers finest achievement, at a time when women were viewed in the same way Saudis see women today. The ancient Trojans, watching their sons being slaughtered by the Greeks from the safety of their towers, came upon Helen in her shimmering garments and whispered in awe: Terrible is the likeness of her face to an immortal goddesses. They refused to blame her for the massacre because she was so special. Old Homer sure liked the fairer sex too.

So here we are, back to the present day. Greece is a tiny country living off loans from corrupt bureaucracies and Germany. Clowns are in power and daily face the Acropolis, where giants once stood. I look around me and see nice, hospitable people here in the Peloponnese. Churches are everywhere, which gives me hope. After all, Christianity is the only institution that can save mankind; not Silicon Valley, nor Hollywood. But try telling that to the DC crowd.

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Democracy is dead - Spectator.co.uk