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31.08.07
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Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Is Democracy Promotion Dead?
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Introduced by Vladimir Frolov
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Contributors: Stephen Blank, Ethan S. Burger, Vlad Ivanenko, Eugene Kolesnikov, Edward Lozansky, Andrei Seregin, Ira Straus
Although this panel is usually devoted to Russia and Russian policies, it is useful from time to time to consider the policies of other countries that affect Russia, either directly or indirectly.
This week, we take a look at the Bush Administration’s theory of democracy promotion and its impact on Russia and the former Soviet states.
In a brilliant article last week, Peter Baker of the Washington Post (“As Democracy Push Falters, Bush Feels like a “Dissident”, Washington Post, August 20, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081901720_pf.html) paints a disquieting picture of an idealistic George W. Bush pushing the ambitious goal of “ending tyranny in our lifetime,” but rapidly colliding not only with global realities, but also the costs and moral hazards of democracy promotion on U.S. foreign policy interests.
Bush decided to make democracy promotion the central foreign policy issue of his second term, stating passionately in his second inaugural address that he wanted to “plant a flag” for democracy.
Events in late 2004 and early 2005 seemed to endorse the viability of Bush’s agenda as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine brought to power a “pro-democracy candidate”, while the “cedar revolution” in Lebanon and the “tulip revolution” in Kyrgyzstan ended autocratic, corrupt regimes and seemingly opened the door for democratic revival.
At that time, even Vladimir Putin’s Russia seemed vulnerable to democracy promotion efforts, and the anti-Putin forces were hoping the events in Ukraine would soon replay in Russia to topple Putin’s regime. At a summit in Slovakia in early 2005, Bush tried to lecture Putin on democracy and was pushed back.
“But two and a half years after Bush pledged in his second inaugural address to spread democracy around the world,” writes the Washington Post’s Baker, “the grand project has bogged down in a bureaucratic and geopolitical morass. Many in his administration never bought into the idea, and some undermined it, including his own vice president. The Iraq war has distracted Bush and, in some quarters, discredited his aspirations. And while he focuses his ire on bureaucracy, Bush at times has compromised the idealism of that speech in the muddy reality of guarding other U.S. interests.”
It is striking to learn that Vice President Cheney sought to undermine the democracy promotion strategy by making that awkward juxtaposition between his anti-Putin Vilnius speech and an unconditional embrace of Kazakhstan’s strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev a couple of days later. In the same way, it is interesting to see Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia Richard Boucher argue in favor of the U.S. support for Kazakstan’s bid for the OSCE Presidency in 2009, with the White House in tantrums over Nazarbayev’s decision to change the constitution to make him president for life while holding an election which resulted in a one-party (pro-Nazarbayev) parliament.
As Anatol Lieven writes in his recent piece in the Financial Times, “human rights advocacy can also be used to feed agendas of hatred, arrogance and aggression. And in the case of Chechnya, most U.S. politicians’ motivation is not sympathy for the Chechens, but hostility to Russia. If the Chechen insurgents had been subjects of a pro-Western state, these U.S. figures would have actively supported their ruthless repression.”
Democracy promotion is in a deep funk and the strategy appears to be largely discredited. But is it dead? Or will it be refurbished and brought back in a repackaged format by a new administration in Washington?
How has the democracy promotion strategy affected Russia? Has it in fact strengthened Putin’s regime, which took the threat perhaps too seriously and built effective instruments to defend Russia from these efforts? Could democracy promotion be really guided by idealistic visions of ridding the world of tyranny, or is this flowery rhetoric just masking morally dubious intentions and self-serving interests?
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Vlad Ivanenko, Ph.D., Economics, Ottawa, Canada
Years ago, working on development projects in poor countries, economists discovered a simple fact: only those projects in which local benefactors were interested and participated actively, had a reasonable chance for success. Other projects, irrespective of how efficient their design and "progressive" objectives were, failed, to the dismay of their sponsors.
Today, the fact that local norms should be taken in consideration and benefiting communities should play the dominant role in development initiatives is slowly becoming accepted by international bureaucrats. Politicians tend to lag behind. In their view, it is money and other resources that matter, while local norms and traditions do not.
Before attempting to implant Western democratic norms in non-Western societies, politicians need to look into their own histories. They might be surprised to discover that women were denied the right to vote until the 1900s and early political parties were more like clubs that lobbied for the private benefits of their members, rather than advocating for the public good.
The Western project of democracy promotion in Russia is faltering not because of ruthless Kremlin repressions or the inherent inability of the average Russian to embrace democratic values. It fails because its sponsors define democratic priorities regardless of what prospective benefactors want here and now. The record of achievements is telling. Whenever a Western NGO initiative strikes a cord with local objectives, be it ecological concerns or the plight of Russian inmates in overcrowded prisons, the NGO gets decent support from both local private donors and bureaucrats. If not – and here the failure of gay pride parades come to mind, foreign activists face widespread hostility and harassment.
To succeed in Russia, Western organizations should check the compatibility of their objectives with local institutions. In spite of the common belief that Russians are community-oriented people, most of them are highly individualistic and recall their social obligations only when they are in need. They believe that government officials are not much different from the rest of the population and, hence, they are inefficient and corrupt for a good reason. Consequently, voters expect political parties to play the role of lobbying groups for competing private interests. With such expectations, individual political apathy is rational.
The resulting political system is obviously suboptimal, but the first step towards its dismantling lies in breaking the pattern of political expectations. Like a toddler learning to walk, the Russians have to develop a taste for success working in small-scale social projects ranging from sporting events to maintaining public order and helping disadvantaged persons. The West has significant expertise to offer in this respect. One example I am familiar with is an American initiative to provide Russian private entrepreneurs with training in the United States. Interestingly, while the Russian participants expected to learn how to earn money, the most significant experience that they brought home was the know-how of organizing public projects in their home communities.
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Eugene Kolesnikov, Private Consultant, The Netherlands
Liberal democracy evolved into one of the core values of Western civilization only in the course of recent history. During World War I, then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson coined the famous phrase, "The world must be made safe for democracy," and declared that future peace could only be secured by "a partnership of democratic nations." His comments were echoed by Joseph Stalin on July 3, 1941, who in a radio broadcast characterized the Soviet war against Hitler being "merged with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for independence and democratic liberty." In 1942, Stalin described the restoration of "democratic liberties" in Europe as one of the aims of the coalition, although he must have meant a Soviet-style democracy. Democracy and its promotion have been an integral part of foreign policy conducted by Western powers ever since.
The issue, however, is whether the promotion of democracy will be a major factor in foreign policy or just one of the factors in Realpolitik calculations. The Russian position is clear: in the words of Sergei Lavrov, "we have realistic and understandable goals—maintaining international stability as the most important condition for natural evolution of international relations towards freedom and democracy." Natural evolution is the opposite of promotion. On this point, Russia is sharply at odds with the Western world.
For instance, the European Union maintains an official human rights and democratization policy that aims to promote human rights and democratization objectives in its external relations by means of traditional diplomacy and foreign policy, resolutions and interventions within the United Nations framework and various co-operation and assistance programs. In 2004, the EU funded promotional projects worth more than 100 million euros ($136 million) in 32 countries around the world.
The manner and tools of democracy promotion, however, will be defined by the United States, the de facto leader of the Western camp. The Iraq war failures have forced the U.S. establishment to seek new approaches to foreign policy. Although different in detail, the new ideas being offered by the current presidential candidates emphasize the role of cooperation with democratic allies and collective decision making, while staying firm on democratization objectives.
For example, on the Democratic side, Barack Obama endorses the idea that America's larger purpose in the world is to promote freedom; however he adds that this cannot be simply achieved by deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box. His recipe repeats the recommendations of the Princeton Project to foster democracy by promoting liberty under law. Hillary Clinton wants the United States "to do what is right and smart in the pursuit of democracy and security, rejecting the current administration's doctrine of preemptive war and their preference to going it alone rather than building real international support."
Republicans go a bit further. Mitt Romney wants to appoint regional civilian leaders who would coordinate, "just like the single military commander", the efforts of all the civilian agencies in defined common regions of the world. The work of these civilian commanders would be measured by the success, among other things, of their progress in promoting peace and democracy. John McCain embraces one of the most controversial recommendations of the Princeton Project. He says: "We should go further and start bringing democratic peoples and nations from around the world into one common organization, a worldwide League of Democracies… The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the UN fails to act."
Therefore democracy promotion, albeit mollified in the wake of the Iraq war, is quite alive and relevant. Russia will continue to experience challenges on three fronts: first, the democracy narrative will be increasingly used in the anti-Russian propaganda campaign that has not yet reached its peak. A major outburst can be expected during the Duma and presidential elections. Secondly, democracy will be the code word for containing Russia in the CIS space. Consider a typical example of prevailing attitudes expressed in the following statement by McCain: "The Russian government is even more brutal toward the young democracies on its periphery, threatening them with trade embargoes and worse if they move too close to the West." And finally, democratization projects may interfere with the natural course of events elsewhere in the world, thus shaking the international stability sought by Russia.
After Iraq, forced democratization (or use of force under pretence of democratization) is likely to be put aside for some time, but the excessive military power of the Western camp that possesses almost three quarters of global military capability has its own dynamic and urge for action. Relapse into military interventionism, therefore, is quite probable in the long term until a new balance of powers – and, hence, a multi-polar world order is established.
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Ethan S. Burger, Scholar-in-Residence, School of International Service, American University, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
The line between engaging in "democracy promotion" and interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country is gray at best. Efforts towards democracy building can be counterproductive and risky. Thus, it is not surprising that many Iranians who oppose the policies of the current ruling regime do not want foreign assistance.
As a general rule, foreign assistance should be of a technical nature: health, education, housing and pollution control programs (and must include on-going efforts, such as sustaining the operation of hospitals, not just building them). Perhaps, the only exceptions should be in anti-poverty programs such as micro-financing and efforts to promote tolerance, combating the exploitation of women and children, preventing genocide and responding to natural disasters.
Many of the attempts of the EU, the United States and many international organizations and NGOs aimed at the successor states of the Soviet Union have been counterproductive. They often have not achieved their goals and instead have led to the alignment of foreign countries with particular factions in the recipient country's political system – in Russia and Ukraine, for example, who fail to obtain political power with undesirable consequences.
Some "aid projects" have enriched foreign consultants and companies that were often unqualified and yet were paid significantly more than their local counterparts. This often has led to anti-foreign sentiments. With respect to Russia, such activities, particularly in the area of privatization, have probably caused billions of dollars in damage to the aid grantors' national interests.
Grant-making for the purpose of democracy building can be counterproductive. It can have the effect of methadone. Rather than seek domestic political support for their programs, grantees focus on winning lucrative grants that allow them to live better than others in their societies. They often maintain or develop an "elite dissident" mentality and do not evolve into significant political actors, discrediting themselves with large segments of their foreign citizens in the process. Eventually, many such individuals decide that they would rather live abroad than support the establishment of democracy at home.
It is important to continue to speak out against the deprivation of internationally-recognized human and labor rights at international conferences and via the media to provide invaluable psychological support to domestic persons sharing views we should promote. Similarly, money spent on foreign radio broadcasts of news and news analysis about international events as well as developments in the "target country" is money wisely spent, so long as it does not create false hopes (for example, in Hungary in 1956).
This is a complex area and could easily be a topic of a multi-day conference. Unfortunately, there is a huge "industry" inside governments and international organizations along with their contractors that have an incentive to maintain business as usual while producing very limited results.
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Andrei Seregin, Research Director, Imageland PR Agency, Moscow, Russia
In his recent Washington Post piece, though it was, as always, logical and sober on Bush administration foreign policy, Peter Baker falls into the obvious ambiguity trap: he tries to define policy success using the criteria of “staff-insider logic,” and thus takes the idealistic strategic priorities set by the Bush administration for public relations reasons at their face value. Not surprisingly, Baker concludes that this policy doesn’t deliver, and even finds some inconsistencies in the White House stance towards various authoritarian regimes, most strikingly in Cheney’s Vilnius speech against Russia and his later remarks on Kazakhstan or, to put it boldly, double standards in America’s foreign policy. Sure, spending taxpayer’s money to teach some former Soviet states real democracy is not the way the American public see its foreign policy, but is this really about democracy at all?
Baker is right about one thing: right now, the momentum for democracy promotion is lost mainly because the White House found itself extremely limited in the ways and means for this policy. Iraq, Afganistan and troubles at home have confronted Bush’s legacy-building. Money troubles, a reluctant bureaucracy, scandals within the Bush team and a political opposition eager to seize at every flaw have challenged this administration at home.
Still, bringing ambitious democracy promotion rhetoric into the context of a harsh reality won’t bring any results anyway. This seems to be more of the promotion than the democracy. The big mistake for the Bush team was trying to shift the focus from promotion to democracy and thus facing the necessity of measuring success against diplomatic and budget criteria. Even so, it’s highly debatable whether democracy promotion success in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is easily outweighed by the evident failures in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Promoting American values throughout the world, inspiring pro-American sentiments and breeding loyal elites has always been a valuable and fail-safe tool for U.S. foreign policy. Regarding national security interests, just assessing elections and democratic processes worldwide provides Washington with a hook for any dictator that is easily convertible into suitable pretext for necessary foreign policy action. Requiring the weak, newly-established pro-American governments to comply with the standards of an ideal democracy is an obvious overdoing.
Democracy and human rights advocacy in U.S. foreign policy has long become a means for conducting policy according to U.S. national interests, not an end in itself. Double standards are planted inside this approach, making every administration choose between two basic options: shamefully covering it by human rights rhetoric or openly admitting it, as was the case in Haiti with “our bastard Duvalier.” Clinton’s nation-building earlier or, Bush’s democracy promotion now is still too lucrative a foreign policy tool to be dumped for its obvious double standards.
Therefore, I wouldn’t share the joy of some Russian commentators and foreign experts at seeing Bush’s foreign policy agenda derailed. As has happened many times before, the extremes will fade away and the core values will stay. Advocating American values worldwide has always been endorsed by the U.S. political classes of both parties.
We are already seeing some adjustment to the Bush rhetoric. Baker laments the shortage of money allocated for democracy promotion in Russia, but this only means the White House has decided to put its support into realistic prospects: only those foreign opposition leaders and dissidents, who are able to promote democracy, overthrow their government and form at least a minimally viable pro-American regime will get fully-funded support. Those who are not will have to be satisfied with limited, primarily verbal support from the White House until they manage to prove the opposite.
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Stephen Blank, The US Army War College, Carlyle Barracks, PA
(Dr. Blank’s views as contributed to Russia Profile do not represent the position of the U.S. Army, Defense Department or the U.S. Government)
Since we do not even know who will be the major party nominees for the presidency of the United States, anything we say about their foreign policies is mere speculation not analysis, but there should be no doubt about Bush's personal commitment, nor the fact that both parties share, albeit less intensely, in the view that U.S. foreign policy should seek to promote democracy abroad. Therefore it is likely that some version of this policy, although as yet undefined, will be a part of U.S. foreign policy in the next Administration. Moreover, Americans generally believe that in principle, at any rate, democracy promotion is in America's interests and in Bush's case, as it was for Presidents Carter and Reagan, a real enough personal vision. Therefore Lieven's apologies for Russia are misplaced even though democracy promotion policies can go awry, as we have seen.
As for Moscow, first of all, Bush has never pushed that agenda towards Russia, even before 2005. Russia’s reaction to its own failures in Ukraine may fairly be called an overreaction, even a hysterical one. The jury is out as to whether this has strengthened Russia. I tend to think it is a result of governmental control of the media, the reformers' own missteps, the rising economy and intensified police repression. All these factors have contributed and no one factor can be singled out. But I also believe that Putin's policies all but ensure that another crash will come, as he has saddled Russia with another grossly dysfunctional version of the Muscovite paradigm that has historically proven to be suboptimal. A regime that built democracy over the long term would be more beneficial to Russia.
As for the cause of democracy promotion, it will continue, and is not some idealistic misguided principle if intelligently conducted – as it has not been by Bush's team. Democracy in foreign lands has to come from within, and only then can be helped from outside. A strong external example and support for democrats is essential, but democracies only grow gradually and sometimes have to undergo violence (need I point out the American civil war and the civil rights revolution or the struggles of labor unions were not wholly peaceful affairs). Democracy cannot be imposed from without by force of arms no matter how well-intentioned, and that is the key error in the Bush team's policy. But nobody should have any illusion that Washington conducted a democracy promotion policy towards Russia between 2001-08. The situation was quite the opposite, and the results of that "anemic" policy, to quote Michael McFaul, now stare us in the face.
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Ira Straus, U.S. Coordinator, Committee on Russia in NATO
Bush ultra-Democratism is dead, but democracy promotion is alive and well.
Democracy promotion is not a Bush Administration event. It has a long background, and has been carried out by many free countries in addition to the United States. It has been impressively successful over the centuries, with the normal share of mistakes and detours along the way. It is alive and well. It has a good future ahead of it. Democracy promotion has been a major endeavor of Western countries for an entire century, and it has a 500-year pre-history. It has done quite well during the course of that history. It also has a long-term secular trend of playing an increasing role in the course of the modern centuries. The adventurism of the Bush administration's democratization policies are, while disastrous and potentially catastrophic, in the long-term picture a blip on the screen. They will cause a retreat and retrenchment in democracy promotion, but nevertheless, assuming that humanity survives its crises, the long-established fundamentals of democracy-promotion are here to stay.
Even today, before the demise of this administration, Russians can take comfort from the actual facts of democracy promotion, which have little in common with the criticisms made of it in Russia mostly as a result of paranoia. Of course, the valid criticisms would accomplish more if they were separated from the more paranoid fears.
For all of the missteps of Bush Administration policy and its Clintonian predecessor, U.S. democracy promotion efforts have never been aimed at the ruin of Russia, nor at its destabilization nor at its disintegration, despite the fervor with which these suspicions are held by Putin and those around him. The anti-Russian biases that have actually existed in U.S. democracy promotion have had a different and far more limited character – primarily, a bias in favor of anti-Russian elements within the democratic spectrums of countries formerly subject to the Russian empire.
Putinist Russians can take no comfort from Baker’s Washington Post article. Baker, as a Washington Post writer, is upset at the Administration’s hypocrisy for not promoting democracy as top priority all the time. But unlike Russians, who make a similar complaint all the time about double standards, Baker wields the hypocrisy complaint for anti-Putin purposes. Russians and Washington Post writers alike should put aside their habit of complaining about the double standards and hypocrisy of the powers that be. It is a childish habit. The habit of complaining about double standards is a form of refusal to grow up and accept moral responsibility.
It is high time for Russians, along with Washington Post writers, to put aside this childishness and start thinking honestly about the practical ethics of democratization and its promotion. The issues are too important to keep getting lost in the polemics. As a practical matter, the mistakes of the Bush Administration will get corrected faster and better if there is honest thinking about the subject, not a focus on polemics, whether from the dogmatic Democratizer side of Baker/The Post or the dogmatic anti-Democratizer side of the Russian regime.
In a rare moment of lucidity after the Color Revolutions, Sergei Markov put aside the tendency to blame the leadership changes on Western "interference," saying they reflected a natural process of generational change in leadership in the CIS space, and added that Russia and the West needed to consult on this process – presumably in order to support a smooth transition, support the same clients rather than face off against each other everywhere, and encourage prudent democratic development and stabilization rather than tear Russia's neighbors in both directions. Such a dialogue supposedly did get underway, but little has been heard about its content or results. It would in any case be hard for it to reach substantial conclusions as long as the Kremlin continues with its line of demonization of Western policies and intentions on democratization, or the concomitant national self-deception about the past and about the sources of the recent differences with the West, nor as long as the Bush Administration remains officially trapped in its rhetoric and illusions. These two sets of illusions are, in dialogue with one another, symbiotic, two sides of the same coin, mutually reinforcing, mutually preventing a rational reassessment and rapprochement.
It is in Russia's interest to get out of its rhetoric box. America will inevitably get at least a good part of the way out of its own rhetorical box by January 20, 2009; it will get out farther and faster if it can have some honest dialogue with its counterparts.
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Edward Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow
I do not know how much time taking care of business in the Oval Office leaves its master for reading books. I wish, however, that instead, or at least in addition to, The Case for Democracy by Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, George W. Bush would also read some of the classic Russian sayings by Kozma Prutkov, a source of tongue-in-cheek wisdom to every Russian. One of them – nelzya obyat neobyatnoye, "one cannot embrace what one cannot embrace" – would serve Bush well. Spreading democracy around the world certainly belongs to the same class of utopian ideas as the spread of communism, and the result most likely will be the same. Tragically, history proves over and over again that when someone wants to impose his beliefs on the whole world, however noble those beliefs might be, the result is horror, blood and enormous human suffering.
Not many people in the West would object to the spreading of freedom, democracy and respect for human rights throughout the world. However, their numbers would go down drastically if the same people were asked if they were ready to pay for this process with their lives of their loved ones, or with higher gas prices, to stay this side of the extreme. Looking at the current U.S. and European polls the answer is obvious.
When George W. Bush leaves the White House he definitely wants to leave a legacy in the same league as Ronald Reagan’s. As someone who voted for Bush twice in 2000 and 2004 and who now belongs to the tiny minority of Bush supporters I think I have the moral right to say that George Bush is not Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was a pragmatic man who believed that the greatest threat to the United States and the West was the communist "evil empire," and he was doing everything possible to defeat it and throw it to the "ashbin of history." Using freedom and democracy slogans to shake the communist system from within was an absolutely correct and legitimate policy. The moral support of Soviet dissidents – like Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Natan Sharansky, and others was an effective weapon in the Cold War. At the same time, in his crusade against communism, Reagan used allies with very questionable democracy records, and this was also the right policy no matter what pure-hearted, naive moralists might say.
Reagan also liked Russian proverbs very much, and he obviously knew the one that says: "What’s good for a Russian is death to a German." This proverb is well understood by the current Republican presidential candidates, and they showed this understanding at a recent debate by rephrasing it while openly disagreeing with Bush's vision. "I don't think we can force people to accept our way of life, our way of government," said one of the leading candidates as others nodded approvingly.
No matter what people say about Cheney, one should at least give him credit for being a straight shooter. No casting hints here. Cheney plainly couldn’t care less about Bush's democracy promotion fantasy if it didn’t help U.S. economy and foreign policy objectives. Cheney does not like to see the Russians use their oil and gas to compete with the United States on the global scene; therefore, his endorsement of the Kazakh president and other authoritarian leaders with lots of energy resources at least proves his honesty and pragmatism, although when he says that Kazakh democracy is superior to Russia’s, it raises quite a few eyebrows.
Coming back to Bush, I keep supporting him because I believe that he understands very well the biggest threat to America and Western civilization, and he is willing to use all his remaining political leverage to face this challenge even under threat of being rated as the worst president in U.S. history. However, I do not think that Bush will succeed if he keeps combining the fight with international terrorism with his messianic and utopian democracy promotion crusade. Fighting on several fronts is simply poor strategic thinking and, in addition, it drastically reduces the number of potential allies in our main battle with international terrorism. |
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