1.25.2005
Bush's democracy vow was no threat of force
January 25, 2005
by JOHN O'SULLIVAN
«CHICAGO SUNTIMES»
Was President Bush too eloquent for his own good in his inaugural speech? Many listeners thought they had heard him announce that it was henceforth the policy of the United States to overthrow tyrants and establish democracy everywhere. So powerful was this impression that the following day "a senior administration official" was wheeled out to explain that there had been no change in U.S. foreign policy and that the president was not proposing to spread democracy by military force.
As it happens, the "senior administration official" had a point. Bush's promise to support democracy abroad was hedged about with qualifications: It would be the work of several generations, not one administration. It was not primarily a "task of arms." Freedom could not be imposed on other countries by the United States. We would merely help them to achieve it. It would inevitably reflect their distinctive traditions and end up looking very different from our own democracy.
But these qualifications were obscured by the soaring rhetorical promises to advance the ideals of freedom and self-government throughout the world. This, said Bush, was "the urgent requirement of our nation's security and the calling of our time." Indeed, the "ultimate goal" of U.S. foreign policy was "ending tyranny in our world."
Even heavily qualified, this is quite a goal. And as several commentators have pointed out -- notably, Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations -- it may conflict with other U.S. goals, notably recruiting and keeping non-democratic U.S. allies in the war on terror.
This criticism is not unreasonable, but such conflicts can probably be managed. Throughout the Cold War U.S. presidents combined the rhetoric of freedom and democracy with the realpolitik of maintaining alliances with imperfect democracies (Turkey) and outright dictatorships (Spain, Portugal, South Korea).
Bush sometimes condemns this past policy -- mainly in the Middle Eastern context -- as a bankrupt and amoral strategy. In fact it was quite justifiable morally as the only practical way of securing the larger victory of liberty against the world-wide assault of communist totalitarianism. It worked. America won the Cold War at the modest cost of occasionally sounding hypocritical in such local contexts as the Congo or the Philippines. It continues in the war on terror. Bush has forged alliances with undemocratic rulers in central Asia and the Middle East to obtain U.S. bases against al-Qaida.
Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in the Washington Post, adds a further and more subtle benefit: The presidential rhetoric of liberty in the Cold War eventually undermined even our friends among dictators. Reagan's ringing endorsement of freedom, for instance, weakened Pinochet and Marcos at home and, when they got into difficulties, restrained even the president from coming to their assistance. Bush similarly pushed himself to take the side of Ukraine's "orange revolution" against his anti-terror ally, Russia's President Putin.
But Kagan's argument exhibits two glaring omissions. First, in none of the cases he cites -- Ukraine, the Philippines, Chile -- was the United States called upon to do anything more than encourage and warn. We did not have to intervene militarily. Second, in all of these cases, the end-result of revolution and "people power" was a friendly regime perfectly acceptable to the United States. We had no reason of interest to obstruct the change. In both cases, promoting democracy cost relatively little. That has not always been true in the past -- and it is unlikely always to be true in the future.
Imagine, for instance, a revolution in Saudi Arabia. Rebels have seized key positions in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran, issued a manifesto establishing a Revolutionary Salvation Council, and promised to hold elections within six months. But our intelligence suggests that key figures on the Council are linked to anti-American terror networks.
Do we (a) intervene on their side in the hope of influencing the new regime? (b) intervene on the side of the present royal despots? Or (c) let events take their course? If we do (a), then we are true to our democratic rhetoric but we probably replace a pro-American despot with anti-American ones. Both the other options make us look hypocritical. And the third makes us look weak as well. It is almost needless to add that option (c) is the one Jimmy Carter actually chose when the Shah of Iran was threatened with the Islamist revolution of 1979 that created the present terrorist state.
Or take a different kind of tragedy. Imagine a revolt of oppressed Sunni Muslims in Syria who cite the president's speech as their inspiration and appeal for American intervention. Reports arrive that they are being shot out of hand.
One assumes we would not intervene on behalf of the Syrian despots. But which of the other two options above would we choose? Almost certainly we would choose to do nothing -- or to issue appeals for restraint which amounts to much the same thing. That at any rate is what we did when the Iraqi Shiites rose up against Saddam Hussein in 1991 in the hope that America would come to their assistance. As a result, the Shiites were slow to trust us in both the invasion of 2003 and in its political aftermath. What goes around comes around.
Neither America nor any other country, however idealistic, can be expected to intervene militarily against its own interests or when it has no real interests at stake. And it is immoral as well as unrealistic to encourage others to rebel by promises of intervention we cannot keep.
But that does not mean we cannot take lesser steps -- imposing trade penalties on regimes that jail and torture dissidents, offering a safe haven to despots who agree to go quietly, giving training and technical assistance to free media in authoritarian states that permit some freedoms -- to assist gradual movement toward greater freedom. Promoting democracy in those ways is eminently realist in a world of rapid change. Such a policy, however, must place equal weight on the promise of democracy and the qualification of gradualism. Indeed, the "senior administration official" realized something the president did not: In the grammar of international politics, the qualifications are the main point.
by JOHN O'SULLIVAN
«CHICAGO SUNTIMES»
Was President Bush too eloquent for his own good in his inaugural speech? Many listeners thought they had heard him announce that it was henceforth the policy of the United States to overthrow tyrants and establish democracy everywhere. So powerful was this impression that the following day "a senior administration official" was wheeled out to explain that there had been no change in U.S. foreign policy and that the president was not proposing to spread democracy by military force.
As it happens, the "senior administration official" had a point. Bush's promise to support democracy abroad was hedged about with qualifications: It would be the work of several generations, not one administration. It was not primarily a "task of arms." Freedom could not be imposed on other countries by the United States. We would merely help them to achieve it. It would inevitably reflect their distinctive traditions and end up looking very different from our own democracy.
But these qualifications were obscured by the soaring rhetorical promises to advance the ideals of freedom and self-government throughout the world. This, said Bush, was "the urgent requirement of our nation's security and the calling of our time." Indeed, the "ultimate goal" of U.S. foreign policy was "ending tyranny in our world."
Even heavily qualified, this is quite a goal. And as several commentators have pointed out -- notably, Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations -- it may conflict with other U.S. goals, notably recruiting and keeping non-democratic U.S. allies in the war on terror.
This criticism is not unreasonable, but such conflicts can probably be managed. Throughout the Cold War U.S. presidents combined the rhetoric of freedom and democracy with the realpolitik of maintaining alliances with imperfect democracies (Turkey) and outright dictatorships (Spain, Portugal, South Korea).
Bush sometimes condemns this past policy -- mainly in the Middle Eastern context -- as a bankrupt and amoral strategy. In fact it was quite justifiable morally as the only practical way of securing the larger victory of liberty against the world-wide assault of communist totalitarianism. It worked. America won the Cold War at the modest cost of occasionally sounding hypocritical in such local contexts as the Congo or the Philippines. It continues in the war on terror. Bush has forged alliances with undemocratic rulers in central Asia and the Middle East to obtain U.S. bases against al-Qaida.
Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in the Washington Post, adds a further and more subtle benefit: The presidential rhetoric of liberty in the Cold War eventually undermined even our friends among dictators. Reagan's ringing endorsement of freedom, for instance, weakened Pinochet and Marcos at home and, when they got into difficulties, restrained even the president from coming to their assistance. Bush similarly pushed himself to take the side of Ukraine's "orange revolution" against his anti-terror ally, Russia's President Putin.
But Kagan's argument exhibits two glaring omissions. First, in none of the cases he cites -- Ukraine, the Philippines, Chile -- was the United States called upon to do anything more than encourage and warn. We did not have to intervene militarily. Second, in all of these cases, the end-result of revolution and "people power" was a friendly regime perfectly acceptable to the United States. We had no reason of interest to obstruct the change. In both cases, promoting democracy cost relatively little. That has not always been true in the past -- and it is unlikely always to be true in the future.
Imagine, for instance, a revolution in Saudi Arabia. Rebels have seized key positions in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran, issued a manifesto establishing a Revolutionary Salvation Council, and promised to hold elections within six months. But our intelligence suggests that key figures on the Council are linked to anti-American terror networks.
Do we (a) intervene on their side in the hope of influencing the new regime? (b) intervene on the side of the present royal despots? Or (c) let events take their course? If we do (a), then we are true to our democratic rhetoric but we probably replace a pro-American despot with anti-American ones. Both the other options make us look hypocritical. And the third makes us look weak as well. It is almost needless to add that option (c) is the one Jimmy Carter actually chose when the Shah of Iran was threatened with the Islamist revolution of 1979 that created the present terrorist state.
Or take a different kind of tragedy. Imagine a revolt of oppressed Sunni Muslims in Syria who cite the president's speech as their inspiration and appeal for American intervention. Reports arrive that they are being shot out of hand.
One assumes we would not intervene on behalf of the Syrian despots. But which of the other two options above would we choose? Almost certainly we would choose to do nothing -- or to issue appeals for restraint which amounts to much the same thing. That at any rate is what we did when the Iraqi Shiites rose up against Saddam Hussein in 1991 in the hope that America would come to their assistance. As a result, the Shiites were slow to trust us in both the invasion of 2003 and in its political aftermath. What goes around comes around.
Neither America nor any other country, however idealistic, can be expected to intervene militarily against its own interests or when it has no real interests at stake. And it is immoral as well as unrealistic to encourage others to rebel by promises of intervention we cannot keep.
But that does not mean we cannot take lesser steps -- imposing trade penalties on regimes that jail and torture dissidents, offering a safe haven to despots who agree to go quietly, giving training and technical assistance to free media in authoritarian states that permit some freedoms -- to assist gradual movement toward greater freedom. Promoting democracy in those ways is eminently realist in a world of rapid change. Such a policy, however, must place equal weight on the promise of democracy and the qualification of gradualism. Indeed, the "senior administration official" realized something the president did not: In the grammar of international politics, the qualifications are the main point.
