Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy During the Reagan Administration 1981-1986
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DEMOCRACY PROMOTION, NATIONAL SECURITY AND STRATEGY DURING THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION 1981-1986 BY ROBERT EDWARD PEE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of American and Canadian Studies School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies University of Birmingham September 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship of democracy promotion to national security in US strategy through an examination of the influence of geopolitical, bureaucratic and organisational considerations on the effort to create a coherent strategic approach fusing democracy promotion and national security under the Reagan administration. This process highlighted geopolitical and organisational tensions between democracy promotion and US national security. Groups within the administration, Congress and the private sphere disagreed over whether US geopolitical interests required the limited deployment of democracy promotion against Soviet Communism or a more expansive effort aimed at both Communist and pro-US dictatorships. These debates were linked to clashes over the credibility and effectiveness of competing state-centred or privately-implemented organisational frameworks. The organisational resolution was the National Endowment for Democracy, which intervened on a tactical basis in dictatorships, with US assistance, to safeguard US national security by supporting pro-US democratic groups. However the concept of privately-implemented democracy promotion blocked agreement on geopolitical objectives and the creation of a coherent strategy reconciling democracy promotion and US national security. Tensions between these two imperatives continue to recur and can be resolved only on a case-by-case basis rather than at the strategic level. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, William Scott Lucas, for his advice, thought-provoking comments and incisive feedback. His guidance has proven invaluable to the development of this project, while any errors are, of course, my own. I would also like to thank my family for their support over what must have seemed a long and possibly unending period of study. Without them, this thesis would not have been written. Special thanks are due to the staff of the Reagan Presidential Library and to the Library of Congress for providing valuable and uncomplaining assistance to me during my research. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Roots of Democracy Promotion: From Covert Operations and 15 Modernisation to Party-building Chapter Two: Democracy and National Security in the early Reagan 57 Administration: No Grand Design Chapter Three: Particularist versus Expansive Visions of Democracy 88 Promotion Chapter Four: Democracy Promotion and National Security Policy 113 Chapter Five: Building a Consensus for Democracy Promotion 150 Chapter Six: The Foundation of the National Endowment for Democracy 197 Chapter Seven: Promoting Democracy 225 Conclusion 275 Bibliography 294 INTRODUCTION US policy-makers have often claimed that the US has a special mission to protect and support the spread of democracy.1 However, US actions such as support for dictatorships and hostility to democratic regimes indicate that the place of democracy in US foreign policy practice has been much more ambiguous. This ambiguity has spurred a constant and continuing academic debate between those who see the promotion of democracy as a key element of US strategy and a more critical group of scholars who argue that in practice, democratic rhetoric has been used as a tool to legitimate the pursuit of other goals. The democracy-centred narrative of US foreign policy has been expounded most often by scholars working within a Liberal or Neoconservative framework. The most comprehensive statement of the importance of democracy in US national security policy within a Liberal framework was made by Tony Smith, who argued that “the most consistent tradition in American foreign policy…has been the belief that the nation‟s security is best protected by the expansion of democracy worldwide”2 and that this had been “the greatest ambition of United States foreign policy over the past century”.3 Smith cites the creation of democratic institutions in the Philippines during its period of American rule, the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson, the democratisation of Germany and Japan under the Truman administration, the Alliance for Progress in Latin America and Ronald Reagan‟s crusade for 1 Numerous examples of Presidential rhetoric covering over a century could be cited. See Wilson‟s argument that the US was entering World War One in order to make the world safe for democracy in Woodrow Wilson, “War Message to Congress”, 2nd April 1917, accessed 4th June 2010, http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson%27s_War_Message_to_Congress; see Harry S. Truman‟s contention that “it must be the policy of the United States to…assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way” , used to justify US aid to the governments of Greece and Turkey in support of containment in 1947, in “Address before a joint session of Congress”, 12th March 1947, accessed 20th February 2013, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp; and John F. Kennedy‟s promise that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty” in “Inaugural Address”, accessed 16th March 2013, http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html. 2 Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), 10. 3 Smith, America’s Mission, 4. 1 democracy against Soviet Communism in support of his argument.4 Smith is not alone in making this argument, as the neoconservative Joshua Muravchik claims that the US has been “the engine of [the] transformation”5 of much of the world in a more democratic direction, while liberal scholar G. John Ikenberry sees the promotion of democracy as one component of a US liberal grand strategy which also included the creation of international institutions and an open world economy after World War Two.6 These scholars argue that in democracy promotion idealism and pragmatism are joined in an “evolving, sophisticated understanding of how to create a stable international political order”.7 In this conception, democracy and national security are mutually reinforcing policy goals. However, this perspective fails to engage fully with the contradictions in US practice by minimising the anti-democratic actions often taken by the United States. Thus, while Smith celebrates democratic policy initiatives undertaken by Wilson, Truman, Kennedy and Reagan he devotes far less space to Presidents such as Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon, who overthrew democratic governments.8 Similarly, Henry Nau argues that even though the US undermined democratic governments during the Cold War in countries such as Guatemala and Chile, by containing the Soviet Union, “[i]t played the key role in defending and strengthening democracy.”9 While these scholars do not ignore the contradiction between democratic rhetoric and anti-democratic foreign policy behaviour, they characterise such 4 See Smith p40-49; 84-111; 146-176; 214-236; and 266-307. 5Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny, (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1991), 221. 6 See G. John Ikenberry, “America‟s Liberal Grand Strategy: Democracy and National Security in the Post-War Era,” in American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts, ed. Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 103. 7 Ikenberry, 104. 8 Smith devotes a chapter to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, and does discuss the overthrow of democratic or democratizing governments in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. He also discusses Johnson‟s intervention against the Constitutionalist pro-Bosch uprising in the Dominican Republic. However, these facts are placed within a general framework which is focussed on the linkage he perceives between national security and democracy promotion and do not affect the general thrust of his argument. See Smith, 178-213 and 228- 232. 9 Henry Nau, “America's Identity, Democracy Promotion and National Interests: Beyond Realism, Beyond Idealism” in American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts, ed. Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 143. 2 actions as unfortunate deviations from an overarching policy framework based on the promotion of democracy rather than enquiring more deeply into the connection between democracy and national security. In contrast to the democracy-focussed narrative outlined above, academics working within a Leftist/Progressive or Conservative/Realist framework argue that democracy promotion