Making the World Safe for Partial Democracy? Making the World Safe Arthur A. Goldsmith for Partial Democracy? Questioning the Premises of Democracy Promotion Should the United States promote democracy abroad? Will moves toward democracy, particularly in the Muslim world, advance U.S. interests? To what extent can the United States bring about democratic change? What are the odds of success, and how great are the risks should democracy promotion fail? The answers to these questions are vital to U.S. foreign policy. Even after the debacle in Iraq, there remains broad agreement in Washington that the United States should work to foster a less autocratic world, which, in turn, is predicted to lead to less anti- Americanism and diminished threats to U.S. interests. This article calls attention to two errors in reasoning and evidence that al- most everyone in the debate over democracy promotion seems to have over- looked. First, if democracy enhances international security, that does not necessarily mean that “every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer,” to quote President George W. Bush.1 Frequently, the suc- cessor regime to a dictatorship is a partial democracy, which can pose an even greater security threat. Second, having the laudable purpose of furthering democracy is not a relevant reason for claiming that this goal is attainable. De- spite its signiªcant inºuence, the United States cannot consistently shape for- eign political systems to its liking, particularly in the short term. Democracy promotion’s limitations were brushed aside in the Bush admin- istration’s “forward strategy of freedom” or “freedom agenda,” which became the cornerstone of its foreign policy. The president prominently justiªed ad- ministration plans using strident neoconservative themes, asserting repeatedly that democracy promotion is both a normative prerogative and a pragmatic means to bolster the United States’ security and further its geopolitical preemi- nence.2 As he summarized these arguments in his 2006 State of the Union Arthur A. Goldsmith is Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 1. George W. Bush, “President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address” (Washington, D.C.: White House, January 31, 2006), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060131- 10.html. 2. Neoconservatives had long been conªdently advocating forceful steps by the United States to spread democracy around the world. See, for example, Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulªlling America’s Destiny (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1991); and the essays by William Bennett and Paul Wolfowitz in Robert Kagan and William Kristol, eds., Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportu- nity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (New York: Encounter Books, 2000). On the inºuence of neoconservative thought on contemporary U.S. foreign policy, see Piki Ish-Shalom, “‘The Civiliza- tion of Clashes’: Misapplying the Democratic Peace in the Middle East,” Political Science Quarterly, International Security, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Fall 2008), pp. 120–147 © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 120 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2008.33.2.120 by guest on 26 September 2021 Making the World Safe for Partial Democracy? 121 Address, one of the nation’s “deªning moral commitments” is to end tyranny around the world and replace it with democracy. Regime change is not solely a question of altruism, the president avowed, but also of national self-interest: “Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the ªght against terror.”3 The United States spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq to secure limited constitutional government in those countries. In addition, federal funding for other overseas democracy promotion activities jumped, starting in 2000, when it was about $500 million per year. The 2008 budget request raised foreign aid spending for democracy and human rights to nearly $1.5 billion, excluding Afghanistan and Iraq.4 The Bush administration initiated high- proªle efforts to improve public diplomacy toward areas with large Muslim populations, and engaged in pro-democratic lobbying of some of their leaders. In 2002 it launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative to support non- governmental organizations and government agencies with activities leading to democratic change in the Middle East.5 The freedom agenda never delivered. Five years later, the prospects for nonauthoritarian order in Afghanistan and Iraq seem more remote than ever. Competitive elections in Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, and other places have produced troublesome results for the United States. Human Rights Watch and Freedom House both report that democracy is in retreat globally.6 Commenta- tors from across the political spectrum agree that the U.S. approach to democ- racy promotion since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is in tatters, though they offer different diagnoses for what went wrong.7 Vol. 122, No. 4 (Winter 2007–08), pp. 533–554; Fred Kaplan, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (New York: Wiley, 2008); Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (New York: Doubleday, 2008); and Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006). 3. Bush, “President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address.” 4. Thomas O. Melia, “The Democracy Bureaucracy: The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion,” Discussion Paper (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Project on National Security, Princeton University, 2005), p. 14; and Susan B. Epstein, Nina M. Seraªno, and Francis T. Miko, Democracy Promotion: Cornerstone of U.S. Foreign Policy? CRS Report for Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, December 26, 2007), Order Code RL34296, p. 21. 5. The practical steps taken by the United States, of course, never rose to the level implied by ad- ministration rhetoric. Thomas Carothers is one of many critics to note the inconsistencies in Bush’s policies—for example, the compromises made for certain authoritarian countries, such as Paki- stan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, that cooperate in the war on terrorism. See Carothers, “U.S. Democracy Promotion During and After Bush,” Carnegie Endowment Report (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, September 2007), pp. 6–10. 6. Human Rights Watch, World Report, 2008 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008); and Freedom House, Freedom in the World, 2008 (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2008). 7. See, for example, Steven Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World,” Saban Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2008.33.2.120 by guest on 26 September 2021 International Security 33:2 122 Yet bipartisan support lives on for the ends (and many of the means) of the freedom agenda. Liberal internationalism probably has as much inºuence on the Democratic Party as neoconservatism has on the Republicans.8 It was not so long ago, for example, that President Bill Clinton declared that U.S. foreign policy would be guided by the doctrine of “democratic enlargement,” aimed at expanding the community of democratic states.9 More recently, both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were sponsors of the ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2005. Had it passed, the bill would have increased assistance to foreign countries to carry out democratic reforms of government.10 Public opinion has become more skeptical about democracy promotion, but remains favorable. A survey supported by the German Marshall Fund in 2007 found that about one- third of Democrats (and half of Republicans) agreed when asked whether the United States should help establish democracy in other countries.11 Americans are not alone in wanting to supply the beneªts of democracy to Center Analysis Paper, No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, October 2007); Christo- pher J. Coyne and Tamara Cofman Wittes, “Can We Export Democracy?” Cato Policy Report, Vol. 30, No. 1 (January/February 2008), pp. 11–13; and Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul, “Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2007– 08), pp. 23–45. 8. Michael C. Desch discusses this bipartisan tradition in Desch, “America’s Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter 2007/08), pp. 7–43. Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz dispute whether the inter- nationalist consensus will long survive the Bush administration. See Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 7–44. 9. S. 516 [109th]: ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2005, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill .xpd?bill=s109-516. 10. Making the world safe for democracy has been an undercurrent in U.S. foreign policy since the nineteenth century. See Jonathan Monten, “The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Spring 2005), pp. 112–156. For additional discussion of democracy promotion in U.S. foreign policy, see Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry, and Takashi Inoguchi, eds., American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strat- egies, and Impacts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Thomas Carothers, Aiding