Democracy remains a foreign policy priority, says Anne-Marie Slaughter, State's head of policy planning
The Obama administration had downplayed, but not downgraded democracy as a foreign policy objective, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s head of policy planning, told Democracy Digest this week.
“Give us time,” was her response to critics who cite changes to Egyptian NGO funding and cuts to Iranian human rights groups to charge the administration with backtracking on democracy. Rejecting the suggestion that the administration was over-reacting to the perceived excesses of the Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda, she nevertheless accepted that adjustments had been made.
The administration is changing the discourse and framework in which it articulates its support for promoting democracy, she told yesterday’s Center for International Private Enterprise conference.
“For the first six to eight months, there was a concern that the discussion [of democracy promotion] was too tied to the use of military force,” said Slaughter, a leading liberal internationalist and democracy advocate. Consequently, the administration has stressed values conducive to democracy rather than overplaying the D-word itself.
Addressing concerns that State’s ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review could subsume democracy assistance within a development agenda, she conceded that we “can expect greater integration with the development agenda”.
There is “a strong desire to support those countries where democratization and development go together”, but Slaughter would be “surprised if it [democracy assistance] was subordinated.” She specifically said that the US was not like the European Union, where democracy activists charge that a developmental approach has depoliticized and taken the cutting edge from democracy assistance efforts.
Slaughter’s comments echo those of a State Department official who recently told Democracy Digest that the administration was not downplaying democracy, but reframing the issue within a developmental perspective.
In a wide-ranging interview with Democratiya, she has explained the rationale for “supporting countries that are trying to become democracies and supporting groups within democracies that are trying to achieve democracy, but via mechanisms that have a multilateral stamp of approval.”
[...] Digest has published highlights from an interview with Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s head of policy [...]
[...] Project on Middle East Democracy points us to a piece at Democracy Digest on the Obama administration and democracy promotion. The Obama administration had downplayed, but not downgraded democracy as a foreign policy [...]
March 22nd, 2010
Reframing and Downgrading Democracy
Response to Ann–Marie Slaughter, State Department Head of Policy Planning
by Taher Kanaan, Managing Director
Jordan Center for Policy Research – An Affiliate of the Higher Council for Science and Technology, President – Prince Al-Hassan bin Talal
In endeavors to influence social transformation, what mostly counts is the singer and not the song. With regard to US policy on democracy in the rest of the world, there is no doubt that Americans in general are strongly in favor of countries that share American liberal values on which the American political system is based. The US administration, other things being equal, may be assumed to generally share this popular propensity. However, as other things are never equal, the genuine desire to see democracy flourish everywhere has been mixed up with other not so noble foreign policy objectives, including the promotion of US imperial interests. To be sure, one can cite cases when US foreign policy practices, by supporting unmitigated dictatorships, fly in the face of democratic values.
In other cases, however, US foreign policy expressed support for human rights and democratic activities and activists in developing countries, but the degree of seriousness in such support varied with whether or not there was a conflict with other political and economic objectives. The cases are now notorious where democratic advocacy was used with deliberate deceit to mobilize support for waging open war against countries obstructing US interests.
Unfortunately, the financial assistance to democratic activities and activists (organized in NGOs or otherwise) gave a bad name to the recipients of such assistance precisely because of the aforementioned mix-up of objectives. Thus, while the “song” was worthy and deserving of appreciation by all democrats in developing countries, the image and motives of the “singer”, affected adversely potential appreciation of the “song”. Reversal of those adverse effects through genuine and honest support of democracy requires judicious application of US political and economic leverage to that purpose by adopting the policies outlined below. These policies are predicated on the proviso that achievements in economic development should be combined with achievements in social equity that extend to the mass of the people, and with good governance that is immune to corruption. In this way, such policies are sure to satisfy the most critical pre-conditions for the success of home-grown democratic processes in the various countries. The proposed policies to build on those preconditions may be outlined as follows:
1. Avoid selectivity and double standards in supporting democratic regimes and democratic practices.
2. Avoid selectivity and double standards in opposing dictatorships and dictatorial measures everywhere.
3. In order to discourage autocratic rule and promote democracy in countries where the US carry influence, avoid using economic measures but use instead political pressure and moral suasion .
4. Use economic measures exclusively to promote economic development and combat corruption, and not to influence directly the political process in recipient counties.
5. Direct financial aid to civil society to advocate human rights and liberal values should be sterilized from political bias and therefore should be administered by specialized UN agencies democratically governed by the international community.