Advancing democracy remains an integral element of US foreign and security policy, according to the National Security Strategy document released today. The strategy commits the US to supporting peaceful democratic movements while making the case for engaging autocratic regimes.
President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point last weekend anticipated some of the likely themes of the new National Security Strategy
The Obama administration has been criticized for downgrading democracy and for being too concerned to distance itself from the perceived rhetorical excesses of the administration of George W. Bush.
But while the new strategy is more muted in articulating the case for democracy, there is also notable continuity and consistency with its predecessor.
“The document does not make the spread of democracy the defining priority that Mr. Bush did,” one observer suggests, “but it embraces the goal more robustly than is typical for Mr. Obama, a reflection of a struggle within his administration about how to approach a topic that became so associated with Mr. Bush”
The administration will support “the development of institutions within fragile democracies, integrating human rights as a part of our dialogue with repressive governments, and supporting the spread of technologies that facilitate the freedom to access information.’
In making the case for “principled engagement with non-democratic regimes”, the administration insists it will seek to expand rights and opportunities “in parallel’ with collaboration on security or economic interests. The US will employ a dual-track approach “to improve bilateral government relations and use this dialogue to advance human rights, while engaging civil society and peaceful political opposition, and encouraging U.S. nongovernmental actors to do the same.”
The strategy insists that engagement is more likely to create political space for indigenous democratic actors and independent voices.
“More substantive government-to-government relations can create permissive conditions for civil society to operate and for more extensive people-to-people exchanges,” it states.
In an allusion to the dilemmas of supporting Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the documents commits the US to “welcoming all peaceful democratic movements” while retaining the prerogative to withdraw US support if freely-elected governments begin to dismantle or undermine democratic institutions.
Democracy assistance is not about supporting specific candidates or movements, and the US “respects the right of all peaceful, law-abiding, and nonviolent voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them.” The administration will welcome legitimately elected governments “provided they govern with respect for the rights and dignity of all their people and consistent with their international obligations.”
But, it cautions, “those who seek democracy to obtain power, but are ruthless once they do” will forfeit US support.
Some activists and analysts have argued that the social dimension of democracy assistance has been neglected. The NSS promotes an expansive notion of democracy, insisting that democracies must deliver by addressing broader human needs, including economic opportunity.
It integrates democracy into “an aggressive and affirmative development agenda” that seeks to “set in place accountable and democratic institutions that serve basic human needs.”
Contrary to accounts which assert President Obama’s ‘realist’ tendencies, the strategy “rejects the false choice between the narrow pursuit of our interests and an endless campaign to impose our values”, insisting that the promotion of democratic and human rights is fundamental to US interests.
The administration recognizes the new context of the anti-democratic backlash and contested terrain in which democracy assistance is actively and energetically resisted by newly assertive authoritarian forces.
“Even where some governments have adopted democratic practices,” it notes, “authoritarian rulers have undermined electoral processes and restricted the space for opposition and civil society, imposing a growing number of legal restrictions so as to impede the rights of people to assemble and to access information.”
The strategy’s stress on multilateral and cooperative approaches to international challenges appears to be a point of departure with the previous administration. It commits the US to building “a broader coalition of actors to advance universal values”, working with other governments, NGOs, and multilateral for a, including the UN Human Rights Council, and to “actively support the leadership of emerging democracies.”
The administration did make a commitment to support the Community of Democracies, due for a de facto re-launch in Krakow, Poland, this July.
“Every presidency starts off defining itself by trumpeting the opposite of whatever its predecessor did, and that’s been true in spades going from George W. Bush to Obama,” says Robert Lieber, a professor of government and international affairs at Washington’s Georgetown University. But, he adds, “we’re at a point where the overplayed ‘we’re not Bush’ mantra is raising anxieties among friends and allies in Asia and the Middle East.”
Democracy is not elevated as a strategic priority as it as in the Bush administration, but some observers detect a marked continuity in the themes of countering violent extremism while advancing democracy and human rights.
“The word ‘democracy’ is not in the header of that section, but the values they are talking about are all democratic values,” said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University professor who worked on the last NSS at the Bush White House.
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