Condoleezza Rice and José Manuel Barroso: different approaches, same goals. Source: State Dept.
The United States should not relinquish the leadership it has shown on democracy assistance, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, even if progress has been patchy and application uneven. And especially when others are re-asserting their own commitment to supporting democrats worldwide:
If the U.S. doesn’t remain that lodestar, then I think democracy moves off the international agenda at a time when you’re beginning to see, for instance, the Europeans unafraid to give their award to a Chinese dissident [Hu Jia], despite the blowback from Beijing.
In an interview in this coming Sunday’s New York Times magazine, she concedes that the rhetorical commitment to the Freedom Agenda generated aspirations that, with the benefit of hindsight, could be considered largely unrealistic, although events played a part in inflating expectations too:
2005 was a bit deceptive in that way because you had the Iraqi elections, the Cedar Revolution, the Orange Revolution, the Rose Revolution and the Palestinian election. So maybe people came to expect too much too soon.
In the Middle East, where the democratic deficit remains acute, the need for reform is widely acknowledged and political discourse has a democratic inflection that was largely absent eight years ago:
There have been some real gains, but there also has been a complete change in the conversation, particularly in the Middle East, where some form of popular legitimacy is being sought in almost every country. The American voice has got to stay strong in that conversation.
While Russia’s authoritarian regression is a cause for concern, the regime is not totalitarian and its popularity with Russian citizens largely depends not on the ideological appeal of ‘sovereign democracy’ but on its questionable ability to meet expectations of rising living standards:
They’ve got problems, and the basis of this is that the legitimacy of the Russian government is not ideology; it is not a pretension to a different route for human development as Communism was. It is the ability of Russians to, if they can’t afford those Cartier shops near Tverskaya, to be able instead to go to the Ikea store.
When it comes to democracy assistance, there is only so much that any government can do. Governments invariably face clashes of compelling priorities, of strategic security and energy interests or diplomatic imperatives, for instance. In any event, external assistance can rarely do more than to support locally-driven demands for reform:
The United States is not an N.G.O., so it’s not as if we throw out every other interest or every other concern with a country because it’s authoritarian. And sometimes we aren’t able to effect change as completely as we like. It has to be indigenous change.
Speaking at a European conference on democracy promotion in Brussels today, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso stressed Europe’s concept of the broader socio-economic dimensions of democracy. ”When our American friends now are saying that they should find some ways of promoting some public tools, some public systems, in terms of social security, public education, this is exactly what we Europeans have been doing at least since the end of the Second World War, with the development of social market economy,” Barroso said.
He reiterated Europe’s commitment to promoting democracy in its southern and eastern periphery, noting that it met Europe’s security interests as well as its values:
By investing in the democratisation of its neighbours and their partners, it invests in their openness and development. It invests in fairer societies in which the incidence of social problems, the use of force, and political, religious or cultural radicalization is decreasing. Ultimately, the return on the investment made is collective and translates into prosperity, stability and peace.
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