June 25, 2004, Volume 1, Number 8

DEMOCRACY DIGEST

The Weekly Bulletin of the Transatlantic Democracy Network


ISSUES

"Democracy and Human Development in the Greater Middle East"
An influential group of European and US scholars and policy experts brought together by the German Marshall Fund has just issued a detailed strategy paper on transatlantic partnership for "Democracy and Human Development in the Greater Middle East." The paper will be the centerpiece of a conference being held this weekend in Istanbul as a prelude to the NATO summit. (See Forthcoming Events.)

The list of those who took part in drafting the paper is impressively broad, ranging from the neo-conservative Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute to Ralf Fuecks of the German Greens. There are representatives from both "new" and "old" Europe, and from Turkey. (A full list of the authors follows.)

The paper opens with a challenge to the so-called "realists" who argue that support for democracy in the Middle East is foolishly idealistic. Autocratic regimes in the region do not provide stability, the authors charge, but instead "have stoked anti-Western feelings as an outlet for domestic discontent." Reluctance to challenge such regimes "has helped delay the economic and political reforms...that could provide the foundation for a more durable stability….[O]ur strategic and moral imperatives now clearly converge and argue for a radical shift in our policy."

The paper acknowledges that the policies it advocates will require "historic staying power" and run significant risks, but contends that other options not only run counter to the basic values of the West, but are futile.

The authors set out a half-dozen strategic guideposts for their new transatlantic strategy, arguing for special attention to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and countries at the core of the Israel/Arab dispute. They urge leaders on both sides of the ocean to look beyond "deep differences over the wisdom and justness of the war in Iraq" and not "to abandon the goal of a free and democratic Iraq." While not calling specifically for the deployment of NATO forces in Iraq, they do propose transatlantic cooperation "to recruit, train, equip and deploy Iraqi police and armed forces" adequate "to restore order."

The proposal urges very large increases in funding for democratic development both by the US and the EU, as well as the creation of a new multi-lateral foundation devoted to supporting the independent media, educational activities and the organizations of civil society. It also recommends major expansions of exchanges and academic partnerships with the region.

The paper contends that the promotion of democracy and human development in the region will also require a sweeping reorganization of the national and international structures through which Europeans and Americans conduct foreign and development policies--as far-reaching as the one that followed the onset of the Cold War. This will entail the development of regional security and development structures for the broader Middle East, new organizational capacities for democracy promotion at the Cabinet and Commission level in the US and EU, and much deeper channels of cooperation between the US and the EU itself.

This paper appears at a significant moment in the dialogue about cooperation between the US and Europe in the Middle East, and in the debates of the American Presidential campaign. Some may regard it as an alternative strategy to go-it-alone tendencies in US foreign policy, while others will paint it (in the words of a prominent American journalist) as "a more muscular version of the Bush policy." But the German Marshall Fund's Ronald Asmus explains the effort this way: "What we were trying to do is demonstrate that it's possible to build a bipartisan coalition for this vision across the aisle and across the Atlantic. The Bush administration has made a start. The question is, will we follow up and will we come up with a long-term blueprint?"

Authors:
Urban Ahlin, Member of the Swedish Parliament
Mensur Akgn, Turkish Economic and Social Science Studies Foundation
Gustavo de Aristegui, Member of the Spanish Parliament
Ronald D. Asmus, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Daniel Byman, Georgetown University
Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution
Steven Everts, Centre for European Reform
Ralf Fuecks, Heinrich Boll Foundation
Iris Glosemeyer, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
Jana Hybaskova, Czech Member of the European Parliament
Thorsten Klassen, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Mark Leonard, Foreign Policy Centre
Michael McFaul, Stanford University
Thomas O. Melia, Georgetown University
Michael Mertes, Dimap Consult
Joshua Muravchik, American Enterprise Institute
Kenneth M. Pollack, The Brookings Institution
Karen Volker, Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman
Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House

Democracy in Iraq: Too Visionary, or Too Late?
Some critics of the Iraq campaign hold that an effort to establish democracy there was doomed from the start because of inhospitable cultural and political traditions that can only change very gradually. But a provocative critique of the Coalition's strategy is developing that argues that, risky as they might have been, big steps to engage Iraqis in meaningful democratic participation should have begun immediately after Saddam was overthrown.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who served with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, contends that "the paternalistic approach of the Coalition Provisional Authority has bred resentment and stunted the development of responsible local institutions." Rubin charges that "In the US press, the CPA is often portrayed as a force for liberalism, battling Iraqis' instinct for theocracy. But, in truth, liberal Iraqis have been given no more authority than their conservative countrymen."

A similar theme emerges from a recent review of Coalition practice in the Washington Post. Members of one Iraqi district council "faulted the CPA for not keeping a commitment to give a large share of power to local officials." Members of their communities brought problems to local officials, but these officials had no control over funds or government employees, who report to national ministries. The Post reports that "Despite calls from Iraqi politicians for the participants to be chosen by popular vote, the CPA deemed municipal elections too risky last summer. They worried that religious extremists and Baathists would manipulate the process....As a result, the councils were filled with people who owed their jobs more to the CPA than to the public."

Arafat & Democracy
Transatlantic discussion of the challenges democracy faces in the Broader Middle East soon comes around to the importance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. As noted in the most recent DemDigest (June 18), both Jacques Chirac and Romano Prodi stressed this at last week's gathering of the G-8. The problem, however, is not whether peace is important, but rather, how to get there. And here there are major differences.

The US perception, underscored by President Bill Clinton in his just-published biography, is that four years ago Israel offered major concessions that were rejected by the Palestinian negotiators at Camp David, before the launch of the second Intifada. “I still don't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake,” writes Clinton.

But the view in important European leadership circles is that both Israel and the Palestinians share responsibility for the breakdown of the Oslo process, and that more “evenhanded” pressures than the US is willing to exert will be needed to get negotiations back on track.

Differences about what the problem is have produced deadlock about how to move forward. One way this logjam could be broken is if Palestinians and their supporters put forward a negotiator perceived by all sides to be more strongly committed both to democracy and peace. There are some indications that pressures for such change are mounting both within and outside the Arab world.

Outrage over undemocratic high-handedness and corruption in the Palestinian Authority has provoked strong protests from respected figures in the Palestinian leadership. Jawad Saleh, a former minister in Arafat's cabinet and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has called on his fellow Palestinians to join in street demonstrations “to overthrow the PLC and develop a new leadership.” He contends that the 88-member Council is so dominated by Arafat's supporters that it suppresses any meaningful debate about pervasive corruption.

Another important dissident in the Fatah Party, Quadura Faris, charges that the Palestinian leadership now 'has no vision for obtaining a peaceful future and lacks the ability to govern.” According to this account, the Palestinian Authority exists “only because it manages to pay the salaries of its 140,000 workers thanks largely to the contributions of $1.3 billion from donor countries over the past three years."

Donors to the PA are uneasy about how their funds are being spent. According to the European Observer, "OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud office, has signaled that new evidence could arise over the alleged misuse by the Palestinian Authority of EU funds to fund terrorist activities," and a German Television station reports that some "246 million Euro of EU money, granted to the Palestinian Authority by the European Commission, ended up in fully uncontrollable bank accounts….contrary to specific project-based EU aid [guidelines]."

These issues appear to be matters of concern to a wide spectrum of Palestinians. A number of opinion polls have documented that substantial majorities of Palestinians in areas under the Palestinian Authority support democratic reforms. Skeptics sometimes question whether those polled use the term democracy in the way it is used in the liberal democracies of the West. But the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recently found that most Palestinians understand democracy in terms of what they see in neighboring Israel, and point to Israel as a model more often than such countries as the US, Germany or France.

The Gramsci Effect?
How can it be that -- even as US government strategies for promoting democracy stumbles, and those of Europe seem tepid -- the buzz about democratic reform continues in the Middle East, and may even be growing stronger?

One explanation is suggested in a recent article by Freedom House Senior Scholar Adrian Karatnycky: the Gramsci effect. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Communist thinker whose writings inspired a number of figures who went on to became intellectual gurus to the New Left of the 1960s: Herbert Marcuse and Noam Chomsky among them. Later his ideas also won respect from certain conservatives seeking to challenge what they saw as unhealthy influences in the culture of politics. Gramsci's central idea might crudely be paraphrased this way: greater than the tread of a mighty army is an idea whose time has come.

In an article in the most recent National Interest Karatnycky argues that democracy has become the “hegemonic idea” of our times. He contends that the values and concepts of democracy are re-shaping politics and diplomacy, even in the practice of those who think of themselves as masters of realpolitik. He recounts an impressive list of the ways in which democracy has come to prevail in governments, regional institutions and is even knocking at the door of the UN.

Nevertheless, he warns, "democratic hegemony, in the end, is not some inevitable endpoint of historical development. It may only be an opportunity…."


INFORMATION

Michael Allen on Assignment
Any deficit of material in this week's "Information" section results from co-editor Michael Allen's response to the call to provide badly-needed encouragement to his English national team at the Euro 2004 football championship in Portugal. Allen will also report on the impending Democracy-Agenda conference on "Enhancing the European profile in Democracy Assistance" from The Hague. (See Forthcoming Events.)

Solidarnosc's Jacek Kuron Dies at 70
Jacek Kuron, who inspired Poles to struggle against Communist rule and a was a godfather of the Solidarity labor union movement, died on June 17 in Warsaw. Kuron, who in his youth was an idealistic communist, did not wallow in his disillusionment, but was transformed by it into a democratic activist and thinker. This led him to a role as a senior organizer of KOR, the Committee to Assist Workers, a support group and intellectual resource center for workers' who were struggling against government-run unions to create an independent labor federation. Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity trade union and Poland's first democratic president said Kuron was “the unquestionable leader of the anti-communist struggle in the 1970s and '80s.” and that ''Without him, the events of August 1980 would have been impossible."

Kuron was among the thousands arrested when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on December 13, 1981. He emerged from prison to serve as a leader of the roundtable negotiations, and then as labor minister in the Solidarity government. He was a candidate for the Polish presidency in 1995 before poor health slowed his political career.


VACANCIES

The Asia Foundation
Democracy and Civil Society: Taiwan
The Asia Foundation seeks a Senior Program Manager required to design and implement projects related to Taiwan's democratic consolidation and development of domestic civil society; produce periodic analyses of Taiwan's democratization and civil society development; prepares proposals and reports for these projects; and coordinate with civil society organizations in Taiwan. Contact: Sue Su - Phone: (886-2) 2506-1174 or mailto:suesu@afit.org.tw. Apply by: July 31, 2004

National Endowment for Democracy
Interns
The NED seeks interns for its International Forum for Democratic Studies, Reagan-Fascell Fellowship, and Journal of Democracy. For further details contact: Melissa Aten: Phone: 202-293-0300, extension 665 or matilto:melissa@ned.org. Apply by: July 15, 2004.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

June 25-27, Istanbul, Turkey
The Atlantic Alliance at a New Crossroads Conference
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) are holding a conference of the transatlantic strategic community in Istanbul, Turkey, in advance of the NATO Summit. The themes that will be highlighted include the Alliance's overall strategic reorientation, a new Euro-Atlantic strategy for the Black Sea, NATO's future role in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq, as well as how the West can promote democracy in the Greater Middle East. Several senior politicians from both sides of the Atlantic have agreed to address the audience among them Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. In addition GMF and TESEV have commissioned a set of scholarly policy papers – the “Istanbul Papers” -- on a number of these issues, which will be distributed at the event.

Space and security require the event be by invitation only. Press inquiries should be directed to Abigail Golden-Vazquez: mailto:agoldenvazquez@gmfus.org or fax. 1-202-265-1662. Materials will be available upon request after the conference.

July, 4-6, The Hague, the Netherlands
High-profile Speakers at
"Enhancing the European profile in Democracy Assistance" Conference
Democracy AGENDA –- the Alliance for Generating a European Network for Democracy Assistance -– has confirmed several important speakers for their forthcoming conference,   "Enhancing the European profile in Democracy Assistance." Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende will join Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State and president of the National Democratic Institute, in addressing the conference in The Hague, Netherlands. Other speakers include Lord Dahrendorf of the British House of Lords, Adrian Severin, president of the OSCE and former minister of state in Romania), Mamphela Ramphele, Managing Director of the World Bank), Miguel Angel Rodriguez (former President of Costa Rica) and Agnes Van Ardenne, the Dutch Minister of International Cooperation.

The event is hosted by the Institute for Multiparty Democracy, parallel to the Dutch presidency of the European Union. The conference is prepared by a European wide steering committee, containing the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the British Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the French Fondation Jean Jaures and the Swedish Centre Party International Department

Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, IMD Office, Korte Vijverberg 2, NL-2513 AB The Hague, tel: +31 70 3115464, fax: +31 70 3115465, e-mail: info@nimd.org, web site: http://www.nimd.org/

July 7-10, Cascais, Portugal
Conference on Europe and the Trans-Atlantic Relationship
A conference wil be held at the Palácio dos Condes de Castro Guimarães in Cascais, Portugal, organized by the Institute for Political Studies of the Portuguese Catholic University in association with the Harvard Summer Program, the Boston College Summer Program and Wyzsza Szkola Biznesu-National-Louis University of Poland. Speakers include the German Marshall Fund's Craig Kennedy, Josef Joffe, Editor of Die Zeit, French Parliamentarian Pierre Lellouche, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Raymond Plant of King's College, Oxford, and Democracy Digest's Penn Kemble of Freedom House. The closing session will be addressed by José Manuel Durão Barroso, the Prime Minister of Portugal.

The conference is convened by João Carlos Espada, editor of Nova Cidadania and Director of the Catholic University's Political Studies Institute, Journal of Democracy editor Marc F. Plattner and Adam Wolfson, editor of the Washington-based Public Interest magazine. Further details and information about registration are available from: Instituto de Estudos Políticos da Universidade Católica Portuguesa Palma de Cima, 1649-023, Lisbon – Portugal Tel. (351) 21-721-4129  Fax (351) 21-727-1836 E-Mail: mailto:imoreira@iep.ucp.pt  


   

Democracy Digest Welcomes Your Cooperation

Democracy Digest welcomes cooperation from organizations and individuals in building circulation and in obtaining articles, speeches, web site addresses, organizational statements and other materials that may be of interest to readers. Our effort has just begun. Organizations that have so far agreed to cooperate include: Aspen Institute Berlin; the Center for Study of Islam and Democracy; Council for a Community of Democracies; FAES Fundacion (Spain); the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly(Turkey); the Institute for Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal; No Peace Without Justice [Italy]; People in Need Foundation (Czech Republic); Polish Helsinki Foundation on Human Rights, Droits et Democratie (Canada).

We also seek information that may be useful to those engaged in democracy support activities: dates of conferences and seminars, the availability of resources, job openings, etc. Please e-mail us at: demdigest@freedomhouse.org. We will offer some of this information in the Digest and more on our web site, demdigest.net, which is currently under construction.

Democracy Digest is a weekly summary of analysis and information from the Transatlantic Democracy Network. For your free e-mail subscription to Democracy Digest, simply click "subscribe now" below, then click "send" on the e-mail tool bar that will appear. No need to fill in the subject line or add a message--we can simply enter your e-mail address onto our subscribers' list, where it will be kept strictly confidential.
Subscribe Now!

(Please accept our apologies if you receive several copies of this mailing.
We are using several mailing lists for our initial distributions, so duplication will inevitably occur.)

The Transatlantic Democracy Network involves North Americans and Europeans in dialogue about cooperation to support those working for democracy elsewhere in the world, especially in the Greater Middle East. The Network is associated with the World Movement for Democracy, and maintained by a secretariat at Freedom House.

Co-editors of the Digest are Michael Allen (UK) and Penn Kemble (US.) To comment, get more information, or send us material that may be of interest to other readers, please e-mail us at: Michael Allen at mailto:michaela@ned.org or Penn Kemble at kemble@freedomhouse.org or demdigest@freedomhouse.org.

Democracy Digest is published weekly by The Transatlantic Democracy Network, a cooperative effort of the World Movement for Democracy (which provides "Information") and Freedom House (which edits "Issues").