News Analysis: What price democracy?
News Analysis: What price democracy?
By Steven R. Weisman Copyright by The New York Times
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2006
Even as it unveils an updated national security strategy, the Bush administration is facing fresh doubts from some Republicans who say its emphasis on promoting democracy around the world has come at the expense of protecting other American interests.
The second thoughts mark a striking change in mood over one of President George W. Bush's cherished tenets, pitting Republicans who call themselves "realists" against the neoconservatives who saw the invasion of Iraq as a catalyst for democratic change and who remain the most vigorous advocates of a muscular American campaign to foster democratic movements.
"You are hearing more and more questions about the administration's approach on this issue," said Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, a Republican-linked foundation that supports democratic activities abroad.
"The 'realists' in the party," he continued, "are rearing their heads and asking, 'Is this stuff working?'"
The critics are alarmed at the costs of military operations and of assisting with nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also have been shaken by the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections in January and by the gains that Islamists have scored during elections in Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon.
The Bush administration contends that, whatever their outcome, elections are better than violent upheaval. But critics worry that anti-democratic extremists will prevail wherever tradition and existing civil institutions are too weak to protect the rights of minorities or to nurture moderates.
The critics also argue that heavy- handed pressure for democracy has strained U.S. relations with Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, making it harder to enlist their governments in fighting terrorism, stabilizing the Middle East and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
The renewed violence in Iraq since the voting there has discredited, in their view, the promise of democracy as an outlet for tensions, bringing sectarian parties to the fore - as well as their affiliated militia.
"You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy," said Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican. "We have not always connected those fundamentals to our efforts."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in South America, Asia and Australia this week in part to promote democracy, acknowledged that dissenting views are increasingly being heard but declared that the administration would stick to its goals.
"There is a debate, and I think it's a debate that's healthy," she said. "This is obviously a really big change in American foreign policy, to put the promotion of democracy at the center of it. And people take very seriously what this president is doing and intends to do."
Last month, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, a Republican elder who is chairman of the House International Relations Committee, challenged her view at a hearing, asking whether the Bush administration viewed free elections and democracy as a "magic formula" that could defeat terrorism.
"Implanting democracy in large areas would require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources, which we cannot and will not do," he said.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine, amplified this view.
"What's really driving the criticism is disenchantment with the war," he said. "But it's unfair to say that supporters of the war thought it was going to be easy to build a democracy in Iraq."
Even many supporters of the promotion of democracy say that the idea is still valid but that the administration's miscalculations in Iraq have done damage to the cause.
"I think this administration tends to have the right general policies but to be remarkably unwilling to look at how weak their instruments of implementation are," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. "We threw away a year in Iraq because of our mistakes."
The U.S. effort to support democracy groups in authoritarian countries has also stirred controversy.
This year, the United States is spending $1.7 billion to support groups seeking political change, but lately Russia, Egypt, China and many countries in Africa and Latin America are cracking down on these groups and barring foreign funds for them.
In Ukraine, the euphoria over the "orange revolution" in 2004, which was backed by groups that received U.S. funds, has produced a backlash in the form of an increasingly unpopular government and Russian determination to undermine Ukraine's independence.
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and a leading proponent of democracy promotion in Congress, said that despite these setbacks and controversies, plus the lack of civil society structures and rule of law in many countries, the administration is right to push for democracy and elections.
"The moral of the story is that democracy is tough," McCain said.
"We have to recognize that you can have two steps forward and one step back."
One prominent neoconservative, Francis Fukuyama, asserts in a new book that the administration embraced democracy as a cornerstone of its policy only after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The issue was seized on to justify the war in retrospect and then expanded for other countries, he says.
Fukuyama, who opposed the war in Iraq, said in an interview that it was naive and contrary to the tenets of conservatism for the United States to think that it could act as midwife or cheerleader for democracy in societies it knows little about.
Indeed, as he points out, in the 2000 election campaign, both Bush and Rice, then his foreign policy adviser, criticized the Clinton administration's interventions to promote democracy in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans as misplaced idealism.
"It's this weird situation where you have a really conservative Republican president using all this Clintonesque rhetoric about rights and ideals," he said.
Administration officials say they are guided not by naiveté but by hard-nosed necessity. If authoritarian governments in the Middle East do not open themselves up to reform, extremists will eventually blow them up, they say.
Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, said that, at least rhetorically, Republicans generally support democracy and are likely to continue doing so.
The democracy cause's leaders in Congress are not backing down.
"Obviously, we want stability and we want allies in the war on terror," said one of them, Representative David Dreier of California. "But I don't think we should back down from democratization just because it's hard."
By Steven R. Weisman Copyright by The New York Times
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2006
Even as it unveils an updated national security strategy, the Bush administration is facing fresh doubts from some Republicans who say its emphasis on promoting democracy around the world has come at the expense of protecting other American interests.
The second thoughts mark a striking change in mood over one of President George W. Bush's cherished tenets, pitting Republicans who call themselves "realists" against the neoconservatives who saw the invasion of Iraq as a catalyst for democratic change and who remain the most vigorous advocates of a muscular American campaign to foster democratic movements.
"You are hearing more and more questions about the administration's approach on this issue," said Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, a Republican-linked foundation that supports democratic activities abroad.
"The 'realists' in the party," he continued, "are rearing their heads and asking, 'Is this stuff working?'"
The critics are alarmed at the costs of military operations and of assisting with nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also have been shaken by the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections in January and by the gains that Islamists have scored during elections in Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon.
The Bush administration contends that, whatever their outcome, elections are better than violent upheaval. But critics worry that anti-democratic extremists will prevail wherever tradition and existing civil institutions are too weak to protect the rights of minorities or to nurture moderates.
The critics also argue that heavy- handed pressure for democracy has strained U.S. relations with Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, making it harder to enlist their governments in fighting terrorism, stabilizing the Middle East and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
The renewed violence in Iraq since the voting there has discredited, in their view, the promise of democracy as an outlet for tensions, bringing sectarian parties to the fore - as well as their affiliated militia.
"You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy," said Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican. "We have not always connected those fundamentals to our efforts."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in South America, Asia and Australia this week in part to promote democracy, acknowledged that dissenting views are increasingly being heard but declared that the administration would stick to its goals.
"There is a debate, and I think it's a debate that's healthy," she said. "This is obviously a really big change in American foreign policy, to put the promotion of democracy at the center of it. And people take very seriously what this president is doing and intends to do."
Last month, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, a Republican elder who is chairman of the House International Relations Committee, challenged her view at a hearing, asking whether the Bush administration viewed free elections and democracy as a "magic formula" that could defeat terrorism.
"Implanting democracy in large areas would require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources, which we cannot and will not do," he said.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine, amplified this view.
"What's really driving the criticism is disenchantment with the war," he said. "But it's unfair to say that supporters of the war thought it was going to be easy to build a democracy in Iraq."
Even many supporters of the promotion of democracy say that the idea is still valid but that the administration's miscalculations in Iraq have done damage to the cause.
"I think this administration tends to have the right general policies but to be remarkably unwilling to look at how weak their instruments of implementation are," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. "We threw away a year in Iraq because of our mistakes."
The U.S. effort to support democracy groups in authoritarian countries has also stirred controversy.
This year, the United States is spending $1.7 billion to support groups seeking political change, but lately Russia, Egypt, China and many countries in Africa and Latin America are cracking down on these groups and barring foreign funds for them.
In Ukraine, the euphoria over the "orange revolution" in 2004, which was backed by groups that received U.S. funds, has produced a backlash in the form of an increasingly unpopular government and Russian determination to undermine Ukraine's independence.
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and a leading proponent of democracy promotion in Congress, said that despite these setbacks and controversies, plus the lack of civil society structures and rule of law in many countries, the administration is right to push for democracy and elections.
"The moral of the story is that democracy is tough," McCain said.
"We have to recognize that you can have two steps forward and one step back."
One prominent neoconservative, Francis Fukuyama, asserts in a new book that the administration embraced democracy as a cornerstone of its policy only after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The issue was seized on to justify the war in retrospect and then expanded for other countries, he says.
Fukuyama, who opposed the war in Iraq, said in an interview that it was naive and contrary to the tenets of conservatism for the United States to think that it could act as midwife or cheerleader for democracy in societies it knows little about.
Indeed, as he points out, in the 2000 election campaign, both Bush and Rice, then his foreign policy adviser, criticized the Clinton administration's interventions to promote democracy in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans as misplaced idealism.
"It's this weird situation where you have a really conservative Republican president using all this Clintonesque rhetoric about rights and ideals," he said.
Administration officials say they are guided not by naiveté but by hard-nosed necessity. If authoritarian governments in the Middle East do not open themselves up to reform, extremists will eventually blow them up, they say.
Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, said that, at least rhetorically, Republicans generally support democracy and are likely to continue doing so.
The democracy cause's leaders in Congress are not backing down.
"Obviously, we want stability and we want allies in the war on terror," said one of them, Representative David Dreier of California. "But I don't think we should back down from democratization just because it's hard."
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