The Movement to “Export Democracy” and the Politics of Neoimperial Expansion
BY RICHARD E. RUBENSTEIN
There has been some debate, but not nearly as intense or as enlightening as one might have hoped, about the current U.S. administration’s declared policy to promote the spread of democracy around the world.
Objections to the program of “exporting democracy” are generally of two sorts. One group—call it the “native unreadiness” school—argues that non-Westerners, especially those living in poor countries, have not attained the level of socioeconomic and cultural development necessary to support Western-style democratic institutions. A second school, the “traditional realists,” contends that even if the natives are ready for democracy, U.S. foreign policy ought to be limited to the defense of specific American geopolitical interests rather than indulging in ideological crusades of the sort favored by the Bush administration’s neoconservatives.
Neither objection, however, gets anywhere near the heart of the matter.
Advocates of the administration’s position may reply, quite reasonably, that it is a mistake to underestimate the eagerness of many non-Westerners for political freedom and participation. They may also note, with apparent justification, that defending American interests globally requires internal changes in strategic foreign lands of the sort recently witnessed in Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.
What is wrong, then, with the policy of exporting democracy? The decisive objections, in my view, are these:
Since U.S. foreign policy, as presently conceived, is, in fact, focused on the promotion of U.S. geopolitical interests as defined by American political and economic elites, attempts to support democratic movements abroad must be inevitably and scandalously selective. On the one hand, regimes on which the United States depends to enforce its will in turbulent regions (e.g., those of Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, et al.), receive U.S. support no matter how tyrannical they are. In fact, they receive our support because their tyrannical nature makes them efficient “enforcers” of elite interests threatened by popularly-supported rebellions. How could the CIA engage in “rendition” of suspected terrorists to regimes practicing torture if these governments were genuinely democratic?
On the other hand, when democratically elected and popularly supported regimes like those of President Chavez in Venezuela oppose American hegemony, they are defined ipso facto as antidemocratic, and U.S. forces take steps to “contain” or overthrow them. (It is verbal trickery of this sort that sustains the so-called “democratic peace theory.”)
These forms of selectivity illustrate what most of the world knows to be true: that the movement to promote democracy, as it is currently conceived and practiced, cannot be separated from the expansion of U.S. power around the globe. Tragically, identifying the democratic cause with that of American neoimperialism tends to discredit it in the eyes of freedom-seeking people everywhere.
In a sense, this is exactly what happened in Europe when the cause of French republicanism became identified with Napoleon’s imperialism, and, in many other lands, when “worker’s democracy” became synonymous with Stalinist domination. With the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, and satellite organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy financing and advising “democratic” movements from Central Asia to Zimbabwe, it becomes impossible to distinguish between authentic democrats and those bought and paid for by agents of the new American imperium.
The moral of this story is simple: All power corrupts, and imperial power corrupts absolutely. To promote genuine democracy and self-determination abroad, we must disengage to the extent necessary to permit our global neighbors to make their own self-determining decisions.
Richard E. Rubenstein (rrubenst@gmu.edu) is a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (http://icar.gmu.edu).
