Below is from a Wall Street Journal editorial, one of many, about the new 2009 Freedom in the World report by Freedom House. They see Obama’s “principled pragamaticism” as a major weakness which contributed to the trend observed in the report.
If in the days of Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, we worked to fashion the world into a better place guided by the belief that the urge to live in freedom is universal, today we act as if we are resigned to taking the world as it is. We used to nudge countries toward liberal democracy. Now we assume the price of nudging is too high.
Maybe more than Washington seeing the “price of nudging” as being too high, they see the profits of looking the other way to be irresistible (after all, U.S. government debt to China precludes any serious human rights criticism from either Dem or Rep admins). Besides, can we really say that when democracy promotion was all the rage during the George W. Bush administration, with invasions, occupations, and nation building, that the state of freedom was somehow better? That’s a tough case to make.
The political and economic mechanisms that keep the world’s dictators in power are somewhat more complicated than these kinds of annual lists are able to capture.
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3 Comments
It’s totally demented for you to suggest that it makes no difference to world freedom and democracy whether the U.S. looks the other way on such issues or not. It shows you know almost nothing about the history of democracy, which owes its modern life to the USA, but it’s a topic Freedom House is well acquainted with.It’s abhorrent how you refuse to call Obama out on his shameful cowardice. Does it make no difference to your client Mr. K. whether the POTUS notices his plight or not? If so, Mr. K. might want to look round for other lawyers.
I don’t think it’s “demented” to argue that the Bush agenda produced few results and caused huge harm to the most powerful tool that the US has for democracy promotion – its international image.However, there surely must be some happy medium between the “democracy at the barrel of a gun” approach of the Bush first 6 years and the cynicism and hypocrisy and moral cowardice of the Obama administration (and that includes you, Michael McFaul, if you’re reading).One thing that I think this year has taught us is that Obama’s whole idea of foreign policy was astonding naive and simplistic – that by being nice he, could actually persuade thugs and bullies to change their stripes. I think the signal event in the next 6 months will be to see what comes out of the START talks. If Russia gets a better deal than it deserves, then Obama needs to be seriously confronted.
“It’s abhorrent how you refuse to call Obama out on his shameful cowardice.”Wait just a second – I think you posted a comment complimenting us for our criticism of Obama’s Russia policy not so long ago.http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2010/01/democracies_dont_always_stick_together.htmNor did I ever suggest that the U.S. shouldn’t be promoting democracy – it’s just a question of how. What does “nudging” toward democracy mean? Is that funding for civil society groups? Is it sharing of resources and knowledge? Or is it the harder projection of power, through sanctions and war, etc.I just think we could be doing it better, and making it less easy for the authoritarians of the world to say that democracy is nothing more than a euphemism for going along with American interests. Whenever democracy promotion attempts are seen to be violating any country’s sovereignty, there is a backlash and opportunity for them to close the iron fist even harder and argue that their control over the powers is necessary security. It gives the whole enterprise a bad name.