There are some compelling arguments to be made that we should reconsider the role democracy promotion plays in American foreign policy. Pat Buchanan’s recent critique of what he calls America’s  “democracy obsession” in The American Conservative isn’t one of them.

Buchanan bases in his argument against democracy promotion on a rather warped history of America’s relations with tyrants:

“Historically, we have often made common cause with autocrats and dictators when our vital national interests commanded it.  […] During Vietnam, autocratic South Korea and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines sent troops. The Brits and French traded with the enemy. Gen. Pinochet, who seized power in a coup in 1973, was a better friend than Chile’s Salvador Allende, who was elected. While the Nixon White House did not cause Allende’s ouster, neither did they weep over it.

Democratic France denied Ronald Reagan overflight rights for his F-111s to hit Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack, but Portugal’s dictatorship gave permission for Nixon to use the Azores as a fueling station in resupplying Israel during the Yom Kippur war.

Ought not nations judge friends less by the ideals they profess than by how they behave when you need them most.”

Buchanan’s apparent ardor for dictators aside, the reality is that tyrants rarely make good strategic partners; they are far more likely to be mercurial and demanding and in the long run are generally unstable. The idea that we can manipulate a chosen crop of autocrats is more hubristic than the notion that we can force democratic change on a country.

Even more galling, Buchanan claims that in recent decades it has been our despot chums who have been our real friends while our democratic allies have often turned against us when we needed them most. This just isn’t true.

Take Afghanistan—certainly a more relevant example than our de facto alliance with Napoleon during the war of 1812 or any of the other cases Buchanan cites. Of of the 28 nations contributing soldiers to the ISAF only three (Azerbaijan, Jordan and UAE) are "not free" and of the 18 countries contributing 500 or more soldiers to the ISAF, 15 are ranked by Freedom House as “free” and the remaining three are “partially free.”

One thing I do agree with Buchanan on: American democracy promotion has failed under the weight of its own hype. It is clear that America cannot force or directly cause a country to shift toward democracy. Even our record of providing assistance to countries that are actually interested in reform isn’t particularly impressive.  The answer, however, isn’t to abandon democracy promotion and instead embrace every dictator who  offer us some passing strategic benefit. Instead, the United States needs to take more incremental, targeted and strategic approach to promoting democracy around the world.

Right now, I’m working on a paper outlining what the US can and should do to promote democracy in Azerbaijan, a prototypical state in democratic decline. Until that drops (hopefully before Azeri Parliamentary election this fall), I recommend you check out Thomas Carother’s comprehensive “Revitalizing Democracy Assistance: The Challenges of USAID.” A teaser:

Most of the current structures and methods for funding and implementing this assistance were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when democracy was spreading rapidly in the world, the international acceptance of crossborder political aid was growing, and the United States enjoyed clear geostrategic hegemony. Those conditions no longer hold. Democracy promoters face a world today where democracy is largely stagnant (having retreated as much as advanced over the past decade), suspicion of and hostility toward international democracy aid has burgeoned, and the weight of the United States on the international political stage, although still enormous, is not what it was before. The U.S. democracy assistance community has only started to adjust to these profound changes.

Evan

Since 1972, the Freedom House has published the gold-standard report on the state of democracy and civil liberty around the world. The aptly named "Freedom in the World" attempts to measure the level of political and civil freedom in every country and major disputed territory using a simple 7-point scale (1 being most free and 7 least free).

In recent years, the Freedom House has added another report that focuses on the so called "worst of the worst"--countries that score 6.5 or above. This year, 17 countries and three territories fall into this category. These include personality-driven dictatorships (Libya and North Korea), Central Asian crackpots (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), disputed territories (South Ossetia and Tibet) and failed states (Somalia and Chad). Thankfully, only one of this year's WOW countries (Saudi Arabia) is a major US ally.

Check out the full report here

Remember Bush’s idea that the lack of democracy in the Middle East caused hatred of America/terrorism by suppressing discontent? Well, for this to work in reverse, democratizing Middle Eastern autocracies should be expected to change policies. And right now, most Middle Eastern autocracies have pretty favorable policies vis-à-vis America (and Israel) relative to the Arab street. Greg Scoblete made this point a few months ago:

…the idea that democratic participation would actually give aggrieved citizens some relief seems to imply that a democratic government would actually have to address and ameliorate those grievances. In such a context, it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that the advance of democracy in the Middle East could mean empowering governments that take a decidedly colder attitude toward America (and Israel).

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