Archives for 2005

Before you roll your eyes, read this:

The answers, which aren’t as simple as yes or no, explain what can happen when the United States tries to use democracy as a way to reform the world. The promotion, packaging and exportation of democracy is now America’s foreign policy, more so than at any other time in U.S. history. Its most visible example is Iraq — but that’s the extreme version.

More typical of what is going on every day, in every part of the world, continuously and invisibly, can be found in the details of what happened to an unknown program in Yemen, and to a cast of characters stretching from Washington to one of the world’s most troubled and mysterious countries, all with differing definitions of what democracy means.

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Democracy as commodity: In such a calculation, Operation Iraqi Freedom is one part of Bush’s foreign policy; Yemen: Tribal Conflict Mitigation Program is another, along with hundreds of other programs funded under the Bush administration, such as Promoting Democracy Through Community Radio in Congo, $35,000; Supporting the Electoral Process in Mongolia, $109,725; and Increasing the Transparency and Accountability of Governmental Institutions in Moldova, $36,386.

In total, the United States will spend at least $1 billion this year on these programs. An exact figure is difficult to know because democracy promotion has evolved from a theory into an industry that sprawls all over Washington, encompassing the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and dozens of for-profits and nonprofits around Washington that live and die on government contracts and grants. USAID, which allocates the most money for democracy promotion by far, says it will spend at least $1.2 billion, which it spent in 2004. A State Department spokesman declined to give a figure, saying, “The problem is, it falls into so many categories it’s difficult to tease out.”

The one thing that everyone agrees on is that since Sept. 11, 2001, the amount of money the Bush administration is steering to promote democracy in Islamic countries of the Middle East has increased dramatically, even at the expense of other regions of the world. To help in this, there is a new office in the State Department called the Middle East Partnership Initiative, overseen by a deputy assistant secretary of state named J. Scott Carpenter, who candidly acknowledges, “We don’t know yet how best to promote democracy in the Arab Middle East. I mean we just don’t know. It’s the early days.” But that’s no reason not to try, he says, especially in such urgent times. His approach: “I think there are times when you throw spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks.”

Read the whole thing and tell me what your take is- I am of the belief that this is the sort of thing we should be actively supporting, and a billion dollars for seed corn, which is what this is, really, is a very wise investment.

Exporting DemocracyPost + Comments (78)