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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
A new bill proposes to rid the world of dictators by 2025. But critics deride it as a pie-in-the-sky cover for Bush's failures.
Mar 15, 2005 | President Bush's "axis of evil," in targeting only Iraq, Iran and North Korea, was apparently an understatement. Saddam Hussein, the ayatollahs and "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il were just the tip of the iceberg. The backers of new legislation before Congress have a much bolder vision: to "achieve universal democracy" by 2025 by removing -- nonviolently -- approximately two dictatorships a year. President Bush's call, in his February State of the Union address, for support of "democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," must have been just what they wanted to hear.
If enacted, the new bill -- the ADVANCE (which stands for Advance Democratic Values, Address Nondemocratic Countries, and Enhance) Democracy Act of 2005, introduced into both houses on March 3 -- would bring about a fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy. To maintain a regional balance of power, ensure access to vital resources, and pursue larger national security goals such as the "war on terror," the United States has traditionally worked with dictators big and small, from the tyrants of the past (such as Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua) to current autocratic allies (such as Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan and Crown Prince Abdullah in Saudi Arabia). The ADVANCE Democracy Act, the foreign policy version of "Just Say No," on the other hand, would attempt to steer the United States away from engaging with tyrants under any circumstances.
Those who are skeptical of the bill, including both liberals and conservatives, say its goal of achieving democracy worldwide is hypocritical, because while the United States encourages some democracy movements in the Middle East, it continues its economic and military support of strong-arm leaders like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. What's more, some critics say, the bill ignores the tensions between democracy promotion and America's economic and security goals.
Specifically, the act would put democracy promotion at the top of the State Department's agenda. It would establish a new Office of Democratic Movements and Transitions, require the State Department to issue an annual democracy report, and set up an advisory board of nongovernmental VIPs to evaluate all democracy-promotion activities and spending.
Initially funded at $250 million for two years, the act would direct resources to pro-democracy movements worldwide. The bill proposes to turn U.S. embassies into "islands of freedom" and align U.S. diplomats with pro-democracy movements in nondemocratic countries -- linking performance pay and promotions of Foreign Service officers to their efforts to spread democracy. The bill would also authorize the president to block financial flows to states that resisted democratization.
This plan to upend the world's remaining dictatorships (there are more than 40, according to the nongovernmental organization Freedom House) began with former U.S. ambassador to Hungary Mark Palmer and his 2003 book, "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil." "Some people think a world without tyrants is utopian," Palmer says. "And they think it's more utopian to have a deadline." But, Palmer says, "we're down to a limited number of dictators, and it's entirely feasible to get the rest of them out. Most are pretty creaky and won't even live until 2025!"
Palmer's book didn't generate much of a stir in the press, but it did capture the attention of influential politicians like Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Tom Lantos, D-Calif., in the House and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., in the Senate, the four cosponsors of the ADVANCE Democracy Act. The primary catalyst for the democracy legislation, however, was strategist Michael Horowitz of the neoconservative Hudson Institute. Fresh from his success in pushing passage of the North Korea Human Rights Act, Horowitz, along with the National Coalition for Religious Freedom and Human Rights (a below-the-radar group of evangelicals and others that came together to promote the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998), was ready to kick things up a notch.
Their efforts were aided by Bush's remarks in his State of the Union address. Palmer says that he almost wept with joy when he heard those words. Adds Horowitz: "There were heated efforts within the State Department to say that this speech was just rhetoric, but no, it was an extraordinary speech, and it changes everything."
Horowitz expects easy passage for the act. "Obviously Republicans can support it because it's so in sync" with the president's address, he says. And he thinks Democrats, including some who opposed the war in Iraq, will support the bill because it promotes "peaceful means of supporting democracy."
