Democracy

Democracy: Promoting or Forcing? A view on U.S. foreign policy in the new century

Ryan Wulpi Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne

English W233-02 Professor Thomas Kaough

November 26, 2004

Since the end of World War II, the United States has been the beacon for peace and stability. The U.S. emerged from its self-imposed isolation to engage the Germans and Japanese armies. After their defeat, the U.S., by way of an occupation force, installed democratic governments in these two countries. Since that time, the U.S. has taken a leading place among the rest of the world in promoting democracy and in some cases forcing democracy. This essay will explore if the U.S. has a hand in promoting or forcing democracy throughout the world, America’s new penchant for unilateralism, and why democracies do not go to war with each other. There has to be a different approach than the one that the U.S. currently utilizes.

Promoting or Forcing Democracy?

The U.S. has always been a strong supporter of democracy, dating back to its infancy years. “Government for the people, by the people,” was a staple of the United States’ Constitution. But where does the U.S. draw the line in promoting democracy? When does it become forcing democracy? Democracy indeed has universal validity and should not be withheld either on grounds of cultural specificity or economic weakness. However, it must grow organically from within a society. Outside pressure can and should be applied, but democracy cannot be imposed by force (Patten, 2003). U.S. foreign policy after WWII consisted of one major tenant, containing the communist Soviet Union at every corner of the world. The United States promoted democracy at every turn, trying to keep the aggressive Soviets at bay. This policy, for the most part, worked. Communism did not spread the way

many people thought that it might. The rest of the world viewed the U.S. as almost a big brother, ready to defend the little guy in the face of the aggressive communists. This view held true up through Sept. 11, 2001. After the U.S. mainland was attacked, the outpouring of goodwill from the rest of the world was amazing. The world stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. ready to lend a helping hand to find the perpetrators of this horrific act. The U.S. had the international community’s support when it decided to invade Afghanistan to drive Al-Qaeda from its base of operations. After the resounding defeat of the Taliban, the U.S. went about setting in place a new democracy for the Afghan people. The international community welcomed this as it fostered peace and stability in a country long known for its lawlessness. However, democracy cannot be established overnight. A rush to elections before the establishment of constitutional liberty, may serve as a cloak for autocracy rather than a defense against it, according to Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International (Patten, 2003). It was not too long after the Afghanistan war that the rumblings began about Iraq. There began a propaganda campaign, by the United States, reminding the world about the terrible dictator in a state next door, Saddam Hussein. A man accused of killing his own people, albeit a man who the U.S. helped fight the Iranians twenty years prior, a man who also ruled over a sovereign state. No matter these human rights abuses occurred in the 80’s and 90’s, the U.S. decided that he should no longer be in power because of this and his proclivity to amass weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the international community did not think there was enough evidence to invade a sovereign state and would not back a U.S.-led invasion.

The United States had decided that it did not need the international community to wage war against Iraq and invaded in 2003. Because of Sept. 11, the U.S. had changed its foreign policy to one of preemptive strikes. The President of the United States decided, unilaterally, to invade another sovereign state and set up a democratic state because of perceived threats. Iraq remains an example of forcing a democracy on a set of peoples because of perceived threats from the ruling regime, which did not have the backing of the international community. The Afghanistan war, on the other hand, the world backed because it was a known threat to peace and stability. Because the United States remains the most prosperous and mightiest country in the world, does that give it the right to impose its will on the rest of the world? Just because another country cannot balance the power, is it okay for the U.S. to unilaterally decide what is good and what is not for the international community? Democracy seldom arrives without external pressure, but Western countries should heed Robespierre’s warning about “armed missionaries” – bringing democracy to Islamic countries on the tips of precision-guided missiles. If we in the West think that democracy as a political form holds global appeal, we should not force-feed it to subservient states as a Western geostrategic option (Patten 2003).

America’s new penchant for unilateralism

In the last half century, U.S. foreign policy appears to have taken a quick unilateral turn. For the last 50 years, the U.S. has prided itself around multilateral institutions and alliances, but now those seem to be giving way to a new arrogant

unilateralism. There are harsh examples of this from the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change to the International Criminal Court to now the Iraq war. This arrogance leads to alienating our allies, allies that the U.S. might need down the road. History has shown that global hegemons do not always stay in the lead. That at some point the U.S. might not be the world leader anymore. There are already experts who say that China will be the next superpower to rival the United States. How much longer can the U.S. afford to distance itself from 50 years of alliances with this go-it-alone approach? The United States has become so powerful that it no longer feels it necessary to consult its traditional allies when it feels threatened. These power gaps make it easier to walk away from potential international agreements.

Why democracies do not go to war with each other: the Democratic Peace Theory

Based on ideas expressed by Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Woodrow Wilson, democratic peace theory posits that democracies are more peaceful than nondemocracies. Since 1789, no wars have been fought strictly between independent states with democratically elective governments (Mingst pp. 12-13). The stark reality of this becomes apparent as we look through history. Democracies in the 20th century share much in common, through trade and treaties.

There has to exist, somewhere out there, a different way of dealing with the rest of the world. The U.S. can only go so far as the sole superpower until it actually runs itself into the ground. What happens when we are not the only superpower, who is going to come to the defense of the United States then?

Bibliography Mingst, Karen (2004). Essentials of International Relations. 3rd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Patten, Chris (2003, September/October). How does democracy happen? Foreign Policy pp. 41-44.