Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton's participation in the 10th anniversary meeting of
the Community of Democracies
in Krakow, Poland, serves as a needed reminder of the parlous environment for
democratic governance across the globe. Tom Melia of Freedom House says
we are in the midst of "a
global political recession." Secretary Clinton invoked Winston
Churchill and said, "We must be wary of the steel vise in which many
governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human
spirit."
This is in stark
contrast to the heady days when the democratic wave that began in Asia, swept
through the captive nations of the former Soviet Union, culminating in the Americas with
the 2001 signing of the
Inter-American Democratic Charter which committed all countries in our hemisphere (save Cuba) to not only democratic
governance, but protecting it wherever it was threatened in the region.
But, as we've seen,
autocrats are an enterprising lot. They never went away; they either laid
in wait or adapted. Especially in our own hemisphere, we have seen how
autocrats like Hugo Chavez have used the mechanics of democracy to get elected
and then run roughshod over democratic institutions that separate powers or
protect the rights of the minority. They pervert the concept of democracy
further, claiming that their victories at the ballot box (real or manipulated)
somehow entitle them to rule as they see fit, as arbitrary and capricious as
that might be.
But if Secretary Clinton
wants to employ Churchillian rhetoric, then the Obama administration needs to
commit to significant action in support of those words. Her announcement
of $2 million to support the work of embattled civil society groups and
nongovernmental organizations around the world today is a start, but it is simply
not enough.
It is imperative that
the administration apply the full measure of its political support to U.S.
democracy assistance programs, which range from everything to electoral support
and monitoring, to party building, to good governance programs that emphasize
transparency and accountability. These programs are not without
controversy in certain precincts and are attacked vociferously, mostly by the
autocrats themselves, but also by critics who want to equate them with
"interfering" in other countries' affairs. Yet most democrats in dire
situations abroad are desperate for the support.
Still, the career
bureaucracy's default mode is to avoid conflict and that is why the
implementing agencies of U.S. democracy assistance programs -- USAID and the
State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor -- need to
know how important they are to the administration (increased budgets would also
be a nice indicator) and that they are expected to get this support to those
who need it most and without bureaucratic delay.
Of course there are
risks, as last December's arrest of American Alan Gross in Cuba attests, but the stakes are not
insignificant. We support democracy abroad because it has proven to be
the best system to maximize human prosperity and happiness, but also because it
is in the interest of our own security. Freedom and opportunity tends to
channel people's energies to productive pursuits, not flying airplanes
into skyscrapers.
It is therefore
incumbent upon the United States to carry the democratic banner forward in this
hostile world. Because if not us, then who?
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