The Democratic Imperative
Fossedal, Gregory A.
THE DEMOCRATIC IMPERATIVE: EXPORTING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Gregory A. Fossedal/A New Republic Book-Basic Books 304 pp. $19.95 Peter L. Berger T n recent years many people, pretty I much...
...they differ more in nuances than in ideological substance...
...Gregory Fossedal (a former editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, currently at the Hoover Institution) is not burdened with such doubts...
...To say this, however, is not to recommend the opposite, a Realpolitik utterly devoid of normative content...
...Perhaps the paradigm for such actions is Woodrow Wilson's great crusade during and just after World War I: among other things, it destroyed the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and created a bevy of violently nationalistic states in central Europe, at least contributing to the discontents that held the roots of World War II...
...Southern Europe has swept away the authoritarian regimes of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, and even Turkey appears headed for a stable democracy...
...To be refreshed, alas, is not the same as being persuaded...
...There are strong democratizing tendencies in the newly industrialized countries of East Asia and, in the same region, few today would question the democratic stability of Japan...
...He is also co-editor of A Future South Africa, published earlier this year by Westview Press...
...Despite this polarizing tendency it is quite remarkable, as Fossedal notes, how many recent interventions received widespread bipartisan support—political and economic interventions in the Philippines, in Poland, and in South Africa, and even military (by proxy) interventions in Afghanistan and in Angola...
...Both stances are interventionist in the name of American democratic principles...
...It is quite true that Americans have long felt that the fate of their own democracy is inextricably linked to the advance of democracy abroad...
...The volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade (even when all their particular misjudgments are bracketed) are not exactly models to be emulated...
...D emocracy is a morally ambiguous, empirically ramshackle construction...
...In principle, at least, he sees no problem with any of the interventionist methods—political, economic, propagandistic ("public diplomacy"), and even, though with great caution, military...
...The relationship between democracy and economic development is much more complex than Fossedal asserts: there is no empirical warrant for saying that democracy fosters economic development in its "takeoff" phases—indeed, the opposite may well be the case...
...but, alas, it may also be the case that, at a later stage again, democracy may bring with it increasing economic stagnation, as an ever-expanding system of entitlements, created by what Mancur Olson has called "distributional coalitions," slows down economic growth and stifles all forms of productive enterprise...
...Put simply, Wilsonianism is not to be recommended as the ruling norm of American foreign policy...
...Most notable in this respect is Latin America, where one dictatorship after another has given way to democratic regimes...
...Its achievements are very mixed: some truly great, such as the relatively reliable safeguards for human rights that Fossedal mentions...
...they differ only in whether the pro-democratic interventions should primarily target right-wing or left-wing dictatorships...
...There is nothing new in this...
...19.95 Peter L. Berger T n recent years many people, pretty I much across the political spectrum, have expressed doubts about the notion that American foreign policy should be concerned with the promotion of democracy...
...slowed Fossedal's enthusiastic argument for a Wilsonian foreign policy...
...What is more, the readiness, in principle, to intervene exists strongly in both major parties...
...Crusades rarely reach the promised land, and when they do they often bring about more evils than they set out to combat...
...he leaves out the fact that this option may be quite fickle and that, under changed circumstances, people may opt for something else again...
...Is it really so self-evident that democracy represents the moral apex of man's political history...
...But Fossedal is undoubtedly correct when he argues that the democratic developments are in America's interest and that Americans may derive satisfaction from the reflection that it is their own political institutions as well as values that are gaining abroad, rather than the institutions and the ideology of America's principal adversary in the world...
...But it would seem very dubious to identify its promotion with the national purpose of a great power, and even more so to make it the guiding principle of the latter's actions on the international stage...
...And, even if that were so, by what right can the United States arrogate to itself the national mission to promote this particular form of government at all times and in all places...
...Fossedal is on very sound ground empirically when he maintains that human rights are best protected by democratic regimes...
...Fossedal would build on this underlying consensus...
...More recently, the United States did indeed impose democracy on the defeated Axis powers, with enduring success...
...This is not an easy course to take, and one that requires political leadership (especially in the presidency) that is cool-headed and articulate...
...This should benefit the United States and cheer Americans...
...he barely touches on the question of the latter's moral legitimacy...
...others deplorable, such as the institutionalization of demagoguery and resentment...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 45...
...And finally, to counterbalance the increasingly ineffective United Nations, he suggests the creation of a League of Democracies, in which, inevitably, the United States would play a leading role...
...India, the world's largest democracy, has continued to be that, with only the short interval of Indira Gandhi's emergency rule...
...Under modern conditions it is very probably the best form of government to be had...
...Fossedal observes that people everywhere, if given a chance, will opt for democracy...
...He has written a breezy, almost brash book that confidently asserts the legitimacy of exporting American democratic institutions...
...Not all of these developments, of course, are due to American influence and policies...
...such a course not only would be morally reprehensible, but the American people would not stand for it...
...it is not an end in itself...
...Thus he sees no sharp break between Jimmy Carter's human rights policy and Ronald Reagan's call (made dramatically in 1982 in his speech to the British Parliament) for support of the "democratic revolution...
...Of course it is, especially against the thoroughly repulsive alternatives that are currently available...
...It is a means to certain ends, such as the protection of individual liberties...
...He does so not in order to endorse the political judgment of these individuals (it was poor, as he points out, and their idealism was put to very bad use by the Stalinists who took over the Spanish republic) but to highlight his point that Americans in large numbers have always been prepared to embrace struggles for democracy and even to risk their lives in the cause...
...And the democratic interventionism of the United States was given institutional expression in the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy, again with strong bipartisan support...
...Fossedal begins by evoking the scene in 1936 when the first group of American volunteers sailed off to fight in Spain in the newly formed Abraham Lincoln Brigade...
...The argument over support for the Nicaraguan contras, of course, represents this difference between the parties most sharply...
...It is not the stuff of which crusades are made, and we can be thankful for that...
...Despite skepticism about a proactive democratic foreign policy in elite groups (including, importantly, the foreign-policy establishment both inside and outside the State Department), Fossedal finds a good deal of continuity from one administration to another in the efforts to promote democracy abroad...
...What is interesting, though, is that Fossedal, in arguing against the skeptics, consistently discusses the efficacy of pro-democracy interventions...
...Further, Fossedal is too sanguine about the results of American pro-democracy actions abroad...
...neither accomplishment can be looked upon as a triumph of democracy...
...Fossedal is right that most people, in widely different countries, opt for democracy when given a chance...
...Instead, he notes, there is a widespread sense of American impotence and decline, and a corresponding skepticism about any foreign interventions (not just military ones) in favor of democracy...
...And while there has indeed been of late a wave of democracy in much of the world, there is every possibility that this trend may be reversible: one long look at Latin America today should have at least raised the suspicion in Fossedal's mind...
...And American democracy itself will only have a future if democracy continues its worldwide ascendancy...
...If one looks at the world since, say, the early 1970s, it is indeed hard to gainsay Fossedal's view that democracy has been in the ascendant...
...It has always been the position of those who sought to balance power and conscience, kratos and ethos...
...Is such a regime worth defending...
...He further observes that there is now a worldwide movement toward democracy...
...This is doubly unfortunate because it is widely acknowledged that American foreign policy should encourage respect for human rights and should foster economic development: both human rights and development, Fossedal contends, are inextricably linked to democracy...
...it is not at all evident that they are right in this assumption...
...Its attempts to do the same, usually by less violent means, in the postwar Third World are a mixed bag of successes and failures...
...What emerges from such considerations is a middle position, in which one seeks to balance interests and ideals, prudence and principle...
...Most recently there have been vigorous democratic upsurges within the Soviet Empire, not only in some of the East European satellites but in the Soviet Union itself (though Fossedal's epigram, "today glasnost, tomorrow democracy," may be a bit overoptimistic...
...That is most likely correct, but the very example of the Lincoln Brigade and its disastrous fate should have Peter L. Berger is University Professor at Boston University and author of The Capitalist Revolution (Basic Books...
...and domestically, as Robert Nisbet has argued, it brought about a quantum leap in the powers of the federal government...
...Given the endless self-questioning and self-deprecation of a large segment of the American cultural elite, there is something refreshing about this feisty affirmation of national purpose...
...it is almost certainly valid to say that successful development releases democratizing pressures, as in many of the newly industrialized countries today...
...A number of Fossedal's positions are well founded, others much less so, and even the former do not necessarily imply the policies he recommends...
...Instead of what he calls "dilutive compromises" between Democrats and Republicans ("we'll support X less, if you support Y less"), he recommends "additive compromises": supporting sanctions against 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 South Africa as well as against Communist countries, giving military assistance to the contras as well as to the Afghans, and so on...
Vol. 22 • July 1989 • No. 7
