US Foreign Policy and Democracy Promotion

From Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama

Michael Cox, Timothy J. Lynch, Nicolas Bouchet, Michael Cox, Timothy J. Lynch, Nicolas Bouchet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135917968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

The promotion of democracy by the United States became highly controversial during the presidency of George W. Bush. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were widely perceived as failed attempts at enforced democratization, sufficient that Barack Obama has felt compelled to downplay the rhetoric of democracy and freedom in his foreign-policy.

This collection seeks to establish whether a democracy promotion tradition exists, or ever existed, in US foreign policy, and how far Obama and his predecessors conformed to or repudiated it. For more than a century at least, American presidents have been driven by deep historical and ideological forces to conceive US foreign policy in part through the lens of democracy promotion. Debating how far democratic aspirations have been realized in actual foreign policies, this book draws together concise studies from many of the leading academic experts in the field to evaluate whether or not these efforts were successful in promoting democratization abroad. They clash over whether democracy promotion is an appropriate goal of US foreign policy and whether America has gained anything from it.

Offering an important contribution to the field, this work is essential reading for all students and scholars of US foreign policy, American politics and international relations.

1

Democracy Promotion from Wilson to Obama

Tony Smith

Charting the tortured course of American democracy promotion from its origins as a consciously assembled set of concepts to guide foreign policy set out by Woodrow Wilson in 1913 to its incarnation in the hands of Barack Obama a century later presents a host of problems. Fortunately, there is at least limited agreement on the distinct elements essential to a ‘liberal internationalist’, or (in the American context) ‘Wilsonian’, approach to world affairs. There is also general agreement on how liberalism differs from other approaches to the study of international relations such as realism or Marxism. Where the concepts that constitute liberal internationalism come under dispute, however, lies in efforts to explain how these elemental forces interact with one another to create an identity in theoretical terms that is convincingly unified. Turning to the historical record offers only limited help to sort out the contradictions among those who claim to understand the logic of liberal theory. Given the variety of policies pursued over the past century by four generations of leaders in very varied circumstances under the name of Wilsonianism, how does one recognize an essential character to liberalism and so have firmer footing to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses?

The argument of this chapter is that the prime mover of liberal theory is the ability of democratic peoples and governments to maintain an enduring peace among themselves based on their character as individuals, groups and political units. Other elements that are part of the liberal agenda – economic interdependence, multilateral institutions and American leadership – synergistically complement democracy as constituent elements of the project, but in theoretical terms their contribution is secondary to the key role played by the spirit and institutions of peoples living in constitutional democracies. We then turn from theory to history, examining various stages in the evolution of the liberal internationalist agenda for American foreign policy, showing how in different hands, confronted with varied circumstances, democracy promotion has nonetheless been formulated in a way that has been the chief preoccupation of Washington when it has been acting in a liberal mode, so that practice has remained true to the theory. This chapter’s aim is to show a unity of theory and practice that gives the liberal project a self-understanding that today it often appears to lack.

The Wilsonian vision in theory

Unlike Marxism, which benefited from a unified worldview thanks to its origins with a single individual, and unlike realism, whose terms are contested within a relatively tight intellectual discourse, different interpreters of the liberal internationalist or Wilsonian framework for American foreign policy divide the concepts that make it up in various ways that to the uninitiated may seem bewildering. Some even find up to eight distinct aspects of liberalism, each calling for analysis in its own terms. We would submit, however, that these differences are minor and can be reconciled without too much debate by positing four separate yet interconnected concepts as basic to this way of thought: (1) cooperation among democratic governments; (2) linked in economic openness; (3) through well-structured multilateral institutions; and (4) under a United States that willingly assumed the responsibilities of leadership.¹ The ultimate ambition of these elements when combined is the surest hallmark of Wilsonianism: the belief (often derided as ‘moralistic’ or ‘idealistic’) that together, and if expanded far enough, they have the capacity to create a world order of enduring peace, and in the process, as Wilson put it, ‘to make the world safe for democracy’.

Based on something of a consensus as to what defines liberalism, we can perhaps also agree that these defining characteristics of the argument make it distinctively different from other leading Western paradigms of analysis such as realism, Marxism or constructivism (which would include feminism). Unlike the realists, liberals insist that ‘regime-type matters’; that is, that democratic peoples and states are different in fundamental ways from peoples living under authoritarian rule or imbued with authoritarian cultures. Unlike Marxists, liberals insist that capitalism is not a basic reason for conflict but can be an important force for peace, while Leninism is inherently incompatible with freedom and so with the ennoblement of thought and purpose that makes democratic peoples able to live in peace with one another. Unlike constructivists, liberals maintain that ideas and values must be grounded in democratically functioning institutions both domestically and internationally; a homogeneity of values and ideas alone (which constructivism centres on), even if achievable (which is unlikely), is far from adequate for keeping the world from war.²

Yet one should not mistake a general agreement that might be reached as to what concepts constitute a liberal internationalist approach to world affairs and what makes it distinctive from other approaches as meaning that sharp disagreements do not exist on other counts. The most hotly debated questions concern how the constituent elements of liberalism join to one another in a common project. Some give pride of place in the dynamic forces leading to peace to the integrative powers of capitalism; others favour multilateralism as the engine of increased state cooperation, and still others (and this essay is an example) stress the character of democratic cultures and governments as the most basic ingredient in the mix that leads to the emergence of an increasingly pacific world order.

But let us not overstate the dimensions of the dispute. Thanks to a major study published by political scientists Bruce Russett and John Oneal in 2001, a persuasive account is available demonstrating how the three forces of democracy, economic openness and multilateralism might be integrated with each other in a ‘virtuous circle’ giving rise to peace. Russett and Oneal used an impressive range of empirical measures to establish democratic government as the most important variable in their trinity of practices that make up liberalism. Despite this accomplishment, their study is not exempt from criticism, for it omits at its peril the importance of American leadership in creating, protecting and promoting a Wilsonian world order. The result is to depict a liberal order as one held together by magnetic internal forces of attraction, completely disregarding the indispensable role played by a hegemonic actor, whose conduct is basic to perpetuating a ‘pacific union’ or ‘zone of democratic peace’. Not only is the United States given no role whatsoever in their study; the importance of a hegemonic power is explicitly discounted.³

To envision the set of integrated concepts that typify liberalism more graphically, imagine a four-sided diamond, each point of which represents one of the elemental features of liberal internationalism.⁴ Each facet has its own distinctive quality, yet each relates to the other three in ways that are not only mutually reinforcing but actually work to mix the characteristic features of each element into compounds that are equally distinctive. For instance, consider the role of multilateralism. In a politically plural world presupposed by the character of democratic nations linked through pacts of self-defence and through ties of economic interdependence, rules-based international regimes capable of authoritative determinations as to the rights and obligations of member countries are an imperative need. Multilateralism (to the point of what is sometimes called a ‘pooling of sovereignties’) is thus the necessary product of a particular political and economic structure of a liberal world order; yet at the same time international regimes contribute directly to the perpetuation of an order of plural democracies and economic openness. Multilateralism is thus both cause and effect of political pluralism and market integration – especially in the domain of international law – so that while it needs to maintain its independent identity as a distinct aspect of liberalism for analytical purposes, in practice it melds its character into hybrid features with other concepts. In a parallel manner, each of these four elements retains its unique character or existence for analytical purposes, yet the four integrate with each other as one in what should be understood as creating an effective unity that is greater than the sum of its parts. Moreover, the promise of this unity is peace, which no aspect alone can promise convincingly to deliver, and whose possibility of realization is the prime tenet of liberalism’s secular faith.

When such an admixture is achieved in practice – when theory is embodied in values, interests, institutions and policies that endure over time – the result that liberalism posits is a ‘pacific union’ or a ‘zone of democratic peace’ (to use phrases with wide currency in the 1990s). Today, the European Union is the leading historical example of the freedom and peace that liberal practices may bring (although others have looked at American–Canadian relations or at the cooperation apparent in Mercosur, founded in 1991, or at relations among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in 1967). The brilliance given by the facets of the diamond of synergistically related forces arises from the radiance of its promise – Immanuel Kant’s ‘perpetual peace’ (which George W. Bush frequently referred to as ‘permanent peace’), the conviction, in turn, that allowed Woodrow Wilson to believe not only that ‘the world must be made safe for democracy’ but that it could be so were the guiding ideas of liberal internationalism embodied in affairs of state.

Where debate truly begins in earnest is over the relative importance to attribute to these various aspects of the Wilsonian project. Some see the dynamic power of corporate global capitalism as having a role that drives all else before it. One may either condemn or salute this process of world economic integration. Those who condemn it see liberalism as camouflaging with words like ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘American leadership’, culminating in ‘an enduring peace’ that in reality is a self-interested, predatory global economic system that enriches the few, keeps weak ‘democratic’ states beholden to corporate influence, which in due course will feed conflict domestically, regionally and globally in a manner that may well sap the strength of the United States.⁵ Today questions surrounding the rise of China remind us of Lenin’s phrase that ‘the capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them’. By contrast, liberals who endorse a leading role for economic openness and integration stress the prosperity and the pacifying interdependence such arrangements encourage. They can point to the experience of the European Union (born in important measure as a result of the Marshall Plan and the character of the American occupation of Germany) as a demonstration of the proposition that prosperity gives strength to the middle class (perhaps the most potent social force favouring a democratic culture and government) while interdependence increases the harmonization and sharing of sovereignty that over time can reduce, perhaps even eradicate, the differences in interest and perception that give rise to conflict.

The ‘Washington Consensus’ born in the 1980s holding that privatization, deregulation and openness would result in an increasingly globalized economy maintained that multilateralism, democracy and peace would all be reinforced by such liberal practices. In this respect, Washington’s leadership in creating the Bretton Woods System in 1944, compounded by the effort to promote European economic integration through the Marshall Plan in 1947, were preludes to efforts decades later to promote such schemes as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, which became effective in 1994) and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.⁶ What critics and partisans of this process might agree on is the leading role played by free-market capitalism in how the various features of a Wilsonian order reinforce one another. American leadership, democratic government and multilateralism are all at the service of international capital, the driving force of the liberal agenda.

Other theorists hold that multilateralism is the key variable in the Wilsonian project. Wilson himself saw collective security embodied in the League of Nations as the greatest accomplishment his presidency might achieve to secure the peace of the world.⁷ Although he originally conceived of the League as dominated by democratic peoples, he ultimately had to abandon this ambition, faced with the demands of the British, the Japanese and others that whatever the quality of states that applied for membership in the League, should they agree to be bound by a commitment to work for disarmament and abide by the collective arbitration of differences (backed up by the threat of common action against governments that threatened the unprincipled use of force that would break the peace) then they might become members of the organization. From this perspective, membership in multilateral institutions mitigates the concerns of what social scientists today call ‘the security dilemma’ and so check the anarchy of international relations, one of the causes of war. Moreover, the League might serve as a training ground for rules-based behaviour on the part of participating governments (a rudimentary form of constitutionalism). But the hope that Wilson most relied on was the role that a democratic United States would play in leading the League. As he put it in his famous address to the Senate on 10 July 1919, the country’s role was clear, its responsibility enormous:

[At the Peace Conference] it was universally recognized that America had entered the war to promote no private or peculiar interest of her own but only as the champion of rights which she was glad to share with free men and lovers of justice everywhere. We had formulated the principles upon which the settlement was to be made [ … ] We were welcomed as disinterested friends [ … ] The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression, and the world must be given peace [ … ] The League of Nations was [ … ] the only hope for mankind [ … ] Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world? [ … ] The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead and nowhere else.

Those who maintain the importance of multilateralism, economic openness or American leadership as leading features of the liberal project are persuasive that these features of Wilsonianism carry significant weight in the liberal project. Yet it would seem that both from a theoretical point of view and from an analysis of the thinking of Wilson and most of his successors, the most dynamic feature of the liberalism has always been the creation of a community of democratic states, whose prospects for peace will be immeasurably enhanced through successful efforts at worldwide democracy promotion. Economic openness, multilateralism and American leadership all have critical roles to play, to be sure, but the primacy of the spread of democratic government trumps all other forces on the liberal agenda, and this for reasons that can be argued theoretically and demonstrated in case studies.

The reason that democracy has always been the key variable in the forces that have distinguished liberalism is that it creates the kind of peoples and institutions that alone can make the other facets of Wilsonianism function in harmony with one another as they should. (Put in the terminology of modern political science, democratic government is more of an ‘independent variable’ whereas the other features of liberalism have more the characteristics of ‘dependent variables’.) Take the leadership role of the United States in the liberal agenda. For Wilson, the raw power of the United States made it a candidate for leadership. But the origin of this power lay in important measure in the United States’ democratic nature, which rendered it morally and efficiently superior to those people and institutions that were authoritarian in character. Moreover, its leadership could be counted on to act in terms of the common interest of world peace. In line with Enlightenment thinking, especially as embodied in the organizational practices of Reformed Protestantism in the United States, men and women of reason and conscience were capable of a degree of honesty, disinterestedness, trustworthiness and honour that made government based on the consent of the governed not only possible but more effective than any other form of govern...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: presidents, American democracy promotion and world order
• 1. Democracy promotion from Wilson to Obama
• 2. Theodore Roosevelt
• 3. Woodrow Wilson
• 4. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• 5. Harry S. Truman
• 6. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
• 7. Jimmy Carter
• 8. Ronald Reagan
• 9. Bill Clinton
• 10. George W. Bush
• 11. Barack Obama
• Bibliography
• Index