[Mb-civic] GLOBAL DEMOCRACY Each Vote Strikes at Terror

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-democracy30jan30.story
GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
Each Vote Strikes at Terror
By Walter Russell Mead
Walter Russell Mead, a contributing editor to Opinion and a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author, most recently, of "Power,
Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy

January 30, 2005

The teleprompter providing President Bush with his second inaugural address
had scarcely gone blank before American and European commentators turned to
dismissing his calls for a "war against tyranny" and progress toward
universal democracy as naive, dogmatic, overstated and a recipe for chaos in
U.S. foreign policy.

The White House sought to meet these objections by pointing out that a
statement of values was not a straitjacket and that U.S. foreign policy
would promote these values in a nuanced, flexible and strategic way. So the
criticism shifted. Bush was no longer a feckless naif: He was an
arch-cynical hypocrite. Clearly, this president can't please some of the
people any of the time, but beyond Bush's PR problems lie some bigger
questions.

Does democracy matter in a war on terrorism? Is democracy gaining or losing
ground in the world today? Can it work everywhere, or does it work only in
certain cultures and regions? Can U.S. foreign policy make significant
contributions to democracy's spread? On the whole, the answers support the
idea that, whether or not the Bush administration knows how to do it, the
promotion of democracy abroad can be a positive and practical element of
U.S. foreign policy.

Let's start with the relationship between terrorism and democracy ‹ a
complex one. Weimar Germany, after all, was a democracy before Adolf Hitler
took power, and political assassinations and terror attacks roiled that
unhappy society. Election violence in countries such as Jamaica (not to
mention Iraq) suggests that, under some circumstances, democracy becomes a
focus for terrorism as armed groups try to affect the outcome of elections.
The IRA in Ulster and the Basque terrorists in Spain show that terrorism can
infest even well-established democracies. Closer to home, Timothy McVeigh's
attack in Oklahoma City and the history of the Ku Klux Klan suggest that
democratic societies are not immune to homegrown terrorism.

Still, the signs point to a significant connection between tyranny and
terrorism. According to one study, 70% of all deaths because of terrorism
from 1999 to 2003 were caused by terrorist groups from nondemocratic
countries. Other researchers have similar findings, and although, as
economist Jeff Faux points out, "if you torture a statistic long enough, it
will confess to anything," these studies are at least straws in the wind.

What may matter most is whether democracies are better than other types of
government at meeting the needs of their citizens. If most of the people
feel that most of their needs are being addressed most of the time, and if
they also feel that they have a fair say in deciding who governs them,
common sense suggests that they will be less interested in terrorism and
war. Here the evidence is overwhelming. Almost all of the world's richest
countries are democratic. Almost all of the world's poorest are not. Look at
lists of democracies and you see names such as Canada, Finland, the
Netherlands and New Zealand. Look at the dictatorships and find names such
as Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

This stands to reason. In democratic countries, voters are quick to toss out
officeholders who can't make the economy work. Myanmar's citizens can't vote
out their odious military government no matter what the economy does.
Perversely, bad economic news can be good for tyrants. People who are poor
and unemployed become more dependent on government assistance and,
therefore, more vulnerable to government pressure.

Whatever the effect on terrorism, democracy continues to spread. The best
statistics come from Freedom House, a human rights organization based in New
York. Its 2005 report, Freedom in the World, leaves little doubt that in the
long run, democracy is on the march. In 1974, Freedom House criteria showed
that 41 countries qualified as free, covering 27% of the world's population.
By 2004, the number of free countries had more than doubled, to 89, and the
world's population living in free countries was up to 46%.

Most of that progress comes from two regions: Latin America and east-central
Europe. According to Freedom House, Haiti and Cuba are the only
nondemocratic countries in the Western Hemisphere. In Europe, only Belarus,
Azerbaijan and a backsliding Russia count as not free. Conditions are mixed
in another seven, but fully 13 formerly communist countries are now
considered fully free.

Latin America and Europe, however, aren't the only parts of the world where
freedom is gaining ground. Africa, Asia and the Muslim Middle East also have
seen significant progress. Indonesia, the country with the largest number of
Muslims in the world, has now held two sets of free presidential elections.
Afghanistan, Malaysia and Turkey saw significant progress in 2004, while ‹
also according to Freedom House ‹ Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Qatar
registered modest civil liberties gains in 2004.

The road to democracy is not, unfortunately, a one-way street. Countries
such as Haiti, Russia and Venezuela are less free than they recently were.
Zimbabwe once was a vibrant multiparty state with a free press and honest
courts. Today, it is a nasty thugocracy, as an increasingly isolated and
discredited Robert Mugabe clings sullenly to power. Corrupt government and
poor economic performance have undercut public support for democracy in
parts of Latin America. Yet despite the eddies and crosscurrents, the
long-term trend is clear: The world is growing steadily more democratic.

Can outsiders speed up the process? Although it is fashionable to be
skeptical about the potential for outside pressure to produce democratic
change, there is a lot of evidence that the outside world matters. The
desire to join NATO and the European Union motivated the political evolution
of many of Europe's new democracies. The same forces are at work today in
Ukraine.

The Muslim world also seems to work this way. The reforms that are making
Turkey more democratic are coming about because democratic reform is part of
what Turkey must do to join the European Union. The United States made a
strategic decision to support democratic change in Indonesia after decades
of supporting President Suharto's autocratic government. That decision seems
to be paying off: Even with the recent tsunami tragedy in western Sumatra,
Indonesia today is significantly more stable, more prosperous and less
hospitable to terrorists than many observers have predicted over the years.
Progress in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco reflects at least in
part a response to U.S. pressure.

Ending tyranny, Bush said, will be "the concentrated work of generations."
It's far from clear that his administration has found the right policy mix
to end tyranny in the Muslim Middle East, much less in the rest of the
world. But about some of the big things Bush is almost certainly right. The
world wants more democracy, and the United States wants a more democratic
world. Somehow, that coincidence of interests and values should and will
help shape U.S. foreign policy in the turbulent times ahead.

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