Just in case you think that the Bush Administration's delusions of grandeur and determinism can't get any worse, check out the details of the "Advance Democracy Act," tucked into an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY 2006.
To make matters worse, it's not just the theo-neo-conservative Republicans pushing the bill...it was sponsored by Democrats Tom Lantos in the House and Joe Lieberman in the Senate.
The act instructs American ambassadors and embassy staffs to draw up democracy transition plans for unfree regimes, with input from nonviolent opposition movements in the various countries.
Yes, back in the days when we were all in grade school, this would have sounded innocent enough...Americans "helping" others in the world. What do you remember being taught as a kid about American occupation and intervention in Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama, Germany, Korea, Japan, China, et.al.?
Historian Tony Smith notes,
"...Until the 1990s, American scholarship neglected to investigate with any comparative framework or historical depth the consequences abroad of surely the greatest ambition of United States foreign policy over the past century: to promote democracy abroad as a way of enhancing the national security..." (Smith, 1994, p.4).
One of the more perplexing and contested issues in the study of democracy in modern times is whether democracy can be "imposed" either at the barrel of a gun or by attempting to create a set of conditions in which it will typically flourish, or whether democracy is the result of a process of reform, revolution, adaptation, and progress that takes time to develop and ferment.
Eli Lake notes in yesterday's NY Sun:
"...While Congress has passed laws that require America to work with democratic opposition groups for specific countries - such as the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act - never before has it considered a law that would, as ADVANCE proposes, "commit United States foreign policy to the challenge of achieving universal democracy..." (Lake, 2005).
There have been some rumblings within the Bush Administration and conservative thinktanks against the bill, not because there is disagreement about the presupposed supremacy of America and all things American, but rather, because the bill would actually provide a scheme of Congressional oversight into the Bush Administration's efforts to topple regimes it dislikes. The Bush partisans suggest that rather than employing a Lippert-scale to rate the presence of "democracy," the more simplistic (and arbitrary) "evil empire" analysis used by Reagan and Bush should be the basis for U.S. foreign policy. (Cohen & Dale, 2005).
The left has been largely absent from the debate on this bill, likely because so few know about it. Many, I suppose, would have the knee-jerk, non-thinking reaction that if Bush has opposition to the bill, it must be good. This type of thinking would be foolhardy.
I object to the bill not for the reasons advanced by the Bush partisans, but because it is promotes and will increase the reach of U.S. imperialism and hegemony in the world.
Much has been discussed in recent years in reaction to the rhetorical question, "Why do they hate us?" "They" don't hate us because we have democracy and "they" don't. "They" view America as "the evil empire."
As Pat Buchanan correctly noted, "America's huge footprint in the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia led straight to 9/11. The terrorists were over here because we were over there. Terrorism is the price of empire. If you do not wish to pay the price, you must give up the empire." (Buchanan, 2004).
References:
Buchanan, P. (2004). Where the right went wrong. New York, NY: Dunne.
Cohen, A., and Dale, H. (2005, April 8). The ADVANCE Democracy Act: A dose of realism needed. The Heritage Foundation, Executive Memorandum 968. Retrieved July 30, 2005, from http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/em968.cfm.
Lake, E. (2005, July 29). Universal democracy is the goal as Congress eyes new legislation. The New York Sun [electronic version]. Retrieved July 30, 2005, from http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=17604.
Smith, T. (1994). America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.