Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy: A Review Essay

Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy Gideon Rose A Review Essay Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999 Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 186–203© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gideon Rose is Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs. The author is grateful to Sheri Berman, Stephen Walt, and Fareed Zakaria for their comments on earlier versions of this essay, as well as to participants in seminars on the topic in Los Angeles and Chicago organized by the Council on Foreign Relations National Program. 1. “Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861,” in Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed., Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865 (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 213. 2. For an example of such a view, see George F. Kennan, “Morality and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs , Vol. 64, No. 2 (Winter 1985/86), pp. 205–218. As a nation “dedicated to a proposition,” the United States has always believed that its political ideals and principles are in theory universally applicable. The Declaration of Independence, in Lincoln’s words, gave liberty “not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.”1 From the founding onward , accordingly, Americans have been concerned with—and judgmental about—the domestic order in other countries. The relativist view that foreigners ’ political practices are presumptively legitimate is not only unusual in U.S. history, but in a real sense profoundly un-American.2 Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy If the universal signiªcance of the American national experiment has rarely been disputed, however, its implications for American foreign policy have been, and vigorously. The classic division pits those who believe that the nation should rest content with setting an example for the world against those who believe that the nation should try to shape political developments abroad 186 in accordance with American ideals.3 First emerging in the 1790s in the clash between Republicans and Federalists over whether to ally with newly democratized France against monarchical Britain, this debate has continued to the present with little change in the basic positions on either side. “Exemplars” are wary of the costs associated with a messianic foreign policy and skeptical about U.S. ability to effect true political change in other countries . They prefer to cheer history along from the sidelines.4 “Crusaders” are more optimistic about the possibility of shaping political development elsewhere and more willing to bear costs in the attempt. They think that the United States should step in and give history a push.5 It is entirely ªtting, therefore, that from Chile to China, from Poland to Peru, the question of what the United States should do to promote democracy and liberalism abroad remains at the forefront of American foreign policy today. Because of its dualities, the post–Cold War environment simultaneously spurs hope among crusaders and caution among exemplars. The collapse of the Soviet Union has left the United States as the global hegemon—but its strength relative to the international system at large has decreased from its postwar peak, its hegemony provokes resentment, and its public is increasingly chary of foreign entanglements.6 The collapse of communism has left Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy 187 3. See Robert W. Tucker, “Exemplar or Crusader? Reºections on America’s Role,” National Interest, No. 5 (Fall 1986), pp. 64–75. For an extended gloss on Tucker’s categories, see H.W. Brands, What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 4. The most eloquent statement of this view came from John Quincy Adams, in defense of his policy of nonintervention during the Greek revolution: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is...