Street protest calling for Sharia in Maldives. Wikimedia
Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy: Why Is America So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?
There’s no quick, cheap, or military-based way to bring peace to places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. It’s time we changed our approach, and we can start at home.
If you’re a dedicated Wilsonian, the past quarter-century must have been pretty discouraging. Convinced liberal democracy was the only viable political formula for a globalizing world, the last three U.S. administrations embraced Wilsonian ideals and made democracy promotion a key element of U.S. foreign policy. For Bill Clinton, it was the “National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement.” For George W. Bush, it was the “Freedom Agenda” set forth in his second inaugural address and echoed by top officials like Condoleezza Rice. Barack Obama has been a less fervent Wilsonian than his predecessors, but he appointed plenty of ardent liberal internationalists to his administration, declaring, “There is no right more fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders.” And he has openly backed democratic transitions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and several other countries.
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WNU Editor: Democracy cannot be imposed .... it has to come from within the people themselves. Take Russia as an example. In the early 1990s I asked a senior Russian diplomat (my former boss) on how long did he think it would take for Russia to become a true democracy. His answer .... "it took the U.S. over two centuries to have the political system that it has today. Russia's political system (after the fall of the Soviet Union) is/was just only a few years old. Give a few more decades .... maybe a century .... and they will have the political maturity that many Western countries have".
In short ... in countries like Russia, Ukraine, etc. it will take time .... and for many other countries .... Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. .... probably not in this century.
Update: Here is a post from 2013 on why Democracy has failed in the Middle East .... Why Democracy Has Failed In The Arab World
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