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June 30, 2009

WSJ on Obama's abandonment of democracy

Joshua Muravchik, writing at the Wall Street Journal, addresses Obama's absolute abandonment, "both rhetorical and practical, of any kind of emphasis on democracy and human rights as US policy goals" (HT - Ace):

[...] The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama's presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America's diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than "freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren't secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay."

[...] In early April, former New York Times correspondent Joel Brinkley summed up the administration's initial performance:

Neither President Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has even uttered the word democracy in a manner related to democracy promotion since taking office more than two months ago. The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has put out 30 public releases, so far, and not one of them has discussed democracy promotion. Democracy, it seems, is banished from the Obama administration's public vocabulary.

At a glance, Obama's motives seemed readily apparent. Former State Department official J. Scott Carpenter observed that it was "obvious and understandable" that "the Obama administration wanted to distance itself from the tone and perceived baggage of the Bush administration." But there were two reasons why this explanation did not satisfy.

For one, Obama might have put his own stamp on the issue without turning so sharply away from the goals of human rights and democracy. In 1981, Ronald Reagan came to the presidency with a mandate analogous to Obama's, namely, to undo the works of an unpopular predecessor. At first, Reagan was inclined to eschew human rights as just another part of Jimmy Carter's wooly-minded liberalism. In an early interview, Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the Reagan administration would promote human rights mostly by combating terrorism. But soon Reagan had second thoughts: instead of jettisoning the issue, he put his own distinctive spin on it by shifting the rhetoric and the program to focus more on fostering democracy.

In a similar vein, Obama could have faulted the Bush administration for its ineffectiveness in promoting democracy and promised that his own team would do it better. Indeed, Michael McFaul, who handled democracy issues in the Obama campaign, declared after the election that the new administration would "talk less and do more" about democratization than Bush had done. But when McFaul was appointed to the National Security Council staff, he was given the Russia portfolio rather than the job of overseeing democracy promotion. The latter task, which had been entrusted to senior staff during the Bush years, was given to no one.

The other reason why Obama's tack cannot be understood merely by his impulse to be unlike Bush is that his disinterest in democracy and human rights is global. The idea of promoting these values did not originate with Bush but with Carter and Reagan, reinforced by Bill Clinton. Bush's innovation was to apply this to the Middle East, which heretofore largely had been exempted. Repealing Bush's legacy would have meant turning the clock back on America's Middle East policy. But Obama scaled back democracy efforts not only there; he did it everywhere.

Ace has additional commentary.

Posted by Richard at June 30, 2009 4:20 PM

• WSJ on Obama's abandonment of democracy - Jun 30, 2009