Exporting Democracy Is Not for the Naive

Tired of being lectured by the United States, Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov recently complained that “democracy is not a potato that you can transplant from one kitchen garden to another.”

President Bush wasn’t deterred. In an interview before his trip to Europe, he cited his favorite political philosopher, Natan Sharansky, who asserts that “the security of ... people in the United States of America depends on the level of freedom of people in the other countries because democracies are peaceful.”

The debate over whether the U.S. should aggressively promote democracy in other countries is not new in American history. In the 1820s, a fierce dispute arose over whether, and how vigorously, the U.S. should support democratic revolts against tyrannical regimes in Greece and Latin America.

Fighting broke out between the Greeks and the Ottoman Turks in the spring of 1821. By the end of the year, the Greeks had issued a declaration of independence and established a republican government. Thrilled by the democratic rhetoric of the Greek rebels and horrified by Turkish atrocities, Americans embraced the Greeks’ cause. There were pro-Greek rallies in New York and other states. Editorial writers from Washington to the Ohio Valley supported the Greek rebels, and politicians rose on Capitol Hill to give grandiloquent speeches praising the march of liberty and calling for aid to and formal recognition of the new Greek government.

Despite widespread popular support, however, a congressional resolution backing the Greek democrats was defeated. Its critics, led by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, warned that U.S. intervention in European affairs would anoint the United States head of a global crusade against tyranny. In a July 4 address to the House of Representatives, Adams declared that “wherever the standard of freedom or independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.... She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

At Adams’ urging, the Monroe administration expressed ardent hope for the success of Greece’s republican government -- and nothing more.

A political crisis similar to Greece’s was unfolding in Latin America. Inspired by the U.S. and French revolutions, Simon Bolivar and others led revolts against Spain as early as 1810 and asked the U.S. to recognize the new republics. The U.S. ignored the requests for years because it didn’t want to offend Spain while it negotiated for large tracts of Spanish land and navigation rights.

But finally, after the U.S. acquired Florida, commercial relations began with the fledgling Latin American republics, and Russia and France threatened to crush the new governments, Washington recognized their independence.

More than merely offering a Jeffersonian homage to “another example of man rising in his might and bursting the chains of his oppressor,” recognizing the Latin American republics extended U.S. hegemony into the region and undercut European influence. The White House secured markets for U.S. exports before its rivals recognized the new nations.

Why only rhetoric in the case of Greek democracy and formal recognition in the case of Latin America’s new republics? Critics accused Adams and the Monroe administration of pursuing crass commercial interests beneath a mantle of democratic self-righteousness. But there were differences in the two situations.

U.S. vital interests -- keeping European powers out of the Western Hemisphere and creating markets for U.S. exports -- and democratic values intersected in Latin America. They did not in Greece. And that intersection of U.S. values and U.S. interests enabled Washington to build the necessary domestic support to intervene abroad.

Bush seems to be basing his policies on the same sound confluence. “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one,” he declared in his second inaugural address. But that doesn’t mean, as he has repeatedly stressed, that the U.S. will act the same wherever democracy springs up. The administration has rightly championed democratic elections in Iraq and Ukraine. It also rightly rejects a one-size-fits-all approach to democratization, especially where the situation is more complex, as in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But in the long run, a foreign policy that links vital national interests with national values stands a better chance of garnering domestic support. Ivanov may not understand Bush’s newfound insistence on spreading democracy abroad, but Adams surely would.