In case you missed it, Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright had a great item in yesterday’s Washington Post — hidden deep away on page A17 — about Bush’s rhetoric about spreading democracy around the world and Bush’s real commitment to these ideals. Naturally, Kessler and Wright discovered that the two rarely meet, particularly as it related to Vladimir Putin’s power grab in Russia.
“Russia is one of the leading examples of how the war on terrorism has put the U.S. in a contradictory position in the world,” said Thomas Carothers, senior associate and head of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “On the one hand, the U.S. is pulling back from democracy with needed security allies who are less than democratic, while simultaneously calling for the U.S. to push for democratic transformations in other parts of the world.”
Rhetorically, Bush has made the promotion of democracy, especially in the Middle East, a central theme of his administration. “This young century will be liberty’s century,” Bush said last month at the Republican National Convention. “By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world.”
[…]
But, with only tentative and belated exceptions, mostly involving Powell, the Bush administration has remained largely silent as Putin has slowly dismantled democratic institutions, including taking over or closing all independent national television channels, establishing dominance of both houses of parliament, reasserting control over the country’s huge energy industry and jailing or driving into exile business tycoons who have defied him.
All of this is true, of course, and striking in the way in which Bush will abandon his allegedly deeply-held convictions when it’s expedient to do so. But what I wanted to add to Kessler and Wright’s report is that this not only applies well to Russia, it’s been a strikingly consistent mark of Bush’s presidency.
Bush uses grandiose and inspirational language (written by the always-capable Michael Gerson) when he talks about democracy. The principle of self-government, Bush says, is “God’s gift to the world.” He describes democracy as a system that is literally necessary for the stability of the world.
In at least a couple of ways, the source for such comments is deeply ironic. Indeed, consider how amusing it must be to the rest of the world that a man who came in second in a presidential election is now lecturing humanity on the benefits of democracy. One also wonders about the inconsistency of Bush insisting that all people deserve a vote and voice in their own government, and yet he lives in a city in which 600,000 taxpayers are denied a voice in Congress.
But breathtaking hypocrisy aside, Bush has repeatedly deemphasized democracy when he felt it was the more convenient option.
For example, a 2002 coup in Venezeula that ousted Hugo Chavez, a democratically elected president, was denounced throughout the world — but not by the Bush White House, who said it was a great development.
From the moment that Bush gave the Latin American desk at the State Department to Otto Reich, one of the architects of the Iran-contra idiocy, the Venezuelan coup may have been a fait accompli (though clearly less accompli than its architects had thought). Whatever winks, nods, and secret handshakes may have preceded the coup, it’s plain that the administration did nothing to stop it. (And it was hardly a secret: A number of hours before it began, The Financial Times ran a front-page story headlined, “Chavez on the Brink as Military Looks Set to Act.”). Worse, the White House welcomed the coup with all speed and no apparent deliberation. Latin American presidents, meeting in Costa Rica, jointly condemned the coup just as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer hailed it. In a mind-boggling display of worst-case unilateralism, the administration had neglected to consult any of them before issuing its praise.
Bush also welcomed a coup that ousted democratically-elected President President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, ignored pro-democracy results in Hong Kong, and proudly boasts that Pakistan is a democracy, despite the fact that the country is led by Pervez Musharraf who seized power in 1999 after a military coup. There was an “election” in April 2002 in which Pakistan offered its citizens a one-candidate ballot.
In the meantime, the two countries that Bush is allegedly turning into democracies — Iraq and Afghanistan — are about as close to hosting legitimate national elections as I am to hosting the 2008 Republican National Convention in my living room.
Bush and his allies insist that this administration’s foreign policy is guided by a steadfast commitment to promoting and spreading democracy. The president’s record proves otherwise. The White House is not guided by a goal of global democratization; indeed, it’s not guided by any noticeable set of principles at all.