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Jewish World Review July 7, 2010 / 26 Tamuz 5770 Democracy in trouble By Anne Applebaum http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | KRAKOW, POLAND---A riot of golden curlicues embellished the theater boxes; in the plush velvet seats below, ambassadors in saris crowded against activists in crumpled suits. It was standing-room only on Saturday for Hillary Clinton's speech at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies, and the American secretary of state had the crowd behind her. First she paid compliments to her predecessor Madeleine Albright, who co-founded the organization a decade ago with Poland's then-foreign minister, Bronislaw Geremek. Then she spoke not about democracy, exactly, but about civil society, those "activists, organizations, congregations, writers and reporters that work though peaceful means to encourage governments to do better." Civil society, along with representative government and well-functioning markets, she said, "undergirds both democratic governance and broad-based prosperity." Yet civil society is under threat, and she mentioned activists in prison in many countries, including some that call themselves democracies: Egypt, China, Burma and Zimbabwe. Behind me, a Kuwaiti diplomat scribbled furious notes in Arabic. Up in the balconies, delegates from Moldova and Mongolia leaned forward, trying to catch every word. But was anyone listening back home? This is now the central question, not only for the Community of Democracies -- an organization benignly neglected by the Bush administration and recently revived by the Poles -- but for all advocates of "democracy promotion," myself included. American democracy promotion has taken different forms in recent decades, from the Reagan administration's covert support for anti-communist dissidents to the relaunching of Radio Free Afghanistan in 2002. Right now, though, the whole concept is in trouble. This is partly because -- as Clinton and others have recently noted -- democracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of "democracy" -- along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled "civil society" organizations -- to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish "war for democracy" that went predictably wrong. The subsequent failure of Iraq to metamorphose overnight into the Switzerland of the Middle East is cited as an example of why democracy should never be pushed or promoted. This silly argument has had a strong echo: Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts -- he prefers "our common security and prosperity" -- as if it might be some dangerous Bushism. In fact, democracy promotion was not invented by a secret cabal of neocons but is, rather, a long-standing tool of bipartisan American as well as Western foreign policy, one that has overlapped at times with both public diplomacy and foreign aid. The Germans use their political party foundations to bolster democrats, especially in Eastern Europe; the British sometimes work through the Commonwealth, the organization of former British colonies and others in Africa and Asia. We Americans tend to spend money on media (Radio Free Europe and its modern offshoots), on training (for judges, journalists, activists) and, yes, sometimes on covert funding of democrats in authoritarian countries. Frustratingly -- at least for those who fund these projects -- none of them guarantees success and many fail outright. Revolutions can be reversed. Good dissidents don't always make good presidents. Even established democracies require constant maintenance, and societies divided by bitter ethnic conflict or extreme poverty can be disappointingly fragile. None of which means that these tools don't ever work. They have in the past and they can again -- especially if, as Clinton suggested, we steadily focus on supporting the culture of free speech and free association, without which elections and political parties are mere farce. We cannot impose democracy by force, but we can bypass the United Nations and its corrupt Human Rights Council, perhaps using the Community of Democracies to monitor and investigate abuses of civil society. We can also join others, not only in Europe but in South Korea, Indonesia or Chile -- newer democracies that care enough to have sent senior ministers all the way to Krakow this past weekend -- in condemning the abusers. And we can continue funding those training programs and radio stations that might, someday, bear fruit. Clinton announced the administration's intention to contribute $2 million to a fund that would provide lawyers, cellphones and quick support for embattled civic organizations. It's not much -- a friend pointed out that some in the audience Saturday have more in their bank accounts -- but these things don't have to cost a lot. Besides, even that level of support requires somebody, occasionally, to say that it is necessary. Clinton did so Saturday and won wide international applause. I hope she gets some at home, too. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. APPLEBAUM'S LATEST Gulag: A History   Nearly 30 million prisoners passed through the Soviet Union's labor camps in their more than 60 years of operation. This remarkable volume, the first fully documented history of the gulag, describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor-unprecedented in scope-gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution. Fueled by waves of capricious arrests, this prison labor came to underpin the Soviet economy. JWR's Applebaum, a former Warsaw correspondent for the Economist and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, draws on newly accessible Soviet archives as well as scores of camp memoirs and interviews with survivors to trace the gulag's origins and expansion Sales help fund JWR. Comment on JWR contributor Anne Applebaum's column by clicking here. Previously: 06/22/10: Buzz off? : What to do about the vuvuzela 06/08/10: Germany's dangerous code of silence 06/02/10: Can the Brits play nice? 05/11/10: Greece's stubborn surrender 05/04/10: Another human-rights irony at the U.N. 04/27/10: Britain's spot of Tea Party 04/13/10: Out of tragedy, a detente of sorts between Russia, Poland 03/25/10: From Britain's Tories, lessons for the GOP 03/16/10: Britain and America both have center-left leaders, but the two nations are further apart than ever 03/09/10: Germany Is Tired of Paying Europe's Bills 03/02/10: Chile will survive the earthquake because its democracy works 02/23/10: Prepare for war with Iran — in case Israel strikes 02/17/10: America's Greek tragedy? 02/09/10: The Big Problem With Big Solutions 01/26/10: India's model of reflective patriotism 01/12/10: Haiti's man-made disasters 01/12/10: We need a smarter way to fight the jihadi elite 01/05/10: How every year we waste millions on wasteful homeland-security projects 12/30/09: The next decade will be bad for authoritarian regimes except one 12/15/09: The Apocalypse Is Not Upon Us 11/24/09: Superpower without a partner 11/17/09: Why has the global response to swine flu been so politicized? 11/10/09: After the wall fell 11/03/09: Angela Merkel's Quiet Revolution 10/20/09: Will the President of Europe Be a Gifted Pol or a Compromising Bureaucrat? 09/29/09:What Is Iran Afraid Of? 09/22/09: Letting Europe Drift 09/17/09: Greed and fear are proving stronger than companies' commitment to free speech 09/08/09: Will Obama Fight For Afghanistan? 09/01/09: The Polish Prologue 08/20/09: Why Afghans Need a Vote 07/29/09: No Burqa For Clinton 07/14/09: The Summit of Green Futility 07/09/09: Obama Puts Medvedev Ahead of Putin 06/30/09: In Morocco, an alternative to Iran 06/23/09: An overlooked force in Iran 06/16/09: Some good in a bad election 06/09/09: Why Is the Right Doing So Well in Europe? 06/02/09: Is China Pulling Strings in North Korea? 05/26/09: What a Member of Parliament Deserves 04/22/09: The Twitter Revolution That Wasn't 04/14/09: Do we really need interactive exhibits to bring Jefferson to life? 04/07/09: No Nukes? No Thanks: Obama's odd obsession with universal nuclear disarmament 03/31/09: What's Loud, Unnecessary, and Costs $75 Million? 03/23/09: Ctrl-Alt-Diplomacy 03/03/09: European Disunion 02/24/09: Who cares what Hillary Clinton says to China's leaders about human rights? 02/17/09: Witless protection 02/10/09: Our Ticket Out of Afghanistan 01/27/09:Why some foreigners can't believe Obama won the presidency fair and square 01/20/09: A Flight Test for All of Us 01/14/09: Europe's New Cold War 01/07/09: Pointless Peace Proposals 12/30/08: The magnificent rhetorical legacy of the Founding Fathers 12/23/08: Do riots in Athens portend demonstrations in Paris and Cincinnati? 12/16/08: Breach of Trust: Bernard Madoff's massive fraud will cripple American capitalism 12/09/08: In praise of charismatic politicians 12/03/08: Moscow's Empire of Dust 11/20/08: Getting Past Mythmaking In Georgia 11/12/08: In Praise of Political Rock Stars 10/03/08: Election Day myths you must resist 09/30/08: Not just a metaphor: Lehman Brothers was economic's 9/11 09/04/08: Class of '64 08/28/08: Did Hillary really help the Barack cause? 08/27/08: ‘Show of Power,’ Indeed 08/19/08: What Is Russia Afraid Of? 08/13/08: When China Starved 08/11/08: Two of the world's rising powers are strutting their stuff 08/05/08: How Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago changed the world 07/29/08:‘The Hour of Europe’ Tolls Again … But are European politicians up to the task? 07/15/08: Why Does Obama Want To Campaign in Berlin? 07/01/08: Citizen Athletes: How did a guy who can't speak Polish end up scoring Poland's only goal of Euro 2008? 06/24/08: Why do we expect presidential candidates to be kind? 06/17/08: Pity the Poor Eurocrats 06/12/08: Is the World Ready for a Black American President? 05/28/08: The Busiest Generation: America seems to value its children's status and achievements over their happiness 05/20/08: Leave Hitler Out of It: The craze for injecting the Nazis into political debate must end 05/13/08: A Drastic Remedy: The case for intervention in Burma 05/07/08: A Warning Shot From Moscow? 04/23/08: Radio to stay tuned to 04/17/08: China learns the price of a few weeks of global attention 04/01/08: Head scarves are potent political symbols 03/26/08: The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest 03/19/08: Could Tibet bring down modern China? 03/12/08: Have political autobiographies made us more susceptible to fake memoirs? 03/05/08: Why does Russia bother to hold elections? 02/20/08: Kosovo is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences 02/06/08: A Craven Canterbury Tale 02/06/08: French prez' whirlwind romance reminds voters of his political recklessness © 2009, Anne Applebaum. By permission of the author

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