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« Back to Is Democracy Safe for the World? main page    Transcript for: Is Democracy Safe for the World?transcript.606.html ANNOUNCER: Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology. Improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation,the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, theUnited States-Japan Foundation, and the Donner Canadian Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. After World War I,President Woodrow Wilson said he wanted to make the world safe fordemocracy. Since then, promoting democracy abroad has been anobjective of American foreign policy idealists. But now some foreignpolicy realists are calling us to re-examine this goal, arguing thatsome countries may not be ready for democracy, and that stressingdemocratic values for all is not in America's best interests. Realists versus idealists, values versus interests. Joining Think Tank to sort through the conflict and consensusare, Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, and authorof the forthcoming book From Wealth To Power: The Unusual Origins ofAmerica's World Role; Richard Haass of the Brookings Institution, andauthor of The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the ColdWar; and Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, and author ofNew Nations Rising: The Fall of the Soviets and the Challenge ofIndependence. The topic before the house, is democracy safe for theworld, this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: As the Berlin Wall came crashing down, and theSoviet Union fell into that ash heap of history, many hoped a new eraof democracy would rush in. It has, from the Czech Republic to SouthAfrica, democracy is surging, bringing political and economic freedomaround the globe. But has this spread of democracy always been agood thing? Not necessarily writes Fareed Zakaria in Foreign AffairsMagazine addressing this issue. He discusses the so-called illiberaldemocracies, nations with elections but without the rule of law,separation of powers, or freedoms of speech, religion and property. He suggests that these new illiberal democracies can be worse formsof government than the systems they replace. Let's look at some data. According to Freedom in the World,the influential reference guide published by Freedom House, in 1987,only 69 of the world's nations were a democracy. By 1992, thatnumber had risen to 91, and as of 1997 the number had risen again to118. But not all democracies are American-style democracies. Let'slook at a couple of examples. Throughout the 1980s, democratic Peruwas wracked by a civil war with the Maoist Shining Path guerillasthat left 30,000 civilians dead. In 1992, democratically-electedpresident Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution and dissolvedcongress, even after restoring order, President Fujimori retainsbroad powers over the country, and often rules by decree. Another nominally democratic country is Pakistan, yet itrestricts freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and hasadopted the harsh Islamic penal code. It's electoral systemconcentrates power in a land-owning elite, corruption is rampant. If democracy can be so flawed, why is it that America is alwayspushing it on others? Fareed Zakaria, you seem to be driving thisbus with that article of yours, the Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Whydon't you tell us what you think is going on? MR. ZAKARIA: Well, you've summarized the article quite well,or the central premise of it, Ben. If you look around the world, yousee the rise of democracy, but you do not see a concurrent rise ofindividual liberty and law. And my argument is that this is adistinctive problem that we will face for the next 20, 30, 40 years,because we live in the democratic age. It's not an apology forauthoritarianism. It's not a pay-in to authoritarianism. What I'msaying is, we're experiencing today a world in which we see a kind ofsubstantial mix of democracy and illiberalism, restrictions on theindividual liberty, restrictions on the rule of law, et cetera. Whatyou see is the rise of ethnic conflict, partly because politicianscater to the -- or whip up kind of nationalist frenzies in order toget votes. You saw this -- you see this in Yugoslavia, where theintroduction of democracy in a very divided society may well haveactually worsened ethnic relations among the groups there. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Adrian Karatnycky, you are thepresident of Freedom House. Your job and your deep-seated emotionsare to protect democracy and freedom. What do you say to that? MR. KARATNYCKY: Well, the world has seen and expansion of whatwe could call electoral democracy over the last 20 years, a dramaticincrease, a near doubling in the number of countries that are ruledby democratically-elected leaders. At the same time, it has seen aconcurrent improvement in the climate of civil liberties. The pointthat Fareed makes that in the case of Yugoslavia, that leaders arefanning the flames of popular passion through appeal to popularsupport. That may well be the case, but that is not a context ofdemocracy. The expansion of democracy has occurred in most of thesecountries in the context of reasonably competitive elections andcompetitive alternatives subjected to regular and systematicelections. Yugoslavia doesn't fit the mold of this democraticexpansion. MR. WATTENBERG: So, you think -- MR. KARATNYCKY: So, Milosevic is a demagogue who hasmanipulated and controlled the press and the media rather than somedemocratic leader who is succumbing to popular pressure. MR. WATTENBERG: But wasn't he elected democratically? MR. KARATNYCKY: He was elected under the government ofYugoslavia. The war that broke out in Yugoslavia was the consequenceof decades of Marxist/Leninist rule. To attribute it to theemergence of -- MR. HAASS: Can I just say one thing? MR. WATTENBERG: Let me get Richard Haass in, just so everybodyat home knows who the players are. Richard? MR. HAASS: I think this exchange in some ways inadvertently oradvertently proves Fareed Zakaria's essential premise, there's afundamental difference between mature democracies which tend to befairly responsible in their external behavior, tend to treat theirown people well, and immature or developing democracies which tend tobe much rougher on the edges, and which in turn leads you to maybeanother useful distinction between countries where you have electionsand countries where you have democracies. And I think, again, thecentral premise of this article, as I take it, is simply having anelection is not enough. Even worse, sometimes having an election canbe dangerous if it's not embedded in a much larger context of civilsociety where you basically have restraints, respect for law, marketconditions, and so forth. MR. WATTENBERG: I used to work for a very quiet man namedLyndon Johnson who, when hearing these kind of things from RichardHaass and Fareed Zakaria, would say one word, which is therefore. Let's stipulate that that's an interesting point. Therefore what? MR. ZAKARIA: Well, therefore, I think you look at the MiddleEast, you look at Africa, places that clearly are not democratic. The question becomes, what should you be doing? What should youpush? And I think Madeleine Albright has taken a therefore which Iwould applaud, which is you look at Africa, you have a bunch of newautocratic leaders. You could push them hard to hold elections, andI think that she has made the decision, and the State Department hasmade the decision, wisely I think, forget that. You can force themto hold elections. They'll be sham elections, or maybe they'll evenbe, you know, popular leaders elected. The more important issue ispushing them to liberalize, liberalize the economy, liberalize civilsociety, create the kind of bourgeois middle class and the kind ofrestrictions on government activity that in the long-run will createa stable liberal democracy. MR. WATTENBERG: Define for our audience that word 'liberal' inthis context, because in the United States it means something verydifferent politically. Why don't we just take a breathe. MR. ZAKARIA: It's closer to classical liberal or libertarian. That is to say, liberal in this context means protecting individualliberties, protecting property rights, et cetera. It's almost whatone would call libertarian. MR. WATTENBERG: It's liberal as in liberty. MR. ZAKARIA: Exactly. MR. WATTENBERG: Not as in left of center. MR. ZAKARIA: Not at all. In fact, as I said, it's probablycloser in a sense to libertarian which is right of center. A focuson individual rights, property rights, rule of law, protections onspeech, et cetera. MR. KARATNYCKY: The problem is that many of these powerfulleaders that are encouraged as new forces in Central Africa remindyou of all the illusions that we had about the first wave of colonialleaders, that they also may have had an authoritarian style, and comeout of the colonial struggles, but they -- MR. WATTENBERG: Of anti-colonial leaders. MR. KARATNYCKY: Of anti-colonials, the anti-colonial struggle,who would have been the guarantors of a gradual, incrementalliberalization. Hastings Banda (sp) being only one of them. MR. ZAKARIA: The point is, of course, many autocrats don'tliberalize. And I'm not in any way suggesting that that would begood. That would be terrible. I mean, Saddam Hussein is an autocratwho is not a liberal autocrat. But all I'm saying is that if youwere to push these autocrats to move in the direction of people likePinochet in Chile, of many of the East Asian rulers, who liberalizedtheir economies, created property rights, created some degree of ruleof law, it's a process which then takes on a momentum of its own, anda very progressive momentum which is good. These guys don't want todo it. I want to make that clear. Of course, they don't want to doit, but it happens inevitably. MR. KARATNYCKY: But compare it to the progress that has beenmade both in the introduction of market reforms, and in the arisingof civil society in places which have had even a small and modestpolitical opening, in fragile democracies. When you have somefragile democracies, you see reasonably competitive political partiesemerging. MR. WATTENBERG: For example, let's use -- MR. KARATNYCKY: Well, all the countries of Central Europe. The process that has occurred in Latin America. The process that hasoccurred in South Africa and in, even to some degree, in Mozambique,the process that's occurred in Namibia. In all these cases, you havehad pressure to move from one form of authoritarian rule, military orminority, racial minority, or colonial rule, towards democratic rule. And in most of these cases, these societies, particularly in Centraland Eastern Europe, Latin America, and so on, have made successfultransitions. While this over-reliance upon the strong man doesn'tguarantee this kind of an outcome. MR. HAASS: I think there's a danger. Americans somehow equateelections with democracy, and I think the contribution here, one ofthe principal contributions of the argument, is to pull people backfrom that and say, democracy is something much bigger, much morefundamental. And before you hold elections, you had better becareful that you don't legitimize people who are hijacking ademocratic process. And, you know, the old thing we used to say, oneman, one vote, one time. You want to be careful. You want to makesure that before you send people to the ballot box, you then don'tlead to a situation where you've concentrated political power, sopeople can do in the very democratic process you want to encourage. MR. WATTENBERG: Adrian, let me ask you a question. After theGulf War, if the question was asked, why when the United Statesliberated Kuwait, and Richard was in the White House at that time andworking on this very problem, why didn't the United States insistthat Kuwait become democratic? MR. KARATNYCKY: I think we should ask Richard that. But Iwould say -- MR. WATTENBERG: Well -- MR. KARATNYCKY: -- there are reasonable answers. There were-- MR. WATTENBERG: We are going to ask Richard. But did we makea mistake? MR. KARATNYCKY: Well, I'm not sure. I'm agnostic on that. Ithink that the United States restored a more liberal order than theoccupying order, so we did a noble thing. It did something thatcontributed to our own national both strategic interests and ournational economic interests. And I don't think that you have to,with every action that you take, have a, you know, gigantic moral andpolitical agenda. You can satisfy a lot of important factors. Idon't think you should have -- you know, everything is not a panaceafor everybody. MR. WATTENBERG: I assume that's your answer. Is that right? MR. HAASS: I'm less uncategorical. I would say, no, we didnot make a mistake. We liberated Kuwait, and we helped establish thepost-Cold War norm that you are not going to use force to decideinternational relations. That, to me, is an even more fundamentalforeign policy concern than promoting democracy. Second of all, your question is really revealing, Ben. Youcan't install democracies. Democracy is not a lightbulb that nomatter how many people screw it in, it gets screwed in. Democracyhappens largely from internal evolutions of societies. The last places we really tried to install democracies wereplaces like, and did it successfully, were probably Germany and Japanafter World War II. And those are revealing for two reasons. MR. WATTENBERG: We pushed pretty hard in the Philippines, forexample. MR. HAASS: But look at the -- we can talk about that, too. But Germany and Japan are interesting because we basically had tototally demolish the old order and then it took roughly five or sixyears of occupation, and that gives you some idea of how hard it isto install or transplant the democracy, and then still it has to takeroot. I don't think in Kuwait any amount of American effort couldhave installed democracy given where they were politically,economically, socially and culturally. MR. WATTENBERG: It could have -- I mean, Adrian is not comingacross as some democracy zealot, just as you guys are not comingacross as anti-democracy zealots. He's saying, you know, do what youcan when you can, and couldn't a little more have bee done in Kuwait? I mean, we had sort of absolute power over this absolute monarchy ata certain point. MR. HAASS: Well, Kuwait might have been a perfect examplewhere, had we done more, the elements who would probably have beenmost poised to exploit a democratic opening would have probably beenthe most illiberal elements in the society. Funny example, Americansfor a while were pushing the Kuwaitis to expand their franchise towomen. And one day a senior Kuwaiti official came in to me and said,Richard, do you know what the consequences of that will be? Thewomen who will vote exactly the way their husbands want are the mosttraditional religious women. So, what you will have are a mass blockvote against any liberalization, and people who are more Westernizedand open will be all over the place. So the push for this, whichsounds very nice in the West, would actually be one of the mostcounterproductive things you could do at this stage of ourdevelopment. MR. ZAKARIA: All over the Middle East, one has to say that theforces of democracy are the forces of radical political Islam andanti-Americanism. It's not -- I mean, the generalization will nothold everywhere, but if you were to hold instant elections and havekind of brute majoritarianism take over the Middle East, it would bea devastating blow to American interests. MR. KARATNYCKY: But are they really the forces of democracy,or are they simply the forces opposed to the current order? MR. ZAKARIA: Well, but, Adrian, in a way, you can -- I mean,if you define democracy just to mean those electoral outcomes that Ilike, and then every time something that happens that you don't like,you say, well, that wasn't really a democracy, or they didn't reallyhave choice, et cetera, these guys are popular. You have to dealwith that reality. MR. KARATNYCKY: Right. But there's a difference betweenpopularity and the mobilization of an explicit program that isanti-democratic. We can distinguish in the agendas, the values, andso on of these kinds of movements, we can assess their relativestrength in society, as you indicated, an assessment was made inKuwait, and respond appropriately. Again, I want to make the pointthat I am not a democracy zealot, or a human rights zealot. I thinkwe have -- we are looking at the realm of possibility. Theremarkable thing is, how successful this experiment has been over thelast 20 years, that there have been a number of countries that haveseen their liberty enlarged and their economic freedom enlarged. MR. WATTENBERG: For example? MR. KARATNYCKY: Well, Latin America is far better off. Eastern and Central Europe is far better off. South Korea is a goodexample. The Philippines are a good example. You know, there's aremarkable momentum. There are African countries, although in theminority, and many of them weak and embattled. MR. WATTENBERG: So, is it possible that the argument here isnot sort of strategic but what the evidence shows? You are sayingthe evidence is pretty spotty and real bad in places, and Adrian saysthat the tide of democracy has, in fact, with a lot of bumps andpatches and a lot of disparity, been moving this human species in theright direction, toward more liberty? MR. ZAKARIA: Yeah. I mean, what I would say -- MR. WATTENBERG: Who is right? MR. ZAKARIA: Well, I think this is not mathematics. One canhave differing interpretations of the evidence. But I thinkoverwhelmingly, it will show that -- if your question is, whatcreates a stable liberal democracy, that is not just a democracy, howdo you get to that point? Which is where the West is, and where Iwould argue parts of East Asia, Japan. And it seems clear that ifyou look at that, the countries that have done it are countries thathave democratized slowly but liberalized first. That is to say,you've had autocratic rules who first created property rights,certain kinds of civil, religious rights, et cetera, et cetera. Andthen slowly democratized. MR. WATTENBERG: The United States has not just pushed forelections, they've pushed for free and fair elections. I've been onsome of these missions where -- you know, vote observation missions. And that's always the cliche, free and fair elections. Now, if you have a free and fair election, and the electedprime minister or president does things that the people hate, andthey keep the free and fair elections, they can unseat that -- Imean, that's why we all think it's such a fantastic lever. MR. ZAKARIA: But then what if 51 percent of the populationwant to persecute 49 percent of the population? That's whereconstitutionalism and liberty come in. The problem is not -- MR. WATTENBERG: What would be -- give me some examples ofcountries? MR. ZAKARIA: Pakistan is a country where you have an extremelyliberal democrat in power. Most of the African countries, as thefamous scholar Don Horowitz said, there are two problems withdemocracy in Africa. One, majority rule; and the other minorityrule. Meaning either you get a majority in power that oppresses theminority, or you have a minority in power that oppresses themajority, and creates a kind of rebellion, an armed rebellion againstit. So, the problem is that -- let me say the most controversialthing one can in America today, people can be wrong. The majoritycan be wrong. They can do nasty things. And you need to haveprotections against that. The fact that the election was held, thatthe leader is popular, does not get you around that. MR. WATTENBERG: Adrian's point, if I may make it, is that onbalance you're better off with elections than without elections, andyou are not -- you're saying not necessarily. I mean, I'm trying tounderstand what the difference is here. MR. HAASS: There are a couple of differences. One is notnecessarily, elections aren't inherently good or bad. It depends onthe kind of elections and when they come in the process, because theycan actually become dangerous windows for people who have no interestin democracy other than a tactical one to use it so cease power. Itcan help legitimize them. So, clearly in that case elections aren'tgood. Secondly, though, there's a much larger foreign policy pointhere, which is, to put all of our emphasis on democracies seems toput way too much weight there, and ignore the fact that we've got awhole lot of other things. Look at the China relationship, we do nothave the luxury right now to focus simply on trying to democratizeChina. We want to try to avoid a conflict over Taiwan, and we don'twant China to sell arms to Iran. We want China to help us in theUnited Nations. We want them to preserve -- MR. WATTENBERG: And you would make the same case, for example,about Saudi Arabia, it has an enormous strategic value? MR. HAASS: You said it's interest versus values, I would saywhat foreign policy is about is the weighing of the two. Values areimportant because American people care about values. We want them tosupport our foreign policy. That's something you said before, Ben,values are important because it affects the way the world perceivesus. But values are not the only thing. And, in many cases, I wouldsay they are not the most important. MR. WATTENBERG: But the so-called values people, and I willlet Adrian speak to this, I mean you are making them out, you say,oh, they see it as a panacea, and it's all encompassing. I mean,that is not what the values people have been saying over the years. They're saying, when possible, push as hard as you can. MR. HAASS: If you look at the current China debate there arepeople saying the most important thing with China is that unless theydo what we want on, say, religious persecution, or on how they treatthe people in Tibet, or what-have-you, that we should have sanctionsacross the board. That's what people are saying. Now, if that'swhat you want, fine. But I would say, we have a host of intereststhat would be adversely affected. They want to have a values firstforeign policy. It's people on the left, it's on the right. It'sone of those interesting issues that actually cuts across thespectrum. And I would simply say -- MR. WATTENBERG: It is on the left and the right both. MR. HAASS: Right. I think you saw it in parts of the Reaganadministration, you see it in parts of the Carter administration, andI would say -- MR. WATTENBERG: Well, answer that about China. I mean, that'sa pretty good point. MR. KARATNYCKY: But the kind of arguments that are made onChina are the kind of arguments that were made at various periods byvarious parts of the Western Alliance in terms of events that wereoccurring inside the Soviet Union. Yes, the Soviet Union was morepositioned as an ideological opponent of ours. But under Gorbachev,there were a lot of people saying, don't push it further. Gorbachevis this kind of a liberalizing autocrat. We have a good relationshipwith him. I think we are infinitely better that that empirecollapsed. We are infinitely better that the democratic revolutionsin large parts of the Soviet Union have advanced further. The worldis infinitely safer. And the argument about China is, sure, the people who supportsanctions may be arguing against themselves because economicsanctions may retard China's internal economic evolution, and notpropitiate the liberalization that we would all want. But I wouldalso think that you have to advance and have a dialogue with societyin China, make it clear that the United States is not fomentingrevolution, but is -- believes that democracy is the best way to go,believes that democracies make the best and most stable allies. Andthat believe that in the long-term interests of China, it shouldbecome a normal democratic -- MR. WATTENBERG: We have to close this out. But I want to aska little hypothetical here. I'll go around the room this way, quickanswer, please. I am turning the clock forward 20 years to the year2018, it sounds far away, it's 20 years. What is the fate ofdemocracy on this planet going to be, which way are we headed? MR. HAASS: I would think like now, you'll have a mixedpicture. I would not be surprised if parts of the world were lessdemocratic than they are now. For example, Latin America, this mightbe something of a high water mark. I would think that China willprobably be more democratic than it is now. Russia would be theplace I'd be most worried about because there the chance of anunraveling of the democratic process is probably the greatest. MR. KARATNYCKY: I would argue that barring wars and cataclysmswhich can be leashed upon the world by the autocrats and thedictators rather than by the democracies, that barring that, if wecan have a strong United States and a strong cohesive alliance thatpolices the order, the world order, through time we will see agreater deepening of civil liberties and the rule of law precisely inthose illiberal democracies that Fareed is concerned about. MR. WATTENBERG: Put on your fortune teller's hat. MR. ZAKARIA: Well, I think that the question is revealing in away, because what you'll have, I think, are a number of shamdemocracies, that is to say, there will be democracies everywhere,everybody realizes this is the elixir of political life today, thisis what gives you legitimacy. The question is, will they be realdemocracies, will they be liberal democracies. And I would argue, ifwe just push elections over everything else, and the sort of radicalversion of majority rule everywhere, you will probably have fewerliberal democracies, but more democracies. MR. WATTENBERG: Thank you very much, Richard Haass, FareedZakaria, and Adrian Karatnycky. And thank you, for Think Tank, I'mBen Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make ourshow better. Please send your questions and comments to New RiverMedia, 1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036,or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank,visit PBS Online at www.pbs.org. And please let us know where youwatch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in associationwith New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology. Improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation,the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, theUnited States-Japan Foundation, and the Donner Canadian Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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