The
“world’s democratic movement” is not another
one of the transnational citizens’ movements, like the anti-globalization
or anti-war movements, that prides itself on having no central
structure, no dogma, or even an office.
This
movement is highly organized, better funded, and even has its
own “secretariat.” Unlike other leaderless but world-shaking
transnational citizens’ networks that emerged after the
end of the Cold War, the “world’s democratic movement”
is not a product of global civil society but a quasi-governmental
initiative based in Washington, DC.
Carl
Gershman, the longtime president of the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) where the movement is headquartered, says that
the U.S.-government-backed World Movement for Democracy is “an
imaginative new mechanism that can facilitate networking, sharing,
and solidarity among democrats around the world.”
The
leading voice of this “movement” is President George
W. Bush. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the neoconservative-led
National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, President
Bush said, “We’ve reached another great turning point
[in history], and the resolve we will show will shape the next
stage of the world democratic movement.”
Whereas
the democratization strategy that President Ronald Reagan launched
in 1982-83 targeted the Soviet Union and its “evil empire,”
Bush has said that his administration’s democratization
initiative would focus first on the Middle East, and that the
“establishment of a free Iraq will be a watershed event
in the global democratic revolution.”
In
the first State of the Union address of his second term, Bush
took America’s self-imposed mission to spread democracy
and freedom to new heights of idealism, committing the United
States to the tasks of spreading democracy around the globe and
“ending tyranny in our world.”
In
keeping with the radical thrust of Bush’s foreign policy,
the president often refers to this movement in military terms-“forward
strategy of freedom” and “global democratic revolution.”
Calling for a doubling of NED’s budget for its democratization
work in the Middle East, the president declared, “The advance
of freedom is the calling of our time. It is the calling of our
country.”
NED
and USAID Provide Political Aid
Together
with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the
National Endowment for Democracy has functioned as an instrument
of the U.S. government’s democratization strategy over the
past two decades. Whereas USAID is an agency of the State Department,
quasi-governmental NED is organized as a nonprofit but funded
almost entirely by the U.S. government.
Since
1982, when President Reagan launched what he called a “crusade”
to foster “free market democracies” and spread the
a neoliberal version of the “magic of the marketplace,”
both USAID and NED have channeled U.S. government development
and public diplomacy funding into the democratization programs
of the international institutes of the Republican and Democratic
Parties, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well
as a wide range of institutes, political parties, and nongovernmental
organizations abroad.
As
part of the Cold War, the U.S. government in 1947 began channeling
political aid through the CIA to political parties, publications,
policy institutes, academic institutions, and other nongovernmental
actors. After Congress prohibited such covert funding in the 1970s,
a U.S. government-funded task force called the Democracy Program,
which was directed largely by neoconservatives, proposed a new
political aid program that would overtly support the type of nongovernmental
entities that previously received CIA funding.1 Soon after Ronald
Reagan took office, the new administration put this proposal into
action, assigning the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and USAID
as the chief sources of political funding. But rather than channeling
the aid directly to foreign actors, the Reagan administration
decided, in line with the Democracy Program proposal, that the
“democracy-building” aid would flow through U.S. private
organizations, mainly the newly created National Endowment for
Democracy and its affiliates in the two political parties, labor,
and business.
NED
and other components of the Reagan administration’s democratization
strategy were an attempt to revive the post-WWII international
networks of congresses, publications, and intellectuals funded
by the CIA, such as the Congress on Cultural Freedom, in which
many neoconservative forerunners like Irving Kristol and Melvin
Lasky were leading figures.
Since
its first years NED’s “democracy-building” initiatives
have had two main thrusts-one to promote U.S.-allied political
actors against political parties and governments not closely aligned
with the United States (such as Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela),
and another to promote “free market democracy” in
countries regarded as having an overly large government presence
in the economy, notably in the “transitional” states
of the former Soviet Union. As in the 1980s, when the U.S. government
deployed NED to support surrogate “freedom fighters”
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, NED today is a central player
in the new U.S.-led “global democratic revolution.”
The
U.S. government’s funding for “democracy building”
is closely tied to U.S. foreign policy priorities and generally
goes to groups who fall in line with or at least do not oppose
U.S. economic, diplomatic, and military initiatives.
“Network
of Networks”
In
the mid-1990s, the U.S. government and NED concluded that the
democracy-building strategy needed an overhaul. Taking its cue
from the anti-globalization and other transborder citizens’
movements, NED began to establish networks of center-right foundations,
research institutes, youth groups, parliamentarians, and nongovernmental
organizations. In 1999 NED, with U.S. government and U.S. foundation
support, organized the founding assembly of the World Movement
for Democracy in New Delhi.
In
the age of globalized communication and transnational cyber-networking,
as exemplified by the anti-free trade movement, NED decided to
start its own global citizens’ movement. Rather than just
channeling U.S.-government funds to disparate groups, NED’s
president Carl Gershman in 1999 established his office as the
“secretariat” for a World Movement for Democracy.2
The
movement’s objective is to “offer new ways to give
practical help to democrats who are struggling to liberalize authoritarian
systems and to consolidate emerging democracies.”3
According
to NED, “The World Movement helps to fulfill one of the
objectives of NED’s most recent strategic plan, namely ‘to
create a community of democrats, drawn from the most developed
democracies and the most repressive autocracies as well as everything
in between, and united by the belief that the common interest
is served by the gradual expansion of systems based on freedom,
self-government, and the rule of law’.”
Just
as the citizens’ global anti-globalization movement often
described itself as a “movement of movements,” NED
describes the World Movement for Democracy as a “network
of networks,” that functions as an umbrella organization
for an array of affiliated international networks of citizens’
groups, parliamentarians, research institutions, business groups,
and foundations. What distinguishes this movement from citizens’
networks is that it was created as a U.S. government-supported
initiative.
U.S.
taxpayer revenues cover the cost of having NED function as the
logistical and infrastructural secretariat for this multifaceted
democracy movement. Annual State Department allocations cover
the four NED staff members who oversee the network from their
positions in the office of NED’s president. Most of the
project funding for NED’s WMD, however, comes from right-wing
foundations in the United States, led by the Bradley Foundation,
which has provided the start-up and general support funding for
an array of other neoconservative foreign policy projects, including
the Project for the New American Century. Although the World Movement
for Democracy states that it “does not advocate positions
on particular political issues,” the network’s website
and publications, such as its ezine DemocracyNews, largely reflect
the U.S. government’s foreign policy positions with respect
to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba.
NED
has created regional portals for participants in the network.
For example, for Latin America and the Caribbean there is the
“Portal de la democracia de las Américas,”
which opens to the webpage of the Red Ciudadana por la Democracia
en las Américas (Citizens’ Network for Democracy
in the Americas).4
In
addition to its regional portals to “citizens’ networks,”
NED through the World Movement for Democracy has established regional
forums with more restricted participation, such as the Democracy
Forum in East Asia and the Africa Democracy Forum.
Also
under the umbrella of the World Movement for Democracy are several
other global “pro-democracy” networks that NED has
been developing over the past decade, including International
Movement of Parliamentarians for Democracy, Network of Young Democracy
Activists, Democracy Information and Communications Technology
Group, and the Network of Democracy Research Institutes. The latter,
which includes as members think tanks and policy institutes throughout
the world, receives research and technical assistance from NED’s
Democracy Resource Center.
As
part of its effort to function as a nexus for a “network
of networks,” NED in 1995 convened a meeting in Taipei,
Taiwan in conjunction with Taiwan’s Institute for National
Policy Research that aimed to spark the creation of “democracy
foundations” around the world. In 2003, Taiwan, “following
a period of consultation with NED,” created the Taiwan Democracy
Foundation.5
The
Institute for National Policy Research is a think tank that is
closely associated not only with NED but with the American Enterprise
Institute, the premier neoconservative think tank. Today, there
are three dozen foundations that participate in the NED-initiated
World Conference of Democracy-Support Foundations.
One
of the most recent movement-building exercises of NED is the Movement
of Parliamentarians for Democracy, founded in Washington in February
2003. Among the main congressional supporters of this NED networking
were Christopher Cox (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), both closely
associated with numerous neoconservative organizations.
A
Neocon Product
Neoconservatives
inside and outside the Bush administration have been central players
in an array of government-backed initiatives such as the World
Movement for Democracy and the Community of Democracies, as well
as in such strictly private democratization programs as that of
the neocon American Enterprise Institute.
In
early 2005 President Bush tapped neoconservative ideologue Elliott
Abrams-infamous for his key role during the Reagan administration
in the NED-funded efforts to support the Nicaraguan Contras-to
direct his Global Democracy Initiative.
Penn
Kemble, a longtime associate of Carl Gershman and Elliott Abrams
and who, like Gershman, has his political roots in the Trotskyist
Social Democrats/USA, served as deputy director of the now-defunct
U.S. Information Agency, a stronghold of neoconservatives since
the early 1980s. In 1999 President Clinton named Kemble the State
Department’s special representative for the U.S.-led Community
of Democracies Initiative, which established the Community of
Democracies at a June 2000 meeting in Warsaw.
NED
and the World Movement for Democracy are also promoters of the
Community of Democracies-which has been greeted with widespread
skepticism by many European nations who regard it as a U.S. strategy
to skirt UN authority. Addressing the meeting of the Community
of Democracies last April, Condoleezza Rice said that this forum
with its commitment to “principled multilateralism”
was creating a “balance of power that favors freedom.”
NED’s new democracy initiatives aim to foster a transnational
citizens’ network funded and guided by the U.S. government
and right-wing foundations that will counter the anti-free trade
and anti-imperialist citizens’ networks that have emerged
in this age of globalized communications.
The
close identification of the U.S.-sponsored democracy movement
with U.S. foreign and military policy has made great strides forward
in incorporating hundreds of citizens’ groups around the
world.
Already
there signs that the movement may prove counterproductive in the
region that is the main target of NED’s democratization
agenda. Throughout the Middle East, as in Cuba and Venezuela,
democracy-building is getting a bad name since it is so closely
associated with U.S. “regime-change” efforts by undemocratic
means.
Tom
Barry is the policy director of the International Relations
Center (IRC), online at www.irc-online.org.