Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?

search

possibly noteworthy
Picture of possibly noteworthy
My Blog
My Profile
My Audience
My Sources
Send Me a Message

sponsored links

possibly noteworthy's topics
Arts
Business
Games
Health and Wellness
Home and Garden
Miscellaneous
  Humor
Current Events
  War on Terrorism
Recreation
Local Information
  Food
Science
Society
  International Relations
  Politics and Law
   Intellectual Property
  Military
Sports
Technology
  Military Technology
  High Tech Developments

support us

Get MemeStreams Stuff!


 
Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?
Topic: International Relations 8:58 pm EST, Nov 28, 2007

Francis Fukuyama, in the latest issue of The Washington Quarterly:

Not surprisingly, many in Washington, both on the Left and on the Right, are pressing for a change in US foreign policy objectives. In a German Marshall Fund survey of European and US attitudes on foreign policy in 2007, a solid majority (71 percent) of Europeans believed the European Union should promote democracy in other countries, but US support for this project declined to 37 percent, down from 45 percent in 2006, and 52 percent in 2005. When broken down along partisan lines, Democrats in the United States are about one-half as likely to support democracy promotion as Republicans. Among foreign policy elites, only those at the extreme on each end of the political spectrum advocate completely abandoning democracy promotion as a US foreign policy objective. Instead, skepticism is largely couched as “realism” and a return to a greater focus on traditional US national security objectives. From this perspective, democracy promotion should take a back seat to strategic aims such as securing US access to energy resources, building military alliances to fight terrorist organizations, and fostering stability within states.

Although focusing on the more traditional goals of national security is important, a zero-sum trade-off does not exist between these traditional security objectives and democracy promotion. Moreover, the Bush administration’s mixed if not disappointing efforts to promote democracy in the past few years do not mean that democracy promotion should be downgraded or removed from US foreign policy priorities. The United States should promote democracy, but there are new strategies and better modalities for pursuing this objective.

Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?



 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics
RSS2.0