|
Cooperation
Among Democratic Governments to Strengthen Global, Regional,
and Specialized International Initiatives and Institutions
The
Woodrow Wilson Center and The Council For a Community of Democracies
Conference on The Community of Democracies Meeting in Warsaw,
Poland
May 2, 2000
REPRESENTATIVE
HAMILTON: Good morning, and let me extend a word
of welcome to you for coming out this morning for the first
of two sessions on how we can stimulate better support for
democratic governance around the world. The meeting
is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center and by the Council
for Community of Democracies, an independent NGO. We
have received the active cooperation of the Department of
State.
I want
to express a word of appreciation to Sam Wells from the Wilson
Center who, along with his staff, has done a lot of work in
support of this; and also to acknowledge with appreciation
the very substantial support we have had from the Department
of State and especially from Penn Kemble and his colleagues
at the Office for the Community of Democratic Initiatives.
I think
you all know the general purpose of the session is to do some
advance thinking about the two separate conferences that will
take place in Warsaw in June; those conferences are aimed
at improving cooperation between governments and between non
government organizations engaged in the very broad task of
trying to expand democracies.
To tell
us a little bit about the agenda in Warsaw, we are very pleased
to have Mr. Piotr Ogrodzinski, the chargé d’affaires from
Poland, and I’ll turn that over to him now to explain what
we can expect in Warsaw.
MR.
OGRODZINSKI: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
I am really honored to be here in such a distinguished panel.
I also would like to commend the Wilson Center and the Council
for a Community of Democracies for having the idea to run
this seminar.
I would
like to start with a few words about the genesis of the conference.
I suppose the idea existed even before that, but in the Spring
of last year there was an exchange of concepts and ideas between
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Polish Foreign
Minister, Dr. Bronislaw Geremek. Our Minister was enthusiastic
about the proposal.
The core
of the conference will be a seminar of Ministers of Foreign
Affairs. As far as I know, with the new and emerging
democracies, the idea to have officials of the democratically
minded countries together exchanging ideas and discussing
them is something quite new, and obviously brings together
ministers who can proceed in an ad hoc form.
This is
the chance for other countries to join Poland and the United
States in the effort of organizing the conference. The
convened group of nations include: Poland, the United
States, Chile, India, Mali, the Republic of Korea, and the
Czech Republic.
I would
like to say a few words on what the conference means to Poland.
In the
19th century, the dream of freedom was a dream
of sovereignty, of statehood for a nation. We believed
then that that was a very strong and real tradition, that
helping other nations to freedom was a sure part of achieving
eventual freedom for Poland.
The end
of the 20th century redefines the concept of freedom.
The concept of freedom becomes increasingly parallel to the
idea of democracy. It becomes more and more evident
that the best regime of the government that fosters individual
freedom is democracy.
I think
this is very important and it is very much said in the experience
of Poland: Twenty years ago, a movement which was called
Solidarnosc, Solidarity, came into existence.
This was very much an exercise in freedom and in democracy.
I participated in that movement, and I assure you that we
were extremely touchy on democratic institutions within the
movement. We really wanted to have genuinely free elections
for all the political positions within the trade union.
We were very particular as far as freedom of speech was concerned
within the movement.
Looking
back, it seems quite obvious that this was a very clear signal
that the Communist regime was approaching its end. It
simply did not fit into the logic that such an entity as a
ten-million strong Solidarnosc movement could exist
within the bloc. While I will not try to recreate the
history of Poland, it is sufficient to say that, in the end,
we have achieved freedom and democracy. And in this
sense, I believe that I belong to the happy generation of
Poles, those who have achieved democracy—after many generations
our efforts have finally ended with a tremendous success.
We believe
that democracy is the best regime for free peoples, and therefore
we are very much ready to help other countries traverse the
difficult path to democracy, both in Europe and in other places.
Recently, we managed—with the Czech Republic—to sponsor a
U.N. resolution on human rights in Cuba because we also believe
that there will be a time when Cuba will undergo these tremendous
changes, and people there will be free.
So this
is the way that Poles approach the idea of democracy.
Organizationally, it is extremely difficult. What will
be the result, we shall see. We hope that bringing democratically
minded countries together will give us added value, will give
us an approach which will foster the culture of democracy
throughout the world.
The important
thing is that we would like to spread the quality of democracy.
It is not only a question of many countries declaring themselves
to be democratic countries; it is the issue of the quality,
because the issue of the quality of democracy is, in the end,
the issue of individual freedom.
REPRESENTATIVE
HAMILTON: Thank you very much. All of us are
very grateful to the government of Poland for hosting these
meetings in June. I know all of you are very much aware
that it is been one of the central objectives of American
foreign policy for a good many years, going back several administrations,
I think, to expand and to strengthen democracies around the
world. With all of the challenges that governments confront
today, it is quite clear that many democracies are under stress,
and there arises a lot of frustration because of the slowness,
if you would, of the democracies to deal with a lot of the
very severe problems that they confront.
What we
will be discussing today with a very expert panel will be
how we can get better cooperation established among the democracies
and how we can better explain the processes of democracy and
how we can achieve the cooperation we need to strengthen and
advance democracies.
To help
us understand some of these issues, we have assembled a panel
of very good people. We’ll begin with the Assistant
Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,
Harold Hongju Koh. He will be followed by Paula Dobriansky,
who is the Vice President and Washington Director of the Council
of Foreign Relations. She will be followed by Robert
Hunter, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO.
ASSISTANT
SECRETARY KOH: Thank you, Congressman. Let
me start with three words of thanks; first of all, to my colleagues
from the State Department who are here who have done such
yeomen’s service on both the Community of Democracies initiatives
and the democracy promotion efforts of the department since
I’ve been there; second, to Congressman Hamilton, who is a
man of utter integrity and a shining example of leadership
and modesty, as well as integrity and leadership in the U.S.
Congress.
Finally,
I just wanted to say a word of thanks to the Wilson Center.
This is a living monument to a president who was a prophet
in other parts of the world and less well-recognized in his
own country for what he has done.
And what
I think he did, among other things, was to pioneer the notion
of a Community of Democracies. For him, the notion of
democracy as both an end and a means set a pattern for U.S.
foreign policy, on which in many important senses we are simply
building with the effort that we are making today. I
think the difference is, instead of focusing on making the
world safe for democracy, what we are focusing on is making
democracy the key to safety, security, cooperation and human
rights in the world. And I think that that is building
on a tradition that he brought about.
A fundamental
point, obviously, is that we consider a democracy an end in
that it is a political system in which human beings can most
fully exercise their inalienable rights, but we also consider
it a means, namely, the best guarantor to human freedom and
peace. One thing that struck me at the recent U.N. Human
Rights Commission meeting in Geneva is that although we have
a lot of focus now on the promotion of democracy, we have
no U.N. Democracy Commission. We have a U.N. Human Rights
Commission, but a lot of the interest there is in how to promote
democracy. And what the Community of Democracies initiative
is doing is explicitly trying to create an international setting
in which those issues can be discussed.
Martin
Palous, the Czech deputy foreign minister, made a very interesting
speech here in Washington only two weeks ago in which he said
that the 20th century, in retrospect, ran from
1918 to 1989, from the end of World War I, Wilson’s era, to
the end of the Cold War; and that the 21st century
really began then, with a focus on how we can work together
to try to create a different kind of world order.
Political
scientists, as you know, have come, after millions of dollars
of grant money and thousands of empirical studies, to the
conclusion that democracies do not fight with each other.
And when you think about this, this is quite a puny conclusion
and a modest, overly modest, aspiration. It should not
be simply that our goal is—as the world’s democracies have
moved from 30 to 12—that they not fight with each other.
We ought to have some aspiration in terms of their cooperating
with each other and trying in some way to achieve certain
international communal ends.
And this
has led within the U.S. government, under the administration
of President Clinton and Secretary Albright, to some discussion
about how we ought to consider democracy policy in the 21st
century. And I think in the last couple of years we
have come to the conclusion that we ought to focus on four
different kinds of issues.
First,
consolidating the control over our democracy resources in
such a way that we have a targeted strategy. As you
know, the Agency for International Development (USAID) is
now part of the State Department, and one of the advantages
of that is for the first time we can identify the $700 million
a year that is going into democracy-promotion efforts worldwide.
And the question is: How can that be brought under centralized
policy control and direction? Further: How can
we use this to set priorities?
A second
point concerns the need to set priorities. When you
think about it, there are four kinds of countries in the world:
those countries which are established democracies; those countries
which are very far from democracy at the moment—North Korea,
Libya, Iraq, Serbia—and then countries in the middle, those
that are pushing into the democracy column; and those that
are slipping slightly back from the democracy column.
I think
one of the contradictions or ironies that we realized upon
thinking about this is: Where does the U.S. government
usually put its money? I think, without realizing it,
we devote a lot of money to supporting efforts in established
democracies, and Congress certainly puts a lot of effort into
building oppositions in countries that are very far from democracy—China,
Serbia, Iraq.
But the
two middle areas, those countries which are inching into the
democratic column or backsliding, often don’t get their due.
And one of the priorities has been to try to give those countries
greater emphasis. And so Secretary Albright last year
designated four countries—Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia and
Ukraine—each of which have been inching into the democratic
column, to try to keep them there. At the same time,
this year, 2000, we focus a lot on countries that have slipped
back: Pakistan, Côte D’Ivoire, Ecuador and Venezuela;
countries which have maintained democratic form but have incorporated
autocratic elements. And so the question is: How
do we use our initiatives to try to bring those countries
back into the democratic column?
I think
the main conclusion that I drew from my recent visit to Geneva
is that increasingly there is an awareness that human rights
violations are a symptom, not themselves a cause but a symptom,
of a kind of defect in forms of governance; and that, increasingly,
individuals around the world are demanding certain kinds of
governance and structures of governance, good governance,
anti-corruption and democracy. And it was for that reason
that last year at the U.N. Human Rights Commission the U.S.
introduced a resolution on the Right to Democracy, which passed
overwhelmingly by a vote of 51 to 0, with only China and Cuba
abstaining.
This year,
the government of Romania introduced a follow-on resolution
called “The Right to Democracy 2,” or as we called it, R2D2,
which I’m happy to say last week passed by a vote of 44 to
0, with 8 abstaining the second time, a resolution on democracy
has passed without dissent. And some of those who were
abstaining—Sudan, Bhutan, Pakistan, China, Cuba, Qatar—are
themselves an indicator of why it is important for democracies
to make a statement about their desire now to promote and
consolidate democracy and to make a statement that this is
not just an aspiration, but a norm.
I would
also point out that, significantly, this year at the U.N.
Human Rights Commission there were a number of other developments.
First of all, the government of Brazil introduced a resolution
about the connection between democracy and the elimination
of racism, in anticipation of the World Conference on Racism
which is about to begin. And it was clearly expressed
that human rights abuses can be targeted if there is democracy
and democratic commitments.
A second
development was the response on various country resolutions.
Democratic countries were in the majority that made it possible
to pass a Cuba resolution; they were the ones who were in
the camp that opposed the no-action motion for China by the
largest margin in recent history. And in the resolution
on Chechnya, which is the first successful country resolution
introduced against a Perm 5 member at the U.N. Human Rights
Commission, again a whole series of democratic countries stepped
up and voted “yes,” making it clear that the norm of preventing
human rights violations and indiscriminate use of force against
civilians is one that is shared by democratic members.
So what
I’m saying is the development of a democratic consciousness
among countries from very different cultural and political
tradition is not just an aspiration; it is gradually becoming
a reality. And the question is: How do we allow
this consciousness to build and grow and to become an engine
for more systematic cooperation?
Now, it
may well be that in Western Europe where there are many regional
organizations—NATO, the Council of Europe, Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union
(EU)—we may not need a Community of Democracies per se
and that these are all communities of democracies. But
in other parts of the world where there are no regional forums—Asia;
to a lesser extent Africa; the Middle East—it may well be
that building a democratic consciousness requires a global
gathering in which the focus is on how democracies can work
together. And that, I think, is really the intellectual
spark for the Community of Democracies meeting that is going
to happen in Warsaw.
We think
that there is a clear advantage both to having an inter-governmental
meeting and a meeting of experts who can talk about what we
now know about democracy at this stage of human history.
Let me
just say a few words about another dimension of this, which
is: How do we strengthen cooperation among democracies?
And I think the question is: How do we build a partnership
for democracy in three different respects: first, strengthening
and implementing international norms about democracy; secondly,
strengthening global and regional organizations; and, finally,
coordinating better with regard to democratic assistance?
I’ll just say a few words about this in an illustrative way,
and then I can take more on this in the question period.
What is
very clear is that global, regional and specialized institutions
have taken a number of steps over recent years to make it
more explicit that what we are trying to do collectively is
to implement the democratic norm. Let’s take just what
the U.N. has done. The Secretary General, in 1998, issued
a report on how the U.N. supports democratization in governance.
During the 1999 General Assembly, the governments passed a
resolution requesting that the U.N. strengthen its role in
enhancing the effectiveness of the principle of periodic and
genuine elections.
As you
all know, the demand for U.N. electoral assistance and monitoring
has maintained a very high level, high public profile, with
44 countries since 1997 being arenas for U.N. electoral surveillance.
The U.N. General Assembly has expressly endorsed the International
Conference on New and Restored Democracies, which was initiated
in 1988 in the Philippines, continued in Nicaragua, and in
Romania, and now a meeting will take place this December,
in Benin.
There
is also, among the French-speaking countries of the world,
a summit in Monkton (Canada) which has just taken place of
the International Organization of French-Speaking Democratic
Countries.
Meanwhile,
regional organizations have continued to focus on models of
democracy. The Organization of American States (OAS)
established a unit for promotion of democracy in 1990.
They have the Santiago commitment, Resolution 1080, which
is supposed to stimulate them to respond to threats to democracy.
The Organization for African Unity has a similar decision,
1235, to the same effect—the 1991 Harare Commonwealth Declaration.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has
developed an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human
Rights.
I give
you this not simply to provide a list of what is being done,
but to make it clear that a democratic consciousness is not
simply an idea that belongs to any particular region of the
world. It is a truly global phenomenon. And one
of the inspirational things for me in Geneva in the last few
weeks was sitting there with countries from many different
traditions who all felt that they had come to an appreciation
of the value of democracy through their own means. And
to listen to different member states talk about what they
had learned, how they had struggled to achieve democracy,
their pride at their latest election, from many different
traditions, explodes the notion that somehow this is a notion
which is being imposed upon countries by certain Western hegemonies;
to the contrary, even those countries which are not democracies
like to talk about how they are democracies and how they have
come to this consciousness, although none of their people
have learned about this yet.
Let me
give some final thoughts. How can we move in Warsaw
to try to expand upon cooperation for democracy? One
goal is obviously to try to create a caucus of democratic
countries who are capable of responding when democratic norms
are threatened. We have had a variety of cases in the
last year, which I’ve mentioned, in which democratic backsliding
occurred, and having such a caucus available would be of great
help. Most of the caucuses in multilateral organizations
tend to be regional caucuses, and maybe we should have one
organized around a core idea.
A second
goal is now to focus attention with international financial
economic and trade institutions on the advantages that democratic
governments offer as recipients of international financial
assistance, debt relief and bilateral trade benefits.
I think we all saw after the Asian financial crisis that it
was the democratic countries, particularly the Republic of
Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand, who responded
more quickly and were able to institute reforms that allowed
them to pull out of the crisis. And that’s a measure
of what donors ought to be looking for.
And a
third goal is how to expand mechanisms within international
organizations to expand consultations with NGOs, the public,
the press and civil society representatives about democracy
issues for the purpose of building a culture of democracy.
That should be combined with efforts to establish mechanisms
within international organizations that build capabilities
for effective rapid response to requests for assistance by
member governments as well as to develop expertise on democracy
promotion.
Finally,
there has been a lot of talk about democracy assistance.
How do we strengthen coordination of democracy assistance
and how, in particular, can U.S. government democracy promotion
programs be coordinated with others? In recent years,
we have seen an important turnabout. Countries such
as Poland, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, which were once
themselves beneficiaries of programs to build democratic institutions
have become donor countries. And the question is: How
do we work with these countries to make sure that we are leveraging
our resources, that we’re not working at cross-purposes?
How do we make sure that we’re operating within a common framework,
making effective donations at the level of the individual
country, each working to our comparative advantage?
How do we work closely with private foundations such as the
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)
and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and their
counterparts overseas? And how, in particular, can we
work with NGOs, especially large private foundations, to achieve
the same kinds of goals?
I think
one hope that we all have in the Clinton administration is
that this would be an issue that would become a bipartisan
issue. It really should not be a political football
which gets juggled and defunded from one administration to
another. I would analogize it to concerns about corruption.
In 1977, when the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act passed, there
were concerns as to whether the U.S. should really be dealing
with the issue of corruption; as a matter of domestic law,
wouldn't it put our own companies on some sort of disadvantage
vis-à-vis others?
But, fortunately,
the issue of corruption, as it was linked to transparency
and good governance, became—to use the phrase—“bipartisanized”
and has been carried forward from administration to administration.
We now have an OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, a worldwide network
of NGOs focused on the issue. There is a general feeling
that this is something that we want to promote: anti-corruption
and good governance without regard to who happens to be in
the White House or who happens to be controlling the Senate
or the House.
We believe
that promotion of democracy, the rule of law and the building
of civil society, as a means to promote human rights, and
as an end in itself, should have the same quality. It’s
really not something about which Americans fundamentally differ.
It’s not something about which presidential candidates fundamentally
differ. And one thing that we can do by having a successful,
transparent and provocative meeting in Warsaw is to promote
that result.
REPRESENTATIVE
HAMILTON: Okay, Harold. Thank you very much.
Paula.
MS.
DOBRIANSKY: Thank you. First, Congressman,
I’d like to thank you and also the Woodrow Wilson Center,
as well as the Council for Community of Democracies, for holding
this session today. I think that the timing is most
opportune, not only because of the upcoming meeting in Warsaw
but also because I believe we are at truly a critical juncture
in terms of taking stock of democracy around the globe.
We’re almost approaching the 10-year mark of the collapse
of the former Soviet Union and also the Velvet Revolutions
in Central and Eastern Europe. When I also look at developments,
for example, in Asia, there have been some very significant
trends that have taken place, most significantly the recent
developments in Taiwan with their second round of peaceful,
democratic elections.
And then,
at the same time in our own back yard, in Latin America, I
think we have witnessed some regression in terms of democratic
trends. So the session, I think, is very timely for
those reasons and other concerns. It is important to
really to take stock of where we are.
I wanted
to address some of the questions that have been put on the
table, first starting with the issue of how democracies can
work more effectively together. And I’d like to set
forth three propositions, the first being the issue of how
alliance and alliance structures have played a very important
role in bonding democracies. And I think certainly what
we have seen over the last years in terms of the issue of
NATO enlargement has really proved this point.
First,
NATO is touted as one of the most successful alliances in
history, and one of its great successes is the fact that it
has succeeded in binding democratic countries together in
support of common goals and objectives. Most significant,
I think, NATO is brought together not only traditionally because
of common military objectives, but simply because there are
common values, common democratic values, which have united
all of the countries.
And, significantly,
this alliance structure in the aftermath of the breakup of
the Soviet Union and also the changes in Central and Eastern
Europe has provided an important incentive to those countries
interested in bringing about internal change. Part of
the process is not only to join NATO because of the common
overall military purpose, but also to join in terms of a community
of values, a community of common political objectives.
And I
think that the incentive to change has essentially brought
new entrants into the fold to meet democratic and economic
standards. My reason for citing this is there has been
discussion in other parts of the world about, “Can the experience
of what’s taken place in Europe and with NATO be emulated
elsewhere?” And I would set forth that I think it does
deserve some consideration. Thought has been given to
the development of a comparable alliance structure, for example,
in Asia. It’s been successful in Europe, and I think
it is worth looking at more seriously as to what an alliance
structure could actually produce in other geographical areas.
The second
point is democracies have also banded together when there
are common objectives. Secretary Koh had mentioned the
fact that you have gradations of democracies—those that are
solid democracies, those that are emerging democracies and
then you have offenders. And I think in this case democracies
can certainly work more effectively together, meaning the
ones that are more advanced, in terms of providing incentives
to those fragile democracies. And then, at the same
time, also banding together to exert some pressure on those
who have engaged in human rights abuses.
And this
can be done effectively by these democracies banding together
to basically deal collectively with human rights abuses in
a way that has a reinforcing effect. And it is a way
and means of encouraging democracies to work more effectively
together.
I’ll give
you one case in point that comes to my mind when I served
in the Human Rights Bureau, when the United States, Australia,
Norway and France banded together to exert pressure on Burma.
I would not have normally associated Burma as being a high
priority in particular with Norway or France. Australia,
naturally; it’s in the neighborhood. But these four
countries, and actually several others, came together, both
officially and unofficially, to come up with some creative
strategies to try to exert pressure on Burma to bring about
changes politically. That kind of activity, I think,
has a resonance for the future and should be continued.
A third
point is collaboration on multilateral assistance projects.
In this regard I think of, for example, the work of the National
Endowment for Democracy. NED has collaborated with such
organizations as the Westminster Foundation, also with a number
of German foundations, for the very specific purpose of looking
at one another and what their priorities are, and to consider
what kind of assistance could be rendered.
The value
here, by working together, has been maximized. We are
able to complement one another in those areas that are in
dire need of resources. We are able, to some extent,
to try not to step on one another’s toes and duplicate each
other’s efforts.
So these
are just a few examples of ways in which I think democracies
can continue to work together for the future.
I’d like
to also address the question of what strategies exist or should
or could be developed to achieve a Community of Democracies.
And in this regard, I first start with the issue of institutions.
Institutions matter, I believe, in this effort to develop
a strategy. I think there is a vital need for both governmental
and nongovernmental support for a range of strategies in support
of the creation of a Community of Democracies.
The United
States should play a leadership role. Traditionally,
we have placed a very high premium in playing an important
role in this area in our foreign policies, in support of democracy
across administrations. I also think traditionally there
has been bipartisan support for the promotion and protection
of human rights; in other words, there has been bipartisan
support for a moral underpinning in our foreign policy. This
should be sustained.
But let
me be very specific in terms of a few, just a few, strategies.
One being the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which
has launched an effort which NED is seeking to establish counterparts
in other countries. There would be indigenous counterparts
that are responsible for striving to consolidate democracy
within a particular country.
REPRESENTATIVE
HAMILTON: Okay, thank you very much to the distinguished
panelists for excellent statements. Let’s open it up
now.
QUESTION:
I would like to ask three brief questions. Who decided
which countries should be invited to Warsaw and who should
not? Was it just the Polish government or U.S. government
or both, or in a group of countries?
Two, how
was it defined which countries are democratic, which are not?
And, three,
the United States created an extremely successful instrument
of consolidating democracy: this is the National Endowment
for Democracy. Should it not be involved in this effort?
Should it not be really presented as a kind of model to be
emulated by others?
AMBASSADOR
ROBERT HUNTER: The National Endowment for Democracy.
Great American idea, which we could help spread somewhere
else. Right? A great idea. Wrong!
It came from the Germans. When we created NED we did
it very precisely because we stole a great idea that was done
by and financed by the German government. It shows a
way in which a country that came out of such tragedy was able
to develop a particular institution and now can have a universal
appeal.
MS.
DOBRIANSKY: I’ll just make a brief comment, if I
may, on the last question as well. As I suggested in
my own remarks, I do see this as the wave of the future.
I think it’s important to have the establishment of comparable
indigenous organizations in those countries grappling with
the evolution of democracy.
And one
case in point that I think was so striking was, in fact, the
evolution of democracy in Taiwan where, in fact, such an organization
was created. And I know that NED was centrally involved
in the birth of that indigenous organization, and I think
it has played quite a pivotal role in Taiwan. I think
that’s the wave of the future, and it should be developed
in many other countries across the globe.
MR.
OGRODZINSKI: From the very beginning, it was a very difficult
problem that we had to face. As far as the body who
made the decision, the answer would be the government of the
seven convened group nations (ed. note: US, Poland, Czech
Republic, Mali, Korea, Chile, India later Portugal).
That was the idea of creating this ad hoc group and giving
such a name to the group.
It was
a very delicate action, and I would say we made the decision
through negotiation, trying to be as inclusive as possible.
Some countries are invited if they are moving in the correct
direction, even if we are not 100 percent sure whether they
have what some would call a “consolidated democracy” already.
The problem,
I think, is connected to the broader dimension which, to some
extent, is the reason why I’m here. The issue is that
some countries observing this initiative from some distance
were treating it as an attempt to create yet another institution
for U.S. hegemony. That has been a problem. And
I could answer to these doubts that when viewing the United
States on the international stage, it is, it is somewhat similar
to an elephant in a china shop. It is very difficult
for an elephant to behave in a delicate way in a china shop.
But on the other hand, I think the issue is wrongly defined.
It is a fact that the United States is the only superpower,
and I think it is an extremely happy circumstances that the
only superpower happens to be a democracy. That’s a
very important difference.
But on
the other hand, the nature of democracy is based upon the
will of the people to have democracy. If people in a
certain country do not experience democracy for themselves,
there is no democracy in that country. So, in the end,
what we will be discussing in Warsaw is the many experiences
of democracies in different countries. This is not a
thing which can be imposed by one country or another.
ASSISTANT
SECRETARY KOH: Let me just add that, on the question
of how democracy is defined, obviously there is little sense
in inviting only established democracies. The importance
is to have a dialogue, and the goal at the end of the conference
is to have a signing of a declaration of principles.
And the declaration of principles should be one that is signed
by a large number of countries to make this an inclusive and
expansive event. The standard that we used was “stated
commitment to the democratic path.” In other words,
they may not be there in terms of civil society, in terms
of rule of law institutions, in terms of constitutional structures,
but there is a commitment, or a stated commitment, which is
the basis.
On how
the invitations were extended, my friend Peter used the image
of an elephant in a china shop. I prefer the image of
seven sets of parents invited to a wedding—not the easiest
thing in the world. Part of a democratic decision-making
process is that we may have legitimate differences about whether
particular countries have a stated commitment to the democratic
path. We tried in many respects to defer to the convener
who had the strongest regional connection because in some
way they may have greater sensitivity to the difficulties
that a country is facing in trying to make that commitment.
And so
I think in the end the important thing is that the gathering
is an inclusive one with the goal of, at the end of the discussion
at the meeting itself, having a declaration of principles
that everybody signs. And if a country which has been
less democratic in practice signs the declaration, that’s
another way in which the Community of Democracies meeting
can be used to make some progress in pushing countries in
that direction.
QUESTION:
John Sullivan, Center for International Private Enterprise:
I wanted to come back to your opening statement, Assistant
Secretary Koh. I thought I heard you say that you were
attempting to consolidate control over democracy promotion,
to advance a strategy in this area and to begin setting some
priorities. And you made reference to USAID.
And, if
so, I’d like to ask you, is this a change in administration
policy, because I’ve met recently both with assistant administrators
and mission directors who have told me that decision-making
has been delegated to the field and will not be changed.
The second
part of that question relates back to this theme of how you
relate private enterprise. Ambassador Hunter is right;
the NED was modeled very much on Germany. One unique
aspect, though, is that we have business and labor counterparts,
and both business and labor have had a great deal of difficulty
trying to relate to a strategy articulated by USAID which
is a broader strategy. I’ve had many AID officials tells
me that this is a function of the bureaucratic structure;
they are not structured in such a way that one can include
an economic or a labor dimension to a democracy strategy because
of the nature, if you will, of lines of control within the
agency.
ASSISTANT
SECRETARY KOH: Well, before I was a bureaucrat I
was a scholar and, you know, I now understand what the words,
“Yes, Minister,” means. Political appointees have a
limited capacity to affect long-entrenched bureaucracies.
So the statement that I made up front is an aspirational one
which I hope will be implemented over time.
The fact
of the matter is that the integration of the Agency for International
Development with the State Department is with the long-term
goal of rationalizing what these two organizations do, and
that certain foreign policy directions that are set by the
State Department and by the Secretary of State can have a
direct effect on the way in which democracy promotion policies
are carried out in the field.
Now, the
fact of the matter is that when I go out to the field and
go to particular countries and visit the embassy, then visit
the AID mission, and then go out and talk to officers from
AID about particular projects that are being done, very often
they are exactly what the policy would direct. But often
they’re being done more at a grassroots level and based on
field level consultations than based on some sense of this
is what the foreign policy of democracy promotion is.
I think that’s something that’s going to have to be worked
out over time.
Is this
good for American businesses and labor? Clearly, U.S.
businesses want to operate in an environment in which you
have the kinds of institutions and sets of rights with which
you’ve become accustomed in your home-base operations.
American businesses want to operate in an environment in which
people have control over their own lives, can express their
political opinions through democratic mechanism, can participate
in robust civil society. If they have difficulties,
they can go to legal institutions and get redress.
And I
think that that is what a democracy promotion policy is trying
to do, and I think it is good for these countries; it s good
for America and it is good for American business.
QUESTION:
Dieter Dettke, Director, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Washington:
I just wanted to mention that the reason for German political
foundations to emerge and to begin to operate was precisely
the experience of and the important power of pluralism,
as a mechanism for democratic participation which needs, of
course, the empowerment of the institutions which help voice
opinions, and allowing active participation in the democratic
dissonance.
And that
is why we have a rather pluralistic structure. We have
a Christian Democratic Foundation, we have a Social Democratic
Institution that I represent, we have the representation of
the Liberal Party, the Greens. And it is part of a large
concept of pluralism, and I think that it is very essential
and it is good. NED works more—and thatis interesting
for me—works more on the basis of a culture of bipartisanship,
which is of course true, too, because you need a common denominator,
you need common principles to work on, and that is what we
all do.
But I
wanted to emphasize the pluralistic nature of the German system
here. One point Ambassador Hunter mentioned, and that
is if you talk about the enlargement of democracy, you need
to give this process a broader chance. And, in fact,
if the end of history is democracy, then so be it. It
is a good objective to work for.
But, of
course, the export of democracy is a very delicate process.
You mentioned it. And it is difficult because you do
have different traditions that have to have a chance.
There is not only one model that you can simply enforce.
And Germany, again, is a very important case in history.
You can say that the modern German democratic model was somehow
even enforced in Germany after the war, after Hitler.
And it was a good thing that happened.
But, of
course, the seeds of democracy were already there. Germany
is not only about the short history of Hitler and the Third
Reich; it has a much longer history. And that’s where
we started.
I wanted
to add one principle that I think is very important if you
want to support this pluralistic process. I think pluralism
is a core principle for democratic institutions to work on
a grassroots level. And I think if we begin to talk
about the enlargement, I think pluralism has to be a very
important institution because it is not only a top-down cause;
it has to be a bottom-up process. And that is what we
need to encourage, and I hope the Warsaw meeting is going
to work in that direction.
COMMENT
from Ann Hudock from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor, Department of State: I would like to go back
to a point that Ambassador Hunter made, which was economic
rights as fundamental to democratic rights. And this
seems to be particularly relevant in the context of Africa,
where the real challenge, it seems, to democratic development
is the provision of basic needs, and how we can have an economic
payoff for political reform.
And I
think at the micro level it’s important, but also at the macro
level in terms of how we can help democratic nations receive
the kind of economic dividends in the international financial
institutions as well. What sort of economic gain is
there for political liberalizations? And I just wondered
if you had any further comments on that, particularly in the
Africa context.
AMBASSADOR
HUNTER: You’re moving in the right direction.
This is something I think we really need to cover in detail.
Coming at a time when we have such incredible possibilities,
and very little demand in terms of our engagement in the outside
world for our own self-interest and our protection.
We have this opportunity to help shape things in the future
if we accept and understand the extent to which democracy
and prosperity go together.
Most countries
that become democratic over time and sustain it are countries
that are able to do things for their people. If we want
this to work, we need to get over what was the old dichotomy
in the Cold War. We were for two kinds of human rights—security
of the person and political—and the other side was for the
economic human rights, which they didn’t really believe in
and never practiced. We became polarized. We can
now grab the whole thing and understand that it is an integrated
whole, and the tenor of your question shows you’re moving
in the right direction.
ASSISTANT
SECRETARY KOH: Let me just add, you know, one of
Martin Luther King’s less well-remembered quotes is, “What
good is it to have a right to sit at a lunch counter when
you don’t have anything to eat?” Obviously, the indivisibility
of economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political
rights has been a key to the Clinton administration’s foreign
policy. I think we’ve had the difficulty in having not
ratified the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
That puts
us in a funny position vis-à-vis a lot of the countries that
I deal with at the Human Rights Commission. They have
pointed out that the United States tends to emphasize civil
and political rights to the exclusion of economic, social
and cultural rights, which creates a divide. One of
the reasons that we have offered a right to democracy resolution
is a way of bridging the gap between their concerns over a
right to development and to connect it with our concerns about
right to democracy.
I do think
that in countries that are struggling for political democracy,
you continue to see this kind of turmoil at the very forefront
of their discussions. Take a look in Guatemala, a country
which now has very optimistic signs on the civil and political
front. You know, a couple of weeks ago they had massive
demonstrations. Why? Because they raised the fares
for public transportation by 30 cents. Now, you think,
how can this possibly be the basis for massive civil unrest?
But the bottom line is it’s both a symbol and a practical
impediment to people going about and doing their work in a
country which has a very low tax base and needs to dramatically
expand their tax base and to be seen by their own people as
taking into account their economic, social and cultural welfare.
So I do think this is going to be a continuing concern for
us and an area in which we are going to get a lot of protestations
in Warsaw and have to be prepared to listen to them.
MR.
OGRODZINSKI: I think there is obviously not an easy
linkage between poverty and lack of democracy and between
affluence and democracy. And I think in each individual
experiences of a nation it looks different. I can only
say that in Poland this linkage was there from the very beginning.
This is the reason why Solidarnosc was a trade union.
The first reaction was to the meager life. Then the
answer was that the meager life, which was a reality, required
freedom, and then we learned that in order to have freedom
we have to have democratic institutions—but also market economy.
So it
is probably a learning process in which we can obviously say
that you cannot have democracy instead of affluence.
If this is the way the thing is run, then it is a very big
mistake.
Now, as
far as pluralism is concerned, I think it is a very important
issue which, in the case of Poland for instance, we’d rather
treat it in terms of regionalism, because a country which
has problems with sovereignty is very reluctant to disperse
powers of the central government to regional governments.
But on other hand, obviously you are right that in order to
have democracy you need to have it locally, not only at the
center.
REPRESENTATIVE
HAMILTON: We extend our thanks to the panelists for their
excellent contributions, and we stand in adjourned.
Thank you.
|
