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.