Responding To Threats To Democracy
The Woodrow Wilson Center and the Council For A Community of Democracies Conference on the Community of Democracies Meeting in Warsaw, Poland
May 10, 2000

MR. RICHARDSON: I'm John Richardson substituting for Secretary Eagleburger who suffered a back injury and has had to cancel his participation in this seminar.

I am President of the Council for the Community of Democracies and a long-time participant among those who believe in the future of democracy in the world and what the U.S. and others can do to pursue it.

We have an excellent panel and I'll just say a word about them because you have their bios.  But just let me mention Mort Halperin who has a record in this town and in this field that few other people can match.  Now, of course, he is the Director Of Policy Planning at the Department of State.

Mark Palmer, who will actually lead the panel in the discussions we have after I finish the introduction, has had many roles in very influential spots on the foreign policy apparatus.  Being an ambassador to Hungary was a small part of what his record has been.  And he continues to function in important ways outside the government.  For example, as vice chair of Freedom House and a key player in the development of the National Endowment for Democracy , he was a principal drafter of Reagan’s democracy speech at Westminster in June 1982.  He is continuing to pursue these things and among other ways as a member of the board of the Council for a Community of Democracies.

Richard H. Solomon, another extraordinary figure in this town, in this field.  He has served as  president for seven years at the United States Institute of Peace.  Before that, ten years as head of the social science department at Rand Corporation, in the Department of State and elsewhere.

We are in for a good evening, and I think we'll have time for discussion.  This is a good, broad subject for us all to get into and I'll turn it over now to Ambassador Palmer.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  Unfortunately, I look even less like Larry Eagleburger than John does.  But I can claim that I was his deputy in four different positions.  And as Ambassador Jeszenski, the Hungarian Ambassador who's with us today, knows, Secretary Eagleburger spent a good part of his career trying to control my exuberance about democracy and civil rights, et cetera.  I promise in running the panel to act like Larry would have me act, in a sober, serious and responsible way.  However, when it is my chance to speak, the exuberance will come out.  Mort Halperin is first on our list, then Dick Solomon will speak and then I'll show my exuberance.

MR. HALPERIN:  Thank you.  It is a pleasure to be here and to have an opportunity to talk with you about democracy, particularly the threats to democracy.  I thought it might be useful if I put this in the context of the Clinton Administration and the State Department, Secretary Albright's approach to democracy issues.

As you know right from the start of the administration the President made it clear that the promotion of democracy, an enlargement of the area of democracy, was a major priority of the Administration along with economic prosperity and protection of security.

In the last two years of the Administration, having to face the question of priorities and what did we want to try to get to done, we have come to focus on those countries that have already chosen the path of democracy.  And we have done so not out of a lack of concern about the rest of the world.

The President has said and it remains our view that all of the countries in the world, all of the peoples of the world, should live in democratic regimes and that we expect that over time to happen.  But we are all aware of the fact that when a country has chosen the road of democracy, there is no guaranty that it will remain on that road, then there is a threat of military coups, or just a gradual erosion of democratic values resulting in countries straying from the path of democracy.

And therefore, it seemed to us that it was important, given the number of countries that had chosen that path in the past years, to focus on helping those countries to stay on the path and to advance further along.

That has led to two initiatives that Secretary Albright has undertaken within the State Department and the government as a whole: First has been the identification of four priority democracy countries.  We asked ourselves the question, what are the countries that have chosen the path of democracy that are at critical points along that path and where the success of the country would have important implications not only for that nation itself but for the region in which it was situated?

And that led us to identify four countries:  Nigeria, Indonesia, Ukraine and Colombia. The Secretary has identified these countries for priority consideration in terms of resources and in terms of time and energy of senior officials of the government.  It is our belief that our support could make a difference in helping them continue to move along the path of democracy and their success in doing so would have important ramifications for the broader region in which they were situated as well as for their own society's development.

Second, the most comprehensive initiative, is the Community of Democracies.  This project is one in which we have been working cooperatively with a number of other governments including the Polish government. And as I think most of you know, the Community of Democracies will hold a conference hosted by the government of Poland in Warsaw next month.

That conference will be the first government ministerial conference bringing together countries from around the world committed to the democratic process, committed to a definition of democracy that we all know and accept and committed to working to continue to advance on that road and to cooperate with each other in order to do so.

We have commitments to attend the conference now I think from more than 80 countries including more than 50 foreign ministers and other ministers.  And I expect others to come as well.  The Secretary General will address the conference with other distinguished officials as well as the foreign ministers.

The conference will issue a declaration which will commit the countries to democratic values that you are all familiar with: free elections, an independent judiciary, respect for minority rights, periodic free and fair elections in which the winners actually get to run the country, and the promotion of civil society and other values.

There will also be four working groups of ministers at the conference which will focus on areas in which we think cooperation among democratic states is particularly important.

One working group will look at the question of the role of regional and multilateral organizations in the promotion of democracy. One of the interesting phenomena of the recent period has been the degree to which organizations which were founded with the commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of each other have nevertheless come to be instruments for the protection and advancement of democracy.  The OAS, the OSCE, more recently the OAU and even more recently and probably the most unlikely of all, the NAM have begun to impose democratic criteria on their members and to find ways to cooperate with each other to advance democracy in each of their countries.

This working group will look at the best practices of each one of these regional groups and how they might be taken from one regional group to another.  It will also look at the question of the U.N. and other multilateral institutions and the degree to which they ought to reflect democratic values, recognizing the fact that it is now the case that the overwhelming majority of members of these organizations are democratic countries committed to democratic values.

A second working group will look at the question of democratic assistance and how countries committed to democracy can provide assistance to countries particularly in the early stages of democratic process.  What can we learn from past efforts to do that in places like the Philippines and South Africa and from current efforts to do it in Indonesia and Nigeria and others?  Can we draw some conclusions about more effective ways to provide assistance to countries moving on the path of democracy? 

A third working group will look at the question of sharing best practices and to see whether lessons from one part of the world can be applied to another on issues like promoting civil society, free media, elections, the relationship between economic development and democracy and the issue of civil/military relations among others.

And then finally, a fourth working group will focus on a response to threats to democracy.  And this is a problem that clearly will not go away.  Since planning for the conference was underway we have had threats to democracy manifest themselves in Pakistan, in Cote D’Ivoire, in Ecuador and in a different but important way in Austria.

Each of those events has triggered a response from regional organizations, from multilateral organizations and in some sense from the Community of Democracies as a whole in efforts to either roll back the threat to democracy or to respond to it in a way that would advance the democratic process.

And if you look at the activities of regional organizations it is really quite remarkable how much has been done in various organizations.  The OAS has probably got the most advanced mechanisms and formal mechanisms for dealing with this problem.

But the OSCE has procedures; the Council of Europe, the Commonwealth, and now as I say both the OAU and the NAM have recently adopted at least the rule that where there is a military coup that displaces a civilian government that country will not be permitted to participate fully in the organization.

We think there is a lot to be learned in sharing information and experiences between these different organizations about how they deal with threats to democracy.  We need to look at the next steps each organization might take to deal with those threats, but also look at how the Community of Democracies, as a whole, can reinforce the work of regional institutions.  Where such efforts do not exist, the Community of Democracies—functioning as a worldwide community—can try to prevent the interruption of the democratic process or to work for the restoration of democracy where there is an interruption.

I think that is an area in which further thinking about creative steps is very much in order and something that I hope this discussion will illuminate.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  Thank you, Mort.  Dick Solomon.

MR. SOLOMON:  Thank you.  I should begin by saying I was hesitant about accepting the invitation to speak here because I was not sure exactly how the focus of this session would merge particularly with the work of the Institute of Peace.  But as I will describe and in some ways think out loud with you, we are headed in a direction of looking at some issues that I think are quite relevant to this session here.

We are frequently called the Institute for Peace.  For some reason intuitively people talk about the U.S. Institute for Peace, not "of" peace. Legislatively and legally we are the Institute of Peace.  What's the difference?

Well, if you are "of peace" of course it implies you are there already.  If you're "for peace" you are still working at it.  Actually, it should be "for peace" because as we know we are not there yet.  And that also underlies an important issue that structures our work: that peace is not a final state; it is a condition.

I personally do not believe we are going to create the peaceable kingdom.  I think peace is really a process that concerns dealing with conflicts, dealing with threats to the way people live.  And it is, in a sense, a never-ending process and much of our work at the Institute is concerned with developing ways to promote or manage the conflict that is unfortunately part of the human experience in a way that does not degenerate into destructive violence.  And democracy is in many ways much of that process.

Let me also just make a footnote.  I am delighted to share the podium with John Richardson.  I did not have the opportunity to serve at the Institute when John was on the Board.  But he and I worked together when I was on the NSC staff and he was at the Department of State as Assistant Secretary for Cultural Affairs in the early '70s.

We were working particularly on the China issue.  And, of course, in those days the Chinese were seized with a cultural revolution, with the promotion of Chairman Mao's thought and all the ideology associated with the revolution.

One of the great ironies that I hope will make this comment relevant is now the Chinese whine and complain about us and how we are running ideological politics.  And our ideology, of course, is democracy and markets.  And they are squirming that we are promoting our values.  This is only one of the many ironies in the way the world has changed.

Another thing, not an irony but a blessing, is that the world that George Orwell envisioned in the '30s when he wrote 1984 has been “turned on its head” by a range of developments that make the promotion of democracy something that has taken off, irrespective of things that we may be doing, and makes the focus of this effort so promising.

In that regard, I should also acknowledge that in the audience is one of my board members with whom I have had the privilege to work with: Ambassador Max Kampelman, who played a seminal role pressing for the honoring of human rights standards in the Soviet Union.  We really were working with an administration that was pushing along changes in the Soviet Union that I think none of us thought would really come to pass.

We are living in a time when people are being empowered in dramatic ways relative to state systems whose power is relatively shrinking.  It is a combination of major changes that have been long in coming: rising standards of living, and rising standards of education, elites being educated.

It is a reflection of the impact of global communications, the information revolution which is making the world transparent.  Cheap air transport which enables activists to travel around the world relatively cheaply as well as to communicate by the Internet at virtually no cost.  It is also in interesting ways diffusion of wealth.  Many elites have been able to be educated in this country and elsewhere abroad.

Governments are no longer the prime movers in international affairs.  As an example, George Soros' personal wealth is greater than the GNPs of 43 countries in the world.  And we know that George Soros through his Open Society Institute has played a major role in promoting change to democratization in the former Soviet states and eastern Europe.

In short, we are in a time where, as we put it in terms of a project we run at the Institute called a virtual diplomacy, diplomacy as a process is being diffused away from governments.  NGOs whether in Seattle or elsewhere around the world are playing a major role.  So that eternal tension between state and society is seeing a transformation in, if you like, the balance of power, the balance of initiative.  And it has set in motion processes where efforts either in the private sector or in the government to promote democracy are having a much more powerful and a positive effect.

But what are the threats?  We all know that the “good guys do not always win”.  We know that there are bad guys.  And that on one extreme you can have the likes of Saddam Hussein and Milosevic. The “bad guys” control the means of coercion and will try, as Mort Halperin indicated, to snatch away the results of an election. Myanmar Burma is a case in point.  Further along the spectrum you get a Lee Kuan Yew or Suharto or others who are less brutal but none the less constrain/strangle the democratic processes.  How do democrats, people who want to advance the cause of democracy, deal with these people?  I will come back to it in a moment.

Another major factor is the corrupting power of all that money which in other ways is diffusing wealth and power into the private sector.  We know the corrupting effects on democracy of economic corruption.  And again, as we try to advance the democratic process, how do we get that issue under control, an issue that I hardly need to emphasize because it is still very much alive in our politics in terms of election campaign reform.

So how does one cut into this analysis in terms of efforts to promote democracy?  I see a real tension between things that can be done not only by the private sector but by external forces as opposed to internal forces.  As a general rule I assume you are not going to get very far in promoting either human rights or democracy unless within a society there is some organized effort, even if it is pretty rudimentary, to promote the values, to promote the organizational action that will, in fact, empower people in a structured, organized way.

How much those forces can be seeded and strengthened from the outside is a very interesting question.  As Mort Halperin has noted, the classic, traditional rule of state sovereignty is now eroding fast even though people continue to give lip service to notions of non-interference in internal affairs.  In fact, this is increasingly lip service because the way this world has changed.

Let us just focus on the Internet which is setting in motion—has set in motion—processes that states are finding increasingly difficult to control.  One of the things that we can certainly do to advance the cause of democracy is to do all that we can to strengthen mass media globally.  And the American Revolution, as we think of that phrase in terms of our history, probably would be in today's terms better thought of in terms of the revolutionary impact of our technological innovations, the Internet perhaps foremost among them.

What we can do is to make sure that the world is ever more transparent so that corruptions of democracy are brought to global attention, so that the democrats within a society do not feel isolated and that their problems are brought to global attention, enabling outside forces to, in fact, strengthen them.

But there is another area and this brings me to my final point: something we are thinking increasingly about at the Institute of Peace is this notion that peacemaking is a process.  How can we give democratic activists the political skills by which they can challenge those in positions of power who would undermine democracy?

And in that context, among the skills that we seek to develop through our training program are negotiating and mediating skills, techniques of preventive intervention in conflict situations; we are now looking at issues of research and training on matters of non-violent political action.

The Philippines are a good case in point. A remarkable set of developments took place there in the mid-1980s. The Filipinos, clearly influenced by their exposure to American politics through their former colonial relationship with us, reflected to some degree their own political culture and organized themselves to oppose the Marcos dictatorship.  People power, as we saw in the 1985/86 period, reinforced by the actions of the U.S. government, did bring the dictatorship down. 

In Indonesia, Suharto was brought down in no small measure because the students in this archipelagic country, spread out over at least four or five major islands, were able to coordinate their actions through the Internet.

We are in a time when people power can be further reinforced both by government action and just by the workings of both the technologies and the efforts of the private sector whether it is through business, the work of NGOs or the work of the international media.

The question is whether we can come up with integrated strategies, a part of which might be training activists in ways of organizing the people, who are much more readily mobilized in the information age to confront those with power in a way that then can be reinforced by multilateral efforts from abroad.

Well, those are some thoughts and I am sure we will spin them out as we elaborate on this discussion.  Thank you.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  Thank you, Dick. 

I wanted to begin with just a word about the World Forum on Democracy, which is the non-governmental counterpart to what Mort Halperin described that governments are going to do.  There is a handout on the table outside for those of you who do not know much about the World Forum on Democracy.  Freedom House also has at its website a regularly updated description of the agenda, the purposes and projected at the World Forum on Democracy.

The concept of the World Forum on Democracy is quite simple.  It is to gather the non-governmental democrats of the world together.  This has at least one significant advantage over the Department’s operation, and that is that we can have people from every country in the world, not only functioning democracies.  We can have Chinese dissidents and freedom fighters from Cuba, et cetera.  We can and will have in Warsaw people from all regions and all types of countries.

We will interface with the governmental meeting.  Part of our effort is, of course, to keep informed about what is taking place at the conference of the Community of Democracies.  But also, it is an effort to convey on behalf of people, who may be even more passionate about this subject, our views in our effort to keep them focused and to push them further.

We will have our own working groups and our own continuity, assuming that our meetings go well in Warsaw.  We have in mind four working groups: one on globalization and democratic change; a second on strengthening new, fragile and poor democracies; a third on international cooperation among the democracies; and a fourth, promoting the rule of law and democratic values in closed and divided societies.

So we will in some ways parallel what the government's working groups will do and in some ways be somewhat different.

As Dick mentioned, NGOs are playing an increasingly important role in the world in virtually every area and we think that the World Forum on Democracy can build on a National Endowment for Democracy sponsored democracy conference in New Delhi a little over a year ago.  The World Forum will strive to create a strong network of democratic organizations worldwide and to push for more resources for democracy promotion.

When I came back from working in Berlin in 1996, where I was active as a venture capitalist, I reflected on the speech that President Ronald Reagan gave at Westminster, in London, in 1982.  I asked myself, what is really missing in the post-Cold War world?  What  occurred to me was that at the beginning of the cold war in the 1940’s we thought through the need for new institutions and for new ways of operating.  And both on the governmental side and the non-governmental side we radically changed the way we operated.

Virtually the entire political and economic structure that has dominated the world for about 50 years was set in the aftermath of World War II.  Political, economic and security structures were created to play the game and hopefully win the game, which  we ultimately did.  We put together a football team with a set of tactics and we went out and played hard and well.  In my judgment we have not responded to challenges of the new era, the post-Cold War.  We have not looked for fresh structures nor established new ones.  I think that what Mort Halperin described is one of those new institutions.  Hopefully it will become an organization not the way the U.N. is but a movement, a network of force, a way of cooperating.  And I think the World Forum on Democracy, the NGO counterpart, also is one of those things.

But in my judgment we are just scratching the surface.  I think, for example, we have not yet sufficiently internalized that we are now a critical mass in the world.  Mort Halperin mentioned that it is wonderful and, you know, those of us who used to have to deal with the Non-Aligned Movement almost have to be amazed that they are taking the democratic cause seriously now.

It is a telling fact that now over half of the nations of the world are, in some form or another, defining themselves as democracies.  We have the possibility, as democracies, of joining with all of the world's peoples—with the Chinese people, the Saudi Arabian women, the women of Afghanistan, and others who do not yet control their own destinies.  We have the possibility for radical action, for doing things that would have been really inconceivable almost a few years ago.

What I basically want to say is that I think that with a new American administration and a new political crowd in Washington and more importantly, with all these new democracies around the world, we need to do what Henry Kissinger would have called "a conceptual breakthrough."

We need to establish a new basis.  We need to re-think in my judgment from root and branch what diplomacy is.  Diplomacy has come about over thousands of years with a notion of one leader dealing with another leader and then via his representatives.  It had very little to do with nations in the larger sense of nations of people relating to people.  I think we have a new opportunity to do that.  We have a new opportunity to create a whole new set of practices.  I am hoping that in Washington over the next 24 months that we will make an effort in that direction 

Let me say a little bit about what I think ought to come out of such an effort or at least be considered in such an effort. I was very excited that people in this country and some non-Americans cared enough about the WTO to demonstrate in Seattle.  And I also was very pleased that when the IMF and the World Bank had its meetings that people cared enough to go out and demonstrate.

I was a Freedom rider in the South in the 60’s and participated in the civil rights marches.  I also demonstrated as an ambassador and marched in the streets of Budapest.  I believe that peaceful demonstrations can be  a good thing.  But I think that the people who demonstrated regarding the WTO, IMF and the World Bank had the wrong approach.  What is necessary, in my judgment, in the less developed countries is not just debt forgiveness.  It is essential to recognize that bad governance is the basic core problem.  And until you get democratic governments with good governance you are not going to have economies which are going to put their own money to work in these countries.  Debt forgiveness will not, by itself, lead to development.  It will not get rid of poverty.

What specifically do I think we should do?  I think that we should have five-year political plans for these non-democratic governments.  We have always thought about economic plans and development plans in the economic sense.  We should strive to impose a discipline on all of these non-democratic governments and say, "Look, here is a five-year plan.  You should join us in developing what that plan is."  A goal of the plan should be regular elections, free-trade unions, regular business practices, rule of law, et cetera.  We need to have specific plans for every country in the world that is not democratic.  In my judgment we need to have a 25-year goal.

When Ronald Reagan gave his Westminster democracy speech in 1982 it was attacked by the New York Times as a cold war statement.  The speech critics lacked vision.  In fact, when he gave the speech the only person who liked it was British Prime Minister Thatcher.

Foreign policy is in many ways the most intellectually vapid part of all intellectual thought.  There is so much conventional wisdom in the foreign policy arena that it is really outrageous.  Diplomats and career diplomats are particularly guilty of this.  But academics are not necessarily all that much better, either.

So I do not think we should be timid.  We should say that in one generation, in 25 years, the world could be 100 percent democratic.  And we ought to say that that is our objective.  People are scared of saying this.  Why are they scared?  Because a few people around the world like Milosevic, like Jiang Zemin in China, Saddam, a few others in the Middle East object?.  We should not be guided by what these people think or say.  We should not be unwilling to say, " These bums have got to be kicked out just like our bums get kicked out every four years." 

I was pleased to hear the views expressed at a meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace by two former U.S. ambassadors to China: Win Lord and Stapleton Roy. Both said they thought that we could be very surprised in China in the next couple of years.  We could see a sudden breakthrough to democracy there.

I spent some time recently with the Falon Gong who brought out 900 demonstrators in Geneva for the U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting.  But what is much more fundamental about the Falon Gong is that they are going to Tiennamen Square every day now and getting arrested.  These are middle-class Chinese, people who lose everything when they do this.  Many of them have lost their lives, yet the others keep going every day. 

This is what Gandhi did in India.  This is peaceful non-violent resistance at its absolute best.  And there are 70 million members of Falon Gong.  They are organized in 130 American cities.  This is a phenomenal movement, and they could bring about sudden change in China that will surprise people as much as what happened in the Soviet Union surprised most people.  We should predict that it is going to happen and make it happen.  We should join with people like the Falon Gong.

And how can we join with them?  I think that if every embassy from a democratic nation in China sent out diplomats to Tiennamen Square in Beijing with a sense of purpose and demonstrated by doing the exercises every day for the next year it would have a profound effect.  It would be good for them.  That is the kind of thing that I think we need to think about.  We need to figure out how do we identify with the people of non-democracies.  What are the tools?

When I was a student I was an activist.  The first time I went to the Soviet Union I took 500 “Freedom Now” buttons and I handed them out all over the Soviet Union.  I think our diplomats—and by "our" again, I do not mean just American diplomats.  I mean diplomats from Mali, diplomats from Chile, diplomats from South Korea, diplomats from the Philippines, diplomats from all the democracies in the world ought to go to every meeting they have whether it is in Saudi Arabia or Burma or Cuba or China and they ought to have a button on that says “Freedom Now” or “Democracy Now.”  And they should not be ashamed of that.  They should say, “This is our flag.  This is what we are about.  This is our central goal, to bring about a peaceful world, a developed world.  We must have universal democracy and we are going to plant our flag.”

I think that ambassadors when they go to countries should not first present their credentials to the dictatorship if they are assigned to a dictatorship.  They should find a symbolic way of presenting their credentials, at least their symbolic credentials, to the people of that country.  They ought to go and meet in a public place with the democrats.  If they cannot do that at least go to a place which is identified with democracy and say, “My job here is to help the people of this country.  And my goal is to help them get the vote, to get women to have equality, their rights.  This is my job.”  Now, if you only had American ambassadors you would have a problem.

I think another area that we need to think through a lot more is training.  I was very excited when I was in Budapest as ambassador because CIPE, the AFL-CIO, NDI and IRI came and engaged in training programs.  Such training was an important contribution to democracy.  But as we all know, the resources for such activity in this country are always under fire and uncertain.  We need to create a stronger political underpinning for those efforts because they are, from a security and national interest point of view, the most important things we can do for the future.  We should support National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman’s efforts to create more NEDs and more Freedom Houses around the world.

Every democratic nation, as the Germans first showed to all of us, should develop democracy support programs  This should be an objective.  We need more resources so that the democrats are not always on the defensive because they do not have sufficient funds;  they must be given the tools.

Questions re the Warsaw Conference:

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  I agree that we need to be creative about new institutions and new ways of doing things and try to orient people in different directions.   The Warsaw conference is a joint endeavor of a convening group of seven countries including: Mali, Chile, India, the Republic of Korea, the Czech Republic as well as Poland and the United States.  And the convening group has planned jointly this conference in Warsaw and invited the other countries to participate.

We have created in many capitals around the world a working group of these seven ambassadors who have gone to the foreign ministries of these countries and invited them into this enterprise.  And I think part of the effort is to get countries around the world to think of themselves not only as part of a regional grouping and not only as part of these acronistic organizations, the NAM, the G-77 and others, but as part of a community of democracies and to think of their role in the world as a reflection of their domestic values and shared democratic values.  I would very much like to see a world in which there are no non-democratic countries.  I also think that it is important that we make sure that there are not fewer democratic countries in the future than there are now.  Dick said that peace was a process.  We very much view democracy as a process, as a path traveled and not a destination.

And I think that we need to recognize that every country on that path no matter how long they have been on it still have a ways to go.  There are things that need to be improved and there are threats that arise to the continuation and preservation of the democratic process.

As we look towards expanding the number of democratic countries it is important that we work hard in enriching the democratic process in each of the existing democratic countries and work to persuade those within those societies or outside who would try to turn away from the democratic process that that is not a productive path to take.

QUESTION (Walt Raymond, CCD):  What happens after Warsaw depends very much on what happens in Warsaw, but in your own mind you probably have some ideas of whether you would like to see some new political architecture emerging which would help network the leading democracies.  And if you do, do you feel there will be a need for some kind of a steering committee, some kind of a body that could make the process move forward rather than just having a Tower of Babel?

HALPERIN:  I think I would rather have democracy than a Tower of Babel.  I think that is something that is going to have to emerge out of the conference.  One of the things that we would like to see happen would be an increasing number of countries beginning to identify themselves as democratic countries.

We saw this a few weeks ago in Geneva when the U.N. Human Rights Commission adopted for the second year in a row a resolution on democracy.  This time it was a resolution which came out of the Conference of New and Restored Democracies that Romania had chaired last year.  Out of that came the notion that there ought to be a resolution laying out what some have called the “code of conduct for democracy.”

That resolution was adopted by an overwhelming vote of the Human Rights Commission after country after country recognized that the resolution reflected their own values.  One of the things I think we ought to talk about in Warsaw is whether we now should take that resolution to the General Assembly for adoption by the General Assembly.  And if that is done I think it will be the occasion for the democratic countries in the U.N.—which is a large majority of the countries in the U.N.—to come together to work for that resolution.

There are other multilateral institutions and regional institutions in which we hope countries will see themselves as part of a community of democracies and work to share those values.  We also think that countries will learn that they have common problems and share solutions to those problems and that they will find ways to talk to each other.

I think the only thing that the United States has ruled out is the creation of a formal international institution.  The United Nations is that institution.  That is why all of the members of the convening group thought it was very important that the Secretary General of the U.N. be invited to Warsaw.  He is coming, he is speaking.  He has spoken out, as you know, about the importance of the U.N. functioning as a democratic organization.

So we view that as the democratic organization and we hope to work with the other members to strengthen the U.N.’s rule in advancing democracy.

QUESTION (Charles Kupchan, Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations.)  My question follows very much from Walt Raymond’s and is directed primarily toward Ambassador Palmer.  I agree very much with what you said about the need for more innovation and creativity in diplomatic affairs and across the board in part because I agree with you that there has been a shortfall on that front, particularly given the opportunities at hand that come with American power in the end of the Cold War.

In your call to arms you mainly focused on what we need to do for countries that are not yet democratic.  Do you think that a similar call to arms needs to be made to those countries that are already democratic?  The task of keeping those democracies together and preventing the return of authoritarian or non-democratic politics may be as important, if not more important, than bringing democracy to non-democracies.

And if the answer is yes, and I see you nodding your head, are you satisfied with Mort Halperin’s answer which was sort of, "Well, we'll let the U.N. take care of that" or do we perhaps need to think of something a little more bold?

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  I agree with both of you that preventing backsliding and, equally important, helping countries move further along the process is vital.  I note parenthetically that Senator McCain has said that democracy in some respects in this country needs development particularly concerning the funding of elections.  The furtherance of the democratic process is vital in places like Ukraine where it is very new or Indonesia where it is relatively new or fragile Nigeria.  These are places that deserve top priority in helping them move along and in preventing backsliding with whatever means we have available.

One thing I personally stress so much is being positive.  Faced with the non-democracies, the ones that have not made even an initial breakthrough, people tend to throw up their hands and say, "Oh my God, what are you talking about?  Forget it.  It's just a complete impossibility to do anything in places like that."  And I do not think that is right.  I spent most of my foreign service career serving in communist countries and there were things you could do.  And we could have done much more had we been a little bit brighter maybe and a little bit bolder.

As an example of change, President Wahid is coming to Warsaw.  Here is a Muslim leader in the largest Muslim country in the world, the fourth largest country in the world, and he is aligned with the students of Indonesia.  He has created and furthered the democratic revolution.  Interestingly, a majority of the world's Muslims now live in democracies if you include the Muslims in India and Muslims in the United States and in many countries around the world.

So this argument that somehow the Middle East and Islam is somehow anti-democratic is complete rubbish.  I would say that the hard-core cases—the Saudi Arabias and Afghanistans of this world, Pakistan now recently—deserve as much attention as those countries that are fragile and have made some breakthrough but where there may be some backsliding.

MR. HALPERIN:  I think one can debate the question of whether creating a new institution or working to have existing institutions more effectively promote a democratic agenda is the best way to go.  I do not think one is bolder than the other.  In my view, we have enough institutions.  What we need to do is to get them to recognize that they are dominated by democratic countries and should not be ashamed to reflect democratic values.

QUESTION (Martin Walker, Woodrow Wilson Center): I feel like I'm criticizing Santa Claus if I raise my voice in question against some of the cozy democratic assumptions that we have been making here.  But I would like to ask a couple of rather pointed questions upon where I think would be the practical implications of what we are doing.

The first one is, as we have known since the German people elected Hitler to power quite constitutionally in 1933, democracy by itself is not solely a guaranty of good, benign government.  And we do have cases in the world at the moment, and I am thinking particularly of Russia and some of the drug-ridden countries of Latin America, where democracy takes place within a formalized context.  But the reality of power is based upon money and usually money in terms of ill-gotten gains.  And to what extent are we focusing on democracy and focusing on the wrong problem?

The second question I would like to put to you concerns sovereignty.  We are now in a post-Kosovo world where a precedent has been established that a sovereign state can have its integrity interfered with.  It can be militarily attacked if it seems to be in gross violation of human rights.  That is a fundamental change in some of the basic principles of international behavior.  Would any of you propose that we should go ahead with that precedent in order to install democracy?

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  There are a couple of thoughts that come to mind.  Democracy is necessary but not sufficient.  And as you correctly point out, there really are dramatic changes in the notions of the right of interference by one means or another.

I was just at a recent meeting in Singapore—as we all know, a country where open politics is not very strong—and was shocked to hear representatives of a number of ASEAN countries say that they are now rethinking the ASEAN way of building consensus and specifically not criticizing internal affairs of the participating countries.  With the addition of Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Vietnam, the core ASEAN original six countries now are particularly stimulated by what happened in Malaysia and are prepared to speak out in a critical way to try to maintain fundamental practices that we would call democratic.  Again, that is, a major change.

Now, what is the right vehicle for intervention?  I think one of the points that Mort Halperin made is worth stressing.  And that is, for one country—the United States or any other—to be the vehicle of the intervention is not nearly as effective and sustainable over the longer run as creating international institutions or changing the rules of the game, whether through the U.N. or regional organizations, so that intervention in support of practices that clearly have an effect beyond the borders of any one country are managed in a way that supports the good of all.  And that will be an on-going process but I think one that is, again, the tenor of our times.

MR. HALPERIN:  Well, let me respond to both.  But first on the question of whether we are focusing on the wrong problem.  I think if you look at the declaration that is being prepared for the Warsaw conference it is clear that the convening countries understand that one election, even one free and fair election, does not make a democracy.  First of all, as is explicitly stated, one needs to have a commitment to periodic free and fair elections and elections which, in fact, bring to power a group that runs the country.  And democracy is more than that.  Democracy is civil society.  It is free media.  It is an independent judiciary with respect for minority rights.

And we also understand as will be discussed in Warsaw that democracy carries with it an implication of economic equality or at least movements towards economic equality and economic prosperity.  And I think one of the problems that we are acutely aware of is that democracy has not yet met the expectations of all people, whether in central Europe or in Latin America, that it would lead to the kind of economic justice and equality that many people would like to see.  And I think that is one of the issues we have to wrestle with.

But we start by stating that democracy does not guarantee that you will solve the problems.  But it is impossible in this world to believe that these problems will be effectively solved without democratic institutions, without the transparency, the accountability which comes from the democratic process.  So we do not think we are focusing on the wrong problem.  We think we are focusing on an essential part of the solution.  But, in fact, by having democratic countries coming together to help each other we are all saying to each other that we know it is not enough just to have a free election.

We know it is not enough even to have periodic free elections.  We understand problems of corruption and problems of income distribution are problems that all democratic societies need to deal with if they are going to survive and meet their full expectations.

I do not believe and I think the United States government does not believe you can impose democracy by the use of force.  Secretary Albright often says that by definition you cannot impose democracy on people.  You cannot make them be free.  And we can, of course, work to help people in societies struggling for democracy.  We are doing that now in Serbia and in many other countries and many other places around the world.

But I think that there is a difference.  I think that if you look at the procedures of organizations there is a difference between a country that has chosen democracy, that has had a free election, has installed a free government and then has that overthrown by violence and countries that have not yet chosen that path.

I think if you look at reactions and responses of regional organizations and multilateral organizations they have responded in a different way when there is a threat when people have chosen democracy and then have had that take away from them by legal means.  And I think the international community is developing a consensus on an obligation to help people whose democracy is being threatened by violent and illegal means.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  On corruption I might just add that Peter Eiken, head of Transparency International, has developed an excellent anti-corruption fighting organization in the world and is very much involved in the Warsaw process.  He also was in New Delhi at the democracy conference and I know that Eiken and his organization believe that the only way to fight corruption is through democracy, that there is no other way, that all dictatorships are corrupt, financially and morally.

MR. HALPERIN:  Let me just add one quick comment.  When I was at the Singapore conference I was shocked, and I should not have been, when one very smart guy asked, "Isn't democracy the same as good governance?"  And I was bold enough to say, "Hey no, you've got it wrong."  That is, democracy assumes that the opportunities for corruption are always there and democracy is a way of disciplining power.  And in a sense, the people who I know who are democratic activists are really optimistic types.

QUESTION to Amb. Palmer:  Some of us who are involved in this whole discussion are intrigued by the fact that through own experience democratic activists, human rights activists, labor rights activists have often regarded the business community as a place which was at best cold-blooded and often predatory and willing to align itself with opponents of democracy.  And the business community conversely regarded many of us as people who were naive; trouble makers indifferent to the importance of economic development, modernization and all of that for democracy.

There were just, to go back to an old phrase, "two world views."  Is there in your view today a possibility of greater convergence as the global economy begins to rely more and more on rule of law, freedom of information transparency, the development of human capital?  Are we finding ourselves closer to a situation where there could be greater cooperation and, in fact, where consideration for democracy could find its way more and more into the international financial institutions, the international financial community?

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  I would like to hear John Sullivan (CIPE) give an answer.  But what bothers business people like me is the thought that we are not going to be able to do business.  So if human rights organizations were willing to come over to a view, which as a human rights person I happen to agree with, that the reason Castro is still in power in Cuba is because of what I would think of as the idiocy of American policy.  I think Castro would not have survived for more than 40 years in Cuba if we opened the place up and aired it out.  If all the successful, middle-class Cuban Americans of Miami were going over there every weekend he would have long ago been history.  The best way to get rid of dictators is to open the place up to intellectual exchange, the information age, the Internet, business.  Get in there.

And I think there is the potential for a new alliance between the business community and the human rights community.

JOHN SULLIVAN:  (Center for International Private Enterprise, one of the core institutes in the National Endowment for Democracy) : Our board of directors at the Chamber of Commerce made a commitment not yesterday but 17 years ago that this is a fundamentally-important objective.  The other thing that we did was we first started polling our membership, business people, multi-nationals but also small companies as well as people like Mark Palmer who are invested around the world.

I'll never forget, we had one meeting the Association of American Chambers in Latin America.  The very first thing they wanted to discuss was the fact that business communities are made up of very diverse elements, not all of which are pro-democratic and many times they are a major part of the problem.  We are all familiar with “crony capitalists,” but that does not mean that business as a whole takes on those characteristics.  In fact, business is  a reflection of the institutional structure in the society in which it functions.

It is somewhat like Gresham's law in that bad money drives out good.  If you have a situation where all of the incentives and the rewards are handed out by pocket dictators to their cronies it is very difficult for anybody to compete with them.  So when one surveys the business landscape you will likely find that type of individual in non-democratic countries with weak democratic institutions.  If you look further down into the lower strata, you see small businesses and in this vast informal sector you are likely to find grass roots entrepreneurs.  That is not a market economy in the fullest sense of the word, but it is something that is possible in non-democratic states.  In fact, just two weeks ago we held a meeting in Jakarta with the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, which is a regional center based in Manila, as well as with the Jakarta Post.  Representatives from several major business associations also attended that meeting.

The meeting focused on freedom of economic information and specifically freedom of information acts.  Thailand has now adopted an FOIA law.  The consensus from the meeting was that were there was a lack of transparency, a lack of fairness, and a lack of the rule of law.  These shortcomings had not only pretty much destroyed the Indonesian economy but had really made a mockery out of any of the investments that had been made there.  There was a firm commitment that we cannot keep doing this.  This has got to change.  If it does not, really fundamental problems will continue to repeat themselves over and over.

AMBASSADOR JESZENSKY  (Hungary): There are quite a few people in this room for whom it was a life-and death issue to overthrow a dictatorship. As a 15-year-old boy I faced the Russian guns in 1956.  I saw that there was a clear case of people politically united for change but it was impossible to maintain our liberty.  Then we saw Czechoslovakia (1968) under different conditions.  I think that we have to discuss two issues: The first is how to conspire for studying democracy.  And this is a major aim of this conference.  The second is the threats to democracy.  My question and perhaps the basis for some discussion and comment is that many people advocate that it must be the local people who must really make the changes.

But how can the people change the actual leadership, how can they be loosened up?  How can we make them more mellow?  We have to open up these countries and this leadership.  And I would certainly support this on my personal experience because I think the biggest, most successful strength of the West in winning the Cold War was prosperity: the example of prosperity.

My question: In your opinion, where should we put the emphasis: On opening up the minds of people under dictatorship or semi-dictatorship or opening the minds of the leaders?  Obviously both should be attempted.  What is more important?  The role for diplomacy, the role for governments including the United Nations or somehow inciting the people?  It is a difficult question but this is the issue that we are facing.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  I think with existing dictators it is useful to work from both the carrot and the stick direction.  When Peter Grosz was the last communist leader of Hungary, it was very important for him toward the end to believe that he might be able to get out of there alive, unlike Ceausescu in Romania.  And I think in looking at leaders in dictatorship in other countries we should talk about Gorbachev's experience and talk about avenues.  Maybe we should create some kind of "Institution Geneva" or something where they all could live.

I have heard that the Spanish government years ago offered Castro a villa in Spain which struck me as a particularly good idea.  So I think this is part of the intellectual lure which seems to me somewhat underdeveloped.

QUESTION (Gil Robinson, Center for the Study of the Presidency):  We have undertaken a report to the president-elect, whoever he will be, and we are doing it on factual basis of case studies.  We have some of the leading scholars in the country working with us, presidential scholars.  And it occurred to me hearing this discussion that maybe something parallel where we do case studies on democracy and then put them out on the Internet.  Of course, the question arises; A) is this a good idea; and B) who should do it?  I throw that out to the panel.

MR. SOLOMON:  Well, we are already cutting into that issue in some of our work.  We have done a very interesting case study on the use of the Internet to organize the Burmese opposition.  That is a particular cut of the problem.  We are pursuing this project on non-violent political action and doing case studies so that there is as documentary record on what works and what does not work.  I would also like to mention the Institute's study of what has worked in U.S. human rights.  Well, there again, when I was Assistant Secretary of State I had the opportunity to negotiate the Cambodia peace agreement in which is perhaps the one instance in which all five permanent members of the security counsel actually cooperated.  They all wanted to get out of it.

But we had a big problem.  And the big problem was a standard issue when you are trying to get the bad guys out of power.  It is the problem that Mark alluded to.  Of course, everybody in Congress said, “We don't want to touch these guys.  They’re genocidal maniacs.  How could you conceivably construct a U.N. peace process that somehow deals with them?”

And my answer was: Are you prepared to cut them out of the process and send in American troops so that we get them under control.  Or would you rather have a process that the international community supervises that exposes them to political pressures and exposes their lack of public support?

And the debate was very vigorous and basically was concluded when the permanent five members of the Security Council came to a consensus that there was a peace process that would bring the genocidal maniacs into this political process and it fortunately worked out the way we expected which was, when exposed to open politics the leaders fell upon themselves, killed themselves and the movement collapsed.  That kind of a case study, again, is worth documenting and trying to replicate where we deal with similar problems.

So yes, I think we should be doing these kinds of analytical studies but then looking for ways to apply the lessons in a practical sense because the wheel will keep turning.  There will be successes and then there will be retrograde examples and the process of trying to sustain democratic politics and respect for human rights is an on-going task.  I won't say it's eternal.  Maybe genetics will in some thousands of years produce a different kind of people.  But I do not see it any time soon.

QUESTION:  Some western specialists in Russia say that a major lesson from Russian experience over the last ten years is that all good things do not proceed forward toward open markets and democracy.  At some point Russia will get to choose between some kind of centralist authoritarian regime and an open economy and democracy.  And the West should be ready for such a choice.  What would you choose in such a situation?  Thank you.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  Well, as somebody who has done and does do business in Russia, I feel that you must persevere with both, that is both the democratic political system and a market economy.  And you are not going to get all of the many problems that Russia has solved unless you have both.  But you cannot do one or the other; that autocracy has been tried in Russia for 400 years or more and it does not work.

You know, Peter the Great did certain things that were good.  But overall Russia is where it is because it has not had, in my humble judgment, good governance.  And now I think you have an opportunity for that.  You have a lot of very bright young people who understand that you have to do both of these things.

As an American doing business in Russia, things will only work if Russia observes licenses so that if people invest in a certain infrastructure, they know the contracts will be honored.  In a dictatorship you do not have a hope.  So I would say that Russia has only one possibility.  And it seems that President Putin, at least in his very brief inaugural address—one must admire him, it must be the briefest inaugural address ever given by a political leader—seemed to give very high stress to this.

MR. HALPERIN (In response to a question):  I am not aware of anybody successfully making the argument that we should tolerate a fixed election or support somebody because they were more favorable to the United States even if they were not the ones who were going to win a free election.

I think the American government has reached a point of saying that in societies which are conducting democratic process we support free and fair elections whatever the outcome.  We are talking about a society in which the candidates all support the continuation of the democratic process.  I think you would have a much harder case if you thought somebody was going to win an election and terminate the process.  But I do not know of any situation where it happened and I do not think it would happen.

In response to an earlier question about U.S. support for a country when a military coup has taken place, there is on the books a law, one of the few laws of the Congress which has no loop holes, no presidential findings, no way around them.  And that law says that if a military displaces a democratically-elected civilian government all U.S. assistance terminates, period, full stop.  And I think that is the view and will remain the view of the American government and that sends a very important message to militaries around the world.

AMBASSADOR PALMER:  Also responding to an earlier question about recognition of non-democratic states, we have to make some very tough calls regarding countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.  These countries are basically accepted by the United States as the alternative may be an extreme Islamic dictatorship.  This was the basis in Algeria for not honoring the elections in Algeria.

QUESTION.  There is one problem I think in the United States about support for democracy.  A lot of people up on the Hill and even people in the Administration talk about support for democracy, but when it comes to appropriating the resources Congress, in fact, cuts back on those resources.

The very people who are complaining about China and saying how terrible the dictatorship is are the people who are in the leadership who want to cut back those resources.  We have cut our foreign affairs resources in the last dozen years by 40 percent.  We have gone from 4 percent in the 1960s of the federal budget for foreign affairs to 1 percent.  And we are cutting back in several different ways, including cutting support to endangered countries; reducing funding for the United Nations and for institutions like UNDP and UNICEF.  And one wonders what is happening to all those groups that are in this room here and everyone who is around who appears willing to accept that and not go up and say that you cannot have it both ways.

The same thing with Administration.  The Administration—and I will say this for larger political reasons, and I am speaking personally—agreed to something called a balanced budget agreement with the Republicans.  And that agreement forces the reduction of discretionary funding across the board. So even the Administration does not ask for sufficient money.

Funds for these foreign affairs programs are very small in comparison to other budget items.  Congress will vote for a military budget but they will not vote for democracy.  How democratic can we be and what can we do when America speaks with an ambiguous voice and fails to find basic cuts to help strengthen democracy.  We are telling other countries to have democracy, but we have to realize we have to pay a price.  We did it during the Cold War and we supported in that time a lot of terrible dictatorships but now we are not willing to support the democrats in a new and different world.

MR. HALPERIN:  It is a speech that the Secretary of State makes every time she speaks and it is one that we agree with.

QUESTION (Jim Crusal):  I have just returned to the U.S. after being Director General of the International Organization for Migration.  I want to get back to the point of poverty.  While in Geneva I had a chance to participate in the global conferences dealing with human rights and environment and sustainable development.  And we always split, the rich guys and the poor guys or north to south, whatever you want to call it.  They call it  “development” but it could be called “poverty.”

But it does seem to me that over recent times two movements have come together, democratization and globalization.  And it seemed to me that there are new opportunities and governments all over the world that are going to want to participate.  But does that not provide a bit of a solution?  I would hope that those would come together at this conference.  It is clear that the question of the economic performance of democratic countries is a central issue that we all have to deal with.

VOICE:  I had a chance to talk to bankers at J.P. Morgan yesterday about investment in Latin America.  One of the striking things about Latin America is how little private equity has flowed into the region from major investors in the world.  And the reason that so little has flowed in is the track record.  The return of foreign private equity in Latin America over the last 20 years is very small.  And the reason is corruption.

So we ought to see this challenge of democracy and democratization and getting rid of poverty as allies, as the same challenge.  And getting these bums out, these corrupt dictators who have 18 Rolls Royces or whatever, that's the way to do it.

MR. BARBER:  ( Washington Times).  I have been to many countries, such as Nigeria, where attempts are made to introduce democracy into a system which is fundamentally non-democratic and based on power relations: whoever is in power from the village on up to the top is beyond questioning.  And I am just wondering, we live in a system—perhaps if we take it back to the Magna Carta—that took 800 years to develop.  How is it possible to take countries such as Nigeria or other newly independent states and just hand them our Constitution and say, “Copy this and act like this."

Whereas, the whole basis of democracy in this country is we are protected by a system of laws.  Those protections do not exist in places that you are talking about.  Can you introduce this from the top down?  Our democracy comes from the bottom up.

MR. SOLOMON:  The answer to that is in the history of the last 20 years.  As an example, Taiwan was ruled by a Leninist party.  Within the space of a few  years, they have transformed themselves into a democracy.  Same thing for South Korea, which had a well-established history of military rule.  So the argument that it will take generations breaks down.

We are clearly in a time where the international community is inclined to take that next step, which is why notions of sovereignty are being transformed so dramatically.  And institutionalizing these processes in a more overt, regularized way can be one of the exciting possibilities of this time in history.

There is evidence for many countries including Mali that it is corrupt dictators that stand in the way of people's desire for democracy.  And democracy is resisted from the top.  It is not imposed from the top.  If you have leaders that respect those values, we have seen throughout the world in different societies and different cultures that democracy is not a western invention that we are imposing on other people.  It is something that people everywhere want.