An Ambiguous Commitment to Democracy
“Supporting Democracy – Or Not”
By Anne Applebaum
The Washington Post
October 31, 2006

In an op/ed to The Washington Post, columnist Anne Applebaum delivers a scathing critique of the United States’ commitment to democracy promotion.  She sets her current assessment against the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprisings, in which the West did not intervene, and wonders what, “if anything, we in the West have learned since 1956.”  
           
In the years leading up to the Hungarian Revolution Applebaum says that the American government had been “encouraging Hungary and other Soviet satellite states to rebel;” however, when it came time to support the protesters she says “that the U.S. government did not consider the Hungarians ‘potential allies.’ The message was clear: The West would not intervene.”  This led to the deaths of hundreds of protesters who continued to fight, “believing help was on the way.” 
           
Applebaum then turns to the U.S. government’s present-day policy on human rights and democracy promotion.  She lists the president, Congress, the State Department and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations as supporters and even promoters of democracy, but challenges the government’s actual commitment to freedom everywhere in the world.  Applebaum paints the picture of a hypothetical pro-democracy uprising in Saudi Arabia and the deposing of the monarchy.  She believes that “the [U.S.] administration -- alarmed by the potential for a Middle Eastern war, worried about oil supplies, horrified by the unknown rebels -- would support the ousted royal family and call for maintaining the status quo, just as in 1956.”

Applebaum doesn’t believe in the strength of the U.S. verbal calls for democracy, particularly in regions where the U.S. has strategic interests.  She pities those groups who try to shake off oppression and “who take our democracy rhetoric too literally: Sometimes we really mean it – and sometimes we don’t.”