Thursday, February 16, 2017

Adrian A. Basora and Kenneth Yalowitz — Democracy Promotion Is Smart Security Policy


Two former US ambassadors advocate for "democracy promotion" abroad to enhance US national security.
Excluded from these efforts will be countries like Russia and Uzbekistan, where the effort would be futile and/or discredit democracy promotion by validating regime propaganda that equates these programs with aggressive intrusion into domestic affairs.
The National Interest
Democracy Promotion Is Smart Security Policy
Adrian A. Basora, formerly U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic and presently director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute Eurasia Program and Project on Democratic Transitions, and Kenneth Yalowitz, formerly U.S. ambassador to Belarus and Georgia, and presently director of the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

7 comments:

Penguin pop said...

AKA Robbing and pillaging third world countries for personal gain and promoting paid mass murder. I wish these people would just be honest about what their warped version of "democracy promotion" actually is.

Noah Way said...

"Democracy" is a code word for "capitalism". The purpose of democracy as such is maximum profit and the elimination / destruction of anything and everything that prevents that, especially social systems that benefit human beings. The list of democracies that have been overthrown by the US for profit and the number of dictators installed and/or supported by the US is long and clear evidence of this.

franco said...

Question for you all:

Given what you know about the US' foreign policy and behaviour in recent decades, do you think a degree of authoritarianism is necessary to exercise a nation's sovereignty (particularly economic)?

Under the current state of play the influence of money in democracy weakens the formation and representation of progressive policy.

How could democracy as we know it be shaped to reduce the power of foreign influences?

Tom Hickey said...

do you think a degree of authoritarianism is necessary to exercise a nation's sovereignty (particularly economic)?

The extremes of the range are totalitarianism and anarchism. There are a lot of points along the range.

Sovereignty is a political issue. The political issue is which point is optimal in the context of prevailing conditions where conditions are constantly changing and uncertainty looms large.

Thinking in financial terms it is risk/reward issue and thinking in economic terms it is a cost-benefit issue.

Thinking in political terms it is a tradeoff between freedom and security and order.

Thinking in moral terms it is a right-wrong issue.

These perspectives need to be integrated, but most people probably look at from one perspective.

lastgreek said...

You know, I can imagine Tom Hickey being in the same room with a Steve Bannon type discussing geopolitics. I'm not saying that they'd get along, but that it would be damn interesting and entertaining.

Ton Hickey and Trump?

Hmmmm... unless Tom brings down the discussion to the pussy-grabbing level, it would be no different than if Tom were talking to a wall. "You know what I am talking about, right? Because I am, like, a very smart person. Believe me -- it's in the genes." ;)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

Noah Way said...

Financial / economic terms are essentially the same: risk/reward equates to cost/benefit. Political terms have nothing to do with freedom, security and order and everything to do with personal advancement (bureaucracy). Moral terms cannot be defined as absolutes and vary among individuals.

What's missing are social terms, the basic and essential structure of our humanity - compassion and cooperation.

franco said...

Maybe it's the combination of those terms through a moral lens that brings out the social terms?

Then the issue becomes aligning morals on each term between individuals.