Washington Post - 11.18.2002

The Washington Post

Democracy Drowned Out

By Jackson Diehl

Last week the Bush administration participated in a major international conference on democracy, successfully pushing for the adoption of an "action plan" that commits 110 governments to preserve political freedom in their own countries and spread it to their neighbors. But you wouldn't know it. Outside of Seoul, where it was held, the Community of Democracies ministerial meeting received almost no attention. No major U.S. newspaper published an article about it. Most of the international press corps vanished with the last-minute decision by Secretary of State Colin Powell not to attend. The action plan couldn't compete with the drama in the U.N. Security Council about Iraq or the latest broadcast of Osama bin Laden.

The shutout was symptomatic of what is happening to the administration's much-advertised intention to make the spread of freedom central to its foreign policy. It's not fair to say that nothing is being done: The Bushies argue that there has been more effort, in more places, than in any recent administration. And yet the engagement pales beside the military campaign in Afghanistan, the preparations for war with Iraq or even the Predator strike in Yemen.

The democracy campaigners often seem like a lonely bunch. In Seoul they were led by Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, who for the past year has been tirelessly making the argument that terrorism may best be combated by bringing political liberty to the countries that breed extremists. Dobriansky inherited the Community of Democracies project from the Clinton administration, which, along with some of the leaders of Central Europe, conceived of it as an analogue to the Helsinki process of the 1970s. That detente-era diplomacy created the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and nurtured the democracy movements that eventually conquered Soviet communism. The idea now is to induce governments around the world to commit to a set of liberal principles and practices, then make them accountable -- while holding out club membership as an enticement to others.

For many in the Bush administration, the enterprise is a nonstarter, either because it bears the imprint of Madeleine Albright or because it smacks of fuzzy-headed multilateralism. But Dobriansky has doggedly sought to make it work. Before the Seoul meeting, the U.S. team pushed through one major correction to the process by rigorously weeding out the fake democracies that had been included in the past, including a few close U.S. allies. Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia were all denied membership, a sanction that won't change their regimes but at least departed from the winking tolerance of the past. Furious, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad refused offers to send observers; those who did get in, from Albania to Uruguay, had more reason to feel the invite was worth something.

The plan adopted at Seoul is aimed in part at building regional alliances of democracies that can reinforce one another and pressure their neighbors for change. An inter-American democracy pact helped stop a coup in Venezuela earlier this year, and the Seoul plan calls for regional groupings in Africa and Asia to adopt similar firewalls. Intriguingly, Qatar, home of al-Jazeera television and one of several Persian Gulf states creeping toward free elections, has offered to hold a community-affiliated conference in the Middle East next year. There are also plans to forge a democracy caucus in the U.N. General Assembly; if the 100-plus democracies ganged up, they could purge the U.N. Human Rights Commission of the rogues and despots who now hold seats and systematically block constructive action.

The problem with all this, apart from the lack of international attention, is that democracy promotion takes time. It was 14 years from the Helsinki conference to the Central European revolutions of 1989. Even with concerted effort, "This will pay off maybe in six or eight years," says one administration official. "This is an evolutionary process," agrees Dobriansky. "But as a vehicle this is very potent."

As potent as a Predator? No doubt -- but only if the Bush administration gives Dobriansky and her team more help.