The Globalisation Of Democracy

PALO ALTO: Among the least explored and most intriguing of globalization's many aspects is theglobalization of democracy. By this I mean the spread of electoral politics to more and more countries. But Ialso want to highlight what I take to be a rising desire for more democratic or consultative relations amongcountries, including especially the United States.

The two phenomena are not necessarily related. An autocratic government can advocate multipolarity in worldpolitics. China's rulers have been a case in point. Opponents of globalization who attack the InternationalMonetary Fund and the World Bank for being undemocratic do not always practice democracy inside their ownorganizations or in their dealings with others. I know this from personal experience as a journalist coveringthe "battle of Seattle" in 1999. Unelected activist leaders on that occasion successfully violatedthe democratic right of assembly of the delegates who had come to attend meetings of the World TradeOrganization.

The United States represents a different sort of disconnect between national and international democracy.For Americans committed to democracy at home, it hardly follows that American foreign policies should beapproved in advance by a majority of other countries. Nor have I noticed the American government abiding byinternational majorities when it comes to slowing global warming or prosecuting crimes against humanity.

"The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others," said U.S. PresidentGeorge W. Bush in his State of the Union message on 28 January 2003. As he spoke, globalizers and anti-globalistswere returning home from, respectively, the World Economic Forum in Davos and the World Social Forum in PortoAlegre - mirror-image meetings that annually frame the pros and cons of international democracy.

In the presently unipolar world, democracy among countries seems utopian. Yet the pressure against Americanunilateralism is real. Witness January's demonstrations, in Washington and other democratic capitals, againsta war in Iraq "made in USA." Those rallies did not merely pit the street against the state. With fewexceptions, democratic states, too, would rather give peace - and the UN inspectors - another chance.

Below the radar screens of most observers, the proliferation of electoral democracies around the world isbeginning to give shape to an ironic proposition: The spread of democracy within countries, itself an explicitgoal of U.S. foreign policy, could increasingly limit America's ability to act unilaterally in world affairs.

Never have there been more electoral democracies - 121 today, by Freedom House's latest count, up from 66in 1987. So far, this trend has been cause mainly for American celebration. Viewed from the United States,democratization has been easy to construe as imitation - the sincerest form of flattery. American politiciansroutinely project American democratic values as not just humane but human: what, deep in their hearts,everyone thinks and wants or, at any rate, would if they knew what was best.

Whatever the accuracy of this presumption, it is at least less fantastic than the idea that being ademocracy should necessarily imply sympathy for American foreign policy - what Washington does as opposed towhat Americans may believe.

It is no coincidence that recently elected governments in Turkey and South Korea should have resistedabetting American attacks, respectively, on Iraq and North Korea. Living adjacent to the latter members of the"axis of evil" makes Turks and South Koreans uniquely vulnerable to the consequences of Americanbelligerence. Their electoral democracies assure that public fears based on this vulnerability cannot beignored. As a senior adviser to Turkey's new prime minister has observed, "Everybody knows that 80 to 85percent of the Turkish people would say no to war in Iraq. As a democratic country, how can we say yes?"Gerhard Schröder's decision to comply with such logic in Germany's latest election is a main reason heremains chancellor of that country. And these countries are American allies. (Ankara and Berlin may, in theend, say "yes" to an American attack on Baghdad, but if they do, it will be through at leastpartially gritted teeth.)

Irony of Global Democracy

Pakistan offers more evidence for the irony of global democracy. What if General Pervez Musharraf had notseized power in a military coup in 1999 and declared himself president in June 2001, just months before AlQaeda attacked the United States? What if Pakistan had been, and still were, a democracy led by civilianpoliticians? Would Al Qaeda's Taliban base in Afghanistan have been dismantled so quickly?

These questions have no certain answers. But when Musharraf did conform to Washington's democraticpreference and hold an election in October 2002, the results were unhelpful to the freedom of Americanmilitary movement against jihadist redoubts in northwestern Pakistan. There the balloting gave a plurality toan anti-American alliance of Islamist parties, which also won the third largest bloc of seats in the nationalassembly.

Indonesia further illustrates the idea that democracy in other countries need not always facilitateAmerican ends. Could an Indonesian Musharraf have prevented the Islamist bombing in Bali that took nearly 200lives on 12 October 2002, two days after Pakistanis went to the polls? What we do know is that the electedgovernment in Jakarta had been reluctant to risk alienating Muslim opinion by even acknowledging that such athreat existed inside the country.

In mid-January the Bush administration decided to require all male Indonesian citizens aged 16 or older,excluding immigrants, asylum-seekers, and short-term visitors, to register with the Immigration andNaturalization Service, a procedure that includes being fingerprinted and photographed. Indonesians werefurious at being singled out. Far from making them more tolerant of Washington's presumed need to take such astep for security reasons, Indonesia's democracy, including its free press, intensified the nationalistexpression of resentment. Meanwhile, the democratically elected Indonesian government continues to opposeAmerican unilateral action to end Saddam's regime.

Democratization abroad need not impede U.S. foreign policies. But democratic divergence in a more and moredemocratic world has complicated the ability of American administrations to act unilaterally in ways thatsignificantly threaten or burden other countries. What is an election, after all, if not a multilateralconsultation, among voters rather than states?

Reluctant Allies

On 16 January in The New York Times, commenting on Turkish reluctance to back an American war in Iraq,columnist William Safire wrote: "Paradoxically, the growth of democracy in Turkey - which America cheers- has introduced an element of uncertainty" into the Turkish-American alliance. Paradoxically? Not by thelogic of democratic divergence.

In an adjacent op-ed, former National Security Adviser Richard Allen bemoaned South Korea's dissent from anAmerican policy of confronting North Korea. He called it "a serious breach of faith." Breach offaith? Not if one's faith is in democracy, including the right to disagree. In a democratizing world, even asuperpower may discover that the compliance of allies is no longer an element of certainty or a matter offaith, but a condition to be earned.

Finally, for comic relief, I cannot resist quoting the riposte of the French defense minister, the firstwoman ever to fill that post, who said of her American counterpart's dismissal of Franco-German cold feet onIraq: "We are no longer in prehistoric times when whoever had the biggest club would try to knock theother guy out so he could steal his mammoth skin."

Caveats are in order: Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie's distaste for Neanderthals notwithstanding, adramatically successful American assault on Saddam could turn skeptics into believers. The UN could, in asecond resolution, authorize force. Future terrorist attacks, in the U.S. and other democratic countries,could enlarge the global reservoir of good will toward America, reversing divergence. In the democratic ranksbehind U.S. leadership, in any event, grumbling hardly presages revolt.

But if a collision is unlikely, a gradual erosion is not - erosion, that is, in the willingness of otherdemocracies to give unilateralist America the benefit of the doubt.

On 3 January, President Bush said of Saddam Hussein that "he really doesn't care about the opinion ofmankind." Three days later Bush urged his nemesis to "listen to what the world is saying."Whatever the outcome of this administration's obsession with finishing the earlier Gulf War by finishing offSaddam's regime, should American assertiveness persist and democratic divergence become more common, futurecustodians of American power may increasingly find themselves on the receiving end of such remarks.