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In the Name of Democracy: Towards a Global Political Intervention Monitor

In an influential paper for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2003, former Assistant Secretary of Defense (1981-85) Lawrence J. Korb declared, “The ultimate goal of American foreign policy will be to use…power, alone if necessary, to extend free-market democracy around the globe.” Korb was explaining the logic that took the US to Iraq that same year. But he was also describing another development in United States foreign policy born of the Reagan administration and continued under every administration since: the pursuit of US foreign policy goals by ostensibly overt, peaceful means, through the promotion of “free-market democracy.” The US is, in fact, spreading “free-market democracy” by both consensus and coercion, by carrot and by stick. The stick is the more visible of the two strategies, yet over the past twenty years “consensus-building” in the form of the promotion of a particular kind of low-intensity democracy has begun to take precedence. In this, the US is not alone. Canada, the European Union, Japan, and a host of multi-lateral institutions from the World Bank to regional diplomatic and trade groups actively support and facilitate what has become a transnational hegemonic project. But, while the promotion of restricted democracy is undoubtedly transnational in scope, the US plays a fundamental leading role. Read more

posted by Annamarie at 2:43 AM