The Global Impact of American Democracy
Dr. George Voskopoulos
January 07, 2006
The debate in the US over the issue of civil liberties and the application of the Patriot Act has been intriguing outside the country, mainly in Europe. That is the case with those who recognize a relation and a conceptual link between the quality of the American democratic edifice, the efficacy of the institutions to protect civil rights and the international behavior of a country with distinguished power.
International Relations scholars have plausibly tended to link the mode of a state’s international acting with the quality of democracy at home. In essence they relate the institutional capacity of domestic mechanisms to protect human and civil rights and its foreign policy operational mechanisms.
Most approaches tend to lead to the same conclusion. Autocratic, undemocratic regimes, like that of Saddam Hussein, tend to formulate a foreign policy based on militaristic bravado abroad and a covert or overt effort to undermine civil liberties at home.
In these states aggressiveness vis-ŕ-vis neighboring states and suppressive methods of domestic ruling constitute the operational paradigm of exercising policy. The very same elements add substantially to the formulation of the mental model through which autocratic regimes scrutinize the world.
In the course of history American international behavior has been dictated by the need to support democracy, human rights, trade liberalism, openness and political and religious tolerance. This happened in an orchestrated effort to expose the actual weaknesses of the proposed ideological alternative to capitalism. To realize its goals as leader of the West the US made choices that were incompatible with its values by either supporting autocratic regimes in Latin America or allying with states where western values are irrelevant (i.e. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia).
Today, the current Republican administration appears willing to make another qualitative compromise and undermine the foundation of American democracy itself. The Patriot Act does not only constitute a blow to the very same values advocated in the struggle against terrorism and absolutism but exposes the governance model we consider superior to any other alternative.
First, it puts aside human dignity as shown in the case of detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The West is suddenly becoming less “western”, less civilized, less liberal. “Torturing by proxy”, abducting and transferring to secret detention centers, allowing intelligence agencies to operate as a state within a state are exactly those practices we had always wished to eliminate on a global scale.
Second, the Act threatens American civil liberties, privacy and the constitutional order in a country that has explicitly and historically defined what is against. American democracy and its values are at stake here and this is an issue with an impact on the life of the average American.
It is for Americans themselves to define priorities and impose a change of course in order to protect the constitutional and operational prerequisites for sound democratic governance. Failing to do so risks to spill-over these practices in other parts of the world, with Europe being an immediate collateral victim.
Democracy starts at home and this is what most international relations scholars consider a prerequisite for ethical international behavior. George Kennan, an experienced American diplomat, defined with precision the core of the problem when he claimed that the US judges others’ behavior through a morality prism but fails to do the same with American foreign policy itself. According to him a sound policy would be to “seek the possibilities for service to morality primarily in our own behavior, not in our judgment of others”.
An extended attentive public in the US is bound to provide a premium against abuses of power and protect democratic standards and fundamental freedoms. Compromising values is a high-risk strategy that threatens America, Europe and the tangible gains of a political system that provides a sound framework of orderly social life and maximizes an individual’s benefits.
International Relations scholars have plausibly tended to link the mode of a state’s international acting with the quality of democracy at home. In essence they relate the institutional capacity of domestic mechanisms to protect human and civil rights and its foreign policy operational mechanisms.
Most approaches tend to lead to the same conclusion. Autocratic, undemocratic regimes, like that of Saddam Hussein, tend to formulate a foreign policy based on militaristic bravado abroad and a covert or overt effort to undermine civil liberties at home.
In these states aggressiveness vis-ŕ-vis neighboring states and suppressive methods of domestic ruling constitute the operational paradigm of exercising policy. The very same elements add substantially to the formulation of the mental model through which autocratic regimes scrutinize the world.
In the course of history American international behavior has been dictated by the need to support democracy, human rights, trade liberalism, openness and political and religious tolerance. This happened in an orchestrated effort to expose the actual weaknesses of the proposed ideological alternative to capitalism. To realize its goals as leader of the West the US made choices that were incompatible with its values by either supporting autocratic regimes in Latin America or allying with states where western values are irrelevant (i.e. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia).
Today, the current Republican administration appears willing to make another qualitative compromise and undermine the foundation of American democracy itself. The Patriot Act does not only constitute a blow to the very same values advocated in the struggle against terrorism and absolutism but exposes the governance model we consider superior to any other alternative.
First, it puts aside human dignity as shown in the case of detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The West is suddenly becoming less “western”, less civilized, less liberal. “Torturing by proxy”, abducting and transferring to secret detention centers, allowing intelligence agencies to operate as a state within a state are exactly those practices we had always wished to eliminate on a global scale.
Second, the Act threatens American civil liberties, privacy and the constitutional order in a country that has explicitly and historically defined what is against. American democracy and its values are at stake here and this is an issue with an impact on the life of the average American.
It is for Americans themselves to define priorities and impose a change of course in order to protect the constitutional and operational prerequisites for sound democratic governance. Failing to do so risks to spill-over these practices in other parts of the world, with Europe being an immediate collateral victim.
Democracy starts at home and this is what most international relations scholars consider a prerequisite for ethical international behavior. George Kennan, an experienced American diplomat, defined with precision the core of the problem when he claimed that the US judges others’ behavior through a morality prism but fails to do the same with American foreign policy itself. According to him a sound policy would be to “seek the possibilities for service to morality primarily in our own behavior, not in our judgment of others”.
An extended attentive public in the US is bound to provide a premium against abuses of power and protect democratic standards and fundamental freedoms. Compromising values is a high-risk strategy that threatens America, Europe and the tangible gains of a political system that provides a sound framework of orderly social life and maximizes an individual’s benefits.
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