Title: Why the United States Should Spread Democracy | Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Headings: Why the United States Should Spread Democracy
Why the United States Should Spread Democracy
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Content: democratic elections usually do more good than harm. The United States should, however, aim to promote liberal values as well as electoral democracy. And the "soft authoritarian" challenge to liberal democracy was not persuasive, even before the Asian economic turmoil of 1997 and 1998 undermined claims for the superiority of "Asian values." Introduction
In recent years, however, many writers have criticized the idea that the United States should attempt to spread democracy. The Clinton administration's commitment to spreading democracy seems to have faltered, and critics from across the political spectrum have argued that the United States should scale back or abandon efforts to foster global democratization. 4 In a prominent article, Robert Kaplan has argued that holding democratic elections in many countries may actually hinder efforts to maintain ethnic peace, social stability, and economic development. 5 Fareed Zakaria has suggested that elections in countries without liberal values create illiberal democracies, which pose grave threats to freedom. 6
This paper argues that the United States should make promoting democracy abroad one of its central foreign-policy goals. Democracy is not an unalloyed good and the United States should not blindly attempt to spread democracy to the exclusion of all other goals, but U.S. and global interests would be advanced if the world contained more democracies. It often will be difficult for the United States and other actors to help countries to become democracies, but international efforts frequently can make a difference.