Donald Trump, Joe Biden & the Future of American Democracy Promotion
A woman waves an old Belarusian national flag standing on the roof as Belarusian opposition supporters march to Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2020. A vast demonstration with many thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Belarus' authoritarian president are rallying in the capital, continuing the public dissent since the disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Mass protests against Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, often labelled as “Europe’s last dictator”, began in August after elections giving Lukashenko a landslide 80% victory were condemned as fraudulent by opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya – and by EU leaders. Often spear-headed by women dressed in white and carrying flowers, the demonstrations represent the most serious challenge to Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule since he became president in 1994. Despite violent repression by the state security forces, protests show no signs of dying down.
While Donald Trump’s State Department, under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has expressed concern about “electoral irregularities” within Belarus and a willingness to consider sanctions on top Lukashenko regime officials, Trump himself has shown little interest in the current situation. This “hands-off” stance contrasts strongly with US policy during the “Maidan” anti-regime protests in Ukraine in 2013, when senior Obama administration policymakers such as Secretary of State John Kerry strongly condemned the repression of protesters and were supported by President Obama.
Trump’s attitude to democracy promotion in the case of Belarus highlights a contrast between the President and his immediate predecessors. Presidents since the 1980s have considered democracy promotion to be a long-term policy aimed at building a global environment characterised by free trade, political stability, and a lack of inter-state conflict --- an environment more hospitable to American interests. But the Trump Administration has only embraced “democracy” when it wants to punish or overthrow a handful of anti-American regimes; meanwhile, it undermining wider democracy promotion efforts and the agencies charged with implementing them.
However, if Joe Biden wins the Presidential election in November, there will be no restoration of the pre-Trump status quo. Global changes since the Obama Administration mean that the promotion of democracy on a wide scale is a less attractive policy for US leaders, even if they are not named Donald Trump. Biden is likely to take a narrower – but different – approach to democracy promotion because of these changes.
Donald Trump’s Approach to Democracy Promotion
Trump’s effusive praise of dictators such as Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi --- magnified by the President’s use of social media --- breaks with much of the public rhetoric and bipartisan consensus on US foreign policy, which for decades articulated a mission to promote democracy.
US Presidents have supported dictators to achieve US interests in the short term. For example, Ronald Reagan praised Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos as a “voice for reason” in 1982, seeking to maintain a friendly relationship to keep access to important US military bases. But successive US Administration also pursued a global strategy of democracy promotion which was both top-down, pushing dictatorships to liberalise, and bottom-up with US government agencies and NGOs providing training and funding to democratic parties, civil society organisations, and institutions in other states. This approach embraced states which were transitioning to democracy, dictatorships hostile to the US, and dictatorships allied to America.
In contrast, the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy argues that the bipartisan belief in inevitable global democratisation is mistaken, and that the US cannot “impose its way of life” on other societies. This reading of global conditions has led to the abandonment of the strategy of predecessors in favour of a selective deployment of democracy promotion to attain short-term gains against America’s enemies.
The Administration has framed the struggle between the US and its key rivals, Russia and China, as a struggle between freedom and dictatorship. It has condemned human rights abuses in enemy dictatorships such as Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. It has supported democratic opposition movements and transitions in these states: doubling the size of a fund which supports Iranian dissidents compared to 2019, increasing funding to prepare for democratic transitions in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and taking a more hostile approach to Cuba.
However, the administration has shown disinterest in – if not hostility to – aid to other countries transitioning to democracy or supporting democratic movements in allied dictatorships. Trump has annually demanded deep cuts in funding to the US organisations that implement bottom-up democracy promotion, such as the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the National Endowment for Democracy. While Congress has not implemented these reductions, they show a lack of Presidential support which has impacted democracy promotion. US ambassadors are unlikely to champion programs which might strain alliances with friendly dictatorships if they fear the President will not support them; US officials who oppose programs hostile to dictatorial allies have been empowered to attempt to block them; and democracy promotion agencies that want Trump’s support have cut down on risky political programs in favour of those spurring economic growth in dictatorships.
Promoting democracy has also become more difficult than it was, with experts arguing of global stagnation since 2006. Many democracies did not perform well economically after the 2008 crash, while authoritarian states such as China enjoyed relative success. Democratic institutions have been weakened by populist leaders and movements, as in Hungary. Many states see democracy promotion as a tool of US regime change, through its connection to the 2003 Iraq War and its real or perceived role in the post-Soviet “colour revolutions”. Russia and China resist the spread of democracy in areas important to their national interests, while around 60 governments have restricted foreign funding of civil society organisations, damaging the ability of American democracy promotion actors to work effectively in other countries.
Joe Biden’s Alliance of Core Democracies
These global economic, political, and geopolitical shifts mean that, if Joe Biden wins the Presidency in November, he will not restore the pre-Trump status quo. Instead, a President Biden will focus on a American policy of defending democracy where it already exists. At the top-down level, a Biden administration would call an international “Summit for Democracy” which aims to create an alliance of democracies. This would include the “core” US Cold War democratic allies such as EU states, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. It would focus on making existing democracies more resilient against Russian and Chinese political manipulation and preventing its members from backsliding into authoritarianism.
The alliance would also include democracy promoting NGOs as well as states. This should be easy to mobilize on the American side: despite the Trump Administration’s policy the democracy promotion agencies still exist and could regain their effectiveness if supported by Biden. Channelling bottom-up democracy programs through a multilateral alliance of democracies might also defuse some of the hostility to these programs in other states by reducing the American imprint on them.
However, it is unclear how widely the alliance would promote democracy in non-democracies. According to Biden, it would seek to strengthen Russian civil society organisations to weaken Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism. The alliance might also provide aid to countries already undergoing democratic transitions, such as Tunisia. However, its policy toward dictators allied to the US is uncertain --- the alliance’s focus on Europe represents a pivot of US policy away from the Middle East, where many of these regimes are located. Furthermore, the second term of the Obama Administration, in which Biden served as Vice-President, showed a lack of support for democracy promotion where this could damage relations with authoritarian allies.
Biden will pursue competition with Russia and China, with democracy promotion as one dimension, while focusing US policy on defending a core of existing democracies and a less expansive democracy promotion policy elsewhere.
US Strategy, Global Conditions, and Democracy Promotion
Since the 1980s, the importance of democracy promotion in US foreign policy has been decided by three factors. The first is the importance which Presidents have attached to democracy promotion as a vehicle for the achievement of US interests such as free trade and a non-threatening international environment. The second is the amount of support they have given US organizations which implement democracy promotion programs. The third is the possibilities which policymakers perceive for successful transitions to democracy serving US interests, such as the existence of mass-based popular democratic movements and the ease of providing support to them.
The Trump Administration has attached low importance to democracy promotion, has provided less support for democracy promotion agencies, and has been sceptical that democracy remains a strong and popular global movement. The result is a narrow policy of using democracy promotion as a cudgel against America’s enemies.
An incoming Biden administration will attach more importance to democracy promotion as a method of cohering a Western alliance against Russia and China and provide more support to democracy promotion agencies. However, it cannot immediately alter the changes in the global environment which have made democracy promotion a less attractive vehicle for US interests outside already-democratic states. These global changes are leading to a downgrading of democracy promotion in US policy, no matter who is President after November 2020.
Robert Pee is the author of Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy under the Reagan Administration