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The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion

Abstract

The Reagan administration’s democracy promotion initiative was inextricably linked to US Cold War goals. Democracy promotion towards the Soviet bloc posited the possibility of an American Cold War victory secured through democratic transformation in these states. In the Third World, democracy promotion was deployed as part of the Reagan administration’s effort to roll back perceived Soviet gains, stabilize US client states, confront Third World nationalism, and promote neoliberal economic policies. Reagan-era democracy promotion had limitations in terms of scope, human rights, and economic impact. Nevertheless, the rising importance of democracy promotion had significant implications for post-Cold War US foreign policy. Successive post-Cold War administrations advanced the belief that US national interests and moral concerns were best served in a world of free-market democracies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    George W. Bush, ‘Remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy,’ October 6, 2005. Public Papers of the Presidents. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2005-book2/pdf/PPP-2005-book2-doc-pg1520-2.pdf

  2. 2.

    Henry Nau, ‘Ronald Reagan,’ in US Foreign Policy and Democracy Promotion: From Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama, eds. Michael Cox, Timothy J. Lynch, and Nicolas Bouchet (New York: Routledge, 2013), 150.

  3. 3.

    George W. Bush, ‘Remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy.’

  4. 4.

    George F. Kennan, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’ Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (1947), reprinted in Foreign Affairs 65, no. 4 (1987): 868.

  5. 5.

    White House, ‘National Security Decision Directive 32: U.S. National Security Strategy,’ May 20, 1982, National Security Decision Directives – Reagan Administration, Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-32.pdf, 2 and White House, ‘National Security Decision Directive 75: US Relations with the USSR,’ January 17, 1983, National Security Decision Directives – Reagan Administration, Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-75.pdf, 1.

  6. 6.

    Robert Pee, Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy under the Reagan Administration (Abingdon, Oxon. and New York: Routledge, 2016), 109.

  7. 7.

    White House, NSDD 32, 1.

  8. 8.

    John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, Rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 354.

  9. 9.

    Alan P. Dobson, ‘The Reagan Administration, Economic Warfare, and Starting to Close Down the Cold War,’ Diplomatic History 3, no. 3 (2005): 531–556.

  10. 10.

    Fareed Zakaria, ‘The Reagan Strategy of Containment.’ Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1990): 390.

  11. 11.

    White House, NSDD 75, 5.

  12. 12.

    Reagan, Ronald, ‘Message on the Observance of Afghanistan Day,’ March 21, 1983, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=41078

  13. 13.

    The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) was composed of three factions: the Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste (ANS), which supported Prince Sihanouk; the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF), headed by democratic Cambodian politician Son Sann; and the Khmer Rouge, headed by Cambodia’s former communist ruler, Pol Pot. Only Son Sann’s faction had a clear commitment to democracy, and the Khmer Rouge constituted the coalition’s largest and most effective guerrilla force.

  14. 14.

    Quoted in Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, ‘Soldiering On: The Reagan Administration and Redemocratisation in Chile, 1983–1986,’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 25, no. 1 (2006): 16.

  15. 15.

    George P. Shultz, ‘America and the Struggle for Freedom,’ address to the Commonwealth Club of California, February 22, 1985, Washington, D.C. Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs: February 1985.

  16. 16.

    Michael K. McKoy and Michael K. Miller, ‘The Patron’s Dilemma: The Dynamics of Foreign-Supported Democratization,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 5 (2012): 917.

  17. 17.

    Jerome J. Shestack, ‘Human Rights, the National Interest and U.S. Foreign Policy,’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506, no. 1 (1989): 24 and David P. Forsythe, ‘Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy: Retrospect and Prospect,’ Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1990): 447.

  18. 18.

    Michael Massing, ‘How Liberia Held “Free’ Elections”.’ The Nation, October 13, 2005. https://www.thenation.com/article/how-liberia-held-free-elections/

  19. 19.

    Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 176–7.

  20. 20.

    Gildred, Theodore E. Interviewed by Hank Zivetz. April 26, 1990. Transcript. The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Oral History Collection, https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Gildred,%20Theodore%20M.toc.pdf?_ga=2.211850388.1491710752.1528692966-1130200362.1522950675

  21. 21.

    Elliot Abrams, ‘Latin America in the Time of Reagan: The U.S. has led a Historic Expansion of Democracy.’ New York Times, July 27, 1988: A25.

  22. 22.

    Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy toward Latin America In the Reagan Years (Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), 132.

  23. 23.

    Alan Riding, ‘Democracy and Debt: U.S. Policy on Latin America is Well Received—In Washington,’ New York Times, October 30, 1988: E2.

  24. 24.

    Douglas J. MacDonald, Adventures in Chaos: American Intervention for Reform in the Third World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

  25. 25.

    Thomas Carothers, ‘The Resurgence of United States Political Development Assistance to Latin America in the 1980s,’ in The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas, ed. Laurence Whitehead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 131–3.

  26. 26.

    William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 109–110.

  27. 27.

    Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, Reagan and Pinochet: The Struggle over US Policy toward Chile (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, 175–193.

  28. 28.

    Eddie Mahe, Jr., & Associates Inc., ‘Democracy Program Election Assistance Project: Phase I,’ May 1986 USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC), http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pdabd700.pdf and Eddie Mahe, Jr., & Associates Inc., ‘Democracy Program Election Assistance Project: Phase II.’ September 10, 1987, USAID DEC, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pdaaw739.pdf

  29. 29.

    USAID, ‘An Initiative by A.I.D. to Support the Evolution of Stable, Democratic Societies: The Democracy Initiative,’ December 1990, USAID DEC, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pdacq141.pdf, 1.

  30. 30.

    William I. Robinson, A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the post-Cold War era (London and Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

  31. 31.

    Quoted in Aryeh Neier, ‘Human Rights in the Reagan Era: Acceptance in Principle,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506 (1989): 31.

  32. 32.

    Neier, ‘Human Rights in the Reagan Era,’ 38.

  33. 33.

    Richard Schifter, ‘Building Firm Foundations: The Institutionalization of United States Human Rights Policy in the Reagan Years.’ Harvard Human Rights Journal 2 (Spring 1989): 16.

  34. 34.

    Milja Kurki, Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion (New York: Routledge, 2013), 124.

  35. 35.

    For examples, see Brian Loveman, ‘¿Mision Cumplida? Civil Military Relations and the Chilean Political Transition.’ Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 33, no. 3 (1991): 36, 46; Richard Wilson, ‘Continued Counterinsurgency: Civilian Rule in Guatemala,’ in Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order, eds. Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora and Richard Wilson (London and Boulder, CO: Pluto Press, 1993), 136–8; and James Petras and Steve Vieux, ‘The Transition to Authoritarian Electoral Regimes in Latin America,’ Latin American Perspectives 21, no. 4 (1994): 10.

  36. 36.

    William Deane Stanley, ‘El Salvador: State-Building before and after Democratisation, 1980–95,’ Third World Quarterly 27, No. 1, From Nation-Building to State-Building (2006): 105.

  37. 37.

    Ivan Molloy, Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2001), 135–63.

  38. 38.

    See Barry Gills, ‘Korean Capitalism and Democracy,’ in Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order, edited by Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora and Richard Wilson (London and Boulder, CO: Pluto Press), 226–258 and Carl J. Saxer, From Transition to Power Alternation: Democracy in South Korea 1987–1997 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 224.

  39. 39.

    Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), 54.

  40. 40.

    Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2007), 150.

  41. 41.

    Quoted in Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 285.

  42. 42.

    See Douglas Brinkley, ‘Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine,’ Foreign Policy, no. 106 (Spring 1997): 110–127 and White House, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, 1994, National Security Strategy Archive, http://nssarchive.us/national-security-strategy-1994/

  43. 43.

    Dona Stewart, ‘The Greater Middle East and Reform in the Bush Administration’s Ideological Imagination,’ Geographical Review 97, no. 3 (2005): 410 and White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2006, US Department of State, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/64884.pdf

  44. 44.

    John Dumbrell, Clinton’s Foreign Policy: Between the Bushes, 1992–2000 (New York: Routledge, 2009), 41–50.

  45. 45.

    Tony Lake, ‘From Containment to Enlargement,’ September 21, 1993, John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/lakedoc.html

  46. 46.

    See Paul Carlin, Dan Jones, Will Lyman, and Greg Barker, Ghosts of Rwanda, 2004, Alexandria, VA. Public Broadcasting Service. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/script.html and Brinkley, ‘Democratic Enlargement,’ 119.

  47. 47.

    Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, ‘Bill Clinton’s “Democratic Enlargement” and the Securitisation of Democracy Promotion.’ Diplomacy & Statecraft 26, no. 3 (2015): 547.

  48. 48.

    George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 944.

  49. 49.

    George W. Bush, 2003. ‘President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East: Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,’ The White House, November 6, 2003, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html and ‘The Struggle for Iraq: Bush’s Words to Britons: “Both our nations serve the cause of freedom.”’ New York Times, November 20, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/world/struggle-for-iraq-bush-s-words-britons-both-our-nations-serve-cause-freedom.html

  50. 50.

    See White House, National Security Strategy, 1994; Søndergaard, ‘Bill Clinton’s “Democratic Enlargement”,’ 541; and Brinkley, ‘Democratic Enlargement,’ 121.

  51. 51.

    Davis, Planet of Slums, 163.

  52. 52.

    ‘Declaracíon de la Selva Lacondona,’ reprinted in Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader, ed. John Womack, Jr. (New York: The New Press, 1994) 247–249.

  53. 53.

    White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2002, US Department of State, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf, i.

  54. 54.

    Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 115.

  55. 55.

    Terry R. Anderson, Bush’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  56. 56.

    James D. Boys, Clinton’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 218 and Thomas O. Melia, ‘The Democracy Bureaucracy: The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion,’ Princeton Project on National Security, 2005, https://www.princeton.edu/~ppns/papers/democracy_bureaucracy.pdf, 49.

  57. 57.

    Carothers, 1991, 331.

  58. 58.

    Melia, 2005, 46, 49.

  59. 59.

    Nicole Bibbins Sedaca and Nicholas Bouchet, ‘Holding Steady: US Democracy Promotion in a Changing World,’ Chatham House Americas PP 2014/01. https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/197475#, 16.

  60. 60.

    Dona Stewart, ‘The Greater Middle East and Reform…’, 407.

  61. 61.

    Marlene Spoerri, Engineering Revolution: The Paradox of Democracy Promotion in Serbia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

  62. 62.

    Bruce Gilley, ‘Did Bush Democratize the Middle East? The Effects of External-Internal Linkages,’ Political Science Quarterly 128, no. 4 (2013): 653–685.

  63. 63.

    Katerina Dalacoura, ‘US Democracy Promotion in the Arab Middle East since 11 September 2001: A Critique,’ International Affairs 81, no. 5 (2005): 973.

  64. 64.

    Francis Fukuyama, ‘America: Failed State.’ Prospect, no. 250, January 2017. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/america-the-failed-state-donald-trump

  65. 65.

    Sedaca and Bouchet, ‘Holding Steady,’ 16.

  66. 66.

    Freedom House, ‘United States: Cuts to Democracy Funds Reduce U.S. Security,’ February 12, 2018. https://freedomhouse.org/article/united-states-cuts-democracy-funds-reduce-us-security

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  1. Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Robert Pee

  2. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    William Michael Schmidli

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  1. Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Robert Pee

  2. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    William Michael Schmidli

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Pee, R., Schmidli, W.M. (2019). Conclusion. In: Pee, R., Schmidli, W. (eds) The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96382-2_13

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