Remarks
of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
Promoting Democracy, Development and U.S. Diplomacy:
U.S. Interests and Values
Georgetown
University
September 15, 2008
Senator Feingold's
speech was the third in a series of speeches on post-9/11 foreign policy.
Learn more about the speech series here.
Thank you President
DeGioia, and thank you Carol Lancaster. I am honored, both to be here
at this notable forum and speaker series, and to be hosted by a university
so dedicated to international public service. Your efforts will help
the next generation to wrestle with the global challenges of this new
century, and I applaud your leadership.
Just four days
ago, our country marked the seventh anniversary of al Qaeda’s
attacks on New York and Washington. Seven weeks from tomorrow, we will
elect a new President. Many of us will cast our vote for president based
in great part on how we judge this administration’s responses
to the events of 9-11 and how we see ourselves as a nation in a post
9-11 world.
What I wish to
speak about with you today – and what I have been addressing in
a number of ways throughout this year -- are the continuing gaps between
what the events of 9-11 meant to us and how our government actually
responded to those events. Tragically, the current administration has
made a number of serious mistakes in response to 9-11. The next administration,
Democratic or Republican, will have the opportunity and the responsibility
to finally fix those mistakes, and to set us on a path that strengthens
our national security and advances our country’s top priorities
and principles.
Within this context,
I want to focus today on the importance of democracy and the rule of
law -- the rules, the procedures and the institutions that underpin
fairness, human dignity and opportunity, here in our country and throughout
the world. These principles and processes -- and the institutions that
safeguard them -- reflect and protect our core national values, self-image
and aspirations. As such, they should underpin our diplomacy and our
development assistance as we support others in their search for a meaningful
voice in the decisions that affect them. This administration has said
as much in promoting what it calls a “freedom agenda,” but
lofty rhetoric without meaningful action is not just ineffective –
it undermines our national principles and security by allowing others
to portray us as cynical and insincere.
The Context
– The Iraq War: Strategic Failure and Hypocrisy
Many of the strategic
gaps we face today on so many fronts can be traced to the decision to
go to war in Iraq for reasons that were poorly conceived, at best, and,
at worst, manufactured. That war set us on a single-minded and seriously
mistaken strategic path that continues to drain our attention and resources
at the expense of our more urgent domestic and global interests.
I have talked elsewhere
at length about how this disastrous decision has not only weakened our
national economy – which is what bin Laden did to the Soviets
in the 1980’s and has expressly set out to do to us -- it has
created and worsened existing deficits in our global partnerships; jeopardized
our national security; decreased the capacity of our military; and,
in too many cases, sidetracked our diplomatic engagement and sucked
up our foreign assistance resources.
This strategic
failure was compounded by the claim that one of our primary goals in
going to war was to bring democracy to Iraq. That insincere and unconvincing
claim has not only undermined our own values, it has created a huge
gap between what this country purports to stand for internationally
and how much of the rest of the world perceives our efforts to foster
democratic principles globally.
Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, writing in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, tells
us that “in the long term, our security is best ensured by the
success of our ideals: freedom, human rights, open markets, democracy,
and the rule of law.” “One of our best tools for supporting
states in building democratic institutions,” she states, “is
our foreign assistance.” I entirely agree. But, as democracy scholar
Thomas Carothers puts it:
“[T]he
hope of advancing a regional democratic agenda has been deeply undercut
by the Iraq war. . . . Day after day Arab citizens see on their television
sets tens or even hundreds of Arabs dying as a result of a ‘democratic
experiment’ in their region.”
He goes on to
say that “over the past four years President Bush has closely
associated democracy promotion with a military intervention in Iraq
that is widely viewed as illegitimate, illegal, and the cause of tremendous
human suffering. . . . The Iraq war has . . . effectively rebrand[ed]
democracy promotion as a tool of hegemonic interventionism –
this time with militaristic coloring.”
Those are not my
words, but I think we should all be concerned about them. And it’s
not just in the Arab and Muslim world where this is the case. On my
travels through Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia I have seen how
the gap between our rhetoric and action undermines our diplomacy and
development assistance and, in so doing, undercuts our security. This
disparity between our actions and our words is felt strongly around
the globe and I have been asked about it time and again, from displaced
people in northern Uganda, to parliamentarians in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, to civil society leaders in Pakistan. The unfortunate legacy
of Iraq will continue to haunt us, compromising our global partnerships
and ability to ensure our long-term safety and security until we close
that gap.
Many of you will recall then-President Putin, in responding to US criticism
of Russia’s lack of democratic process, saying to President Bush
that if the situation in Iraq reflected democracy, Russia could do without
it. More recently, Russian diplomats, in defending their attacks on
the Republic of Georgia, repeatedly referenced the US attack on Iraq
and the conditions established for US presence there as a justification
for Russia’s own actions. I am not suggesting that Russia would
have acted differently if not for Iraq, but I think it is clear that
Iraq makes it easier for other countries to resist our efforts to promote
peace and democracy around the globe.
After all, how
can we approach nations around the world – from Burma to Zimbabwe
to Cuba -- with any meaningful expectation of democratic reform when
these very same principles are being challenged by our questionable
practices in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?
Our national image
and the diplomatic strength we can project through our democratic values
and the respect for law have taken a beating. As we anticipate a new
administration with a new approach to diplomacy and development assistance
we must not throw the democracy promotion baby out with the bathwater
– but we desperately need to change the bathwater.
Rule of
Law: Our Strength & Values
As a starting point,
we must reaffirm that our strength as a nation, and our most fundamental
national value, is the principle that our government “derives
its just powers from the consent of the governed”-- the people.
And from this once truly revolutionary notion we have, over time and
with great effort, constructed rules of law and legal procedures and
institutions that seek to protect this principle, ensure fairness, and
increase public participation in the decisions that affect us.
We sometimes like
to think that America is a young democracy. The reality is that we are
now a mature country, among the oldest if not the oldest practicing
democratic nation. For more than 220 years, we have been shaping our
form of government to increase its inclusiveness and responsiveness
to the governed, as well as modeling it to the world. Our democratic
experiment, while ongoing and constantly in search of needed improvement,
may not be transferable whole cloth to other countries. But it embodies
many principles, processes and institutions that have furthered the
interests of the governed -- all of this in a country that is ethnically,
culturally and religiously diverse. We have a body of experience to
share with countries that are shaping their own forms of governance,
many of which only have achieved their independence from colonial or
undemocratic rule within the last half century and which also face ethnic,
religious or cultural diversity. And it is American rules of fair play,
and the institutions and processes that protect them, that have made
us both a beacon and a melting pot – both a model and an attraction
for diverse people all over the world who seek to live in communities
that allow and support their aspirations, their human dignity and their
opportunities.
I am not saying
we have it all right. In fact, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
on the Constitution, I am particularly troubled by how the events of
the last seven years, including the existence of secret prisons, sanctioned
torture, illegal wiretapping and efforts to undermine our privacy have
eroded America’s historic respect for legal process and individual
rights. But the fact that these issues are openly before us and are
the subject of debate by our elected bodies, as well as over the Internet,
tells us a lot about our system.
What does this
have to do with a post 9-11 world? A lot. How we act as Americans at
home, and how we act in ways that are consistent with these values and
governing processes in our relationships abroad, will define our strength,
our security and our opportunities as a nation.
Post 9-11
Gaps in Strategy and Diplomacy and Development Resources
The post 9-11 diplomacy
and development policies of this administration reflect a major strategic
gap. It’s a gap not only between rhetoric and action, but also
between our goals and the tools or tactics we use to achieve those goals.
Al Qaeda and its
affiliates are the leading immediate challenge to our security and to
that of many other nations as well. We must fight them and eliminate
their safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But we cannot just rely
on our military to win this fight – we have many other powerful
tools at our disposal and we need to employ them all. And we cannot
simply focus on eliminating terrorist leaders. We need to address the
support those leaders receive, both active and passive.
That means we need
to understand the extent to which this group of killers has gained the
support and sympathy of those, particularly in the Muslim and Arab worlds,
who find no voice in their political system and have no meaningful role
in the decisions that directly affect them. And we need to appreciate
and act on the ability of terrorist groups like al Qaeda to exist and
even thrive in weak or failed states.
Unless we address
all of these factors, we are bound to fail. The short-sighted, wack-a-mole
tactics that we are employing in places like Somalia are dangerous and
self-defeating. They make us feel like we’re taking action when
we’re really not. Ultimately, such short-term policies do little
to reverse the type of internal disintegration that erodes the rule
of law (assuming it existed in the first place), eats away at governance
institutions and creates the space for extremism and terrorism to flourish
longer term.
Sadly, much of
our diplomacy and development assistance, especially in recent years,
has been weighted toward short term responses to security threats –
particularly in Iraq -- at the expense of concerted strategic efforts
to reduce and eliminate these threats. And in many cases, as we respond
to immediate threats, we have jettisoned some of the values and governing
principles that have historically defined us – our respect for
the rule of law being the most prominent. There can be no question that
our national security is paramount. But promoting democracy and the
rule of law advances our own national security. From Ethiopia to Pakistan,
we have pursued policies designed to achieve short term security interests
that have actually done little to make us more secure. Instead they
have diminished our stature globally and undermined our commitment to
human rights, dignity and the rule of law – all of which are essential
to the long term stability and security of societies. What’s more,
our hollow commitment to the freedom agenda has profoundly compromised
our ability to influence people and governments.
Compounding this
strategic failure are the gaps we have in our civilian resources --
the human resources in our diplomatic, intelligence and development
programs who can best inform and execute the longer term strategies
that best serve our national interests. I agree with Secretary Gates
and Secretary Rice when they argue that we must increase our civilian
human resources to strengthen our diplomacy and development assistance
programs, so as to more effectively impart our national values and protect
our national interests. But to actually do that, we need to make tough
decisions about our spending priorities. Here’s a concrete example
– the President has requested some $400 million to support the
stand-up of the new Africa combatant command, also known as AFRICOM.
At the same time, the U.S. embassy in Niger -- a poor democratic country
with potentially serious national security concerns for us -- no longer
has sufficient resources to fund a political officer, so the position
has been cut. What does that say about our development policies and
diplomatic relations with Niger? Our military cannot and should not
do the job of our State Department or USAID – but it is not hard
to see why this work has increasingly been outsourced to them. The annual
budget for the Defense Department is somewhere around $600 billion while
State’s is a mere $39 billion.
The leaders of
the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, recently noted that
"Military power is essential to our security, but if the only tool
is a hammer, pretty soon every problem looks like a nail." We too
often make the mistake of assuming that our massive military power is
capable of solving our problems alone, even though we have many other
powerful tools in our toolbox. One of the most important ways to advance
our strategic global goals is through traditional diplomacy and development
assistance, along with private citizen diplomacy. It is difficult if
not impossible to impose a democracy, promote sustainable development
or create a widely accepted system of fair laws at the barrel of a gun.
Let me quote Carol Lancaster here from her recent discussion on the
increasing role of the military in foreign assistance and development
efforts:
[T]his mission
creep (or mission leap) raises basic questions about whether it is
sensible or effective for the military to provide aid in support of
long-term development. . . . U.S. economic assistance may be perceived
abroad as becoming militarized, which could prove dangerous for those
delivering it and lead to its rejection by its intended beneficiaries.
As a new administration
takes on the human and other resource deficits in our diplomatic and
foreign assistance programs, it must adopt a broader perspective on
addressing our national security challenges. We must allocate funding
in a more flexible and comprehensive manner in order to better achieve
the longer term security goals we seek.
Rule of
Law as Central Theme of Diplomacy and Development Assistance
To strengthen our
civilian efforts abroad there is a significant movement within the diplomatic,
development and related policy and academic communities to reform our
diplomacy and foreign assistance programs. The title of Carol’s
most recent book “George Bush’s Foreign Aid, Transformation
or Chaos?” hints at the problem. There is the now famous chart
of the many federal organizations charged with executing foreign assistance
tasks that looks like someone dumped a plate of spaghetti on two long
lists of government agencies. And there is much to be debated, assessed
and done with regard to the role of USAID, the relatively new Millennium
Challenge Corporation and the many programs that have proliferated during
the life of our foreign assistance efforts. I will not pretend to compete
with Carol’s insights and recommendations or those of her many
colleagues who are wrestling with these important issues, so I won’t
address them here.
What I do wish
to put forward today is a specific challenge to those who will take
charge of our diplomatic and development assistance programs in a new
administration. That challenge is: to produce and implement, as a cornerstone
and priority of our diplomacy and foreign assistance -- and as a reflection
of our most fundamental national values -- a more meaningful and robust
strategy to support others to achieve real self governance anchored
by the rule of law.
Our national interests
are best served by long term stability abroad and we must support the
processes and institutions that will achieve that prospect. Unfortunately,
in an era defined by immediate physical threats, we have sought short
term stability at the expense of sustainable and long term stability
and we have placed our diplomatic priorities in conflict with our longer
term development strategies. In the process we have compromised some
of the very fundamental values and strategic goals that are critical
to our longer term national security interests.
For me, the most
significant recent example of this tension is Pakistan, although there
are others as well. This administration strongly supported former President
Musharraf of Pakistan in a misguided effort to provide short term stability
and counter extremism. The threat of extremism is very real, but by
embracing and relying on a single, unpopular, anti-democratic leader,
President Bush failed to develop a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy
that transcends individuals and can be sustained. His policies also
encouraged Pakistanis to be skeptical about American intentions and
principles.
We need to look not just beyond strongmen but beyond national elections.
Rules of law that extend into the issues that affect daily lives, and
which are enforced by fair courts, are critical to long term stability
and so critical to our national security. It is not surprising that
recent polls by the Pew Global Attitudes Survey note that a fair judiciary
is seen as especially important; in most countries it is more highly
valued than free elections. This is true around the world and notably
in Pakistan. I saw this firsthand on my recent travels there when I
met with the Chief Justice and shortly thereafter called for the judges
that had been illegally removed by President Musharraf to be reinstated.
I was asked whether I had made such a call in support of a particular
political party and whether I also sought the removal of President Musharraf,
who at that time had not yet resigned. I responded that those were issues
for the Pakistanis to determine, and I continue to believe that is the
case. Indeed, while the political landscape in Pakistan remains turbulent
and fragile, I have no intention of meddling in domestic affairs. Nonetheless,
it is unacceptable for the United States to sit back in the face of
such fundamentally undemocratic actions. We cannot be selective in the
democratic principles we support. Any enduring counterterrorism partnership
must recognize that Pakistan, despite the coups and military dictatorships
that have marred its history, has a democratic tradition, a vibrant
civil society, and a large and educated middle class whose interests
and values frequently coincide with ours. To ignore these would be both
inconsistent with our values, and short-sighted in terms of our national
security
This short-sighted
agenda is not limited to South Asia – it is has long been the
policy of this administration with regard to Ethiopia as well. The US-Ethiopian
partnership is a very important one – perhaps one of the more
significant on the continent given not only our longstanding history
but also the increasingly strategic nature of our cooperation and the
serious national security threats throughout the Horn of Africa. Unfortunately,
the Bush Administration has allowed a narrow counterterrorism agenda
to dominate the relationship while poor governance and human rights
concerns get a pass.
Genuine democratic
progress in Ethiopia is essential if we are to have a healthy and positive
bilateral relationship that can successfully combat terrorism and extremism.
Similar to Pakistan, instead of placing our support in one man, we should
commit to Ethiopia’s institutions and its people to create a stable,
sustainable political system. But we have done this in rhetoric only:
when the Ethiopian government has responded with oppressive and disproportionate
tactics to domestic calls for political or economic reforms, we have
not taken a strong position or qualified our support for that government
By working with
Pakistani and Ethiopian reformers and supporting their efforts to promote
democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, we align ourselves with
the moderate forces that are critical to the fight against extremism.
We need to speak out when the government in power does not support these
values and not allow their actions to be swept under the rug. Supporting
Pakistanis and Ethiopians as they seek to strengthen democratic institutions
is not just an outgrowth of our values -- it is in our national security
interests. The counterterrorism efforts we need from Islamabad and Addis
must be serious and sustained in a way that only democratic processes
can ensure.
Building
Rule of Law on a Human Scale
To effectively
promote and realize the benefits of the rule of law and democracy, we
need to supplement our lofty freedom agenda rhetoric with concrete attempts
to build human scale legal processes and institutions. Democracy’s
search for the consent of the governed begins on the street, in our
communities, in the daily acts that define personal and economic rights
and relationships. And that is where our diplomacy, our development
assistance and our outreach efforts as private citizens can give tangible
meaning to democratic values.
I’d like
to share two modest examples -- one from Georgetown and one from my
state of Wisconsin -- of the types of approaches and programs that speak
to the role of law in these everyday needs and which should be strengthened
and placed at the center of our development assistance strategies. Many
of you here will know, or know of, Georgetown law professor Richard
Roe. I understand that Professor Roe is with us here today. In 1972,
Professor Roe started the Street Law Program, which is aimed at getting
law students to go out into communities to make law more understandable
and accessible – to focus on the law that affects people’s
everyday lives. Professor Roe has taken his Street Law Program abroad
and here are some excerpts from his State Department interview in 2004
that offer a good framework for how to bridge the gap between an abstract
“freedom agenda” and meaningful efforts to promote democratic
values:
I think that
the law should be understood in the context of values, culture, and
choices. . . .The law has to come out of their fundamental values
and connect with their culture. The idea of taking Street Law to another
country for me is not taking the American system of justice and the
American Constitution and the American laws as a wholesale transplant
into another setting. It's using fundamental ideas of law that are
universal. I also try to understand the country's culture, history,
and language, moving the lesson in a way that becomes meaningful in
that context.
I think Professor
Roe’s Street Law program provides us with a good framework for
sharing abroad what is best about our country’s values –
in ways that will strengthen long term stability abroad and our national
security at home.
I have another
example, from Wisconsin, of how efforts to build the rule of law can
be effective when tied to matters of daily public concern and interest.
As many of us know, China faces enormous environmental challenges. Much
of its air, lakes and streams are in desperate condition. Recently,
a Chinese delegation came to Wisconsin as part of a China-US Water Symposium
to study how we in Wisconsin had dealt with some of the same challenges
in recent decades. Wisconsin, as you may know, is virtually surrounded
by water and lots of it – the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River
– and as a major manufacturing state we have had to deal with
industrial pollution, so our government agencies and businesses have
become global leaders in addressing challenges to clean water. Over
the period of a week, engineers, businesses, academics and government
officials discussed various aspects of clean water management and protection
with the Chinese delegation.
But what struck
me most about this relationship was an earlier related exchange, sponsored
by the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative between
China and an ABA group that included a member of the Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources. They were talking about developing local projects
to increase public participation in environmental decision-making in
China. So here is an example of a common and immediate public need and
a realization that rules of law and public participation have a meaningful
role to play in responding to that need.
Some of us may
take these kinds of procedures for granted, but it is this type of public,
transparent process, driven by our daily interests; rooted in our communities;
and managed by the rules and processes of local government that drives
our democratic system. This is the kind of interaction I see in the
listening sessions I hold in every Wisconsin county every year: citizens
being able to voice their concerns to elected officials and having some
reasonable prospect of influencing related decisions. And I have no
doubt that the citizens of Guizhou, China, who have aligned with these
ABA Rule of Law efforts, will benefit from having some reasonable prospect
of influencing their government’s decisions affecting the quality
of their water. Like the citizens of my state pushing for clean water,
they want to know how the government will respond to their concerns
and how their voices will impact the decisions that affect them. Our
values and experiences can inform this process. At the same time, as
Professor Roe advises, we can do this with respect for the culture and
history of the country with which we engage to better realize our own
national security interests.
These efforts and
others like them must be strengthened and improved in our foreign assistance
programs and encouraged by our diplomacy.
As we anticipate
the changes that a new administration will bring, it is essential that
we reaffirm our national heritage and values, rooted in the rule of
law and the consent of the governed, and place them at the core of our
diplomatic dialogue and development efforts -- not just in theory and
in words, but in actual programs and in our diplomatic exchanges. I
hope and imagine that many of you here today will find and involve yourselves
in those opportunities and that you will reach out to the world in America’s
best traditions and in its best interests. Thank you.
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