Lead By Example—Democracy

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Lead By Example—Democracy

Curtailing surveillance allows the US to lead by example

"America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will," President Obama told the graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday. Responding to critics that have cast his foreign policy as feckless and weak, Mr. Obama used the commencement address to make the case that his leadership has positioned the U.S. to be a nation that leads by example and that the United States has never been stronger than it is now. "Those who argue otherwise - who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away - are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics," Mr. Obama said. The president reassured the cadets that the military is the backbone of U.S. leadership but that it must be used with restraint. "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail," he said, defining his leadership style in contrast to the overzealous interventions of the Bush era. "It is a particularly useful time for America to reflect on those who have sacrificed so much for our freedom," Mr. Obama said, "for you are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan." Mr. Obama summarized how his foreign policy, based on a strong reliance on multilateral diplomacy, applies to hot spots across the globe. He said the U.S. will "step up our efforts to support Syria's neighbors" as its civil war drags on. He urged Congress to ramp up support for Syria, as well as to "lead by example" by on issues like limiting domestic surveillance, acknowledging international treaties and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Consistency key—domestic surveillance is hypocritical

Diamond 8 - Larry Diamond is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford University, he is professor by courtesy of political science and sociology, and he coordinates the democracy program of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). (“Doing Democracy Promotion Right,” http://www.newsweek.com/doing-democracy-promotion-right-82937 12/20/2008) STRYKER

Finally, the new president should keep in mind the power of example. Washington can't promote democracy abroad if it erodes it at home. The contradictions between the rhetoric of Bush's "freedom agenda" and the realities of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, torture, warrantless surveillance and boundless executive privilege have led even many of the United States' natural allies to dismiss U.S. efforts as hypocritical. Thus the new president must immediately shut down Guantánamo and unequivocally renounce the use of torture; few gestures would restore American credibility more quickly. The United States should also reduce the power of lobbyists, enhance executive and legislative transparency and reform campaign-finance rules—both for its own good and for the message it would send. Make no mistake: thanks to the global economic crisis and antidemocratic trends, things may get worse before they get better. But supporting democracy abroad advances U.S. national interests and engages universal human aspirations. A more consistent, realistic and multilateral approach will help to secure at-risk democracies and plant the seeds of freedom in oppressed countries. Patience, persistence and savvy diplomacy will serve the next president far better than moralistic rhetoric that divides the world into good and evil. We've seen where that got us.

The US needs to set a good example

The Century Foundation 9 - Citing Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served on the State Department’s policy planning staff in the last years of the Clinton administration after living and working on the ground for the National Democratic Institute in Egypt and the Palestinian territories. (“Democracy Promotion in the Middle East and the Obama Administration,” http://www.tcf.org/work/foreign_policy/detail/democracy-promotion-in-the-middle-east-and-the-obama-administration2/16/2009) STRYKER

“Making this shift in strategy will require significant changes in how the United States implements its national security policies,” Katulis concludes. “But the most important step that the United States and the full range of U.S. institutions and organizations can do to advance human rights and democracy in the Middle East is to practice what it preaches—lead by example and ensure that its actions match the democratic values and ideals it seeks to advance in the Middle East.”

Thorough democracy is crucial to successful modeling

Kemming and Humborg 10 - Jan Dirk Kemming is Creative Director for Weber Shandwick Continental Europe and a visiting lecturer at Cologne University of Applied Science. His PhD from Giessen University deals with nation branding and public diplomacy for Turkey’s EU accession. Christian Humborg is the Managing Director for an NGO in Berlin and a visiting lecturer at the University of Potsdam. He holds a PhD from the same university. His recent academic work focuses on the linkage of democracy and lobbyism. (“Democracy and nation brand(ing): Friends or foes?” Ebsco, 8/1/2010) STRYKER

CONCLUSION AND PROSPECTUS Our research indicates a significant relationship between the success of a nation’s brand and perceptions of its performance as a democracy. These findings not only show how relevant and essential democracy is for successful nations 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but also reveal a remarkable perspective on earlier identified tensions between consensus-orientated democratic procedures versus the presumed necessity of hierarchical brand management. Apparently, thoroughly democratic nations display consistently high scores in terms of their esteem from other world citizens. This result indicates that successful brand management does not require non-democratic procedures.

Bad US practices spillover

Gates 12 - Kelly Gates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the Science Studies Program at University of California, San Diego. Gates specializes in the study of surveillance, digital media, and visual culture, from an analytical perspective that bridges science and technology studies and cultural and media studies. (“d. The globalization of homeland security,” Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, Google Books, 2012) STRYKER

How have the priorities of "homeland security" in the post—9/11 era been mobilized to bolster an expanding global industry, and what are the consequences of this industry expansion on surveillance practices transnationally? It is the aim of this chapter to consider the globalization of homeland security. It examines the extent to which the US model of homeland security has been exported to other countries, and what the results have been for the spread of new surveillance practices across national borders. “Homeland security" is typically understood as a policy program instituted in the United States as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I argue that it is more adequately understood as a broader govern- mental rationality that reconfigures the US Cold War “national security" regime in ways more amenable to the post-Cold War context, and to the priorities of an emerging global security industry. In order to be promoted as a form of national identity, the US model of “homeland security" has been and must con- tinue to be defined as uniquely "American." However, it is also being globalized in particular ways in order to serve as a powerful political and economic strategy in the "war on terror" (see also Hayes, this volume). One focus of this strategy has been the USA-led effort to create a global surveillance apparatus, a dis- persed system of monitoring and identification that aims to enact a USA-centric politics of inclusion and exclusion on a global scale. Not only the USA, but much of the world, is engaged in what Giorgio Agamben (2005) has called a permanent “state of exception." Here constitutional laws and human rights are suspended indefinitely, and individuals are continuously called upon to demonstrate their legitimate identity and right to exist. As the USA and its allies carry out the seemingly endless "war on terror," a heavily financed “security-industrial complex" has taken shape. Along with it has come a seemingly endless and increasingly integrated stream of new surveillance systems and practices.

Consistency is important to democracy promotion

O'Connell 12 - Jamie O'Connell is a Senior Fellow of the Honorable G. William and Ariadna Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, as well as a Lecturer in Residence. He teaches and writes on political and legal development, and has particular expertise in law and development, transitional justice, democratization, post-conflict reconstruction, and business and human rights. (“Common Interests, Closer Allies: How Democracy in Arab States Can Benefit the West,” Stanford Journal of International Law, Lexis Nexis, Summer, 2012) STRYKER

The unpredictable, gradual, and context-specific nature of democratization means that the benefits to Western countries of that transformation may appear quickly in some Arab states, but only slowly in others. Western countries cannot simply vary their posture toward democratic change from country to country, however. Polling data on the Arab Spring suggests that many Arab citizens feel a sense of solidarity that transcends national borders. n31 Western countries' policies in all Arab countries therefore are likely to affect how they are perceived by citizens of each Arab country. n32 Egyptians, for example, will doubt the sincerity of the United States' commitment to Egyptian democracy and professions of friendship with the Egyptian people if they see that country supporting repression in Bahrain. To be sure, each Western country's policies toward democratization must vary somewhat among Arab countries, based on its specific interests in each place, level of influence there, and other factors. In crafting those policies, however, Western policymakers should appreciate that the more consistently they can support democratization across all Arab countries, the more likely they will be to benefit from its success in any of them.

Consistency key

Babayan 15 - Nelli Babayan has a PhD from the University of Trento and is a Senior Researcher at the Freie Universitat Berlin, where she has also taught on democratization and the role of information technologies in democracy. (Democratic Transformation and Obstruction: EU, US, and Russia in the South Caucasus, p. 2, Google Books, 2015) STRYKER

Given that “never in human history had international forces—political, eco- nomic, and cultural—been so supportive of democratic ideas and institutions” (Dahl 1998), the limited progress of democracy has been even more surprising. Since the early 1990s, states and organizations have targeted virtually every corner of the world with democracy-promotion activities. However, after the “third wave of democratization" (Huntington 1993), liberal democracy has made little progress or has even broken down (Diamond 2008), arguably pointing to a third reverse-wave of democratization. However, policies of democracy promo- tion have also lacked consistency and well-defined strategies, leaving practition- ers and academics wondering how democracy promotion would proceed (Cox et al. 2000; Smith 2008; Youngs 2002). To shed light on these issues, the book investigates democracy promotion by the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (US) in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia against the back- drop of Russia's regional interests.

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