*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
**AFFIRMATIVE** *Democracy Promotion Good *
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- Should Endorse Democracy Promotion Even if it Doesn’t Solve
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**AFFIRMATIVE***Democracy Promotion Good *--Moral ImperativeDemocracy Promotion is a Moral ImperativeDEMOCRACY PRMOTION IS A MORAL GOOD/IMPERATIVE Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow Hoover Institute, In Search of Democracy, 2016, p. 33 As democracy has spread to a majority of the world’s states over the past three decades, many scholars, politicians, activists, and aid administrators have gone from asking why transitions happen to asking what the new regimes are like. How can we evaluate – and if need be, help to improve – their quality (or any regime’s quality) both as governments and as democratic governments? This stream of theory, methodological innovation, and empirical research flows from the notions that:
Should Endorse Democracy Promotion Even if it Doesn’t SolveWE OWE IT TO OPPRESSED PEOPLE TO TRY TO PROMOTE DEMOCRACY EVEN IF IT IS UNSUCESSFUL Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow Hoover Institute, In Search of Democracy, 2016, p. 415-6 It would be better if, in countries such as Cambodia, the international community would summon the resources and the will to promote and insist upon true democracy. However, the hard truth is that we lack in the international community today the finances, the troops, the political will-and probably also the knowledge—to promote democracy successfully in the most forbidding cases. In all likelihood, Iraq will bear out this sad truth once again. In these circumstances, it is possible that we are better off having tried, even if half-heartedly, to build democracy, while winding up with a partially democratic system—a country at least struggling in the “gray zone”—than we would have been if we had just resigned ourselves to dictatorship from the start. Nevertheless, the people who suffer under new forms of oppression—however much they fall short of genocide, absolute dictatorship, or civil war—still wish for something better politically. At a minimum, we owe it to them to remain engaged, morally, rhetorically, diplomatically, and with concrete programs for democracy assistance, once the failed state has begun to take shape on less than democratic grounds. --US Soft Power/LeadershipDemocracy Assistance Key to U.S. Soft Power/LeadershipDEMOCRACY ASSSITANCE BEST WAY TO ASSERT GLOBAL SOFT POWER LEADERSHIP Representative Green, 2010, House Hearing: Human Rights and Democracy Assistance: Increasing the Effectiveness of U.S. Foreign Aid, June 10, [http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg56888/html/CHRG-111hhrg56888.htm] Promoting human rights and democracy around the world is an important, worthwhile and strategic goal of American foreign policy. The United States must remain a global leader in this area. And I have long believed that the best way for us to show its leadership is through soft assistance to other countries. This is accomplished through foreign assistance programs involving a team of different organizations, each playing different roles. We are here today as part of that team, and the role we play is to find ways that reform and strengthen the structure of these programs so they can be more flexible, accountable, and efficient. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE IS A KEY TOOL OF U.S. SOFT POWER AND FOREIGN POLICY Representative Pence, 2008, House Hearing: U.S. Assistance to the Middle East: Old Tools for New Tasks?, May 8, [http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/42296.pdf], p. 5 I would offer there is really no substitute for American leadership on the foreign stage. Foreign assistance is one tool; it is an element of soft power in our national arsenal. Our leadership though is broader than simply considering dollar amounts. As you know, I am generally skeptical of government spending, especially direct payments to other governments. But I certainly understand why governments like the newly elected one in Pakistan desire bilateral aid with no strings attached. I believe they should always, though, be closely linked to our national interests. Foreign policy and foreign aid go together. Foreign aid is not philanthropy; it must be tied to America’s vital national interests. DEMOCRACY PROMOTION STRENGTHENS US HEGEMONY BY CREATING STATES THAT SUPPORT US INTERESTS Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 2-3 Democracy promotion emerged as an organized, coherent US strategy in the early 1980s. It signaled a cautious but pivotal reassessment of the US’s traditional posture abroad, which had long relied on us authoritarian systems of government to ensure stability and concomitantly US interests. The broad objectives of the strategy of democracy promotion have been twofold. First, the aim has been the maintenance of stability in the countries concerned, both of the state itself and wider society. Stability impacts the various political, economic, military and other interests identified by the US in each of these countries. For instance, stability is a necessary requirement for the success of free market economies, a primary US concern. As part of this strategy, the US has sought to gradually replace proxy authoritarian governments with elite-based democracies. An elite-based democracy refers to ‘a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choices in elections carefully managed by competing elites. Whereas authoritarian governments are reliant on coercion to rule, elite-based democracies incorporate more consensual means of governance. This means the latter are more likely to engender popular support, and consequently ensure a more enduring form of stability. As such the strategy of democracy promotion marks the development of a more subtle, nuanced means of pursuing US interests abroad. Second, the aim has been the achievement of hegemony in the Gramscian sense. This occurs when the ideology promoted is internalized and accepted as “natural” by society at large, upon whose consent a consensual hegemony is dependent. The locus of hegemony is situated in civil society according to Gramscian theory. By integrating democracy promotion with a range of economic, social and cultural policies, the US has sought to strategically “penetrate not just the state, but civil society…and from therein exercise control.” Civil society has subsequently proved to be the main focus of US democracy promotion programs across the world. This reflects a gradual shift in the strategic emphasis on the US, from predominantly engaging state governments, in an effort to institute reforms top-down,to increasingly incorporating actors located in civil society, thus tentatively encouraging reform from within, rather than solely from above. 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