US HAS PLAYED A UNIQUE ROLE IN THE SUCCESSFUL SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY THROUGH THE LAST CENTURY

US Key

Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 1-2

“If any factor gave the liberal democracies their edge, it was above all the existence of the United States rather than any inherent advantage. In fact, had it not been for the United States, liberal democracy may well have lost the great struggles of the twentieth century.”

The antecedents of America’s efforts to promote democracy lie far back, in the ‘civilizing’ of the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century, when President William McKinley called on to the US to ‘uplift and civilize and Christianize’ the newly subjugated Filipino population. This was followed in the mid-twentieth century by a shift towards ‘modernizing’ developing countries, such as Indonesia and South Vietnam. The promotion of democracy by the US can be seen therefore in evolutionary terms. A logical progression can be identified – as societies and their political systems have evolved, the US’s focus has developed correspondingly from an early emphasis on ‘civilizing’ and ‘modernizing’ and now ‘democratizing.’ Following this line of thought. If civilizing countries were posited as the “white man’s burden”, most famously so by Rudyard Kipling, the democratizing them may well be the “Western man’s burden.”

US KEY TO DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION – MOOST EFFECTIVE AND KEY TO INFLUENCE NATIONS GLOBALLY

Larry Diamond, 2009, Sr. Fellow Hoover Institute, “Supporting Democracy: Refashiooning US Global Strategy,” Democracy in US Security Strategy from Promotion to Support, March, CSIS, p. 131-2

Strategic Implications There are few higher imperatives for U.S. grand strategy in the Obama administration than to prevent a reverse wave of democratic implosions. Or to put it more positively, a major purpose of American foreign policy—and with respect to democracy in the world, the leading purpose—should be to help deepen, improve, and consolidate democracy where it has already come into being, at least in form. This does not mean that we should abandon the goal of trying to extend democracy as well, and thus to aid struggling democrats in authoritarian situations. But we need to recognize that we are at serious and growing risk of a worldwide paradigm shift, in which the momentum and global luster or legitimacy of democracy could be sharply reversed, with many democracies dying quietly, or with a thud. If this happens, it will not be a favorable climate for the spread of democracy to new places. Rather, those authoritarian regimes that do fail may be suc-ceeded by new dictatorships, possibly even worse (or more aggressive). Neither does it mean that we should stop trying to generate incentives for existing autocracies to move toward democracy. Indeed, one of the most promising tools to leverage the consolidation of existing democracies (selectivity in aid) could also generate a felicitous byproduct in that regard. It is a question of pri-orities. We are sailing into a storm, and we need to secure the gains for freedom in the world. This must be a project of the established democracies collectively, but with its continuing resources and the moral authority of a new and globally admired president, the United States has more potential than any other single country to help direct the winds of change toward democratic deepening rather than decay. There is another sense in which aiding the improvement and consolidation of existing democ-racies seems the right emphasis for the time. After eight years of George W. Bush, other states (and even most of the world's other democracies, including our principal allies) clearly wish to see a more multilateral style and a less hectoring and bombastic tone to U.S. foreign policy. In a period when we need the cooperation of major authoritarian states like China, Russia, and Saudi Ara- bia to deal with the big international challenges—the economic crisis, the climate change crisis, nuclear proliferation and terrorism—a shift in emphasis from what has appeared in recent years to be an American campaign for "regime change" to a more soft-spoken and incremental effort to support those democracies already in place may serve other American interests better as well.

*EU CP Answers*

AT: Perm Answer “EU Must Act Independently of the US”

Richard Youngs, Researcher FRIDE, 2005, [Fundacion par alas Relaciones Inernacionales y el Diaolgo Exterior], Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 246

Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 263

In most countries around the world where the established democracies are engaged in promoting democracy, the efforts of European and U.S. democracy-promotion actors are very similar on the ground, even though the different intervening countries claim to have a distinctive approach. While each democracy-promoting country tends to favor some types of programs over others, and has, in a manner of speaking, its own foibles and preferences, the differences tend to be fairly minor. Typically, almost all of the Western democracy aid in any particular country reaches a common set of state institutions and civil society organizations, with many of these institutions and organizations receiving support from multiple Western sources. Donor coordination, always invoked and rarely fully achieved, is important in democracy promotion precisely because there is so much similarity, and thus overlap and duplication, in assistance programs.