Will Trump End Sham Democracy Promotions?
by James Bovard

The Trump administration has slashed federal spending for democracy promotion efforts around the globe. That rollback of U.S. meddling is perhaps the most positive foreign-policy reform of the Trump presidency.

Since 1946, the U.S. government has intervened in more than a hundred foreign elections to assist its preferred candidate or party. Democracy is so important that the U.S. government refuses to stand idly by when foreign voters go astray. Rather than delivering political salvation, U.S. interventions abroad more often produce “no-fault carnage” (no one in Washington is ever held liable).

In 1983, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In 1984, Congressman Hank Brown (R-CO) provided a single sentence that should have nullified NED’s right to exist: “It is a contradiction to try to promote free elections by interfering in them.” In a 1985 piece for the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as “one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac.” But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things — an International Political Action Committee, the Taxpayer Funding of Foreign Elections Program, and a slush fund for political hacks who like to travel to warm climates in cold weather. In less than two years, NED has lived up to all these epithets.” My op-ed concluded, “The sooner NED is abolished, the cleaner our foreign policy will be.”

But that is a paltry argument compared to “jobs for the boys” —or perpetual government subsidies for Washington hustlers.

Guatemala

U.S. democracy promotion efforts in Latin America have resembled a fairy tale or a bad LSD trip. In the 1980s, the Agency for International Development bankrolled a program “to motivate the people of Guatemala to participate in the electoral process.” The written materials for the program assured everyone that “All Guatemalans are Equal and Free.” The program distributed a pamphlet entitled, “How the State and Government Is Organized to Protect Our Lives and Work for the Development and the Good of All.” The Carnegie Institute’s Thomas Carothers noted that the titles the program used were “seemingly drawn from a Chinese reeducation campaign of the 1960s.” Uplifting fare on democracy was a hard sell because the Guatemalan government had just completed a genocidal crackdown that killed hundreds of thousands of Mayan Indians and suspected leftists.

Haiti

No nation has received more pro-democracy interventions from the U.S. government during the past century than Haiti. In the early 1990s, Haiti’s elected ruler, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, became increasingly despotic, encouraging his supporters to kill opponents and critics by hanging burning automobile tires around their necks. The C.I.A. provided money and encouragement to a clique of Haitian generals who toppled Aristide in August 1991. Regardless of the C.I.A.’s role, the United States and the United Nations responded to the coup by slapping embargoes on Haiti, worsening the island’s economic misery and spurring thousands of Haitians to flee to Florida in leaky boats. In September 1994, President Clinton invaded Haiti, sending 20,000 troops in Operation Uphold Democracy to restore Aristide to power. Clinton hailed the efforts of American soldiers: “The work you’re doing is helping the Haitian people win their fight for freedom and democracy…. It’s proving to the world that the United States will stand up for democracy in our hemisphere.” Aristide became increasingly brutal and intolerant, though he managed to win reelection. In February 2004, an array of U.S. government-subsidized democracy promotion organizations helped spur another coup that left 100 people dead and toppled Aristide. Prior to the coup, Brian Dean Curran, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, warned Washington that the federally subsidized International Republican Institute’s actions “risked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government.”

Ukraine

In 2004, the United States pulled out all the stops to help its favored candidate win a “free and fair” election in the Ukraine. In the two years prior to the election, the United States spent over $65 million “to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won a disputed runoff election,” according to the Associated Press. Rep. Ron Paul complained that “much of that money was targeted to assist” Viktor Yushchenko. Yet with boundless hypocrisy, President George W. Bush had proclaimed that “any [Ukrainian] election … ought to be free from any foreign influence.” The United States intervened again to rig Ukrainian politics in 2014. The U.S. meddling helped sow the seeds of the Russia-Ukraine war that commenced in 2022.

Afghanistan

In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the United States would “seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” While Bush’s invocation thrilled Washington, the rest of the world paid more attention to his support for any tyrant who joined his war on terror.

In 2009, President Barack Obama traveled to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he announced plans to send more troops to Afghanistan to save Afghan democracy. Shortly after Obama’s West Point speech, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, sent in troops to bring democracy to a village named Marja in southern Afghanistan.

Shortly before the assault began, McChrystal announced: “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in.” In the same way that the U.S. government plopped Hamid Karzai into Afghanistan in 2002 as its “democratic” leader, the U.S. military brought in Afghan emigre Abdul Zahir to serve as Marja’s new governor. The Washington Post noted that Zahir was touted as “a respected elder from the Alozai tribe, a landowner who lived in Marja in his youth…. U.S. Marines and civilian advisers in Marja have given him money and protection in an attempt to persuade a wary population to follow him.” Zahir’s accession hit a bump after it leaked out that he had spent four years in prison for attempting to murder his stepson while living in Germany. The Washington Post noted: “U.S. officials in Afghanistan said Zahir’s criminal conviction did not undermine their confidence in his ability to govern.” Zahir never received popular support and was murdered at a local meeting the following year.

Libya

President Obama was supposed to redeem the honor of U.S. foreign policy. In 2011, Obama portrayed the U.S. bombing of Libya as a triumph of democratic values. After Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed, Obama speedily announced that Libyans “now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya.” But violence spiraled out of control and claimed thousands of victims (including four Americans killed in Benghazi in 2012). Similarly, Obama administration officials invoked democracy to justify arming quasi-terrorist groups in Syria’s civil war, worsening a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and created millions of refuges.

Egypt

But the Obama team, like prior administrations, did not permit its democratic pretensions to impede business as usual. After Egyptian protestors toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, Obama pledged to assist that nation “pursue a credible transition to a democracy.” But the U.S. government disapproved of that nation’s first elected leader, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi. After the Egyptian military deposed Morsi in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry bizarrely praised Egypt’s generals for “restoring democracy.” Similarly, many Ethiopians were horrified when Obama visited their country in 2015 and praised its regime as “democratically elected” — despite a sham election and its brutal suppression of journalists, bloggers, and other critics.

American zealotry for spreading democracy fails to recognize how democracy in many places has become simply another form of oppression.

Philippines

In some nations, election victories legitimize destroying voters en masse. This is exemplified by the Philippines, where the government killed 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers, including several mayors. After President Rodrigo Duterte publicly declared in 2017 that he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug users, Trump phoned him and, according to a leaked transcript, said, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job [you’re doing] on the drug problem.”

Many so-called democracies nowadays are simply elective despotisms. Elections abroad are often herd counts to determine who gets to fleece the herd. Many democracies have become kleptocracies where governing is indistinguishable from looting.

Democracy versus freedom

Selecting leaders by ballots instead of bullets does little to prevent oppression. Economist Friedrich Hayek observed in 1960, “Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.” The lessons of the domino-like collapse of democracies in the 1920s and 1930s were largely forgotten by the 1990s. Even the current round of democratic demolitions has failed to awaken people to the folly of trusting elections to safeguard their rights and freedom.

James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the great difficulty in framing a government is to “first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Democracy has been wildly oversold in the past century as the cure for Madison’s second dilemma. Politicians are far easier to elect than to control. Fostering the illusion of consent makes it easier for rulers to shackle their victims. As Sen. John Taylor warned in 1821, “Self-government is flattered to destroy self-government.”

In many nations, sham rights complement sham elections. Constitutions are “mere scraps of paper” that rulers shred at their convenience. Who determines whether citizens enjoy the rights they are promised? The same politicians who profit from violating them. The Rwanda constitution, for instance, declares, “Freedom of the press and freedom of information are recognized and guaranteed by the State.” And government agents were still free to kill anyone who criticizes President Paul Kagamea, who has ruled Rwanda with an iron fist since 2000.

Nations are increasingly descending into “rights-free democracy” — which is simply despotism with a facade of popular approval. A bogus election is worse than no election at all, as far as leashing politicians. The state gains legitimacy while reformers lose hope.

At this point, ballots are bolstering more tyrants than they are toppling. In much of the world, elections have become sops that rulers throw to their victims. What is the point of referendums that merely provide a one-day faux intermission on oppression? While Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, and Egypt epitomize the bastardization of balloting, many nations with venerable democracies also serve up election charades to citizens.

Around the world, people are recognizing that rotating political scoundrels in high offices achieves little or nothing. Unfortunately, falling support for democracy does not necessarily signal a decline in political gullibility. While many citizens have become wary of campaign promises, they remain easy prey for other demagoguery.

Once the U.S. government began trumpeting the spread of democracy, it was inevitable that “democracy” would be defined down to gin up more applause lines for presidential speeches. Unfortunately, because most Americans are ill-informed on foreign affairs, presidents can pirouette as saviors even for brazen foreign hoaxes. Invoking democracy provides a Teflon coating for almost any intervention abroad by the U.S. government.

It remains to be seen whether President Trump will fulfill his promises to end U.S. democracy promotion shams. But bribery and bombing are poor ways to export freedom. U.S. endorsements of spurious foreign elections should make Americans think twice about trusting official verdicts on our own elections. What if our politicians decide to give the American people “government in a box,” Marja-style? Or have they done that already?

James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty, published by FFF, his new book, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.