Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
For the last eight years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, friends of mine who either worked for or were simply sympathetic to the Kremlin have argued at various times that Russia was a "managed" democracy, a "sovereign" democracy or an autocracy like China on the long road to democracy via the autocratic-modernizer path. Western observers of Russian internal developments, including the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have echoed this third argument, emphasizing that Russia's transition from communism to democracy would be a long one but that it is nonetheless under way.
Carnegie Senior Associate Michael McFaul takes on the conventional wisdom that Vladimir Putin's tight-fisted rule has been behind the economic growth and stability over the past seven years. "The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either," McFaul writes.
After making a few initial concessions to the international community, like allowing in a UN human rights investigator and permitting a government meeting with pro-democracy leaders, the Burmese junta has stood firm. In the weeks since the August and September protests, the military has scoured the country, rounding up demonstrators and shuttering monasteries.
Since the pursuit of economic development and deepening democracy are complementary goals, there should be a long-term processes of democratic development that involves incentives for democratic reform and putting existing domestic democratic institutions to work.
During the campaign, United Russia released a document called "Putin's Plan" that became the party's main message. Although Mr. Putin's actual plan for the future remains a mystery, his plan for the parliamentary election has been carried out.
People in Asia embraces democracy as a principal but have a very different understanding of what it looks like compared to citizens in the West.
Bush did not enter the White House with a mission to promote freedom around the world. As a presidential candidate, he put forward a modest foreign policy agenda that eschewed nation building. The events of September 11, 2001, however, radically jarred his thinking on the nature of international threats and triggered a fundamental reevaluation of his administration’s national security policy that elevated democracy promotion as a central objective of his foreign policy agenda.
Reform is a politically charged issue in the Middle East. Carnegie experts force us to recognize the reality of conflicting interests and the limitations of external actors to bring about political reform, while drawing lessons on how to make international democracy promotion more effective.
Lebanon is threatening to come undone in the coming days. The international community, and particularly the United States, need to focus urgently on Lebanon. The crisis in Lebanon deserves the most urgent and intense attention at the highest international political levels