“What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils, for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

–Edmund Burke

“Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained”

–James Garfield

Note: I originally wrote this piece in 2008 when I was a US European Command Deputy J5. I have done some light editing, primarily in format and grammar. The National Security Strategy referenced  here is dated, but I think the overall content is still valid and important in today’s environment.

US National Security Strategy

One of the key objectives in American policy today is to spread democracy. It is clearly articulated in the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States and followed by the State Department and the Department of Defense in their policy, plans, and actions.

The 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States references the following statement from the 2002 version.

The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. These nonnegotiable demands of human dignity are protected most securely in democracies. The United States Government will work to advance human dignity in word and deed, speaking out for freedom and against violations of human rights and allocating appropriate resources to advance these ideals.

It then goes on to state:

To protect our Nation and honor our values, the United States seeks to extend freedom across the globe by leading an international effort to end tyranny and to promote effective democracy.

And then:

The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people.

This strategy has three potential problems.

First, democracy may not be the best option for a country at a particular time. The strategy potentially confuses a form of government with the ends—human rights and liberty—the government will deliver. It may be possible and even desirable, in some cases, to use different forms of government to deliver the desired end. Regardless of our best intentions, we may not be able to create a democracy everywhere. Moreover, we may not be able to create a democracy anywhere. Democracies and freedom may be something that people can only create for themselves.

Second, the document assumes that if the US can create global democracy, it will provide security. While this sounds good, it does not necessarily follow that democratic governments throughout the world will result in enduring security. Not all threats to national security will come from nation-states—Al Qaeda proved that. While I am not sure the nation-state system has ended, there are clearly transnational threats, as well as non-state actors. In addition, some of the most difficult national security issues may not even come from states or even non-state actors. Global warming, energy, declining international competitiveness, excess debt, and decaying infrastructure may be far more dangerous than Al Qaeda or its offshoots.

Third, not all democracies will follow equally harmonious paths. Even democracies will have divergent ideas over ideas. Democracies will also compete for resources and economically. While these competitions and disagreements may not lead to war, they can erode US influence and prosperity.

The 2006 National Security Strategy never really lays out strategic ends. At most, it talks about a vague idea of national security, as noted in the quote above. The rest of the document really talks about means, not ends. If one were to read the strategy, the strategic end would seem to be to ensure the US is not attacked again. While that is clearly a strategic goal, there is one that is even higher. It is to protect the US center of gravity.

Clausewitz, the first to clearly use the term center of gravity, defined it as “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.” What are the hub or hubs around which all else revolves that gives the United States its power? I think the US center of gravity lies not in something tangible, but rather in an idea. I think it strikes to the heart of what it means to be an American. It is why people from virtually every corner of the globe seek to become Americans.

Thomas Jefferson eloquently expressed this idea in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In this seminal statement, we find three critical principles:

1. The unalienable rights of humanity—Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
2. Power flows from the people to the government, not from the government to the people. Government exists only at the consent to the governed.
3. The rights of humanity should drive the actions of government. Government should take no action to constrain these rights and should work to preserve them against those that would constrain them.

These principles draw people to the United States. They shape our society and its institutions. They form the idea is our center of gravity—free citizens that mutually consent to form a union in order to promote liberty, human rights, and common prosperity.

We can be physically attacked and survive. Indeed, we have before. The danger really lies in losing or corrupting the ideal and our liberty. Succinctly put, the end of US National Security is to ensure our way of life. This means, of course, protecting our citizens from attack. But it also means ensuring our economic well-being, our liberty and our republican form of government.

Thus, the 2006 promotion of democracy seems right in line with protecting the US center of gravity. However, first impressions may be deceiving.

Note the strategy clearly references human rights and liberty, and then states that democracies are the best form of government to protect these rights. On the surface, that sounds eminently reasonable. After all, isn’t the United States a democracy and hasn’t it proven that it works? Isn’t a democracy the natural form of government for humanity? Can the US create democracies in other countries? This paper will consider these questions and then make a policy change recommendation to focus on human rights and the rule of law rather than a specific form of government.

Democracy in the Developing World

Before we start, however, let’s look at an interesting statement from an editorial in the 11 January 2008 edition of the New York Times by Aiden Hartley, entitled “Democracy by Other Means”. Harley, a native of Kenya, is the author of The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love and Death in Foreign Lands and worked for Reuters as a reporter. In the article, he wrote:

Kenyan democracy has failed because ordinary people were encouraged to believe that the process in and of itself could bring change. So Kenya’s leaders — and often international observers — interpret democracy simply in terms of the ceremony of multiparty elections. Polls bestow legitimacy on politicians to pillage for five years until the next depressing cycle begins.

This paragraph eloquently sums up the dangers of focusing on democracy rather than in building the processes and systems required to secure human rights and liberty. If the US goal is simply democracy, it runs this risk time and time again as it engages in other parts of the world with different historical and cultural settings. The US—and all western, representative governments—needs to engage countries along a spectrum of potential activities that recognize their history and culture, as well the systems they have in place. The goal should be to protect liberty and human rights in a matrix that can be supported within the country. Without the rule of law and a tradition of governance that supports human rights, efforts to create a democracy could create even worse conditions. Democracy as the US understands it may not be the best vehicle everywhere.

Two passages from Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion are also quite interesting in this light.

On page 51, speaking of a natural resource trap, he wrote, “ And I think the political science explanation is also important: resource rents are likely to induce autocracy. In the ethnically diverse societies of the bottom billion, such autocracies are likely to be highly detrimental for economic development…”

On page 71, speaking of preconditions for turnaround of poor societies, he wrote:

Democracy doesn’t seem to help policy turnaround. That is extremely disappointing, both for advocates of democracy and because democracy is more common now in the countries of the bottom billion than it used to be. Having a large population and having a high proportion of people with secondary education both help. The may well be pointing to the same thing: countries need a critical mass of educated people in order to work out and implement reform strategy.”

Collier’s point is that while many of the poorest countries are resource rich, they do not possess the core capacity—effective policies and process—to turn themselves around. Even when they can overcome the autocracies and attempt to form democratic forms of government, they still often do not possess the means to turn themselves around.

China provides a somewhat illustrative point. While it is not a resource rich country as envisioned by Collier, it is an autocracy, with a large population that is increasingly educated. China has managed an amazing turnaround…without a democratic government. Time will tell where the Chinese experiment leads and whether it is sustainably in its autocratic form.

The examples of China and democratic governments in the bottom billion stand “common wisdom” that democracy and economic prosperity go hand-in-hand on its ear.

Democracy is a Tool

Democracy is not an end. Rather, it is a means to secure the end of human rights and the rule of law. Human rights—the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—are the end state that should guide engagement with other governments, particularly in the developing world. The means then need to be tailored to the situation and be flexible to respond to changes.

Furthermore, a democracy relies upon a process of fair, free and informed voting that can take years to develop. It requires both a fair electoral system and an informed and capable electorate. Voters must be informed, capable of making rational choices in complex situations, and free from coercion to make those choices. If any of these three conditions are not present, democracy cannot secure the ends of human rights and the rule of law.

An informed and capable electorate depends upon ready access to information and the capability to sort through biases, misinformation and incorrect information to understand the critical issues. This requires a sound educational system and a free press. Without either, the electorate cannot make wise choices when it goes to the polls.

When it goes to the polls, the electorate must have a fair system, free of coercion and corruption. These systems must be developed and safeguarded. The voting process must be transparent and trustworthy. Otherwise, the validity of the election will be in question. This process, if not already present, could take years to effectively develop. Otherwise, the country could face the situation Harley describes.

And without a fair and free election, made by an informed and capable electorate, the resulting government could actually be antithetical to human rights and the rule of law, even though it was elected in a democratic process. The Kenyan example above shows the dangers of a potentially flawed process without an informed electorate. Collier hints at other examples as well. Let us also not forget that Hitler was duly elected as Chancellor of Germany. A means does not always lead to the desired ends. A means, after all, is a tool. And tools can be used to achieve different ends. An ice pick may be used to break apart ice for a refreshing drink, or, as Walter Freeman espoused and performed, to do a lobotomy.

Democracy is not a Swiss Army Knife

Now, let us return to our three questions.

The answer to the first question, whether the United States is a democracy, is no, not really. The United States is a republic, not a democracy. Many people, to include politicians and scholars, use the two words interchangeably. There is, however, a significant difference. The more a country tends to democracy, the more the people directly vote on the issues—or at least the representatives. The more it tends toward a republic, the greater the chance that enfranchisement and voting will be restricted to certain groups, with a remoter connection between the voter and the decision. Moreover, the US took quite a long time to evolve to our current “democractish” form of government.

If we look at the two seminal documents in United States political thought, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the word democracy is not used at all. The closest we come is in the enumeration of abuses in the Declaration in which King George is accused of dissolving representative bodies or causing the legislative bodies to meet “at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures”. The Constitution discusses the legislative branch and, in Section 4 of Article IV, guarantees each “State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. But a legislature is not necessarily synonymous with democracy. As noted below, the US Senate was not popularly elected for nearly 125 years and the right to vote was originally constricted.

When we look at the Constitution before several amendments in the twentieth century, the second question regarding proving that democracy works is also somewhat less clear. One can make a fairly good case that the framers of the Constitution were as concerned with the abuse of power by the electorate as they were with empowering the electorate. Section 3 of Article I state that the state legislatures will choose the senators from each state. This was not changed until the Seventeenth Amendment was passed in 1913. We see the same concern in Section 1 of Article 2. The President is elected not by popular ballot, but rather, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Clearly, there was concern about placing key parts of the federal government in the direct hands of the electorate.

So what did the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution intend if it wasn’t democracy?

Let’s look at two parts of these documents.

The Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The preamble to the Constitution states:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

These two paragraphs are arguably the most important paragraphs written in the corpus of American political thought. They do not specify a form of government. Rather, they talk about human rights. It is human rights that are paramount, not the specific form of government that ensures these rights are maintained and protected.

Many of the original signers of the Constitution were concerned that it did not adequately protect human rights. As a result, it was amended four years after ratification with the first ten amendments, commonly called the Bill of Rights. The common theme among these amendments is protecting the rights of the individual.

Clearly, the US perspective, at least historically, has been focused on human rights and liberty. The structure of the government was devoted to ensuring liberty and actual enfranchisement was limited to those the framers of the Constitution felt would best protect these rights and constitute an informed electorate. James Madison, in Federalist 47, addressed some concerns that the structure of the government envisioned in the Constitution would not protect liberty. Two sections of the paper are particularly interesting.

In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu.

The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim [separation of powers to protect liberty] are a further demonstration of his meaning. “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,” says he, “there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner. ” Again: “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR. ” Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author.

To quote an architectural term, “form follows function”. The primary function of the government, then, is to ensure liberty and human rights. The form then must support and guarantee this function. The question then, is there only one form that guarantees this function? The follow up question is does democracy entail a separation of government into three branches as Montesquieu envisioned and the US constitution created? Is democracy really even enough to secure liberty or does it need a specific structure as well?

Madison, Montesquieu and other western writers, drawing from their historical and cultural perspective, argue for a republican form of government, with clear separation of powers. From their cultural perspective, this structure is eminently logical. The question, however, is, are there other structures that would work based on other cultural perspectives? Is there only one structure that will support liberty and human rights or many? This is more than an academic question. As the US and other developed counties continues to engage throughout the world, they need to ensure that their strategy accomplishes their goals. The goal should be the protection of human rights and liberty.

The protection of human rights rests on the rule of law. The rule of law governs how citizens interact with each other, how the government interacts with the citizens and sets the legal framework for what rights the citizens have and what rights the government has, as well as the legal framework for security, commerce, and other key issues.

The rule of law rests upon a philosophical foundation, which is heavily influenced by religion, history, culture and perhaps geography. If we look across the globe, across history, we can see how systems of law developed based upon these concepts. From Hammurabi through Moses, to Confucius to Mohammed, we can see the religious influences. We can study the evolution of philosophy and law in the Greek and Roman texts. We can study the development of the Chinese bureaucracy and the Japanese samurai culture. We see how the English system of common law evolved.

In most of Europe and the west, this foundation starts with Greek philosophy and then adds the codification of Roman law. During the Enlightenment, western philosophers extended this concept to “natural law”. Jefferson clearly invoked the concept of natural law in the Declaration of Independence and the US rule of law can be clearly traced from the Greeks to the Romans, to the British and to the philosophers of the Enlightenment. This philosophy was based upon a well-developed construct of government and liberty.

But in other parts of the world, the philosophical foundation for the rule of law developed with different governing forces. Not all systems of law grant the individual the same rights or have the same cultural basis as western law and philosophy. Not all places in the world evolved the same system of government that evolved in the west.

The rule of law requires it to be maintained, executed and adjudicated. These base functions cut across virtually all philosophical foundations and governmental systems and are the functions that Madison quoted from Montesquieu. (However, in those forms of government based upon a religious law, the maintenance function may be more of a commentary function than that of legislation. We can clearly see this in legal systems based upon Sharia.) The differences in functional architecture are in whom or what body performs these functions and the degree to which the people are involved. In some forms of government, one person performs all three functions or at least controls them. In others, a tribal council may perform some or all of them. In the US government and many other representative forms of government, the three functions are separated into two or more bodies.

Thus, as the US and other developed countries engage throughout the world, we will find different philosophical foundations and different structures. The question then becomes, can we successfully export western philosophical foundations and governmental structures to regions that have a long history of their own foundations and governmental systems?

To answer this question, let’s turn back to the Declaration of Independence again. It enumerates three critical rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These three rights mirror, in many ways, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow constructed a pyramid of needs with physiological needs at the base, moving up to “Self Actualization” at the capstone of the pyramid. Jefferson’s three rights match this concept extremely well. The right to life, the need for security and the essentials for life are at the base of the rights pyramid. The right to liberty is in the center, delineating the rights to freedom to act in self-interest with minimal coercion, bridging Maslow’s safety and social needs. The Pursuit of Happiness is the capstone of the pyramid, matching up well with Maslow’s capstone and self-esteem and social needs. While Jefferson didn’t specifically delineate a hierarchy of rights, they do flow like one and are listed in the correct order for a hierarchy. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need to articulate a hierarchy based upon the philosophical foundation and existing governmental structures in which he was operating.

As we engage throughout the world, we may benefit by keeping Jefferson’s hierarchy of rights in mind. If we try to export the concept of the “Pursuit of Happiness” to a part of the world that is still struggling with the right to life, then we may well be frustrated.

The same thing may be said for governmental systems. If we try to export the US or western structure to a society based upon a tribal or feudal system, again we may be frustrated.

Lessons in Developing Representative Governments

The history of several key US engagement efforts after World War II clearly illustrates this concept. Let’s look briefly at Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Germany and Japan rapidly assimilated the rights hierarchy and a representative governmental structure with the separation of powers and rule of law that supported them.

Germany, despite its history under the Kaiser and Hitler, had a clear philosophical foundation that recognized and understood all three components of the rights hierarchy. It had a representative form of government after World War I and before Hitler. Indeed. Hitler was duly elected Chancellor—again showing the potential fallacy of democracy as a cure to all problems. Thus, the development of a representative form of government based upon the western constructs of human rights and rule of law was not that difficult to bring about. The German people were ready for it both philosophically and structurally.

Japan may seem contraindicative to a smooth acceptance of this philosophy and structure. It was a militaristic empire at the end of the war. However, if we look at Japanese history from the middle 19^th century onward, we see an amazing ability to change and to accept western ideas in order to develop. The Japanese rapidly transformed from a samurai-feudal form of government to a modern state that defeated Russia in 1905. Japanese acceptance of the western philosophical and governmental structures can be seen as a continuation of their very successful strategy.

South Korea and Taiwan are very interesting cases. Neither had the philosophical nor the governmental structure conducive to the western notions of human rights and representative government. Thus, throughout most of the period from the 1950s through to the early 1980s, South Korea and Taiwan had difficulties with human rights and could not really be considered representative forms of government with structures designed to protect human rights. South Korea and Taiwan needed the time to assimilate these concepts and to create the structures required governmentally, culturally, and commercially to support them. After this evolution, they have taken a place in the commonwealth of representative governments that have formed the rule of law based on human rights with the representative governmental structures to support and protect it.

Perhaps our strategy should not directly link human rights and democracy together. Perhaps we need to think about our strategy in light of our history with representative government and our experiences after World War II. As discussed above, the US has evolved to a far more expansive view of human rights and a more representative form of government over the course of its history. From abolishing slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) to protecting rights and the extending the vote regardless of race in the Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteen Amendments (1870), to granting woman the right to vote in the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), the US concept of human rights and voter enfranchisement has evolved. Likewise, the US structure has evolved as well with the passage of the Sixteenth (giving Congress greater power to spend) and Seventeenth Amendments (popular election of Senators) in 1913, the Twenty-Second Amendment (limiting the president to two terms) in 1957 and the Twenty-Third Amendment (electoral college reform) in 1961.

Just as the United States has evolved in its understanding of human rights and enfranchisement, we must expect other countries to move along evolutionary lines as well. Few, if any, countries will be able to leap straight from an existing form of tribal or feudal government to a full-blown representative democracy with universal enfranchisement. Even the Japanese took over a hundred years to make this change.

Universal enfranchisement may not even be appropriate initially. Recall Harley’s statement, quoted above about the failure of Kenyan democracy. Voting entails a significant responsibility that requires an understanding of governmental processes and structures and the key issues that shape governmental policy and protecting human rights. Premature enfranchisement could produce governments that are actually antithetical to human rights and the rule of law. The Palestinian elections are but one example of many. Perhaps evolutionary paths like those that South Korea and Taiwan followed may be more appropriate for some countries.

At the same time, we need to keep the lesson of South Vietnam in mind. Like South Korea and Taiwan, South Vietnam had a less than stellar government supported by the US. The crucial difference, however, was there was an active insurgency in Vietnam designed to overthrow what many saw as a corrupt government. The lesson of Vietnam is perhaps less military than political. The US needed a far more robust political and economic engagement to reform the South Vietnamese government. Military engagement could only buy time for this to happen. The same may be said for the current involvement in Iraq. In pressure situations, the US needs to bring all elements of national power to bear to assist the government in reforming, providing basic services and developing and implementing a rule a law.

A More Flexible Strategy Based On Human Rights and the Rule of Law

As we engage with other countries, our strategy should be to promote the hierarchy of human rights and help these countries to evolve and to develop the philosophical and structural requirements to support and to protect them, as well as the policy reforms required. This may not mean a direct push to a democracy. It may mean working with existing tribal forms of government or other structures to ensure the recognition of the hierarchy of rights and to develop a rule of law based upon it. As the rule of law develops, then the governmental structures can likewise evolve to support, sustain and to protect it. And as the experience of Korea and Taiwan show, this strategy may mean a prolonged engagement to produce meaningful results. There will be ups and downs along the way, but prolonged engagement in the rule of law and economic policies will help to ensure a successful transition.

Our strategy should also keep in mind that it is nearly impossible to give another country liberty and democracy. Liberty must be earned—constantly—or it will be lost. Liberty given will soon be lost. Countries need to take steps to secure their own liberty. Our strategy should assist in this process and help countries make peaceful and stable transitions to governments that secure human rights and the rule of law. In this light, significant investments in Security Sector Transformation and Reform (SSTR) and governance are critical. They are also clearly linked: SSTR must emphasize civilian control over the military and the transformation of the military and police from predators to protectors. The US and other developed countries must increase these investments in stability and prosperity and be prepared to stay the course.

However, we need to be prepared that the actual governmental structures that evolve may not be what we would recognize as a democracy. The cultural milieu may evolve a different structure. The specific structure, however, should be less of a concern than whether that structure supports and protects a rule of law that encompasses the entire hierarchy of human rights.

Human rights and the rule of law should be the red line, not a specific form of government. We need to engage each country based upon its cultural, historical, economic and geographical context and work with them the grow human rights and governmental structures that support them.