A Critical Look at the Forced Spread of Democracy

By Tony Smith, MIT Center for International Studies. Posted May 15, 2008.

The first subject to discuss in considering the future of the liberal internationalist agenda is the importance of the democratization project to the definition of Wilsonianism. The second is the meaning of multilateralism. In the first case, Thomas Knock and Anne-Marie Slaughter argue in a forthcoming volume that democratization was never an important part of Wilsonianism; that, instead, multilateralism is the key to liberal internationalism. On the basis of this argument, they come to the conclusion that the Bush Doctrine is not in the Wilsonian tradition. In my contribution to this volume, I object to this denigration of the place of democracy in liberal internationalism as being fundamentally illogical. Accordingly, I find the Bush Doctrine easily identifiable as Wilsonian.

I argue for the centrality of democracy to the Wilsonian project because it seems clear that the microfoundations for a regime in society are critical to the ability of those states that participate in multilateral organizations to do so effectively. That is, in order to function effectively, ultimately to provide for a peaceful world order, a multilateral organization needs to be dominated by democratic states, known for their rule-abiding behavior, their transparency, predictability, and accountability. Wilson wanted the League of Nations to be a League under the control of democracies and concerned with expanding this form of government, but then in late February 1919 at Versailles, he abandoned that idea. From a liberal internationalist perspective, the result of the League's character was that it was undermined not only by the failure of the United States to join, but also by the role played in it by autocratic states. It is worth adding that in his drafts of the Pan American Union some three years earlier, Wilson had also looked forward to a community of American states based on the consent of the governed. In a word, a world of peace was necessarily a world dominated by what today is often called "market democracies," a type of social, economic, and political order that Wilson argued was fundamentally different from and better than any alternative order. In such an order the place of democratic governments was central.

From a liberal perspective it is altogether logical that democratic states would make better partners in multilateral institutions than those that were autocratic (much less "totalitarian," a term and reality that only became evident after Wilson's death). That said, Wilson had to work with such material as he had at hand, whence, presumably, his capitulation to the idea that the League would not be dominated by the democracies. Such a compromise could not be satisfactory unless it were seen as a way-station on the road to the expansion of democratic government, a process that a rule-creating and abiding organization like the League might well encourage.

It is therefore altogether Wilsonian for liberal internationalists today to recognize the deficiencies of the United Nations yet at the same time not to sacrifice the notion of the paramount importance of multilateralist cooperation among democratic peoples for the sake of world peace. This is illustrated by Madeleine Albright's, and now Anne-Marie Slaughter's, notion of a "Community of Democracies" or a "Concert of Democracies" standing alongside the U.N. but capable of acting with unity and purpose in a military fashion should such a community deem it necessary.

Albright and Slaughter's position on the centrality of democratic solidarity is perfectly Wilsonian. This is what makes the Bush Doctrine so clearly Wilsonian as well. From President George W. Bush's initial speech on the matter to the West Point commencement in June 2002, through what is generally considered the best statement of the doctrine in the National Security Strategy of the United States in September 2002, it is clear that the leading element of his plan to construct a new world order (but not its only aspect) is the replacement of what he repeatedly has called "tyranny" by the spread of democratic government -- not only in Iraq but throughout the "Broader Middle East," if not beyond.

As a result, democratic government, like multilateralism and open markets, may be only one aspect of the Wilsonian project. But of its various aspects, democratic regimes are the most critical.

American Hegemony

Knock and Slaughter also disagree with me on the meaning of "multilateralism" in the Wilsonian agenda. Slaughter argues that such cooperation involves sacrifice of sovereignty, as if such a process will be experienced by all members of such organizations equally. What she never says is that multilateralism is, in effect, a program for American hegemony. I don't necessarily have anything against American hegemony; it may be good for the world. I don't necessarily have anything against imperialism; it may be good for those people subjected to it. It's a matter of debate. She, however, doesn't buy into the notion that her version of Wilsonianism is hegemonic or imperialistic, and sees rather the U.S. as being no more than first among equals. On this she is on solid ground, for as Knock shows, Wilson himself excluded the idea that multilateralism would be a vehicle of American power projection.

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Tony Smith is Cornelia M. Jackson Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. His most recent book is A Pact with the Devil: Washington's Bid for World Supremacy and the Betrayal of the American Promise (Routledge, Taylor, Francis, 2007).