United States Efforts to Build Democracy Around the Globe is Working, New Report Says
The universities' report, which analyzed the impact of U.S. foreign assistance on democracy-building in 165 nations from 1990 to 2004, was presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The report concludes that democracy assistance has the greatest effect in nations that have the greatest socio-economic need, so that it works better in countries with lower levels of development.
Large amounts of U.S. military assistance, however, significantly reduce the level of assistance toward democracy.
"In general, the results remain consistent with our previous findings, but the effect of 'Democracy and Governance' programs on democracy building has become smaller. The overall reduced impact of democracy assistance is explained mostly by the unusually high level of democratic governance investment in Iraq in 2004," said Mitchell Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science and a fellow of the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt.
"The research...did not change the troubling finding about the negative impact of human rights assistance on respect for human integrity," said C. Neal Tate, professor and chair of political science at Vanderbilt.
Critics of the United States' attempts to spread democracy around the globe call it "nation-building" and denounce the policy as needlessly expensive financially and militarily to the American people as well as being an unjust impingement on the rights of other nations to evolve on their own-something that they opine leads to the "troubling finding about the negative impact of human rights assistance on" mutual respect for other human beings.
These critics point to the war in Iraq as a failed attempt at nation-building. The United States' leadership falsely believed that after a devastating display of military might and a call to bring down Saddam Hussein, the people of Iraq would rally behind the U.S. and practically hand the nation over to the Americans to be transformed, the critics say, and this is not at all the way things have played out.
President Bush ran for his first term as President making the assertion that he would not be engaging in nation building. Some analysts opine that he was pressured into continuing with the international policy by his advisors, including Vice President Dick Cheney.
Some other critics call America's democracy-building efforts American Imperialism and say that it is a practice that violates all that the nation's Constitution stands for.
Original Newswire Source:
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Published by Brant McLaughlin
I am a Writer driven by endless curiosity and a deep desire to waste time creatively. View profile
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1 Comments
Post a CommentI am not so sure that it is building real democracies but I do know that the one's we need to worry about are not moving in the direction we had hoped. Great article!