Brace as America’s New Round of 'Democracy' Exports Hits the Asia-Pacific

The “New Game” of U.S. Democracy in the Asia-Pacific

During the last four years of Obama’s consecutive terms in office, Obama’s promotion of democracy has been stepping up. In one regard, the personnel appointed by Obama in his second term to be responsible for foreign relations and security — for example: new Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice — have, all along, been absolutely meticulous in their dealings involving democratic rights. In another regard, economic turnaround has allowed Americans to regain their faith while numerous American anti-establishment organizations have renewed their activism. According to the U.S. federal budget report of 2013, the focus on the United States has, amid the many countries around the globe which “accept democracy,” seen a notable increase. This is especially evident in areas of U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy and the government’s 25 percent increase in revenues over the 2013 budget, both of which have spurred nongovernmental organizations like “Freedom House” and “National Endowment for Democracy” to further pursue their political agendas.

In December 2013, Susan Rice gave a public lecture on “rights issues.” This was the latest continuation in the U.S. political assembly’s citizenship debate, since Hillary Clinton’s public speech on Internet freedom. During her speech, Rice clearly outlined the four points of promoting U.S. democracy throughout the world in future: Don’t promote democracy down the barrel of a gun, take the middle road of compromise for the short term during this period of conflict between prosperity and U.S. democracy, use economic sanctions and foreign relations to pressure human rights violators, and promote a 21st century “human rights agenda” — this includes respecting equality between men and women, not discriminating against homosexuals, and protecting the development of a civil society. At first glance, Rice’s four points appear to imply some restraint on America’s attempts to convert other countries to democracy. But given that the U.S. has yet to begin both strongly stressing its own “democratic superiority” and taking on the promotion of “American style democracy” as its responsibility, then it is clear there will be no fundamental changes to the way the U.S. does things.

At the end of 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also took to the stage many times in the interests of “human rights issues.” On International Human Rights Day in December, Kerry spoke out saying that he would continue supporting those who advocated for human rights and those who had been (wrongfully) imprisoned. Afterward, Kerry called for the seeking out of a civil society leader in Laos, a man who had been missing for a long time, saying that this person had the air of a leader. When Kerry visited Vietnam and the Philippines, he also spoke out many times on human rights issues and even increased pressure on the Vietnamese government. America’s new round of Asia-Pacific democratic change is formed with the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative. In December 2013, President Obama himself outlined the strategy via video address. In actuality, the U.S. Department of State had already begun related activities a year earlier. Judging by the scale of the activities and the government’s participation in them, the “youth leader” strategy might, in comparison with previous Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Civil Society 2.0 strategy, become the benchmark project of America’s future four points of democracy reform. As the U.S. documents its strategy, over 65 percent of citizens aged 35 and under in the ASEAN regions are potentially covered by it. The U.S. will engage these potential candidates with ways to competitively cultivate leadership power, come to the U.S. to study, promote cultural exchange within regions, seek solutions to regional disputes, learn industrial technologies and English, and assist and support the cultivation of youth volunteers. All these [initiatives] will be used to promote the United States’ strength and its relations with ASEAN countries. For a long time those within American society have been the major supporters of and participants in the U.S. democratic reform movement. Nowadays, the core of these citizens have also hit upon subversive new techniques for promulgating democracy. For example the recently retired from office New York mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, will soon be engaging vigorously in his newly self-created “consulting business.” In his 12 years in office as mayor of New York, Bloomberg personally paid $6.5 billion to defuse New York’s “economic time bomb,” created tens of thousands of new jobs, and fundamentally eliminated many of the “sicknesses” from which this mega-sized city was suffering. Now, he hopes to take his experience onto the international stage, offering to export his own “New York model” to other megacities around the globe. And of the ten most populous cities in the world, the majority is either in the Pacific or South Asia regions — so we can see that the Asia-Pacific will become a major focus for Bloomberg.

Techniques Will Become Ever More Crafty

Judging by Rice and Kerry’s speeches, along with the examples given involving actions by the U.S. government and its citizenry, Obama’s U.S. democracy export strategy has a unique quality about it. It embodies America’s attempt to “step out again” and propagate varieties of democratic transformation using experience and tutelage. From a theoretical standpoint, Obama’s line of thinking and ex-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emphasis on soft power are both based on the same fundamentals. They emphasize techniques of nonviolence and noncoercion to promulgate American views and values to the world. In doing so, they protect the human resources engaged in human rights movements and use them to interfere in the internal workings of other countries’ governments. But in terms of concrete application, Obama’s methods are gentler, subtler than Hillary’s — they don’t appear to be a distinct project. The Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative has been in operation for over a year, it has been clearly reported in the media, yet it by far lacks that “mustering of forces” feeling as was seen behind Civil Society 2.0.

Furthermore, when considering its democratic strategy the U.S. is drawing upon its experiences — the Arab Spring, especially, had a profound effect upon its policymakers. Those within the sphere of the U.S. democratic strategy movement believe that not only do movements like the Arab Spring fail to change existing military governments within the regions in which they arise, but they also weaken the rule of law and do nothing to combat deeply entrenched ideologies that undermine civil rights. They also plunge regions into chaos, something that the U.S. does not want to see happen, because such chaos can go on to have a detrimental effect on U.S. foreign relations within the area. History has shown that each and every part of such forms of “democratic movements,” after they evolve into social upheaval, mostly ends in defeat for democratic change. America’s answer is to focus on building a stronger foundation for the shift toward democratic reform, without letting itself appear to be the instigator.

When reflecting on the ideas outlined above, the three major elements that can be seen in America’s democracy export strategy are as follows: First, emphasize the export of rule of law and its methods of resolution. In the past when the U.S. was promoting democracy, it emphasized imitation of the American system. It wanted others to establish a system involving the separation of powers and “one person, one vote.” To this effect, the U.S. normally operated on policies involving the provision of foreign aid and preconditions that relationships would change. But these overarching political ploys could not resolve the social problems that were prevalent throughout emerging nations, and so their successes were limited. Now, the U.S. will plan to export the essences of democratic details by tailoring them to a specific country’s need for democratic reform assistance. For example, in recent years Indonesia and the Philippines have been hit with natural disasters like typhoons and tsunamis. The precise aid that the U.S. provided to these Southeast Asian nations was used to build a disaster prevention and response network, thereby advancing U.S. presence within the region’s civil societies. Southeast Asian nations ordinarily hope to increase their exports to the United States and accept the products of U.S. industry in return. So the U.S. immediately went into the Trans-Pacific Partnership with conditions based on environmental protection, country production restrictions, freedom to form labor unions and arbitration for ultranational militarism. Through the deals it struck with these partner countries, the U.S. was able to export the fundamentals of American society and its economic system under the banner of increasing trade with the United States.

The second element in the strategy is to aim at the youth, the grassroots movements and the middle class — those that will serve as the future support pillars of society. In previous times, the American democratic conversion movement desired to progress using the “top layer route.” It emphasized cultivation, influence and even absorbed the essence of the host country’s political system and trained political representatives within it. In this way, the U.S. hung its hopes on a minority to push forward with American democratic reform within these countries. But as the situations in Iraq, Iran and the revolutions within Central Asia have demonstrated, although these tactics could have a short-term positive effect for the U.S. reform process, over the long term, the representatives they trained would often revert to seeking personal profit before anything else. At the same time, they could even come to have a falling out with the United States. Now the U.S. seeks to broadcast its message of democracy among the youth, the grassroots and the middle class. It uses a variety of methods to export its American values and foster appreciation for them. It promulgates an admiration for American society and its ways of thinking to the populace. The U.S. is especially making cities and the middle class key factors in its strategies. It believes that in the coming international society, the use of cities will become more prominent. In turn, the problems brought along by urbanization and social conflict will then become a focal point. The U.S. will need only to get a grip on a few world leading specialists on city management, and it will then be in an outstanding position to instruct other countries on using them.

The third strategy is especially clever and could have deep and penetrating effects. Rice’s speech demonstrates that the uniqueness of America’s foreign democratic reform strategy is already being put into effect. For the good of its own country, the U.S. can accept the issues of compromise and concession into the civic debate. And by doing so, it creates for the U.S. an even greater gulf between itself and all other nondemocratic countries with which it comes into contact. For example, in the United States’ softening foreign policy changes toward Burma and Vietnam, it doesn’t persist with old quarrels over civil rights. The U.S. also doesn’t pursue unrealistic attempts to change standards of human rights, which were so often issues in its previous relations with these countries. Rather, the U.S. uses access, economics and the prize of diplomacy to induce softer changes on those countries’ national stages — similar strategies have also had a positive effect up until now. These changes have given the U.S. more freedom to move on the foreign policy front, and they give flexibility to its push for democratic reform. By combining its foreign strategy and promises of economic profitability together, more channels are opened. This way the U.S. can incrementally build a solid foundation to export democratic reform, and it can tackle foreign relations and human rights together. Two birds with one stone.

“Here’s the Carrot” Versus “Here’s the Stick” — the Growing Peril

As the examples given above show, the U.S. diplomatic reform movement is changing its methods. It is focusing less on trying to topple and instead opting to instruct and poison. Its methods are becoming more invisible and more complex, eluding discovery by those who are on the watch for them. Just as this democratic reform technique sprouted from change for everyday American citizens, so too do its techniques focus on pandering to the discontent and needs of grassroots citizens. It focuses on education, health care, income and societal management to spread its initiative of American qualities, get action on issues or assist its policies. It is difficult to look into the future and predict how these democratic reform activities will alter ordinary benevolent acts, such as foreign aid, disaster relief and commerce. This implies that the instant a cooperating country starts to become intractable or prohibitory in any way, it could end up harming a great number of its citizens’ personal profits. As a result, there will be a backlash from the people. From this, we can see that the U.S. democratic change movement is already moving away from the hackneyed dichotomy of “infiltrate” and “don’t infiltrate.” Instead, it is engaging with local governments in a war for the civil hearts of the people.

The author is an assistant researcher on the U.S. for China’s Modern International Relations Research Center.