Democracy Promotion & Schulz's Failure

Democracy promotion was main topic in Chapter 2 of In Our Own Best Interest written by William F. Schulz’s. In this chapter Schulz writes it is in America’s interest to promote democracy, and this in turn will help bring more rights to people who live in repressive countries. (Schulz, 48) Schulz also argued that, “More democracy does not always equal more stability any more than more democracy automatically equals more peace. In the long run, however, democratic communities of rights do in fact tend to be more ”dynamically stable” than autocracies.” (Schulz, 59) The arguments he put forward were intriguing to me; however, I felt he purposefully downplayed the difficulty in promoting democracy in order to make the American reader more open to his ideas.
Schulz argues the U.S. should promote democracy and many of his opinions, I believe, take on a realist perspective. This perspective, in International Relation terms, assumes the global system is anarchic and every state’s goal is to promote its own national interest. Schulz’s arguments rely on the U.S. doing what is best for us, but then simultaneously argues that if not the U.S. then either NATO (which is heavily supported by the U.S.) or the UN (where the U.S. has a seat on the Security Council) should intervene. Here we are presented some problems. First, won’t promoting our national interest not necessarily equate with promotion of democracy in other countries? Secondly, I take issue with Schulz saying, essentially, “If you don’t want the U.S. involved in democracy promotion than too bad because they will be involved.” This argument, or assumption, decreases the importance of other actors such as EU, or NGOs.
Schulz wanted the reader, at the end of his book, to think promoting human rights and democracy is in fact in our interest. However, what is in the U.S.’s national interest does not always mean promoting democracy and I believe this can be seen with the comfortable relations the United States has with Saudi Arabia. There a democracy is certainly not flourishing, but U.S. elites are not advocating for an Arabian democracy because of our natural resource needs. Viewing our national interest in economic terms, instead of the moral terms that Schulz hoped to promote, has occurred throughout our history and will continue.
Also, the use of realism has always bothered me and it still does when used within this book. The U.S. should promote democracy because it’s in our interest, but is it not also in other countries interest to promote democratic reforms (the democratic peace theory, after all, does not just apply to the U.S. and another democracy)? Let us assume Britain wanted to promote democracy in the United States, how would this promotion be achieved? Would it come through: election monitoring, promotion of civil society, or perhaps Britain would overthrow our government and install a new and better one? Obviously, the leaders of the U.S. would not allow these scenarios to occur neither would the elites or leaders of ‘problem’ countries. I think this is where Schulz purposefully simplifies democracy promotion. As a citizen I can petition the U.S. government, become involved with educational campaigns, or a NGO but ultimately democracy promotion will be in the hands of my elites and the elites of the problem country. Unlike ending human rights violations, there is no clear stopping point for democracy promotion and it is much less tangible than something like a genocide or FGM. This ultimately means the average U.S. citizen may advocate for democracy promotion but little may be done; moreover, the citizen may never really know if the promotion is accomplishing anything.
Schulz’s audience was U.S. citizens and he argued not every conflict requires U.S. action, but almost every democracy promotion will have a U.S. influence. Historically Schulz is probably correct, but promoting this view discounts the role other countries have played in promoting democracy. Additionally, it puts his American readers in a precarious position that is to either support democracy promotion directly, or indirectly you will have to deal with it. If then Americans view democracy in these terms they will never think about alternative methods of democracy promotion without U.S. engagement.
Finally, Schulz fails to address the idea of democracy itself. The literature discussing the different forms of democracy (for example, Presidentialism v. Parliamentary system, Federalism v. a Confederation) is vast, but Schulz does not address the different forms. Instead, he allows the reader to assume the U.S. liberal, capitalist democracy is the best version and is a cookie cutter model for any country. To me, there are obvious problems with this idea. A simple example of where our democracy may not work well is China. Their sense of communalism is much stronger than the U.S., which might mean they would want a different form of democracy.
I understand Schulz’s goal of this book was to engage the average citizen on human rights issues, but I think in doing so he might have made the reader more ethnocentric in his or her own views. Schulz could have still achieved his goals by incorporating different views of democracy promotion within his book. Specifically, I think of Dr. McMahon’s “toolbox approach” to nation building and democracy promotion. Though Dr. McMahon’s subject matter may be unknown to the average citizen, the overall concept is pretty easy to grasp. Furthermore, had Schulz challenged his own American views then, perhaps, I would have had less issue with his Chapter 2; however, as it stands I find the chapter quite poor.