Democracy Support in practice

Yesterday I attended a great event at CSIS on Democracy Promotion.  The short version is that Bush botched it badly but there's nigh universal foreign policy community agreement in favor of a more humble Democracy Support agenda.  Key ideas, don't use coercion, it's not just about elections, and don't be hypocritical.

So if those principles are so universal, will we see them in practice?  One place to look is Pakistan where the civilian government run by Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the slain Benazir Bhutto, is clashing with form PM Nawaz Sharif's supporters.  As Yglesias notes, the U.S. has been consistently waryof Sharif, but now Zardari is taking fairly undemocratic measures to crackdown against him.  Sharif has respnded by leading a mass protest movement which is facilitated by the former PM's support for Chief Justice  Iftikhar Chaudhry who Gen. Musharaff had sacked.   For more detail see the summary by Najam Sethi over at the Middle East Progress blog.

I think U.S. policy on democracy in Pakistan has actually steadily moved in the right direction for some time now.  We got tougher on Musharraf which meant he had less incentive to really crack down in response to protests.  Removing him from power was the work of the Pakistanis, not us, but I think we got out of the way.  I don't think that Zardari needs to be replaced by Sharif by any means.  It would be excellent if both of their families stopped with the dynastic politics and made the top leadership of Pakistan more inclusive.  However, we need to be very careful to talk to everyone and add pressure to ensure that the treatment of opposition parties is fair.

The other point from the event yesterday that's relevent is that if we want to support a democratic government, we may do well to do so through economic and social aid.  Hard to do in this economic climate, but Pakistan is basically a front in the war.  I don't think we'll be able to find ways to really spur growth, but we should be able to work to allievate misery.