Democracy Not Guaranteed
Patrick Hanley, NLC Chicago
It’s only April and already, 2018 is shaping up to be a banner year for Vladimir Putin. First, a landslide victory in Russia’s sham election and now an open invitation to Washington, where he’ll enjoy the results of ours. Meanwhile, Hungary makes a mockery of the democratic process, China gleefully welcomes our misguided “trade war,” and, in exhaustion and disinterest, the Western Powers abandon Syria once-and-for-all to Russian, Iranian, and Turkish interests.
In March, Historian Robert Kagan opened this year’s Brussels Forum with an admonition that haunted the four-day convention of U.S. and European leaders: democracy is not guaranteed. In the sweep of human history, reminded Kagan, our short span of global democracy marks a rare exception in thousands of years of conflict and conquest. In this context, our liberal international order, governed by rules and distinguished by human progress, remains an experiment in decency, communication, and resolve.
I attended the forum — an annual working-level symposium and multilateral dialogue hosted by the German Marshall Fund — as a delegate of its Young Professionals Summit (YPS). The YPS drew young leaders from around globe: political leaders from Austria and Kosovo, municipal councilors from Charlottesville and Berlin, and a particularly charismatic mayor from a border town in Arizona.
What we learned in Brussels, and what I now hope to impart on fellow New Leaders, is the fragility of the global order we love to take for granted; how powerful rivals are real and rising; and that it comes to us — millennial leaders — to refresh democracies in all of our communities and to protect the liberal order that makes peaceful progress possible.
The 1980s Called…
Not since the failure of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of state fascism have global democracies and free societies faced such clear and present danger from such powerful and popular alternatives. Autocrats and theocrats from Tianjin to Tehran rule the fates of billions with swelling confidence and impunity.
On the campaign trail in 2012, I chuckled alongside friends and volunteers when President Obama (in his cool swagger) heckled candidate Romney’s Russian anxieties: “the 1980s called… they’re asking for their foreign policy back.” *pause for laughter*
In the six years since, Putin’s Russia has invaded two sovereign states, conducted cyberwarfare attacks on American and European elections, and reestablished traditional Soviet spheres of influence in the Persian Gulf, in Syria, and throughout Asia. Former GOP congressman Mike Rogers spoke about the very real and regular threat of Russian attacks on our public and private institutions. We face a “rapidly evolving threat matrix” that ranges from critical infrastructure and utilities mainframes to the more pernicious manipulation of public opinion. Friends, consider: our very ideology of popular sovereignty succeeds on our ability to translate public opinion into policies and reforms. In the words of Rogers, “we are in a cyberwar and we are losing.”
Across the steppes, Communist Party autocrats in Beijing crowned a new emperor, confirming President Xi’s decisive consolidation of power by deftly blending casual tactics of state terror with social media and digital technologies to quash resistance in new and startling ways.Abroad, Beijing vigorously contests its international borders with India and the Philippines, provides diplomatic cover for genocidein Myanmar, and exploits weak regimes in East Africa, pumping fragile countries with corruption, debt, and foreign labor while extracting valuable resources and occupying strategic forward-positions.
In the past, the democracies of Europe, Asia, and the Americas have risen to challenge authoritarian threats (albeit in fits and starts). Some things a revisionist power simply would not attempt, without the dual-threat of global sanction and grave consequence from a united liberal bloc. Today that resolve is in doubt. The dual-threats of Russian trolldom and Chinese muscle would not be existential were it not for more troubling rot at home.
In Brussels, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reminded us that “crises are not polite.” And so, it seems, across the sea. No one trend, or mistake, or movement is responsible for the corrosion of western democracies. European governments face simultaneous crises: technological transformation, the proliferation of terrorism, a historic shift in global migration, and successive refugee crises, all in the context of economic stagnation and democratic decay. In Hungary, Poland, Italy, and elsewhere, the European right has been captured and eclipsed by authoritarian nativist parties with dubious regard for free press or human rights. In France and Germany, rightwing groups (with ample support from Russian intelligence services) seize global headlines, dominate national conversations, and upend democratic norms.
Meanwhile, Europeans have lost faith in national elites, fat on white-collar dividends and isolated within a continental aristocracy. Secret trade pacts, untaxed corporate earnings, and wrenching inequality mocked by an entertainment-media elite erodes the fundamental fabric of civic societies. Liberal institutions — freedom of religion, freedom of press, welfare and immigration policies — are delegitimized by illiberal and reflexive strains of public anxiety.
The Liberal International Order
But wasn’t the “liberal international order” (even typing it out feels conspiratorial) just a white capitalist post-war construct in the first place? Of course.
And yet, like our own founding documents, the instruments of global order (the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and many more) are laced with a powerful strain of liberal universalism, and have — gradually, over decades of hard work and struggle — taken on a life of their own. Global progress is made possible (and defensible) in the expectation of due process and through the negotiation of inclusive global norms. Kyoto; Paris; Geneva; Dayton; these cities and the treaties they suggest remind us that the international order is worth more than the ignominy or idealism of its origins.
And within the liberal order, the United Kingdom dismantled its global colonial empire; wars and civil conflicts in every continent have been mediated and defused (with many successes and many failures); the global South has found its seat at the table; and Asian nations have found their voice. Within the order, the world has become a safer, fairer, smaller, more prosperous place. And the alternative, Kagan reminds us, is history. The story of human contact from the Assyrians through the Third Reich is written with an expectation of war. The liberal order is foundational not only to global peace, but as a framework — a scaffolding — for progressivism and democracy to work their magic.
So now what?
We begrudgingly appreciate the international order; what can be done to protect it?
The immediate answer is to restore democracy. We see the answer play out in the Women’s March and in the March for Our Lives. We see the answer in Black Lives Matter and in New Leaders Council. Democracy is strong when “democracies” are democratic; when the People feel empowered — and are empowered — rather than disaffected, belittled, or ignored.
When we spoke with Congressman Gregory Meeks, he told us we “look like the future.” Our leaders counted a female state legislator of color from Tennessee (now running for state senate!), a Navajo woman who trains progressive groups, a young man who — I believe — will become the first Roma legislator in Albania, and a second-generation Italian city councilor, whose family emigrated from Morocco. Our leaders were women, men, black, brown, Asian, Latinx, white, and everything in between, joined together not on the basis of their identities, but in their conviction that democracy is an ideology worth defending. Each was elected or supported by communities and constituencies as diverse as our merry crew. We were what democracy looks like.
And in Brussels we were reminded of the distinct and special strengths of a healthy democracy. Our British friends shared how districts with the highest rates of immigration voted against Brexit. We heard how towns on the U.S.-Mexico border opposed this administration’s misguided immigration policies. We watched hard and awkward conversations between Trump officials and European bureaucrats and intellectuals and students, and we saw how disagreement yielded to understanding.
The Answer is to Rely on Youth
The most troubling undertone in Brussels had the most to do with us. In panels and meetings and conversations on topics ranging wildly from artificial intelligence to an Arctic arms race, the sincerest hope of the participants — these 40, 50, 60-year-old politicians and professionals — was placed in our generation. Flattering, perhaps, but sobering surely.
These ballooning and inherited crises are soon ours to deflate. Will we draw Russian millennials back into the fold? Can we reassure and empower our Chinese friends, classmates, and colleagues? Will we reconcile cut-throat capitalism with social justice? Can we cut that Gordian knot which tangles carbon, development, Miami Beach, and the end of the world?
If we can, we will together.
I’m an organizer by training and could never leave you without a few asks. Here are some thoughts on how you can participate constructively in the transatlantic (and global) dialogue:
· Keep engaged, stay informed, and advocate for international order in your communities. Take a stake in world peace; act global.
· Stand up for democracy in the United States and throughout the world. Once, it went without saying. No longer.
· Support our allies, yes, and our Allies also: we cannot renege on global commitments, alliances, and relationships.
· Promote progressives and liberals across the Atlantic who share our struggle toward democracy!
· Come to Brussels next spring and see for yourself.
Democracy does not come with a guarantee. The responsibility and the right to a free society must be affirmed and renewed by every generation. Our time has clearly come.
Patrick is a recovering investment banker and OFA alum now studying policy and business at the University of Chicago. He is a 2018 NLC-Chicago Fellow and can be reached at procquehanley@uchicago.edu.
