By Michael Shifter
In 2000, dramatic events in Latin America and the United States raised questions about what has been for the past several decades a guiding principle of U.S. policy toward Latin America: the promotion of democracy. Few analysts anticipated the growing political uncertainty and turmoil in Latin America, concentrated especially in the Andean countries. Moreover, the confusion surrounding the 2000 presidential elections in the United States did little to enhance the credibility of U.S. efforts to advance democracy abroad. These developments upset conventional assumptions about the progressive improvement of democracy in Latin America and the leadership role of the United States in contributing to this improvement.
From the beginning, the Clinton administration claimed to attach high value to promoting liberal, representative democracy along the lines of the U.S. model. The framework for democracy promotion that the U.S. has followed in Latin America since the early 1990s has emphasized building democratic institutions (the judiciary, executive and legislature), free and competitive elections, human rights guarantees, the rule of law, and a system of checks and balances among democratic institutions.
In the early 1990s, these democracy promotion policies enjoyed increasing public acceptance throughout Latin America. The political climate in Latin America at the time was markedly optimistic. In 1989, Chile was the last country (with the exception of Cuba) to make its transition to a democratically elected government. However, in the latter years of the 1990s, the Clinton administration's model for liberal representative democracy has been challenged by new leaders. The changing political climate in Latin America had also created public dissatisfaction with this democracy promotion model in the region.
In the early 1990s, the Clinton administration not only gave more weight to democratic institution building, but also embraced the notion of democratic defense -- that is, countering threats such as a coup to a democratic political system. The concept of democratic defense was broadly endorsed by Latin America's civilian constitutional governments. In June 1991, during the Bush administration, the Organization of American States made a significant legal advance in Latin American democratic development with the adoption of Resolution 1080. The resolution declared that, for the first time, an interruption of a country's constitutional process would be a matter of hemispheric concern and would at a minimum trigger a meeting of the region's foreign ministers. The resolution came into play in response to four cases -- Haiti (1991), Peru (1992), Guatemala (1993), and Paraguay (1996). The new OAS mechanism worked best in the cases of Guatemala and Paraguay, where outside pressure, together with the mobilization of constituencies in each country, helped prevent successful military takeovers. The OAS denounced Haiti's illegitimate government for three years, though it would ultimately take the use of force by the United States in 1994 to bring military rule to an end. The hemispheric community's initial condemnation of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's 1992 "self-coup," -- in which he suspended the constitution, closed the congress, and took over the courts -- eventually gave way to acquiescence. Though the overall record on democratic defense was mixed -- the hemisphere's governments might have been more forceful in dealing with some of these situations -- the OAS nonetheless reacted swiftly and positively on all four occasions.
A Gloomy Political Landscape
As the decade progressed, the Clinton administration had to confront a number of serious problems in its democracy promotion policy in Latin America. The most important of these was the increasingly complicated and unexpectedly gloomy political landscape that began to characterize the region. New, more subtle and ambiguous threats to democracy called into question precisely what sort of political system the United States was seeking to promote in the region. The model for democracy promotion that the U.S. had embraced in the early 1990s seemed at variance with the political trends in the region.
Indeed, seven months before President Clinton was elected, Fujimori had engineered his self-coup in Peru. Though the OAS invoked Resolution 1080 and the United States government applied sanctions to express American disapproval, once the Fujimori administration held new elections in November 1992, international pressure on Fujimori substantially diminished. Yet after the 1992 elections, and especially after his reelection in 1995, Fujimori's authoritarian grip on power tightened: He succeeded in extending control over key institutions such as the media and electoral authorities.
Although Clinton administration officials publicly raised concerns about a variety of troubling setbacks to Peru's democratic progress -- including restrictions on press freedom, the weakening of judicial independence and the violation of electoral rules -- U.S. policy was chiefly ad hoc and reactive. The American democracy promotion framework offered limited guidance for dealing with Peru's constantly shifting, retrogressive politics. Fujimori's machinations challenged the very conception of democracy held by U.S. policy-makers. Did Fujimori's May 1997 dismissal of three judges on his constitutional court who had questioned his run for a third term warrant a regional, or U.S., response? And if so, what should the response have been?
Setbacks in democratic development in Latin America during the Clinton years were not restricted to Peru. In February 1997 the Ecuadoran congress, in a constitutionally dubious action, ousted its then-president, Abdala Bucaram. Was this an interruption of the constitutional process and, if so, what should have been the appropriate response from the United States and other hemispheric governments, all of which remained silent? Then in January 2000, the Ecuadoran military removed the democratically elected president Jamil Mahuad from power. In part as a result of Clinton administration pressure -- the U.S. threatened sanctions against any military-led government -- the transition was orderly and Mahuad's vice president took over. To be sure, the country under Mahuad was unquestionably suffering a profound crisis of governability. Still, this marked the first time in a quarter of a century that the military forced the removal of a democratically elected head of state in South America.
The December 1998 election of Hugo Chávez as Venezuela's president challenged the conventional concept of democracy held by U.S. officials even more sharply. Chávez, a former lieutenant colonel and a populist, seems like a throwback to a previous period in Latin American politics. Appealing directly to "the people," he has bypassed democratic institutions such as political parties and given a greater role in public works and development projects to the armed forces. In his speeches he has attacked unions, media and civil society. He has publicly repudiated the idea of representative democracy and the importance of checks and balances, which he sees as responsible for the country's ills. His message has captivated the Venezuelan people, at least the mass of poor Venezuelans who overwhelmingly support him.
Chávez's rhetoric hardly reflects the spirit of Resolution 1080 on democratic defense. In fact, in January 2000 Chávez viewed the Ecuadoran military's actions with considerable sympathy. In response to Chávez's positions, the Clinton administration has maintained a "wait and see" posture -- a posture not unrelated to considerable U.S. oil interests in Venezuela -- preferring to permit Chávez to exercise his rhetorical excesses as long as his actions fall strictly within constitutional and legal bounds.
Questions about the effectiveness of U.S. democracy promotion efforts in Latin America are not limited to the Andean countries. To be sure, countries such as Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and also Colombia (where democracy has long been under siege from left-wing insurgencies and right-wing paramilitary groups) have experienced the most noteworthy departures from democratic standards. Other Latin American countries may be closer to pursuing a democratic path but are nonetheless cause for concern. Paraguay, Haiti, and such Central American countries as Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras, where democratic institutions are precarious, especially stand out. The upbeat mindset that shaped the Clinton administration about the direction of Latin American democracy when it began its work in January 1993 seemed considerably less appropriate for the region's political realities as his second term came to an end.
The Clinton administration had to deal not only with unanticipated political developments in Latin America but also with the difficulty of coordinating an effective democracy promotion policy. The problem of coordination is evident in two key areas. First, there is a problem of creating a coherent policy from among the competing interests (in Latin American policy, drugs, immigration, trade, human rights and the environment are especially relevant) of different U.S. government agencies. Discipline is often elusive, and confusion can result. The second is the problem of the United States coordinating its democracy promotion efforts with those of other hemispheric governments, organizations such as the OAS, and nongovernmental actors. On both of these scores, the Clinton record has been mixed at best.
Domestic Concerns Trump Democracy
The most common critique of the Clinton administration's Latin American democracy policy is not that policy flounders because of the government's coordination problems, but rather that the goal of strengthening democracy was often subordinate to the high priority of fighting drugs. Fighting drugs, after all, is a politically powerful impulse that reflects a U.S. domestic concern. Promoting democracy, in contrast, is considered to be part of foreign policy. When the two aims collide, the former is likely to trump the latter.
The conflict between these interests played out during the Clinton years in Peru and Colombia. To be sure, the U.S. government took a number of steps -- such as making public statements of concern and expanding pro-democratic AID programs -- designed to advance democracy in Peru following the 1992 self-coup. But at the same time, the U.S. government valued its relationship with Vladimiro Montesinos, President Fujimori's principal security adviser and anti-drug chief. Montesinos is generally credited with achievements in Peru's anti-drug operations such as reducing coca production and intercepting drugs in transit. Yet as revelations in 2000 made clear, Montesinos' enormous power came with a heavy cost. Serious allegations of human rights abuses and widespread corruption against him (including involvement with arms and drug trafficking), make it difficult to reconcile the United States's long association with Montesinos with a strong American commitment to democratic progress in Peru.
In Colombia, too, when the goal of fighting drugs has conflicted with that of promoting democracy, the former has taken precedence. South America's oldest democracy has long been under siege, yet the policies fashioned under the Clinton administration have taken this fact into account mainly as an afterthought. As a result of credible accusations that Colombian president Ernesto Samper received $6 million in his 1994 campaign from the Cali drug cartel, the United States not only "decertified" the country (i.e., declared that it failed to cooperate with the U.S. in the fight against drugs) in 1996 and 1997, but also revoked Samper's U.S. visa. Decertified countries are subject to sanctions and denied foreign assistance and U.S. votes for loans at international financial institutions. Such punitive measures may have projected U.S. toughness on drugs, but they dealt a major blow to an already weak government, struggling to contain Colombia's various violent, lawless actors -- and struggling to keep together a democracy at great risk. The harsh U.S. treatment of the Samper government did little to build international and national confidence at precisely the moment when Colombia needed every bit of support to resist escalating lawlessness.
With the election of AndrŽs Pastrana as Colombia's president in 1998, the U.S. became more committed to supporting the troubled country. In 2000, the U.S. approved an aid package of $1.3 billion for a two-year period; to underscore the importance of such assistance, President Clinton went to Colombia, the first U.S. president to do so in a decade. Still, although the rhetoric of some high officials attributed the aid to the U.S. goal of shoring up Colombia's threatened democracy, the central thrust of U.S. support focuses on military aid to fight drugs. While these objectives are not incompatible, they are distinct, and often in tension with one another. For example, insisting on the practice of fumigating coca crops is not the best way to build stronger democratic practices for two reasons. First, the military and police, not civilian political authorities, play an important role in crop fumigation. If promoting democracy were a priority for the U.S., it would direct its limited resources away from these law-enforcement institutions and toward strengthening political authority. Also, fumigating coca hurts small coca farmers. Their livelihood destroyed, these farmers may react by supporting insurgents and other lawless actors, further fueling conflict and straining Colombia's democracy.
Immigration policy is another domestic interest that has conflicted with U.S. democracy promotion aims. The U.S. regularly deports significant numbers of criminals to fragile democracies such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Honduras. Such a policy may be defensible, but few dispute that its democracy promotion consequences are troubling. Journalistic accounts, diplomats, observers and government officials in affected countries have concluded that an influx of criminals has a harmful effect on struggling democracies. Weak institutions such as judicial systems are especially strained when trying to manage the higher levels of gang violence, common crime, and drug trafficking that these countries are already experiencing.
Economic interests also weigh heavily in U.S. calculations on democracy promotion. For example, though there can be little hard evidence in support of this theory, most observers agree that the fact that Venezuela is a chief supplier of oil to the United States has affected the way the U.S. has dealt with Chávez's defiant leadership style. The U.S. has been reluctant to take a tough stance on many of Chávez's decisions even when his actions displease the U.S.: Witness the restrained U.S. reaction to Chávez's meeting with Saddam Hussein in August 2000 or Chávez's close friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro.
At the same time, American economic interests have also reinforced U.S. democracy promotion objectives. The adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and the substantial financial support extended to help Mexico in 1995 -- neither of which was politically popular -- not only bolstered the economic position of our southern neighbor, but also helped prepare the ground for democratization. This process culminated in the election of Vicente Fox on July 2, 2000, the first time an opposition party defeated the ruling party in more than seven decades.
The trade imperative, widely seen by our hemispheric partners as a high priority in U.S. policy, dominated the two Summits of the Americas, in Miami in 1994 and Santiago in 1998, during the Clinton years. Though many considered this emphasis on expanding hemispheric trade to be supportive of democracy aims, the gains in trade were limited and opportunities for even further progress were lost because the U.S. Congress failed to grant President Clinton "fast-track" authority to negotiate agreements. In short, in assessing the Clinton record on democracy in Latin America, the trade issue could be considered both an achievement and a disappointment.
Multilateralism Needed
Many Latin American governments were, moreover, troubled by the way the United States promoted democracy in the region during the Clinton years. In general, they prefer a more collaborative approach, marked by consultations and consensus building, which they believe tends to result in more constructive policies. In the early 1990s, there was a growing expectation that the United States might well move toward adopting such an approach. However, unilateralism has prevailed on important issues such as the Cuba embargo and drug policy; many Latin American countries believed that the U.S. approach to these issues did little to promote stable democracy in the region.
Even in the cases in which the United States has taken important steps to promote democracy in Latin America, the effectiveness of such measures has sometimes been undermined by lack of adequate consultations and coordination with other hemispheric partners. This is the case with the April 2000 elections in Peru when, for the first time ever, an OAS mission reported that the elections were neither free nor fair. In this instance, the United States took a firm stand in defense of democracy, but it did so in a way that upset other Latin American governments. In Brazil particularly, which often frets about projections of American power in South America, there was considerable suspicion about U.S. motives in the region. Some Latin American governments questioned the United States's excessive meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country; the Peruvian government was especially resentful of OAS and U.S. criticism of its elections. Latin American dismay at the way the U.S. responded to Peru's elections demonstrated the tension that exists between promoting democracy and protecting sovereignty. In light of the asymmetry of power in the Western Hemisphere, such tensions can be especially acute and need to be managed with utmost sensitivity.
Haiti: A Textbook Case
The case of Haiti is the classic illustration of democracy promotion during the Clinton era. In September 1991, the Haitian military ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's democratically elected president. Despite economic and diplomatic pressure applied by the United States for three years, Gen. Raoul Cedras, head of the Haitian armed forces, refused to budge. Following the deployment of a U.S.-led multinational force to Haiti, constitutional rule was restored in October 1994.
Several aspects of Haiti policy are worth underlining. First, this was the only case during the Clinton years in which force or the threat of force was employed in Latin America. Second, the United States succeeded in securing U.N. authorization for such an action. Third, Haiti policy was the only hemispheric policy in eight years where there was a clear, marked difference in the position assumed by the Democratic and Republican parties. And finally, more than any other policy in the hemisphere, the return of President Aristide to Haiti in 1994 was explicitly justified in terms of promoting democracy. Whatever the real motives behind the Clinton administration's Haiti policy, there is a serious dispute about its outcome. More than six years after the use of force in the name of restoring democracy, the country is experiencing a profound crisis of governance, and the prospects are not bright. If Haiti is any more democratic than it was in 1994, it is only marginally so. The real difficulty for the United States is the wide gap between the stubborn institutional problems in the country, and the lofty, inflated rhetoric that promised a democratic transformation or restoration. The disparity has contributed to partisan bickering and has cast doubt not only on what may have been a defensible policy towards Haiti, but on what is indeed a worthy enterprise: democracy promotion.
Lessons Learned
Three lessons can be distilled from the Clinton administration's democracy promotion performance in Latin America. These might be taken into account as the administration of George W. Bush confronts an enormously challenging and complex landscape throughout the region.
First, democracy promotion is a sound and important goal that should continue to shape U.S. policy toward Latin America. While some political developments in the region over the past eight years have fallen short of expectations, it is at least arguable that conditions in a number of countries -- especially Mexico but also Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala and perhaps even Colombia and Haiti -- might have been even more troubling if the United States had pursued another approach. Democracy promotion not only helps advance U.S. interests and values, but also contributes to the peace and security of the hemisphere.
Second, it is crucial to temper expectations about what democracy promotion policies can accomplish. The U.S. should be open and honest about competing concerns in the region and recognize that sometimes advancing democracy is subordinate to, say, fighting drugs or protecting economic interests. Such dilemmas should be resolved in favor of democracy promotion, unless other concerns are unusually pressing. Moreover, the United States should resist the temptation to make exaggerated claims. The chaos of the U.S. presidential elections should encourage greater humility, keep occasional ethnocentrism in check, and deflate the zeal sometimes attached to democracy promotion. It should not, however, detract from the value of the enterprise itself.
Finally, the United States should resist the instinct to resort merely to democracy programs or technical formulae in pursuing larger democracy promotion goals. To the extent possible, the Bush administration should keep democracy promotion as a central guide or reference point as it attempts to grapple with the complex political challenges in Latin America. An effective policy will require great subtlety and sensitivity, with the keen understanding that, despite the disproportionate power enjoyed by the United States in the hemisphere, in the final analysis the course democracy takes depends fundamentally on the ongoing, often unpredictable, struggles within each society. n
Michael Shifter is vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and adjunct professor of Latin American Studies at Georgetown University.