Marketing the Democratic Creed Abroad: US Diasporic Politics in the Era of Multiculturalism

Abstract

In this essay I will argue that as human rights and the rule of law increasingly become focal points of international affairs, the United States is finding that it has an opportunity to mold an international system more in harmony with its professed values, those of democracy and pluralism. This opportunity is both more realizable and more inviting now than it has been at any time in the past five decades, because of the new ideological convergence between former “Cold War liberals” and “Wilsonian liberals.” After decades of ideological and political discord concerning the aims that US diplomacy should pursue and promote, they now concur on two key points; namely, that the holding of universal and free elections is the paramount test for the legitimacy of governments, and that sovereignty should not be associated primarily with effective control of the territory of a nation-state but rather with democratic domestic practices. This new posture marks a change from previous US approval of “authoritarian” dictatorships friendly to the US and opposed to communism, a point of view most bluntly and memorably articulated by the Reagan administration’s Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The new posture makes the US government more disposed to hear certain concerns of ethnic Americans who endeavor to influence American diplomacy toward their country of origin, if and when their governments can be presented as “democratic.” In general, the diasporan elites speaking for ethnic groups that will be most successful are those that hope to effect a regime change in their ancestral land that favors democracy or promotes in certain ways their people’s right to self-determination.