The Return of Democracy Promotion to US Foreign Policy

Abstract

When the United States entered the stage of world politics in the early 20th century, democracy promotion played an important role in its foreign policy agenda, especially toward its neighborhood. Only with the advent of the Cold War did a foreign policy agenda emerge that preferred stability over values and the fight of communism over the promotion of democracy. This period of realpolitik which had its peak during the Kissinger era, ended when President Jimmy Carter entered the White House. His was the first US administration that incorporated human rights and democratic freedoms systematically into US foreign policy toward Central and South America.1 Only in the last year of his presidency did this agenda decline, specifically toward Central America. Carter was voted out of office and President Ronald Reagan initially returned to realpolitik in the neighborhood.2 Human rights or democratic principles appeared neither in Reagan’s rhetoric nor policy practice toward the neighborhood. Surprisingly, however, in the second year of his first term, democracy promotion suddenly started to make inroads into US foreign policy again, first characterized by a confusing back and forth, but becoming more coherent in the mid-1980s. This section now examines in detail how the substantive content of democracy promotion, as well as the types of action to promote democracy varied and developed in the last decade of the Cold War.