American Diplomacy Publishers in association with the international affairs.

• Position: Discussion

Title:

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY PUBLISHERS in association with the International Affairs Council at the Exploris Museum, Raleigh, N. C., presents a panel discussion on the subject--

Should the U. S. use force to establish democratic governments?

Editor's Note: Part II, Debate, Questions & Answers(NOTE- Limited editing largely for the sake of clarity)

Text:

Host: Amb. Jeanette Hyde, President, American Diplomacy Publishers [??] Moderator: Hodding Carter, III, Professor, UNC[??] Panel: Congressman David Price, (D-NC)Lt. Gen. James Lee, U.S. Army ret.[??] Dr. Joseph Glatthaar, Chair, UNC Prog. in Peace, War and Defense [??] Dr. Robin Dorff, Exec. Dir., Inst. of Political Leadership, N.C. St. U.

CARTER[??] Now, gentlemen, you all have some debating to do if you wish to, so just speak right up, or not. You don't have to fight. Love, not war, but in any case,

PRICE[??] Let me just observe that I think through most of the panel presentations have been a couple of assumptions that we probably have agreement on. One is that the world would be better off if there were indeed more widespread legitimacy among governments' accountability, responsiveness, respect for human rights, etc. But secondly that democracies and regimes that respect human rights are, as Robin said, normally not established or imposed. Doing this through military means is extremely problematic and often counterproductive. I thought Joe's comments about the dangerousness and presumptuousness of preemptory war were right on target.

That said, I wonder if there are some hard cases. And I guess, Joe, if maybe this would get us started. Are there some hard cases? Are there instances where the practices of governments become so egregious and so unacceptable morally--I mean, genocide comes to mind--that you would overcome your quite justified reluctance to get involved? I'm talking here not just about unilateral U. S. involvement; in fact, my presumption I hope I made clear was that normally multilateral is better. But are there hard cases? Is Egypt a hard case for you in terms of the way we should be handling that relationship where clearly democratic values are at stake, where here we're not talking about direct military intervention, obviously, but it is one of those gray areas where there is a military alliance and where we need to ask some questions, I think, about how.

We just debated this on the floor of the House. I found it very difficult. What about the conditioning of aid to Egypt on human rights accounts? Are these hard cases, or is there some kind of simple way to cut through them? [??]

GLATTHAAR[??] I thought I'd be able to ride this section out. Evidently not. (laughter) And Hodding, I think it has to do with the water in Chapel Hill. That's why you changed your view. (laughter) But anyway, with regard to Egypt, I would not utilize military forces. We have a reasonably good relationship with Egypt and I think we work through more traditional means to encourage that sort of conduct. In the case of genocide, I'm not opposed to intervening, but it needs to be done in a truly collective fashion under the rubric of the United Nations. If the United Nations is not willing to intervene in mass genocide, then what in hell do we have a United Nations for? (applause by audience) It's to my mind really that fundamental. [??]

--But there are all sorts of ways of encouraging the development of human rights within most forms of government. You can use economic tools, you can use the bully pulpit, you can [use] discreet communications through back channels. You can use all sorts of tools that the government has available, and I think we should be employing those and employing them effectively.

CARTER[??] Now, gentlemen, let me ask you one thing: If we could actually concentrate on the hard issue of the topic, because going in to stop genocide is not creating democracy. Going in under the rubric of the United Nations under collective security agreement is not to impose democracy. The question this one is asking is, should the United States use military force to create democracy. And because famously on the day that Bill Clinton cried as he dedicated the memorial to the Holocaust in Washington, he was also pulling the plug on a U.N. effort to save...I mean there are any number of "never agains" that you might raise as to whether or not you use military power. But this is for the sole purpose of creating a democracy...I think was why you described this one so definitely.

PRICE[??] Well, let me just say just a mild quibble. I don't think democracy is a single or simple thing, and I was taking the question to involve a range of issues about the practices and composition of other governments. That's why I described genocide as a kind of limiting case.

CARTER[??] Right. General? Do you have some other thoughts?

LEE[??] I think I'll use my next two or three minutes to talk about what you might call an alternative question. The question was, Should the United States use force to establish democracies around the world? I want to pose the question of what would we be saying if the question instead of using force to establish democracy was ... how should I put this? [H]ow does force fit into the question of how we handle the war on terrorism? To me that's the overarching question of the day--how we handle terrorism, how we use force, what force? Does force play in this quest? And I went through three steps. I said war on terrorism is really a war on nations that

(a) have weapons of mass destruction, or desirous of achieving weapons of mass destruction, or have achieved that, and(b) or to a totalitarian state with fanatical, unpredictable governments headed up by, for lack of a word, crazy people.

Fair game in this war on terror? That seems to me to be the question that has to be confronted in the discussion of force and democracy. My starting point is the security of the United States and the security of the world. The United States government, whether we like it or not, is the lone super power. The whole world depends on the United States to go and do what has to be done when there's a crisis in the world because we're the only one with the forces to be able to do it. So it's not a question of why we should, but it's a question of we have to. We have that responsibility and of course we have to do it in the process of human rights, [the] process of democratic government.

A democratic government was formed [with] a constitution that set up a bicameral legislation, set up a judiciary, set up a legislature, and the executive branch. People were voted on and we've been voting yes and no ever since. ... [Y]ou can define democracy any way you want, depending on your prejudices and "druthers," but there has to be some kind of definition of democracy, and I think the American government is the best one I've found.

CARTER[??] When I was growing up in Mississippi, General, I was taken to see Mrs. Ball, who ... was originally from Vicksburg. Every time we'd go to see her--she was about 85 at the time--she'd say, "No Southerner will ever celebrate July 4th," and I'd say, "Why, Mrs. Ball?" every time. She'd say "Because that's the day the Yankees took Vicksburg." (laughter)

-LEE[??] Hodding, I go to ... an old Episcopal Church in Wilmington, N. C. [I]n the ... Civil War, the Yankees came, ripped pews out of St. James Church and used it for a hospital, as a matter of fact. But sadly I lost my wife here about four years ago, and one of the hymns was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and one of the really fine upstanding members of the church whose family goes way back, Walter Taylor ... came up to me and said "I never thought I would be in church while we sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." (laughter) So there are those who haven't given up.

[J]ust quickly, I think we come back to this point that the question as it's framed ... And Hodding, I want to come back to what you said and challenged us to think about. The point is that establishing democracy, you can't do that just by the use of force. It may well be your choice, Congressman Price, as you were saying, you may have to make a choice of whether you go in with military force to initiate that process. But if you think that you can establish democracy just by the use of military force, I doubt that anybody in this room would agree with that. I don't think really that anyone in the administration today agrees with that.

The challenge I was trying to throw out is to say that you use military force in order to accomplish other objectives. If your objective is in fact to promote democracy or legitimate governance, then you better have the rest of the equation thought through before you make that choice to go to war. [T]here is a great line, to come back to 1776, which in the conservatives are singing: "Why begin till we know that we can win?" That does come back actually to the Powell and Weinberger doctrine because there's a bit of a misleading point in that doctrine, which I have taught a long time. You don't always know that you can win and in some of the most difficult cases, being certain of the outcome ahead of time is not possible. In this particular arena where your objective may well be to try to promote long-term, legitimate governments or democracy, we need to recognize that certainty is not one of the things we will ever have. [B]ut as, just to repeat my one point, hoping for what will happen afterwards is almost assuredly a lack of strategic thinking.

CARTER[??] All right, folks, you have a chance now to be strategic with your questions, tactical or carpet-bombing. (laughter) I'll start here and you're going to be second, all the way in the back.

--AMB. EDWARD MARKS (ret. Foreign. Service, American Diplomacy board)I'm incensed, I'm going to regret that Mr. Carter moved the conversation away from the Congressman's very interesting query about hard cases and the professor's rather ill informed remark about...