Brace as America’s New Round of ‘Democracy’ Exports Hits the Asia-Pacific

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http://watchingamerica.com/News/236252/brace-as-americas-new-round-of-democracy-exports-hits-the-asia-pacific/

The U.S. diplomatic reform movement is changing its methods. It is focusing less on trying to topple and instead opting to instruct and poison.


Brace as America’s New Round of ‘Democracy’ Exports Hits the Asia-Pacific
Huanqiu, China
By Li Ying
Translated By Darius Vukasinovic
28 March 2014
Edited by Kyrstie Lane

The “New Game” of U.S. Democracy in the Asia-Pacific

During the last four years of Obama’s consecutive terms in office, Obama’s promotion of democracy has been stepping up. In one regard, the personnel appointed by Obama in his second term to be responsible for foreign relations and security — for example: new Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice — have, all along, been absolutely meticulous in their dealings involving democratic rights. In another regard, economic turnaround has allowed Americans to regain their faith while numerous American anti-establishment organizations have renewed their activism. According to the U.S. federal budget report of 2013, the focus on the United States has, amid the many countries around the globe which “accept democracy,” seen a notable increase. This is especially evident in areas of U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy and the government’s 25 percent increase in revenues over the 2013 budget, both of which have spurred nongovernmental organizations like “Freedom House” and “National Endowment for Democracy” to further pursue their political agendas.

In December 2013, Susan Rice gave a public lecture on “rights issues.” This was the latest continuation in the U.S. political assembly’s citizenship debate, since Hillary Clinton’s public speech on Internet freedom. During her speech, Rice clearly outlined the four points of promoting U.S. democracy throughout the world in future: Don’t promote democracy down the barrel of a gun, take the middle road of compromise for the short term during this period of conflict between prosperity and U.S. democracy, use economic sanctions and foreign relations to pressure human rights violators, and promote a 21st century “human rights agenda” — this includes respecting equality between men and women, not discriminating against homosexuals, and protecting the development of a civil society. At first glance, Rice’s four points appear to imply some restraint on America’s attempts to convert other countries to democracy. But given that the U.S. has yet to begin both strongly stressing its own “democratic superiority” and taking on the promotion of “American style democracy” as its responsibility, then it is clear there will be no fundamental changes to the way the U.S. does things.

At the end of 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also took to the stage many times in the interests of “human rights issues.” On International Human Rights Day in December, Kerry spoke out saying that he would continue supporting those who advocated for human rights and those who had been (wrongfully) imprisoned. Afterward, Kerry called for the seeking out of a civil society leader in Laos, a man who had been missing for a long time, saying that this person had the air of a leader. When Kerry visited Vietnam and the Philippines, he also spoke out many times on human rights issues and even increased pressure on the Vietnamese government. America’s new round of Asia-Pacific democratic change is formed with the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative. In December 2013, President Obama himself outlined the strategy via video address. In actuality, the U.S. Department of State had already begun related activities a year earlier. Judging by the scale of the activities and the government’s participation in them, the “youth leader” strategy might, in comparison with previous Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Civil Society 2.0 strategy, become the benchmark project of America’s future four points of democracy reform. As the U.S. documents its strategy, over 65 percent of citizens aged 35 and under in the ASEAN regions are potentially covered by it. The U.S. will engage these potential candidates with ways to competitively cultivate leadership power, come to the U.S. to study, promote cultural exchange within regions, seek solutions to regional disputes, learn industrial technologies and English, and assist and support the cultivation of youth volunteers. All these [initiatives] will be used to promote the United States’ strength and its relations with ASEAN countries. For a long time those within American society have been the major supporters of and participants in the U.S. democratic reform movement. Nowadays, the core of these citizens have also hit upon subversive new techniques for promulgating democracy. For example the recently retired from office New York mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, will soon be engaging vigorously in his newly self-created “consulting business.” In his 12 years in office as mayor of New York, Bloomberg personally paid $6.5 billion to defuse New York’s “economic time bomb,” created tens of thousands of new jobs, and fundamentally eliminated many of the “sicknesses” from which this mega-sized city was suffering. Now, he hopes to take his experience onto the international stage, offering to export his own “New York model” to other megacities around the globe. And of the ten most populous cities in the world, the majority is either in the Pacific or South Asia regions — so we can see that the Asia-Pacific will become a major focus for Bloomberg.

Techniques Will Become Ever More Crafty

Judging by Rice and Kerry’s speeches, along with the examples given involving actions by the U.S. government and its citizenry, Obama’s U.S. democracy export strategy has a unique quality about it. It embodies America’s attempt to “step out again” and propagate varieties of democratic transformation using experience and tutelage. From a theoretical standpoint, Obama’s line of thinking and ex-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emphasis on soft power are both based on the same fundamentals. They emphasize techniques of nonviolence and noncoercion to promulgate American views and values to the world. In doing so, they protect the human resources engaged in human rights movements and use them to interfere in the internal workings of other countries’ governments. But in terms of concrete application, Obama’s methods are gentler, subtler than Hillary’s — they don’t appear to be a distinct project. The Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative has been in operation for over a year, it has been clearly reported in the media, yet it by far lacks that “mustering of forces” feeling as was seen behind Civil Society 2.0.