A U.S. INITIATIVE TO PROMOTE DEMOCRACY AROUND THE WORLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505400120-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 120
• Publication Date: January 13, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505400120-6
ARTICLE A?PZL. J
GS F:.
THE td LL STREET JOURNAL
13 January 1983
A U.S. Initiative to Promote Democracy
P:ac.:ef by ccn:inuing recession and
wrestlhnr with budget deficits approaching
f20" President Reagan doesn't need
r cre crinctsm today. It is time to find
scmet!an:g that his administration is doing
right-we!l. almost right-and here it is!
the Democracy Initiative.
i Sometime this week, maybe today, the
president is scheduled to push away his
budget-battlers and sign a National Secu-
rity Decision. Document (NSDD) setting up
a formal stricture to oversee government
and private efforts to promote democracy
Viewpoint
by Morton M. Kondracke
Mr. Kondracke is executive editor of
thr New Rrpublic.
and. counter totalitarianism around the
world, and do so openly.
And when the president unveils his fis-
cal 1P4 budget. it appears that the only set
of federal programs which will avoid cut-
backs are the various elements of the de-
mocracy effort. In fact, reportedly there
will be $65 million in new funding for pro-
grams to be managed by the U.S. Informa-
tion Agency, the State Department and the
Agency for International Development,
and more yet for the Voice of America and
Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty.
These moves constitute first steps to-
ward fulfillment of the proposal that Mr.
Reagan made in probably the best speech
of his presidency-his June S. 1982. address
to the British Parliament. He called for "a
global campaign for democracy ... a plan
and a hope for the long term-the march of
freedom and democracy which will leave
Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of his-
tory as it has left other tyrannies which sti-
fle the freedom and muzzle the self-expres-
sion of people."
Some critics charged at the time that
Mr. Reagan was indulging in provocative
hyperbole, but the democracies needed ral-
lying, and America needs an upgrading of
its overt programs to promote freedom
and combat freedom's enemies.
The Soviet Union, it's clear, far outdis-
tances U.S. efforts-not merely in money,
but in personnel, attitudes and activity. In
addition to KGB, diplomatic and interna-
tional information projects, the Soviets
provide thousands more scholarships to
Third World young people than the U.S.
does. The Soviets not only attend, but orga-
nize, world youth, nationalities and peace
conferences. They aid local Communist
parties around the world. They maintain
contact with religious groups, political
movements and labor organizations. They
give high priority to the effort to sway
world opinion.
Around the World
Most of all, they think in terms of politi-
cal initiative. Yuri Andropov no sooner
took power than he launched what seems
to be a ]0O-day peace offensive designed to
further divide the Western alliance. Even-
tually, the U.S. probably will react, and
perhaps effectively, as President Reagan
has done twice before with major arms
control speeches.
But the problem is that the U.S. almost
always is reacting. If the U.S. had a full-
blown democracy and public diplomacy
program in place, it is Andropov who
would have been faced with a Western
peace blitz when he came into office.
But the U.S. will have to begin slowly.
One of the four interagency groups set up
under Mr. Reagan's NSDD is charged with
getting the U.S. bureaucracy thinking
about political initiatives. Two others will
coordinate information programs and
broadcasting. The fourth and most dubi-
ous, the Public Affairs /Nuclear Group,
will attempt to counter the activities of the
U.S. nuclear freeze movement.
There is no question that the govern-
ment has a right and duty to try to per-
suade the people that its nuclear weapons
policy is correct. But to establish the direc-
torate for that effort under a structure ded-
icated to influencing foreign opinion is sure
to inspire charges that the Reagan admin-
istration is indulging in domestic agit-prop.
That could endanger bipartisan support for
the rest of the democracy initiative.
So far, that support is strong. For ex-
ample, the board of directors that man-
ages Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
is no kooky, spooky right-wing cabal as
during the Cold War, but an assemblage of
some of the brightest democrats in Amer-
ica, including former USIA Director Frank
Shakespeare and Michael Novak and Ben
Wattenberg of the American Enterprise In-
stitute, soon to be joined by author James
Michener and AFL-CIO President Lane
Kirkland.
Similarly, after months of partisan
squabbling. a creative group has been as-
sembled to study the feasibility of estab?
lishing a private American foundation to
do democracy's work abroad. The group is
headed by Alan Weinstein of the George-
town University Center for Strategic and
International Studies and consists of repre-
sentatives of the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties, the AFL-CIO and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce.
If the group's work is successful. the
U.S. will have an equivalent of West Ger-
many's three party political foundations,
which have regional offices throughout the
world, maintain contact with many politi-
cal groups and individuals that the West
German government diplomatically can't
and conduct training seminars for teach-
ers, trade unionists, political organizers
and sometimes even revolutionaries.
The most signal success of west Ger-
many's Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an arm
of the Social Democratic Party, was the
funneling of more than Sltl million to demo-
cratic forces in Portugal during the 1975
crisis, possibly saving that nation from
Communist takeover. If the U.S. had tried
anything of the kind, it would have had to
do it through the CIA, with embarrassment
all around if it had been exposed.
The U.S. has only one major counter-
part to the German foundations-the AFL-
CIO's American Institute for Free Labor
? Development, which trains unionists in Af-
rica, Asia and Latin America and Is espe-
cially active now in' Central America. The
American political parties and business
groups traditionally have shown far less in-
terest in foreign projects, but the democ-
racy program is trying to find vehicles,
and eventually money, to get them and
other private groups involved.
As good an Idea as the democracy ini-
tiative is, and as good as it is that the ad-
ministration intends to fund it adequately,
it is insufficient without two elements so
far lacking in U.S. foreign policy: a global
strategy and internal political tolerance.
All the free elections seminars and Af-
ghanistan freedom conferences in the
world will help only marginally unless the
U.S. government knows where it wants to
go and how it wants to use U.S. power to
get there. The Soviets know that they want
to split the West and gain influence (and
eventually, domination) in the Third
World. Soviet information policies and po?
litical action support the overall strategy.
rather than substituting for it.
To maintain a consistent, long-term poi.
icy, the Soviet dictatorship does not need
internal tolerance. We do, but we don't
have It. Each incoming administration
nowadays makes a habit of punishing for-
eign service officers who loyally carried '
out the orders of the previous administra-
tion. This purge pattern could destroy the
democracy initiative-if, for example, one
party decides to make a campaign issue
out of the-contacts that the other is making
in the Third World. The only alternatives
to a bipartisan democracy program are a
covert program or none at all. As the
world's leading democratic country, we
can do better than that.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505400120-6