Embassy Row

GEORGIA, A SYMPTOM

As U.S. ambassador in Czechoslovakia in 1992, Adrian A. Basora watched the former Warsaw Pact nation, which had emerged from the shadows of the Iron Curtain only three years earlier, build a strong democracy and peacefully split into the Czech and Slovak republics in 1993.

Now he fears that democracy is struggling in some European nations and former Soviet republics that had failed to make the transition from communism and remain oppressed by authoritarian governments, bungling bureaucracies and a new class of corrupt oligarchs who replaced Marxist apparatchiks.

In a new paper written for the Foreign Policy Research Institute with Jean F. Boone, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Mr. Basora argues that the Russian invasion of Georgia in August was a symptom of a broader threat. They noted that Russia, for instance, reverted to an authoritarian government, despite holding elections.

“Long before the Russians entered Georgia, democracy was clearly on the retreat in post-communist Europe and Eurasia, as was the leverage of both the United States and the democratic European powers,” they wrote.

They called the continuing crisis in Georgia a “dramatic new manifestation of the longer-term trends underlying the erosion” of Western influence in the region.

“Reversing these trends will require more than simply outmaneuvering Russia in Georgia,” they said, adding that the “Georgia events are a wake-up call.”

They urged the administration of the next U.S. president to:

• “Reclaim the vocabulary of democracy” by effectively communicating concepts like the rule of law, multiparty systems, freedom of expression, a civil society and free and fair elections;

• “Support processes, not leaders” by working with democratic advocates in states with authoritarian governments;

• Combine support for nation-building with “society-building” programs to promote more citizen activism;

• Work more closely with European allies and institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and NATO;

• And “promote trade as well as aid.”

“Sustained interest and attention by the United States can make a difference in restoring positive democratic momentum in the formerly communist area, but only if our programs are seen as demand-driven and non-intrusive,” they said.

“Rather than appearing to impose our own model of democracy-promotion, our appeal should be based on the prospect of building a better life for people in the transitional countries themselves.”

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