The Committee for the Free World and the Defense of Democracy - article review - Raymond Aron and others

 

Greetings Paulo Roberto Almeida, New items have been posted matching your subscriptions. Table of Contents H-Diplo: New posted content H-Diplo Article Review 1219: Marlo on Søndergaard, "The Committee for the Free World and the Defense of Democracy" H-Diplo: New posted content H-Diplo Article Review 1219: Marlo on Søndergaard, "The Committee for the Free World and the Defense of Democracy" christopher ball H-Diplo Article Review 1219 Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, “The Committee for the Free World and the Defense of Democracy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 25:4 (Fall 2023): 70-100. https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01171 25 September 2024 | PDF: https://hdiplo.org/to/AR1219 | X: @HDiplo | BlueSky: @h-diplo.bsky.social Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Daniel R. Hart | Production Editor: Christopher Ball Review by Francis Marlo, National Defense University In his recent article, “The Committee for the Free World and the Defense of Democracy,” Rasmus Søndergaard sheds light on an interesting, if little known, organization, primarily composed of neoconservative thinkers, that advocated for a more aggressive promotion of democracy. Drawing from his extensive review of The Committee for the Free World’s (CFW) founding documents, newsletters, and other publications, Søndergaard sets forth two principal conclusions. First, he asserts that “the CFW’s campaign for democracy amounted largely to an anti-Communist defense of existing Western democracies rather than an attempt to spread democracy to non-democratic authoritarian states in the Third World” (71). Second, he argues that “the CFW served as an incubator for proponents of more active democracy promotion in the 1990s” (72). While the validity of his first proposition depends on how one chooses to define democracy promotion, Søndergaard demonstrates the important role played by the CFW in the global pro-democracy movement. Søndergaard begins by discussing the founding of the CFW and providing a thorough picture of its membership, organization, and the international context that gave rise to the group. Founded and led by writer and activist Midge Decter, the Committee boasted an impressive collection of intellectuals from both the United States and Western Europe. Those familiar with the neoconservative movement will recognize many of the names: historians Allen Weinstein, Raymond Aron, and Richard Pipes, US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, and journalists Irving Kristol and John Podhoretz. Feeling that the West’s faith in democratic governance was waning while Soviet aggressiveness was on the rise, the CFW’s goal was (according to Decter) “to conduct a battle of ideas in defense of Western values and institutions” (76). While the CFW was primarily a right-of-center organization, internal disputes did exist, and Søndergaard does an excellent job of highlighting these disagreements, particularly over the importance of supporting capitalism as a means of advancing democratic governance. Having described the organization, Søndergaard sets out to demonstrate that the CFW’s primary focus was on anti-Communism, rather than democratic expansion. The extent to which he succeeds depends on how one chooses to define “promoting democratic expansion.” Søndergaard himself appears to argue that a genuine policy of supporting the spread of democracy would entail the United States publicly pressuring pro-US authoritarian regimes to liberalize, rather than seeking to overthrow Communist regimes. He approvingly quotes former Under Secretary of State George Ball, who criticized the CFW for supporting the backing of pro-US regimes in Argentina, Chile, the Philippines, and South Africa by President Ronald Reagan’s administration (94). And, as Søndergaard notes, the writings of key members clearly demonstrate their support for a policy of countering and reversing Communist expansionism (87). Yet, Søndergaard’s definition of democracy promotion is not the only one available, nor was it the one the CFW itself used. He notes that the CFW strongly supported the Reagan Doctrine, particularly in Poland and Latin America (87).[1] What he does not note is that, in the view of the Reagan administration and the CFW, supporting the overthrow of Communist regimes wasdemocracy promotion. In their view, the spread of Communist governments posed the single greatest threat to democratic governance. As such, reversing the spread of Communist dictatorships was the highest priority in terms of democracy promotion. Given that the existence of this view is discussed in Søndergaard’s book on this subject, this omission is odd.[2] Rather than stating that the CFW did not seek to spread democracy to non-democratic authoritarian states in the Third World, the article would have been more convincing had it instead offered a critique of the way the CFW (and the Reagan administration) chose to define democracy promotion. The second flaw in this portion of the paper is that it never adequately explains why the CFW was tolerant of pro-US authoritarian regimes. While Søndergaard (rightly) calls Jeane Kirkpatrick’s seminal article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards” the “intellectual foundation” of CFW’s policy thinking, his description of her view is underdeveloped. Søndergaard claims that Kirkpatrick’s position was that “the United States should focus on combating totalitarian Communism and be patient with friendly authoritarian regimes, which could eventually become democratic” (88). In fact, Kirkpatrick’s position was substantially more active than simply hoping for eventual democratization. Calling for a “realistic policy which aims at protecting our own interests and assisting the capacities for self-governance of less developed nations,” she supported a US policy that “effectively encourages [a] process of liberalization and democratization.”[3] She argued, however, that such a policy had to be gradually implemented and conducted at a time when the regime was not “fighting for its life against violent adversaries.”[4] Once this more complete description of Kirkpatrick’s views is considered, the CFW’s reasoning becomes clear: the organization believed the threat that pro-US regimes faced from Soviet-backed Communist insurgents was too great to justify the risk. The reasoning should have been made clear in the article. Absent such explanation, one is left to assume that only cynical power politics or ideological hypocrisy were possible explanations. Søndergaard continues his analysis by documenting the rapid disillusionment that the CFW experienced with Reagan’s foreign policy. Relying on Beth Fischer’s concept of the “Reagan reversal,”[5] Søndergaard argues that when the administration “abandoned its hardline anti-Communism in favor of a more moderate foreign policy, the CFW felt betrayed and grew antagonistic” (95). Whatever one’s position on Fischer’s thesis, the dissatisfaction some neoconservatives felt towards the Reagan administration was very real.[6] As Søndergaard notes, by early 1982 (well before Fischer’s theorized reversal) some neoconservatives had already begun turning against the administration. More would do so in the years to come (95).[7]Given the composition of Reagan’s cabinet, this development should have been unsurprising. After all, apart from Kirkpatrick, not one of Reagan’s key advisors was a neoconservative.[8] It is quite easy to break from a foreign policy to which one never subscribed. In fact, the speed with which some in the CFW broke with the administration has more to say about the nature of these types of organizations than it does about any changes in Reagan’s foreign policy. Activists, whatever their beliefs, have the luxury of ideological purity since they do not have to make the hard choices or tradeoffs that fill the policy maker’s day. Søndergaard closes out his article by discussing the longer-term impact of the CFW. Following the organization’s dissolution in 1990, many former members became “active promoters of democracy worldwide” and associated themselves with a new constellation of organizations, such as the Project for a New American Century and The Weekly Standard (100). Søndergaard does a good job tracing the activities of some of the key figures in the CFW, and he is surely correct that the CFW was one of the forerunners of a global movement that advocated democracy promotion. Yet, here again, his argument is somewhat incomplete. Had he not only tracked the people involved in this movement but also the ideas, his case would have been much stronger. Why did the CFW view democracy promotion as in the interest of the United States? What specific benefits did its members see this spread providing the US? And how similar was their reasoning to the reasoning of the democracy promoters of the 1990s? His article would have been more convincing had he answered these questions. The critiques above should not be interpreted as an outright rejection of Søndergaard’s piece. He has written a highly readable, well-researched, and compelling article on a little-known but important organization.    Francis H. Marlo is the Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs at the College of Information and Cyberspace at National Defense University. His views do not necessarily reflect those of National Defense University or the Department of Defense.   [1] The Reagan Doctrine was a Reagan Administration policy stating that the United States would support non-Communist resistance movements fighting against Soviet-backed regimes, primarily in the Third World. While it, in principle, applied worldwide, it was particularly relevant to US policy in Nicaragua, Grenada, Afghanistan, and Angola. [2] Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). [3] Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary(November 1979), 44-45. [4] Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” 44. [5] Beth Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997). [6] See, for example, Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). [7] It should be noted, however, that some neoconservatives, such as Kirkpatrick herself, remained largely supportive of the administration’s policies, even after she left office. [8] The most prominent among these were Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (1981–1987) and Secretary of State George Shultz (1982–1989), along with James Baker, Chief of Staff (1981–1985) and Secretary of the Treasury (1985–1988). Read more or reply Repost Back to top Message from a proud sponsor of H-Net: The New Books Network is proud to be a sponsor of H-Net. If you are interested in becoming an NBN host, please go here. Si te interesa hacer entrevistas en español,contáctanos. Please help us keep H-Net free and accessible. $25 from each of our subscribers would fund H-Net for two years. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation online. 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