A global democratic revolution has swept the world over the past two decades. This revolution, however, has been imperiled in recent years by an increasingly ineffective American foreign policy, according to AEI Resident Scholar Michael Ledeen. "Having won the cold war," he writes in his new book, Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away, "we are in danger of seeing our historic victory overwhelmed by a new generation of tyrants."
Mr. Ledeen, who holds the Freedom Chair at AEI, traces the global revolution to democratic movements in Spain and Portugal in the 1970s. The triumph of democracy in Iberia, the author contends, destroyed the myth that communism was the wave of the future and, in so doing, provided a model for others.
Throughout the 1980s, the global democratic revolution was led by the United States and President Ronald Reagan. "Despite the conventional wisdom," writes Mr. Ledeen, "according to which no one' foresaw the impending doom of communism, Reagan's foreign policy was based on the conviction that the Soviet Empire was doomed to fall sometime in the near future." Armed with this conviction, the AEI scholar contends, the United States beat back the Soviet advance while popular leaders like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel attacked the empire from within.
Nonetheless, many still question the effectiveness of U.S. policy during the cold war and doubt that it was responsible for the decline of the Soviet Union. Such disagreement over the role of the West in the collapse of the Soviet Empire is no small matter. For if the fall of the Soviet Union was not due to the superiority of democratic capitalism, Mr. Ledeen notes, "then the West, and especially the United States, has no right to claim global leadership." Thus, those who argue America and the West played no part in the Soviet demise, according to Mr. Ledeen, undermine "the legitimacy of America's role as the lone superpower in the post-cold war world."
A more serious threat to America's status as the lone superpower has been posed by the very men who have led the country in the years since the end of the cold war. "Our obligations," the author writes, "did not end when the Soviets were beaten; we were obliged to help the new nations." Instead of fulfilling these obligations, the United States, first under President George Bush and then under President William Clinton, betrayed the democratic revolution just at the moment our values had swept the world.
In the absence of a clear, decisive assertion of American superiority, recent foreign policy, according to Mr. Ledeen, has been dangerously misguided and sometimes even contradictory. From Baghdad to Beijing, this lack of clarity in American foreign policy has heartened those who would oppose the advance of democracy and has seriously undermined American credibility. Without a strong and active America, the author asserts, the continued success of the global democratic revolution is highly unlikely. Such a failure would entail more than a loss of prestige and power for America; it would almost certainly lead to more immediate threats to our national interests and security.
To forestall these ominous developments, Mr. Ledeen concludes that America must recommit itself to the principles of the global democratic revolution. "Because we seek to advance ideals," he writes, "our national interests cannot be defined in purely geopolitical terms. Therefore, our foreign policy must be ideological and designed to advance freedom." Only with such a clearly defined foreign policy can the United States revive the global revolution it worked so hard to bring about.
