2008: Wesley Clark on Democratization After Bush

2008: Wesley Clark on Democratization After Bush

In the new issue of Washington Monthly, Gen. Wesley Clark writes about how we should advance democracy in the post-Bush era during a review of James Traub’s new book tackling the same subject.  Here’s Clark’s main formulation of how Barack Obama and John McCain’s approaches to democratization might differ:


“Regardless of who takes office in January, American foreign policy will continue to seek a higher, more legitimate purpose than the simple protection of American interests. But a McCain presidency is likely to have a sharper edge in this than an Obama administration. Candidates who speak of strengthening a society of democracies to sidestep the United Nations and expelling Russia from the G8 sound naive and exclusionary. I would hope that an Obama administration would show more tolerance and patience while we built the institutional framework at home and beefed-up teams of civilians abroad to augment the nonmilitary aspects of American foreign policy, including preventive diplomacy and support to fledging democracies. But neither candidate is likely to persist in the simplistic illusion that the act of voting will, in itself, prove a silver bullet in defeating terrorism.”