The Importance Of Assisting Transitional Democracies

From Democracy Digest:

The U.S. should change its “ambitious post–Cold War habits of sometimes-forcible democracy promotion” and instead protect and advance human rights in “more voluntary and limited ways [such as] providing assistance to democracies in transition,” according to a new RAND analysis.

The U.S. success in the Cold War can be largely traced to prevailing in two fundamental areas. The United States and its democratic allies had much more dynamic societies and economies than the Soviet Union, and Washington created a world whose institutions, geopolitical alignments, and norms tilted heavily in the U.S. direction, Michael J. Mazarr writes in Understanding Competition: Great Power Rivalry in a Changing International Order — Concepts and Theories. Success in the current rivalries will likely be determined by the same two fundamental factors, he contends:

Read the full article here. Also see our section on American Democracy or our articles on World Democracy.