Bush To Mandate Aid To End Tyrannies

WASHINGTON — President Bush today is scheduled to sign a law mandating that America develop strategies to help tyrannies and police states to make the transition to democracies.

Two years in the drafting, the changes the new Advance Democracy Act would require of the State Department are largely bureaucratic. The bill, for example, would have the State Department create "liaison officers" to reach out to democratic activists in nondemocratic countries and create awards for foreign service officers that promote democracy.

Its likely passage into law comes as Mr. Bush himself has abandoned most of his democracy-promotion agenda. Yesterday, 114 members of Congress from both major parties signed a letter to the president to oppose a proposed $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni kingdoms in the Persian Gulf. The arms deal is part of a strategy to unify Israel and the Sunni kingdoms of the Middle East against the rising influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Missing from the new strategy is any remnant of public pressure for these states to afford their citizens the rights of assembly, free speech, or petition.

Since the president's second inaugural address in 2005, America's democracy-promotion efforts have been thwarted by both its allies and its enemies. In Russia and Egypt, for example, the recipients of American funding have been arrested and harassed. In Iran and Venezuela, such individuals have been put on trial for crimes of treason.

The democracy bill, sponsored in the Senate by Senator Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut, and in the House by Rep. Tom Lantos, the California Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is also not being promoted with much fanfare. The bill is tucked inside a slate of intelligence community reforms recommended by the September 11 commission. The legislation acknowledges in its findings that the process of democracy building is an indigenous one. "The development of democracy constitutes a long-term challenge that goes through unique phases and paces in individual countries as such countries develop democratic institutions, such as a thriving civil society, a free media, and an independent judiciary, and must be led from within such countries, including by nongovernmental and governmental reformers," it says. This sort of language is a far cry from bills introduced in the 1990s calling for regime change, such as the Iraq Liberation Act, which made it American foreign policy to work with the opposition to Saddam Hussein.

The law calls for the American government to follow through on an idea first broached by Secretary of State Albright under President Clinton, a community of democracies. The law calls for the establishment of a permanent secretariat of the community of democracies and the exclusion of nondemocratic countries from the organization. That language could result in the expulsion of the Jordan as well as Russia from the community of democracies.

The new law also makes the State Department the primary government agency in promoting democracy. The secretary of state for example would determine which countries are not free. More important, the State Department is charged with drafting the democratic transition strategies and providing Congress with annual reports on the progress of democracy promotion efforts.

The law also creates an office within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor that is responsible only for the transition to democracy in nondemocratic nations. Its budget however is determined at the discretion of the secretary of state.

American embassies in nondemocratic countries will be assigned a "democracy liaison officer." These officers will be charged with being a bridge between the American government and democratic opposition leaders and movements. This job may be tricky in countries where America provides counterterrorism assistance and training to repressive security forces.