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Complete List of Institute Reports Release Date: January 1999 Get Adobe PDF version of the full report HTML version of the full report |
Contents | Key Points | Foreword | Preface | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Appendixes: 1 2 3 | Notes | Author The Quest for Democratic Security The Role of the Council of Europe and U.S. Foreign Policy Conclusion In this age of globalization, the security of nations is more indivisible than ever before. This is true in a geographical sense: America cannot be secure without a secure Europe and vice versa. It is also true in conceptual terms: Military, economic, and democratic security cannot be easily separated. Increasingly, nation-states are coming to view their own security in the context of cooperative international structures that promote democracy. The democratic peace theory holds that democracies are unlikely to go to war against one another. Therefore, to maintain peace, relevant organizations must spread the knowledge and the practice of democracy. But democratic peace would remain fragile as long as democracies remain fragile, susceptible to being overturned from within or through interference from outside. Thus, democratic stability is necessary for democratic security. The stability of democracies depends in part on economic factors. While democratic systems have been made to function in poor countries, no real democracy can thrive in extreme misery. When a large part of a country’s population is hungry, the right to vote or freedom of expression become secondary concerns. Yet democracy needs more than capitalist prosperity. For democracies to be stable, there must be a firm commitment to democratic values and a well-developed civil society. As President Clinton underlined during his African tour in March 1998, there is no generally applicable blueprint of a democratic system. Yet there are certain fundamental tenets of democracy that are valid for all societies. The 1983 Strasbourg Consensus constituted an attempt to codify such basic rules. The 1989 democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe provided a unique chance to have the credo of democracy accepted all across the continent. Europe could thus become a vast area of democratic security—to use the words of the 1993 Vienna Declaration—and, hence, contribute to the security of the United States. This process requires the transfer of democratic know-how to countries that lived under dictatorships for a half-century or longer. This transfer, which is under way, comes from many sources: bilateral assistance; cooperation of democracies within international organizations such as the Council of Europe, OSCE, EU, and NATO; and, last but not least, the work of NGOs. By virtue of its origin, the Council of Europe has a unique role to play. It has a specific vocation with regard to democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Therefore, it is only natural that all Central and Eastern European countries turned to the council when they were freed from the yoke of totalitarian communism. Between 1990 and 1997, the council admitted sixteen former communist countries into its ranks. Five more have applied for membership. In accordance with its raison d’être, the Council of Europe initiated a vast program of technical assistance and cooperation to promote the consolidation of democratic rule in these new member states. It cooperates with individual states, as well as with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and it pursues joint projects with the EU. The United States and the Council of Europe have a common purpose of establishing and consolidating democracy in the eastern part of Europe. It would be in the U.S. interest to lend the council’s programs moral support in the international organizations of which the United States is a member, such as NATO and OSCE, in accordance with the concept of the complementary and mutually reinforcing roles of international organizations. The United States and the Council of Europe should undertake an effort to coordinate their democracy-building programs and, where appropriate, enter into joint ventures along the lines of those agreed on between the council and the EU. To this end, the United States’ observer status in the council ought to be fully exploited in conformity with the original intent of the U.S. application. The United States could explore the usefulness of adhering to more “open” council conventions, either because they are intrinsically of interest to the United States or because such action would extend the “common legal space” across the Atlantic.107 Specifically, the United States and the council should explore the feasibility of a joint European–North American research project on common elements in their respective constitutional and legal orders and how they could be further extended, with a view to creating a common transatlantic legal space. Because the United States is actively engaged in OECD, the U.S. Congress should be regularly represented, not only through diplomatic observers, but also by parliamentarians, at the Parliamentary Assembly’s annual debate on the activities of OECD. The United States should bear in mind that under an agreement between the two organizations, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly acts as OECD’s parliamentary forum. Bringing democracy to the eastern half of Europe is a noble task in itself, but it is also essential for our common security. Therefore, the United States and the Council of Europe, and all governmental and nongovernmental actors concerned, should maintain present efforts to promote and consolidate democracy and complement them where appropriate. Accordingly, there should be more coordination among all the actors involved to avoid waste and duplication and to achieve the optimal effect from this common quest for democratic security in Europe—and beyond. Contents | Key Points | Foreword | Preface | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Appendixes: 1 2 3 | Notes | Author
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