The best nextgen foreign policy thinking I know is coming out of The Truman National Security Project, the creation of a group of very smart and talented twenty- and early thirty-somethings. They define themselves as Truman Democrats, dedicated to "forging a Democratic foreign policy founded on strength and security, grounded in a strong military and active diplomacy, and committed to furthering the American ideals of freedom, dignity, and opportunity worldwide." (I would be happy to sign on, but I think I'm too old.)
 
At any rate, the Truman Project has just had its annual meeting, provocatively summarized by Michael Signer on DemocracyArsenal.org. He elaborates six basic principles of Truman Democrat foreign policy  -- three shared with neocons (American exceptionalism, the use of force, and American hegemony) -- and three not (the world community, liberal-mindedness, and helping the least well off).

So how about we "rapidly aging but still thinking of ourselves as young leaders" democrats, starting with at least some of my fellow blog members? Do we agree? With all of these? With any of these?

Believe it or not, today we have at last seen some real action on Darfur, as a result of pressure by the UN (Kofi Annan went to Darfur again over Memorial Day, with Nick Kristof and others, after going to Addis Ababa to meet with the African Union) and from our own Administration (led by Robert Zoelick, who has been twice and has played a major role in bringing the EU and NATO together). Read on, as reported today in the International Herald Tribune:

NATO Agrees To Lend Its Help In Darfur 

By Judy Dempsey

BERLIN--The U.S.-led military alliance, NATO, agreed Wednesday to provide military, logistical and planning support to the African Union as it prepares to assume a greater role in ending the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The decision by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization opens the way for its first mission to Africa, and was approved despite initial resistance by France and Belgium. As former colonial powers in Africa, both countries had insisted that any support for the African Union should come from the European Union and not from NATO.

"NATO and the EU are entering into a very good example of what I would say is practical and pragmatic cooperation," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, secretary general of NATO, in an interview this week before the decision was made. "Let's not have theology. Let's do it. The African Union came to NATO and the African Union came to the EU. There is no room for competition. There is plenty of work to be done."

The NATO agreement coincides with growing international concern for Africa, particularly over how to reduce poverty and provide debt relief for several of the continent's countries.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has made the fight against poverty in Africa the main agenda when he chairs the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations next month in Scotland, held talks in Washington this week with President George W. Bush to reach agreement before the summit meeting.

Wednesday's decision, made a day before NATO defense ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the role of the alliance in Africa and Afghanistan, could also be an important test case for much closer cooperation between NATO and the EU.

The two organizations, which for months have been vying over which will assist the African Union in Sudan, have finally put aside their rivalry by agreeing to coordinate; they are providing transportation, equipment, training and planning for the ambitious task being prepared by the African Union.

The African Union wants to increase its troops in Darfur from 2,500 to 7,700 to protect the local population. According to the United Nations, at least 180,000 people have died from hunger and fighting. NATO said it hoped to start airlifting troops by July 1.

A NATO spokesman said Wednesday that the NATO and EU missions would be under the African Union leadership.

"The key point is that this will be led by the African Union," said a NATO spokesman, James Appathurai.

Appathurai said that neither NATO nor the EU would send troops. Both organizations said they would keep a low profile since neither Sudan nor the Arab League want Western troops sent to Darfur.

"NATO will have a light touch," said Appathurai.

So far, NATO and the European Union have agreed on the following with the African Union:

The military headquarters will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where NATO and the EU will provide a skeleton staff of military officers to coordinate the airlift of soldiers to Darfur, as well as providing planning and logistics.

The 7,700 soldiers will be drawn from Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal. The U.S. has agreed to provide air transport for troops from Rwanda.

NATO said Rwanda will provide three of the eight battalions that will serve under the African Union.

The size of a battalion ranges from 500 to 800 troops.

France, under a EU flag, will provide transport for the troops from Senegal.

It has not yet been decided who will provide transport for the Nigerians and South Africans.

Canada said it would provide 25 "technical" helicopters for transporting troops, and will also supply 100 armored personnel carriers.

The EU will also have its own military planning cell in Brussels and have a military headquarters at an air base in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where it will coordinate the military contributions from the 25 EU member states.

The EU will assist in police training and building up the civilian side of the African Union forces. It will also provide air observation support. The EU has provided €570 million, or $700 million, of which €445 million has been earmarked for humanitarian assistance including food aid and €129 million to the African Union.

NATO and EU diplomats said that while they hoped to meet the July 1 deadline for starting the first of the airlifts, a lot of work still had to be done in providing bases for the soldiers in Darfur and training the 5,200 extra troops that will be airlifted in phases.

I stand chastened if not corrected by all those readers who objected to my claim that Venezuela "obviously" would not meet the Community of Democracies' criteria for membership. Fair point. My reasoning was based on precisely the factors listed by boz in his post: "Venezuela has used unconstitutional means to pack the court with pro-government judges.  They've implemented media censorship laws.  The government has quietly threatened people who signed the petition trying to recall the president.  They've accused their political opponents of treason and many opposition leaders have received threats." But I also certainly take the point that the U.S. backed an unconstitutional coup (not to mention that from the Venezuelan point of view, it may look like certain members of Congress have been trying to use unconstitutional means to pack U.S. courts with pro-government judges!) And I was interested to hear about some of the on-the-ground impressions from readers who have been there recently.

My real point was that the way to promote democracy, in Latin America as elsewhere, is not for the U.S. or the U.S. and a few other countries to "monitor" countries that don't measure up to our self-proclaimed democratic standards. Aside from the perceived hypocrisy of such an enterprise, particularly in a region as sensitive to our double standards and interference as Latin America, it simply will not work. The generation and application of liberal democratic criteria have to come from other countries in the region and the world. The next meeting of the Community of Democracies is not in San Francisco, but Santiago. That should be a meeting that a country like Venezuela would want to attend, and would correct some of its practices accordingly. I suggested that we replicate the desirability of being a member of that club across the board, through networks of as many different government officials as possible. As one reader pointed out, our military has done this for a long time with other militaries; I am suggesting replicating this and doing it -- god forbid -- genuinely multilaterally.

To the reader who questioned my EU analogy, it is absolutely right that the prize for being socialized into the EU networks and living up their standards is membership in the EU itself -- a very big carrot indeed. We can't replicate that. But if we had a network of justice ministers from democratic states in Latin America, for instance, or of legislators, the U.S. and Canada, for starters, could provide sufficient resources through that network to make participation very attractive not only for the individual officials involved but for their countries. As my fellow bloggers know, I'm promoting my book here, but just less openly -- A New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2004). These networks are all over the place, but we are not actually using them creatively and productively to advance goals of democracy and good governance.

As the Times reports this morning, the Organization for American States (OAS) is resisting an Administration plan to create a committee that would monitor the democratic performance of member states. This is one more example of a much larger problem plaguing current U.S. pro-democracy efforts. Jim and Ivo point out rightly that the Administration is longer on rhetoric than on practice, but to the extent it is trying to make good on its word, it ought to be using clubs rather than sticks. Democracy clubs, to be precise. Instead of trying to create a committee at the OAS (or at the UN, for that matter) to sit in judgment on a member state that is behaving undemocratically, something that diplomats are always loath to do, in part for fear that what goes around comes around, we should be creating a whole series of clubs or networks of different officials from fellow democracies within the larger organization. Thus, for instance, a network of the foreign ministers, justice ministers, finance ministers, interior ministers, trade ministers, judges, and legislators of the democracies within the OAS. These networks should have established criteria for membership, such as those currently in use by the Community of Democracies. These include:

         • Free, fair and periodic elections, by universal and equal suffrage, conducted by secret ballot 
         • Multipartidarism, the freedom to form democratic political parties that can participate in elections
         • Guaranteeing that everyone can exercise his or her right to take part in the government of his or her country, directly or through freely chosen representatives 
         • The rule of Law
         • The obligation of an elected government to protect and defend the constitution, refraining from extra-constitutional actions and to relinquish power when its legal mandate ends
         • Ensuring equality before the law and equal protection under the law, including equal access to the law

          • Separation of powers, separation of the judiciary, legislative and executive independence of the judiciary from the political or any other power Ensuring that the military remains accountable to democratically elected civilian government

          • The respect of human rights, fundamental freedoms and the inherent dignity of the human being.

Equally important, these networks of democratic officials should have some resources to hold regular meetings (not just as part of regular OAS meetings, but on their own at places of their choosing), exchange information, coordinate policies, develop codes of best practices, and provide technical assistance and ongoing material and moral support to members who need it. Membership and meetings should be publicized. Obviously, non-democratic countries, such as Venezuela or Cuba, would not be eligible to participate -- meaning that all their officials, from ministers to judges to legislators, would be shut out. These networks could also interact with a wide variety of civil society actors, from all over Latin America.

This strategy would be new only for the U.S. It is a version of precisely the strategy that the EU has used to socialize and integrate government officials from all candidate member states for the EU, all of whom must meet precisely a version of the liberal democratic criteria listed above. It is a strategy that does not fit neatly on the traditiona carrots v. sticks spectrum; it instead uses the power of induction, of wanting to be a member of an exclusive and attractive club.

More to come, from the Dean's Corner.