Twenty-five years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan delivered one of the most significant speeches of his presidency. Standing before the British parliament in the historic Westminster Palace nearly a decade before the demise of the Soviet Union, he offered the vision of “a plan and a hope for the long-term — the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”
Although Reagan knew that “by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens,” Communist regimes ran “against the tide of history,” he knew the struggle for both would not be easy. “Optimism,” he said, “comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.”
Today, throughout the world, political repression is once again on the rise. In its latest annual survey,
Freedom House highlights a “developing freedom stagnation” that includes setbacks to freedom in the Asia Pacific region and Africa, as well as “an entrenchment of authoritarian rule in the majority of countries of the former Soviet Union.”
Take the case of Le Quoc Quan, a mild-mannered Vietnamese lawyer who came to the U.S. last year to conduct independent research on civil society as a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the
National Endowment for Democracy. Upon his return home this past March, Quan was arrested and charged with conducting “activities aimed at overthrowing the Government.”
Vietnam is a particularly revealing example. Granted Permanent Normal Trade Status by Congress late last year paving the way for its entry into the World Trade Organization, it is a test case for the idea that opening markets leads to political liberalization. But as James Mann points out in
The China Fantasy, the notion that economic globalization automatically leads to liberal democracy is a mirage: “Chinese leaders are entering the globalized economy as rapidly as possible while maintaining controls on the news media. So far, they have managed to achieve both objectives at once.”
Following Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, many observers forecast a new democratic wave — coming, as the Kiev events did, in the wake of democratic upheavals in Serbia and Georgia — and hopeful signs in other regions, including 2005’s “Arab Spring.” But for many of the region’s rulers, the “colored” revolutions served merely as a wake-up call. Most notably, Vladimir Putin’s “managed” democracy has cracked down on dissent while muzzling independent media and closing independent non-governmental organizations.
Putin’s brand of authoritarianism is by no means unique. From Central Asia to the Middle East and significant parts of Africa, including countries where political space had been opened enough in previous years to allow independent voices to be heard, authoritarian leaders, sometimes working in concert, have found new means — from the crude to the imaginative — to constrict the boundaries of civil society. A prime example is the Mubarak regime in Egypt, which forced through a series of constitutional “reforms” last March that entrench the security forces’ powers to monitor private communications and send suspects to military courts. In Venezuela, President Chavez has sought to emulate his role model Fidel Castro by nationalizing industry, militarizing the government, and silencing political opposition, while in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has turned peaceful demonstrations against his destructive policies into bloody police riots.
Twenty-five years ago, freedom’s prospects looked similarly bleak. Surely, few if any Soviet experts would have agreed with President Reagan that Communism’s days were numbered. What was the basis for his optimism? Can it offer any hope and guidance for the victims of repressive rule today and those of us who are concerned about them?
Three themes dominated President Reagan’s Westminster address: the instability of authoritarian regimes, the power of democratic conviction, and the importance of long-term democratic institution building.
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