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Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
September 2008
On Sale: September 16, 2008
272 pages
ISBN: 0374158479
EAN: 9780374158477
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Americans have been trying to shape democracy around the
world for more than a century. It is the American mission,
our distinctive form of evangelism. But when President Bush
declared, in his second inaugural address, that “the
survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the
success of liberty in other lands,” he elevated this cause—
the “Freedom Agenda,” as he called it—to the central theme
of American foreign policy. Yet the war in Iraq has proven
the folly of seeking to impose American democracy by force.
As we leave the Bush era behind, the question arises: What
part of our efforts to spread democracy can we rescue from
this failure?
The Freedom Agenda traces the history of America’s
democratic evangelizing. James Traub, a journalist for The
New York Times Magazine, describes the rise and fall of the
Freedom Agenda during the Bush years, in part through
interviews with key administration officials. He offers a
richly detailed portrait of the administration’s largely
failed efforts to bolster democratic forces abroad. In the
end, Traub argues that democracy matters—for human rights,
for reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups, for
political stability and equitable development—but the
United States must exercise caution in its efforts to
spread it, matching its deeds to its words, both abroad and
at home.
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