March 15, 2004, 12:06 p.m.
Dirty Democracy
Creeping authoritarianism in elected governments.

As expected, the Russian people overwhelmingly reelected their president, Vladimir Putin, on Sunday. Friends of democracy should take no comfort from the fact that Putin secured this new mandate via the ballot box: Even though he is indisputably popular with his countrymen, the former KGB man assured his election in ways all-too-reminiscent of the Kremlin's well-established authoritarian traditions.

As a result, it seems likely that the Russian vote Sunday will simply be the latest cooption of seemingly democratic institutions by an incipient dictator to legitimate and facilitate a power grab. This will be bad news not only for most of those who elected him; it also presages trouble for the rest of us.

According to the Sunday's New York Times, the CIA has warned that the election of Landslide Vladimir may not only "bolster trends toward limits on civil society" (Agency-speak for increased authoritarianism) at home; it may also result in "a greater assertiveness" abroad.

Although such developments would clearly be contrary to U.S. hopes for and strategic interests in a free and peaceable Russia, if past experience is any guide, American elites will insist that we support President Putin. The logic goes like this: We favor democracy. He was elected. Therefore, we must not object, even as he systematically dismantles Russia's — at best — fragile democratic institutions.

Similar reasoning has lately been much in evidence with respect to another elected despot: Haiti's sometime president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The Congressional Black Caucus and other Democrats have endlessly cited the fact that the former priest-turned-murderous thug first achieved power through the ballot box. They claim that, as the world's leading champion of democracy, the United States was therefore obliged to prevent his overthrow. These and other Aristide sympathizers are furious that President Bush refused to respond to such pressure the way his predecessor had, namely by intervening militarily to enforce Aristide's claim to power.

The tendency to turn a blind eye to the creeping authoritarianism of elected governments is not new. For example, many in the West gave Adolf Hitler a pass for years, at least in part on the grounds that he became Weimar Germany's chancellor by way of elections. Some of the more addled actually impute a certain popularity — if not actual legitimacy — to dictators based on the results of rigged elections they choose to hold from time to time, for precisely this effect.

Even the foolish evidently have their limits, however. When Saddam Hussein arranged to garner 100 percent of the vote in his last election, his apologists chose not to cite it as one of the reasons why he should remain in power.

Like Hitler and Saddam, today's elected despots are ruthlessly efficient when it comes to liquidating the potential checks on their power represented by democratic institutions. As Soviets like Vladimir Putin used to say, "It is no accident, comrade," that such institutions as an independent judiciary, free press, and freedom of expression and association are endangered species in today's Russia. Putin's landslide rewards him for having — systematically — intimidated and neutralized what remains of a political opposition; installed fellow KGB apparatchiks throughout his government; subjugated the legislature; co-opted the business community; and brought the once-relatively free press to heel.

Similar measures are being taken for similar reasons by the elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. With considerable help from his friend and mentor, Fidel Castro, and the assistance of large numbers of imported Cuban security personnel, doctors, "aid workers," and Communist-party and intelligence operatives, Chávez is threatening and suppressing his opponents; denying them constitutional means to effect his recall; purging and otherwise exercising ever-greater control over the military; and mobilizing what increasingly amount to local paramilitary organizations.

For the United States, the mutation and near-extinction of Venezuela's once-vibrant democracy is an important strategic development. This blight threatens not only a country with which we have long enjoyed friendly relations: It has implications for our economy, since Venezuela is one of America's largest sources of imported oil. Worse yet, the country's oil resources and revenues are increasingly being put in the service of Chávez's radically anti-American agenda.

For example, Castro is being handsomely remunerated for his help to the Chávez regime and getting a new lease on life for his own despotic regime and its longstanding ambition to undermine pro-U.S. governments throughout the hemisphere. The two are engaged, along with Brazil's Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, in fostering anti-democratic instability in Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and elsewhere in our hemisphere. As in the cases of Russia and Haiti, there are those (notably, Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut) who insist that we are obliged to accommodate ourselves to these unhappy realities, since Hugo Chávez was elected.

In fact, we have an opposite obligation — especially at a juncture at which the promotion and nurturing of democracy, especially in Iraq and other parts of the Mideast, has become a lodestar of President Bush's foreign policy.

The United States must support democracy by making plain that what is involved is much more than merely holding elections. The institutions and freedoms that control the majority's power and protect the rights of the minority are no less important than free and fair balloting if the latter is going to amount to more than "one man, one vote, one time."

We should serve notice on Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez, and the world's other elected would-be despots: The United States will feel no greater attachment to their claims to democratic legitimacy than these leaders do to their respective countries' democratic institutions and freedoms. To the extent that elected officials set about perverting their democracies and pursuing policies at home and abroad that defile them, they cannot count on our acquiescence, let alone our support.

It is to be hoped that President Bush meant to convey just that message when he showed Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his admirers that this country will stand with those who stand with democracy — not with those determined to trample the rights they were elected to uphold, and that we believe to be inalienable.

— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and a contributing editor to NRO.

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