The Death of Democracy Promotion

Murdered by Donald Trump and his acolytes, as they embrace dictators and declare open season on global election rigging.

Protest at the Polytechnic. Giorgos Ioannou, 1973. Photograph: Thanos Kartsoglou/Giorgos Ioannou Collection Archive

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I: The Values in the Car

A little over a decade ago, I traveled to Madagascar, not to study its lovable lemurs, but to try to better understand its corrupt, power-hungry politicians.

I was there to conduct research on a coup d’état that had taken place in 2009, in which a powerful yogurt-kingpin-turned-president had been deposed by a powerful radio disc jockey-turned-mayor. More than eighty people were killed in the events surrounding the military coup, as protesters were gunned down in the streets of the capital, Antananarivo.

The Western response was swift—and harsh. The new government was forcefully condemned by governments from Washington to London. Foreign aid was cut off. Western diplomats refused to recognize the coup government.

Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, was isolated, with biting consequences not just for the politicians but for the people, too. It was a clear message: the West doesn’t just speak about the importance of democracy; it sometimes backs the rhetoric with serious consequences. Despots of the world, take notice.

By the time I arrived a few years later, the message had clearly gotten through. When I interviewed the head honcho of one of the major political parties, he deliberately reassured me that his commitment to democratic norms was ironclad.

“Unlike the other political parties,” he told me, “we are a party of values.”

“Okay,” I responded, “which values?”

A look of panic crossed his face, an authoritarian deer in the headlights of democracy. After a moment, he recovered his composure.

“Someone go get the values for the American,” he said. “I left the values in the car.”

Presumably there was a dusty booklet full of pristine Western values just waiting to be read, left discarded in the backseat of a fancy car. I never could be sure, as he quickly moved on to other topics, hoping I’d forget about the case of the missing values.

It was a charade. But it reflected an important truth. Hollow as the commitment to democracy may have been, the authoritarian government of Madagascar cared enough to try to pretend to be democratic. And however insincere, efforts to make a country appear democratic can actually produce democratic reforms. As a result of Western pressure, the bloodshed in Madagascar stopped. Eventually, elections returned.

For much of my political science career, I’ve traveled the globe to try to understand the world’s worst dictators and despots—and how pro-democracy forces can push back against them. I sipped mango juice with ex-rebels and was robbed at machete point in post-conflict Côte d’Ivoire. I was tailed by the KGB in Belarus as I spoke to presidential candidates bravely challenging Europe’s last dictator. I had poetry read to me by a general in Madagascar who spoke of the glory days when he kidnapped politicians. I had tea with a failed coup plotter’s family in Zambia and coffee with generals in Thailand’s junta café.

One fact I learned was this: their behavior was partly shaped by decisions in Washington—for better and worse. The world’s worst regimes pay attention to the White House, not just what it says, but also what the president does.

Since the end of the World War II, American democracy promotion has a checkered history, pockmarked by CIA-sponsored coups in the Cold War and egregious hypocrisy in modern times. But Western pressure has nonetheless played a crucial role in making the world more democratic.

Now, thanks to Donald Trump, global democracy promotion is effectively dead. The murder was carried out by a wide array of despot’s accomplices.

This is the story of Elon Musk’s malevolence at DOGE, far-right alliances that span the globe from Bulgarian cryptocurrency firms to New York penthouses, shady business deals in the Balkans, sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf investing in private equity firms connected to the White House, Europe using the cover provided by Trump to abdicate its responsibilities, and American podcasters giving political cover to aspiring tyrants.

In many countries around the world, the United States now sides with the autocrats, no longer isolating coup governments who murder their own people, but instead isolating the dissidents who fight for freedom and justice.

Woodrow Wilson famously said that the world must be made safe for democracy. More than a century later, Trump’s White House is doing everything it can to make the world safer for dictators. And that story is not being adequately covered by the press.