The Death of Democracy Promotion

The Atlantic

5 days ago

On April 29, 1999, precision-guided NATO bombs tore through the brick facades of two defense-ministry buildings in Belgrade, the capital of the rump state of Yugoslavia. The targets were chosen more for symbolic reasons than operational ones: The American-led coalition wanted to send the country's authoritarian government, at that time engaged in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, a clear message that human rights weren't just words. They were backed by weapons.
For decades, the ruins of the buildings, on either side of a major artery through central Belgrade, were left largely untouched. Tangled concrete and twisted rebar stuck out of pancaked floors. Serbian architects fought to preserve the destroyed buildings; the government has treated them as a war memorial.
At the time of the 1999 NATO bombings, Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia's minister of information, was tasked with denouncing the West and backing his country's despot, Slobodan Milošević. Today, Vučić has risen in the ranks to become Serbia's president—an apologist for Russia who attacks the press, has been accused of nurturing close ties to organized crime, and is rapidly dragging his country toward authoritarianism.
Vučić is not Milošević—he has not led his country into genocidal wars or faced judgment for war crimes at The Hague—but until recently, he might have expected that his authoritarian style would make relations with Washington rocky. That time is past. Instead of harshly condemning Serbia's abuses, America's president, Donald Trump, will build a Trump Tower Belgrade on top of the defense buildings' ruins. 'Belgrade welcomes a Global Icon,' the slick website for Trump Belgrade proclaims. 'TRUMP. Unrivaled Luxury.' The contract for the project has been signed with Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner's investment firm, which is largely funded with billions of dollars in cash from Saudi Arabia.
This story is the material expression of the second Trump administration's turn against a long-standing tradition of Western democracy promotion—and of an embrace of conflicts of interest from which the world's despots can only take inspiration. The authoritarians who govern small countries such as Serbia no longer need to fear the condemnation, much less the bombs, of the American president when they crack down on their opponents, enrich themselves, or tighten their grip on power. On the contrary—the American flirtation with similar practices emboldens them. With Trump's unapologetic foreign policy in his second term, American democracy promotion is effectively dead.
Prior to the Soviet Union's collapse, Western diplomats cared far more about whether a dictator was an ally or adversary to the Soviets than about the quality of a country's elections or its respect for human rights. If diplomats from Washington or London pushed too hard for democracy, there was a credible risk that a Western ally could defect and become a friend to Moscow. Once the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the world's despots no longer had so much cover; Western diplomats could now push harder. New norms developed, which led to a rapid surge in the number of competitive, multiparty elections. Human rights were no longer just an aspirational buzzword. Some countries lost foreign aid or were shunned by the international community if their government committed atrocities.
This pressure to adopt democracy and protect human rights was never applied equally. Powerful countries, such as a rising China, became largely immune to Western cajoling. And strategically important countries, such as Saudi Arabia, in many cases got a free pass, facing little more than rhetorical condemnation while presidents and prime ministers continued to shake hands and ink major arms deals. Meanwhile, in smaller countries, such as Togo, Madagascar, or the former Yugoslavia, the post–Cold War push for democracy and human rights often came not just with lip service, but also with teeth. After all, the White House could afford to lose the goodwill of Madagascar in a dispute over values; its geopolitical priorities would suffer little downside. Moreover, weak countries such as Madagascar depended on foreign aid, such that Western governments wielded far more leverage in them than they did in larger, more self-sufficient countries. For a while, then, small-time despots faced a credible threat: Go too far, rights defenders could hope to warn strongmen, and a Western ambassador could soon be knocking on the palace door.
None of this is to say that Western powers were always on the side of the angels. During the Cold War, Western governments made lofty speeches about democracy and human rights while funding coups and arming politically convenient rebels. The CIA played a role in overthrowing popularly legitimate governments, such as those of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Salvador Allende in Chile. Even after the Cold War, Western governments have cozied up to plenty of friendly dictatorships, in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea.
And yet, particularly in the last 30 years, Western pressure and foreign aid have been significant forces for global democratization. Dictators and despots knew that the world was paying attention, which gave them pause before they turned their guns on their own people. Foreign aid became tied to the verdicts of election monitors, which drastically expanded operations after the end of the Cold War. With funding from the United States and other Western governments, opposition parties, journalists, and civil-society organizations received training on how to bolster democracy. And when political transitions toward democracy took place, as in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, billions of dollars in support flowed in. Partly because of these shifting international norms, the expansion of political freedom was so abrupt after the end of the Cold War that many believed democracy, having won the ideological battle against rival models of governance such as fascism and communism, had become an inexorable force.
But the democracy boom under Bill Clinton gave way to failed wars under George W. Bush and inaction under Barack Obama. Bush, who justified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq partly under the guise of a democracy-and-freedom agenda, inadvertently discredited the notion of values-based 'nation building.' A widespread perception among American adversaries took root that democracy promotion was just a code word for 'regime change carried out by American troops.' This gave dictators political cover to boot out international NGOs hoping to bolster democracy and human rights, branding them as mere precursors for a heavy-handed invasion. Obama, picking up the pieces of that failed foreign policy, downplayed the grand vision of a more democratic world as a guiding principle of American diplomacy, even as countries across the globe began to pivot toward authoritarian rule.
Now the world is steadily becoming less democratic. According to data from Freedom House, the world has become more authoritarian every year since 2006. Trump's second term may provide the most potent autocratic accelerant yet. In his first term, Trump routinely praised dictators, including in a memorable moment when he boasted about exchanging 'beautiful letters' with North Korea's tyrant. President Joe Biden, with his much-touted Summit for Democracy, tried to recenter democracy as a core principle of the State Department, but that effort was overtaken by successive geopolitical emergencies in Ukraine and Gaza. Now, with his return to power, Trump has gone further than before to fully uproot democracy promotion from American foreign policy.
The list of dismantled initiatives is long. In the first months of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency not only slashed America's foreign-aid machinery, effectively destroying USAID, but also targeted the National Endowment for Democracy: a bipartisan grant-making organization established under Ronald Reagan to strengthen democratic values abroad. The Trump administration has effectively kneecapped Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, outlets that have aimed to provide news and information to those living under oppressive regimes. Once viewed as bulwarks against authoritarian censorship, these platforms are now overseen by Trump acolyte Kari Lake. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced an overhaul of the State Department that effectively eliminates programs that work toward peace building and democracy.
As an extra gift to the world's despots, on July 16, Rubio signaled that America will no longer stand in the way of election rigging: Washington will condemn autocrats who use sham election-style events to stay in power only if a major American foreign-policy interest is at stake, the secretary made clear, and from now on, American comments on foreign elections will be 'brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.'
The world's worst dictators can rest assured that the next American diplomat to come knocking on their palace doors is more likely to be looking for property rights than human rights. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, which always have had a free pass, might not notice the difference. But brutal regimes in less-noticed parts of the world have now gotten the memo that the Trump White House is indifferent to democracy and human rights, and they are acting accordingly. Cambodia has cracked down on journalists while courting American military officials. Tanzania's leader recently arrested his main rival and charged him with treason. Indonesia's president has begun changing laws, militarizing the country, and undermining the principle of civilian rule. Nigeria's president made a power grab that critics say was blatantly illegal. And El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, who had faced international criticisms for egregious human-rights abuses, isn't just absolved from American pressure—he's become a much-celebrated friend of the White House, lauded because of his gulags.
Already, in regions such as Southeast Asia, brave pro-democracy reformers find themselves newly vulnerable and isolated. In Myanmar, pro-democracy forces fighting the country's military dictatorship long benefitted from American aid. The DOGE cuts put an end to that—and gave the repressive junta an enormous boost. In Thailand, a human-rights organization that once sheltered dissidents fleeing Cambodia and Laos has been forced to close its safehouses, allowing those regimes to more easily hunt down and even kill their opponents. These funding streams had accounted for a tiny proportion of the U.S. government's budget, but their elimination sends a strong signal to the world's autocrats: that virtually no one will now interfere with their designs.
Admittedly, the United States is less powerful than it once was, and other countries have always had their own domestic agendas, regardless of what Washington has said or done. But that a growing number of the world's despots no longer have to weigh economic costs or diplomatic consequences for crushing their opponents has already made a difference. Thomas Carothers and Oliver Stuenkel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlighted the fact that shortly after Musk referred to USAID as a 'criminal organization,' autocrats in Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia began targeting pro-democracy NGOs that had received money from the agency.
President Reagan once celebrated the United States as a 'shining city on a hill,' a 'beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.' That is apparently no longer the aspiration of the American government, which now sends its foreign pilgrims to a dehumanizing prison in El Salvador, arrests judges, and suggests that following the country's Constitution may be optional.
For democracy to flourish, citizens must yearn for it—and demand it of their governments. At the moment, few can be looking with admiration to the United States as a model. Already in 2024, according to a 34-country survey conducted by Pew Research, the most common perception of American democracy was that the United States 'used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years.' The first months of the second Trump administration can hardly have improved that impression.
Nonetheless, democracy—which provides citizens with a meaningful say over how their lives are governed—still has mass appeal across the globe. Brave, principled activists continue to stand up to despots, even though they do so at much greater peril today than even just a few months ago.
In Serbia, for example, pro-democracy, anti-corruption protests have persisted for months. Students and workers are demanding immediate reforms and calling on Vučić to resign. In years past, precisely this kind of movement would have provoked White House press releases, diplomatic visits, and barbed statements from the Oval Office. In April, at long last, came a high-profile visit to Serbia from someone closely linked to the Trump administration. But instead of offering support for the pro-democracy demonstrators, this American emissary condemned the protests and implied that they were the sinister work of American left-wingers and USAID.
That visitor was none other than Donald Trump Jr., who had arrived in Belgrade to fawn over Vučić in an exclusive interview for his Triggered with Don Jr. podcast, in the months before the newest Trump Tower opens for presales.