I very much enjoyed recently reading Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy in the Reagan Administration by Robert Pee, from 2016 in the Routledge Studies in U.S. Foreign Policy series.

“Robert Pee delivers a carefully crafted, nuanced, and comprehensive study of the rise of democracy promotion as a critical component of US foreign policy under the Reagan administration. The analysis is insightful and sophisticated, offering an excellent understanding of the sources of tensions that animate US democracy promotion’s purpose and practices from its inception to the present days.” Blurb from Dr. Jeff Bridoux from Aberystwyth University, UK.

I highly recommend Pee’s book for anyone involved in or interacting with American democracy assistance. The detailed story of how NED, and NDI, IRI and CIPE as three or the four NED core institutions, “happened” is illuminating and important.

A critical factor that is lost, if not deliberately swept under the rug, in much of the internet commentary that has been generated in contemporary environments, is the fundamental institutional role of Congress in establishing NED.

In the very earliest part of the new Reagan Administration from 1981 the question of democracy assistance was on the table as an aspect of the foreign policy challenges of the late Cold War. Most acutely because of the challenge presented by the Solidarity movement and related happenings in Poland on one hand and the civil war in El Salvador and the revolution in Nicaragua on the other. Within the Administration there were a variety of leading actors and voices reflecting a range of viewpoints. Key questions included consideration of what was beneficial and what was necessary in terms of intellectual and ideological commitments to freedom in the context of the risks of confrontation with the Soviet Union, the stability of the “containment” order and hopes for arms control and other negotiations. Reagan was elected as a critic of President Carter’s new formal policy emphasis on “human rights” as ineffectual in the context of the events such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the hostage-taking by students at the embassy in Iran. So something new and distinguishable was needed. While CIA director William Casey was one of those voices he was far from the only one.

In the meantime, aspirations for democracy assistance had been percolating in academia and civil society since the 1970s. It is essential to place this in the historical context of the post-Vietnam era, and in Pee’s emphasis the era post-Ramparts magazine expose in 1967 of widespread CIA cultural and intellectual subsidies.

In his famous Westminster address to the British Parliament of June 1982 President Reagan made the public commitment to a policy of democracy promotion. With that threshold crossed, the Administration had to come up with actual policy details and bureaucratic structure and the game was on. Reagan’s speech is well worth a re-read, especially to remind of the difficult Cold War context presented by Reagan’s dual commitment to both Strategic Arms Limitation talks with the Soviets and to Solidarity and Poland’s quest “to be Poland”.

Initially those voices of “conservative” caution and constraint who wished the national security structures of the White House to hold the reins won the initial bureaucratic struggle reflected in the Administration’s proposed “Project Democracy” legislation. But however hard it may be to remember this now, in 1983, Congress was a truly co-equal force on these types of foreign policy decisions and the Administration’s proposed “Project Democracy” approach died for lack of support.

In the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate environment, Reagan faced a “permanent” Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives and a Senate with a range of important and influential thought and action leaders in both parties, with an ideological range in each that would be unthinkable today. Congressional debates on foreign policy were highly engaged and unpredictable. Seniority and Committee structures had greater weight.

And thus the National Endowment for Democracy happened in “strategic fuzziness” as Pee elucidates. At a specific time and place the sausage was made. The Administration had committed to democracy assistance as a new tool of foreign policy and Congress delivered a separate organization “endowed” with funding from Congressional appropriations but not in form a government agency nor reporting to the National Security Council. IRI and NDI which had been incorporated as nonprofits at the Republican and Democratic National Committees respectively earlier that year became “core institutions” of NED and CIPE was formed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to join the longstanding international “free labor union” arm of the AFL-CIO which became the other two “core institutions”.

NED was made subject by Congress to the Freedom of Information Act and to audit, but not reporting to the White House. Early gambits to restructure NED to bring it under Administration control were defeated. After forty years NED is a both a fixture of “Washington” and a unique creature born of a specific confluence of global events, policy aspirations and domestic democratic politics in the United States in 1983.

[In reference to my previous posts, this background can explain, in addition to more important things, why Carl Gershman as fledgling NED’s president would have been attracted to having use of Henry Kissinger’s perceived “stature” and “gravitas” inside-the-Beltway” in Washington as a NED board member even if Kissinger was not interested enough in the mission relative to his other priorities to be able to attend the meetings.]