More Building, Less Lecturing, Mansour Recommends

Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia

A 176th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron U.S. Air Force pilot sits in the cockpit of an F-16 Fighting Falcon while being refueled at King Fahad Air Base, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 7, 2021. U.S. and Saudi forces conducted combined operations. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jacob B. Wrightsman)

[“America has a positive role to play in advancing freedom and democracy in the rest of the world,” is one of the themes here at The Editors. I’ve been reporting that out by soliciting, from a variety of thoughtful voices, answers to this prompt:

What are the most promising, concrete, specific steps America can take over the next few years to promote freedom, democracy, and rule of law in other countries? What places and people would you focus on, what’s the case for making the efforts, and how, practically, do you get it done given the constraints imposed by the American political and fiscal landscape?

Today’s response comes from Hussein Mansour. He appears here on the recommendation of Dominic Green, a contributor to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal who has been helping a bit with The Editors, including coming up with the name.]

Recently, an official from a developing country told Larry Summers, “Look, I like your values better than I like China’s. But the truth is, when we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.” These words could be repeated by countless officials and leaders across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Even the oil-wealthy Arab Gulf states have been steadily enhancing their relations with China while insisting—rightfully—that America is their first preference. The first order of business for U.S. foreign policy, for a meaningful re-engagement with the world that restores American leadership, is to substitute the mélange of liberal sentimental moralisms that have come to dominate its vision, rhetoric and spending with a realistic vision and rhetoric that restores confidence in American leadership and power.

To do this, the U.S. must reform its foreign service, foreign aid, and federal security bureaucracies, around which a parasitic ecosystem of contractors, NGOs, and activist businessmen has mushroomed, to eliminate the redundancies leading to inefficiencies, chaotic messaging, and contradictory policies. The "Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor" bureaucracy has become a patronage network subsidizing American professionals with advanced degrees in feminist, LGBTQ+, and climate studies rather than achieving U.S. interests abroad.

By cutting down bureaucratic fat and fostering better coordination between Congress and the executive branch, the U.S. can create a more coherent and effective foreign policy. This leaner approach would not only save fiscal resources but also enhance the clarity and impact of America's international initiatives.

Investing in regions where the U.S. has strategic interests and where democracy is fragile or under threat is paramount. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, for instance, are at critical junctures where external support can make a significant difference. By providing investments without imposing ideological conditions, the U.S. can build trust and influence that may advance U.S. values better than any lecture from a 20-something-year-old with a degree in human rights. After all, the age of liberal fundamentalism and its catastrophic outcomes is well behind us, and, as political philosopher John Gray has suggested, we must seriously consider that liberalism and democracy are neither the end of history nor a universal human desire but a Western, particularly historical development.

By freeing American foreign policy from ideological and fiscal constraints and adopting a strategy of less lecturing and more infrastructure investment, the U.S. can significantly restore its sense of leadership that can help create a more stable and peaceful world in which more individuals and communities are able to flourish.

A case in point was the Biden administration's initial approach to Saudi Arabia, which did nothing but undermine U.S. influence on the kingdom and in the region in favor of Iran and its allies. It was only when the policy shifted to discussing mutual interests without moral lectures that breakthroughs in Saudi-Israeli normalization were potentially achieved—arguably one of the greatest steps toward better human rights in the region. A closer relationship with the Saudis, not a more distant one that may force them closer to China, will give the U.S. more leverage over human rights in the kingdom than moral announcements that change nothing.

Finally, by overhauling its foreign policy establishment, focusing on investment, and refraining from ideological lecturing, the U.S. could rebuild stronger alliances that can take assertive actions against destabilizing actors. Security is a prerequisite for development and democracy, and America can promote nothing—let alone freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—in failed states ruled by militias, proxies, and genocidal tyrants.

Other, earlier answers: “Don’t Lose Any Countries” Is Elliott Abrams’s Advice, by Elliott Abrams

Counter Communist China in the U.S. and at the U.N., Ellen Bork Recommends, by Ellen Bork

Help Ukraine and Israel Prevail, Says Carl Gershman, by Carl Gershman

Resist Redefining “Democracy” as Elite Preferences, Kontorovich Says, by Eugene Kontorovich

Spend More on Defense and Less on Everything Else, Mandelbaum Warns, by Michael Mandelbaum