July 19, 2005
Protecting Democracy: International Responses
Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been re-established in a number of countries with support from other democratic states and private groups. While the increase in the number of democracies worldwide has been widely heralded, very little has been written on how democracy can be protected and sustained where it has been chosen by the people of a state. Coups d’etat and the erosion of democratic freedoms and institutions remain the most salient threats to democratic governance around the globe. How can democratic states protect themselves and secure more effective international action against such threats?
Edited by Center for American Progress Senior Vice President Morton H. Halperin and former Center for American Progress National Security Analyst Mirna Galic, Protecting Democracy: International Responses is the first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to threats such as coups and erosions in democracies. Published in cooperation with the Council on Foreign Relations, Protecting Democracy provides in-depth analyses of the legal and policy justification for these processes and discusses how they can be made more effective, while combining the findings of an international task force on threats to democracy with contributions from leading scholars and policymakers. Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, joins Dr. Halperin to discuss the benefits and risks of international intervention to support deteriorating democracies. Copies of Protecting Democracy: International Responses will be on sale at the event, courtesy of Reiters bookstore.
Video & Transcript
• Robert O. Boorstin: Video
• Dr. Morton H. Halperin: Video
• Dr. Esther Brimmer: Video
• Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter: Video
• Discussion: Video
• Q&A Session: Video
Note: All video provided in QuickTime (MPEG-4) format.
Biographies
Dr. Esther Brimmer is Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. From 1999-2001 she was a Member of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. She also served as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. She has worked for the Democratic Study Group in the U.S. House of Representatives and for the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. She wrote a monograph on “The United States, the European Union and International Human Rights Issues” as well as other articles and book chapters on international security issues. She was the editor for three of the Center’s edited volumes, The Strategic Implications of European Union Enlargement, The EU’s Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations, and The European Union Constitutional Treaty: A Guide for Americans. She received her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and master’s degrees in international relations from the University of Oxford.
Robert O. Boorstin is Senior Vice President for National Security at the Center for American Progress. Boorstin brings to American Progress more than twenty years experience in national security, political communications, research and journalism. Over seven years with the Clinton administration, he worked as the President’s national security speechwriter; communications and foreign policy adviser to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; and adviser on the developing world to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 6 books and the editor of 10 books on international affairs. His books include The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (2004), Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (2003), The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment (1995), Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (1994), and A Search for Enemies: America’s Alliances after the Cold War (1992). He is also the author of more than 300 articles and policy studies. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Interest, World Policy Journal, and many other publications. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs in the United States, Latin America, Europe, East Asia and other regions. Dr. Carpenter received his Ph.D. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas and serves on the editorial boards of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies.
Dr. Morton H. Halperin is a Senior Vice President at the Center for American Progress and Executive Director of the Security and Peace Initiative. He is also the Executive Director of the Open Society Policy Center as well as Director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Society Institute. Dr. Halperin served in the federal government in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently from December 1998 to January 2001 as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. In the Clinton administration, he was also Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council, a consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and was nominated by the President for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. In 1969, he was a senior saff member of the National Security Council responsible for National Security Planning. He has authored, coauthored and edited more than a dozen books including, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (1974), The Lawless State (1976), Nuclear Fallacy (1987), and Self-Determination in the New World Order (1992). He has also contributed articles to a number of newspapers, magazines, and journals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Harpers, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, on subjects including national security and civil liberties, bureaucratic politics, Japan, China, military strategy, and arms control.