Summary
Foreign Policies Toward the Region - Interview
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Extract
Promoting democracy: an interview with Stephen Sestanovich.
These countries are not ours to remake. But influencing the direction they take is not only something that we can contribute to. It is very much in our interest to do so.
********** Journal: Is there a serious analysis out there that says that democracy is just not right for Central Asia? Sestanovich: Absolutely. I have heard that argument from virtually every president in Central Asia! I have also heard it from despairing human rights activists and from journalists who visit these countries from time to time, only to discover that things seem unchanged or worse from their last visit. One has to be realistic about the obstacles to democracy created by decades of Communist rule--and by the traditional order that preceded it. But let's not over-learn the lessons of this so-called realism. In other regions, after all, communism and traditionalism have not been an absolute bar to democratic progress. It wasn't so long ago that people wrote off democracy in the Balkans. These countries, we were told, just weren't ready for modern institutions. "Ancient hatreds" were deep in society and would block progress for generations. Now, one can't leap from this record to the optimistic conclusion that it ...See the full content of this document
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