AS the US embassy’s tiff with the Government of Guyana over a planned $300 million USAID-funded Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project continues to spiral, the expansive column inches of commentary pertaining to the issue have yet to speak to the proverbial elephant in the room. That is, Uncle Sam’s history of ‘democratic interventions’ in foreign states is blotchy at best.Under the Thomas Jefferson-inspired banner of “Expanding the Empire of Liberty”, the US has sought to influence political events abroad and often with very logically perverse outcomes. In actuality, however, the promotion of liberal democratic ideals is hardly the lone variable in the US’s foreign policy calculus. And Guyana knows this all too well.

During the Cold War struggle, US foreign policy was predicated more on containing communism and economic nationalism than on promoting democracy – US President John F. Kennedy was quoted as saying that while the US President favoured democratic regimes, given the choice between right wing, pro-American Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo and then leftist guerrilla Fidel Castro, the US would choose the former. Thus began a series of American-led efforts to depose left-leaning leaders worldwide such as Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán; Chile’s Salvador Allende; Iran’s Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; and Indonesia’s Sukarno, and their subsequent substitution with right-wing tyrants.

Most significantly for Guyana, however, was the overthrow of the Marxist Premier, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and the installation of the decades-long dictatorship of Linden Forbes Burnham. Small wonder then that the Guyana Government, led by the party Dr. Jagan founded, seems so leery of a multi-million American-funded project geared to promote democracy. No analyst should be quick to discount the Guyana Government’s qualms as a mere byproduct of a bygone era, however, since the pennant of the US’s Empire of “Liberty” continues to billow even in the 21st century, and from the mast of its allied NGOs, too.

At the turn of the century, 9/11 and the inculcation by US foreign policymakers of the Bush Doctrine, gave rise to another wave of frenzied American efforts to export democracy. But these have decidedly led to undemocratic outcomes. Take Iraq, for instance. Subsequent to its dubiously rationalised invasion of that country and the deposing of strongman, Saddam Hussein, the US spent some US$1.82 billion to strengthen Iraq’s democratic institutions. As with the LEAD programme planned for Guyana, part of the programme included teaching political parties to gain votes. How has America’s democratic experiment there fared?

The Sunni tyrant has been replaced by Shiite autocrat, Nouri Al-Maliki, whose persecution of minority Kurd and Sunni groups and brook-no-dissent style stand in marked parallelism to the days of Saddam. Because the Obama Administration is keen on withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible, however, the United States has been soft on al-Maliki and are attempting to shore up his military apparatus and by extension, his rule, so that his regime can act as Washington’s bulwark against al-Qaeda. The lesson is plain: the Uncle-Sam-knows-best approach to democracy is no road to democracy as the Americans can always be counted to recalibrate their strategy to suit their ever-shifting priorities.

These days, US-sponsored “democracy” initiatives appear to be predicated not on any dominant ideology or desire to foster democracy, but on a desire to install governments that are subservient to its myriad interests. And it has sought to do so using its allied NGOs, particularly the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute (IRI), the latter being the conduit through which funding for the LEAD project is to flow.
In 2006, the New York Times reported how USAID channelled through NGOs such as the IRI, US$25 million to Venezuelan groups critical of the late President Hugo Chavez, a vocal critic of the US. Explicitly, the New York Times states that USAID made “grants that had what appeared to be an objective of building support for potential rivals to Mr. Chávez.” A $47,459 grant, for instance, was made in July 2005 to an organisation whose goal was to meet with organisations to build a “democratic leadership campaign.” The US government had previously been fingered in a botched 2002 coup against the revered leader, who remained until his death invincible in all free and free fair polls he contested and was widely credited with creating a more organic democracy in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, AlJazeera reported in July that the Obama administration had channelled millions of dollars to groups which had publicly called for the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who was popularly elected in presidential elections following the popular overthrow of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

AlJazeera writes: “The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department’s own guidelines. A long-time grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy groups is a 34-year-old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who sprang to notoriety during the country’s pitched battles over the new constitution in December 2012.
She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who supported the country’s proposed constitution, just before it went to a public referendum. The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them.”

The narrative of “democracy” inspired American interventionism is as long as it is sordid. That political leaders from the People’s National Congress, yet again, and now, the Alliance For Change want to piggyback on American thirst for foreign policy adventurism to suit their short- term political ends is even sadder.
Undeniably, our country needs a change in the nature of its political discourse. Gridlock is too commonplace and consensus forging appears to be a rare talent among the politicians. Important reforms to procurement, local government and law enforcement are bogged down by reckless politicking on both sides of the political divide.

The question, therefore, are we, as Guyanese, prepared to rise above the fray to build the society we want? Or do we let the Americans do it for us?