Weighing the Burden of Security: US Democracy Assistance in the Post-Soviet Space

• Authors: Povilas Žielys
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Academic discussions on US democracy assistance reveal an underlying tension between commitment to democratic process and interest in desired political outcomes. This paper examines the case of Yeltsin's Russia in order to identify deficiencies of US democracy protection policy which is vulnerable to the impact of US short- and medium-term security interests. Both diplomatic and programmatic levels of US democracy protection policy are considered. As a result, an analytical model of ‘security-burdened’ democracy protection policy is developed. This paper argues that the model of ‘security-burdened’ democracy protection policy could be helpful in analyzing other cases of US democracy assistance efforts in the post-Soviet space, such as the cases of Saakashvili's Georgia and Yushchenko's Ukraine.

Keywords

EN

Democracy protection policy; national security interests; US foreign policy; Russia; post-Soviet space

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Baltic Journal of Law & Politics
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 76-98

Dates

published

2010-01-01

online

2010-09-03

Contributors

author

Povilas Žielys

• Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, Lithuania

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10076-010-0005-9