ME AND MADELEINE
Anne Applebaum infiltrates a
ministerial meeting in search of America's real agenda
Warsaw ANYONE who has ever hovered around the outskirts of a grand international con- ference will describe to you the feeling of frustration. During all the public events, there are flowery statements, lofty expres- sions of feeling and photo-opportunities. In all one's private chats there are third- hand rumours of ill-humour, backbiting, transatlantic rows. One longs to know the true story. One longs, above all, to know what foreign ministers really say when they are alone, as it were, surrounded only by legions of aides. Do they use the same flowery language? Make the same general- isations? Now, having accidentally attend- ed one of the ministerial sessions at the `Towards a Community of Democracies Conference' held this week in Warsaw, I can reveal the truth: they do.
In fact, given the diversity of the gather- ing, the opening plenary session of this conference — which has gone curiously unreported in Britain — was an impressive display. More than 100 'democratic' nations had gathered in the Polish capital, a place most of them probably never thought they would visit. 'Democracy is universal,' said Bronislaw Geremek, Polish foreign minister, during a toast at the opening banquet. 'We are here in Warsaw this week to affirm our faith in democracy's promise,' said Madeleine Albright, US sec- retary of state, in her own introduction.
There were, in short, precisely the sort of near-hysterical expressions of unity one expects from those European Union sum- mits which, behind the scenes, have devolved into a terrible brawl over goose- berry quotas or the British budget rebate. But having, as I say, mistakenly attended a meeting chaired by Madeleine Albright herself, I can safely report that, behind the scenes at this particular conference, there was — more rhetoric.
It's probably to be expected that, at a con- ference devoted to reaffirming the value of democracy, every foreign minister should want either to elaborate upon his own coun- try's heroic transition to democracy, or to point out the many ways in which his coun- try supports the heroic transitions of others. But given that each speaker also felt duty- bound to thank the government of Poland for its generosity, and the Polish foreign minister for his dedication, and Albright herself, the speechmaking took quite a bit of time. First prize for clarity goes to the Hun- garian foreign minister who, after listening for a few hours, modestly said he would `refrain from reading out my pre-prepared statement'.
This is not to say that there was no agen- da. Albright certainly had one. Apart from the usual restatement of basic principles, the purpose of this conference, as its pub- lished 'concept paper' clearly states, was to create 'mechanisms to co-ordinate efforts' to promote democracy, and to 'form an informal caucus to work together in existing institutions' — i.e. the UN. On the face of it, neither idea is that bad: there is a lot of institutional duplication in the world of democracy promotion, and pretty much everyone is also sick of the old-fashioned, Cold War-era regional caucuses, whose members feel they have to vote in solidarity with one another whatever the cause.
Yet promoting democracy isn't like eradicating smallpox; there is no formula, which is perhaps why international institu- tions dedicated to promoting democracy have been less than successful in the past. The UN, which also theoretically supports democracy, has given platforms to some appalling dictators. Horrific wars have recently broken out in the territory allegedly watched over by the benign eyes of the Council of Europe, an institution explicitly devoted to the promotion of democracy and human rights. Worse, there is no unanimity about who is and who isn't a democratic state, as the many months of angry negotiation required to put this con- ference together serve to prove.
`Oh no — Germans.' Note the presence of Algeria, where democratically elected Islamic fundamental- ists were prevented from taking power. Note the absence of Iran, which has just had rather successful elections but is less than friendly to the USA. Note, also, the (failed) attempt to disinvite Peru at the last minute and the (successful) disinvitation to Fiji. And note that although the Russians did send a lowly envoy (who pointedly expressed the view that the UN seemed to be working perfectly well, thank you very much), the Russian foreign minister refused to come on the grounds that his allies in Belarus -- a country where opposition leaders have lately been known to disappear in the middle of the night — were not invited. Now imagine how much more difficult it would be to find even a single member of the United Nations which would willingly describe itself as `undemocratic', and imagine the diplomatic nightmare of trying to determine who ought to be allowed to be in the UN democracy caucus, and who should be excluded.
As far as this conference was concerned, someone had to draw the line somewhere, and the US State Department drew it, much to the annoyance of others. One West Euro- pean delegate told me that his government had been angered by the 'secretiveness' of the process: 'We were kept in the dark until the last minute about who was coming.' I will also note, without comment, that Robin Cook, who was due to attend, ducked out at the last minute, citing concerns about Zim- babwe. Alas, it seems that, as time went on, some even began to doubt the goodwill of the American secretary of state: suspicions grew that behind the open agenda lay anoth- er agenda, namely the creation not just of a democracy caucus, but of a pro-American caucus, which is quite a different thing.
Needless to say, very little of that angst or annoyance was expressed in either the semi- accessible 'plenary' or the private 'ministeri- al' sessions of the conference, or really anywhere in the myriad conference halls. On the contrary, it was expressed, unabashedly, at open press conferences. Even before the democracy fest had got underway, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, told journalists that he opposed treating democracy as a 'religion' to be imposed on others. As it ended, he also announced, in a fit of Gallic pique, that he would not sign the deeply innocuous Warsaw Declaration, a document primarily expressing approval for government `by the people'. An anonymous Polish diplomat told a Polish radio station that the French had in fact opposed the heavy 'transatlantic influence' at the confer- ence; an equally anonymous US official blamed standard French orneriness, telling French journalists that '108 countries showed up to support democracy, but only 107 actually did'.
Thus, not only was it unnecessary to be in the room to learn about his particular Franco-American spat; you didn't, in fact, have to be at the conference (or in War- saw, or in Poland) at all.
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