Chinese System Is Doomed

„Should the U.S. now be using the bully pulpit to go to countries and say, »You know what, we have a system, liberal democracy, that works really well, and since you're in this very fluid moment, you should look into this«. In other words, engage in the battle of ideas.

Absolutely.

With Islamist parties.

Well, with everybody. The Islamist parties are the ones that, obviously, we look at with most worry. But there are remnants of old regimes that are also trying to prevent progress and keep people economically denied opportunity and politically denied their rights. So in this kind of transition, there are ideological foes of democracy, there are economic and commercial foes of democracy, there are political foes of democracy. So I think we need to be competing in the arena of ideas and information.

Is that a little bit neoconish?

No. I don't think so. I think that's what we believe in. We believe that more speech is better than less speech. We deplored the guy in Florida who burned the Koran, which is so hard for other people to understand, around the world, because they say, »Well, if you thought it was terrible, you should have stopped it." And we say, "No, we overwhelmed it with speech deploring it and speech calling for tolerance and respect«.

So I testified before Congress a few weeks ago. I said we are losing the war of ideas because we are not in the arena the way we were in the Cold War. I don't think that belongs to a political party or a political philosophy in our country. I want to see us out there pitching our ideas. Now, we need to do it in a way that's more likely to be understood and received than just asserting it in a conclusory way, but no, we need to be much more engaged. And frankly, just at the moment when there's this ferment for democracy breaking out -- 20 years-plus after the Berlin Wall fell, and we invested so much money and effort over so many decades to get behind the Iron Curtain, to talk about what democracy was, to keep the flag of freedom unfurled in people's hearts, to get our messages in through every means of shortwave radio and smuggling Bibles, and we did all kinds of things just to give people a sense that they weren't alone and that maybe their ideas about the human spirit were not subversive -- well, we have cut back on all of that. We don't have those messages going out.

China is starting an English-speaking television network around the world, Russia is, Al Jazeera. And the BBC is cutting back on its many language services around the world. We're not competing. I just feel like we're missing an opportunity. And I'm well aware of our budget constraints and all of the difficulties we face, but now is the time -- not in an arrogant way, but in a matter-of-fact experiential way. We have figured out (in America) how people from every part of the world, every kind of person you can imagine, can live together, can work together. It wasn't easy. It took a long time, but I think we know a little bit about how to do it, and we want to offer whatever assistance we can.”