Most countries, including the United States, have laws proscribing outsiders from directly financing political parties and campaigns. Interference is a touchy, sovereignty matter the world over. And an insult.
And yet the U.S., which has national interests around the globe, wants to stay influential. But without, of course, interfering. So, cue a number of non- and -quasi-governmental organizations with names such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Their charge is to have some influence in countries with strategic value to the U.S. They do it in the obeisant name of “promoting democracy” and “supporting dialogue.”
I saw it a few years back when I was in Caracas. American interest in how things play out in Venezuela is a given. One manifestation was the aid provided by NED to Primero Justicia (PJ), a key opposition party to President Hugo Chavez.
Such assistance, to be sure, could look a lot like, well, interference, depending on perspective. But not to the PJ spokeswoman I met with. PJ, she insisted, did not receive money from the U.S. Government. What it did receive is NED help in the form of “support for training, scholarships and workshops.” Oh.
You obviously have to know your semantics. There’s traditionally a lot of winking and nodding when it comes to such non-profit organizations, especially with key countries in transition.
Which brings us to Egypt, a country on the cusp–and on the receiving end of $1.5 billion in annual American aid. This week it begins criminal proceedings against at least 16 Americans, among others, charged with belonging to illegally funded, pro-democracy groups with an agenda anathema to Cairo’s transitional government. Egyptian officials consider foreign funding of the nongovernmental groups, including the IRI, to be meddling in their fluid and highly flammable political system. The groups, however, insist their goal is to teach Egyptians technical assistance in helping them take part in the democratic process.
This is either thinly veiled interference in the internal affairs of a geopolitically critical country or the exercise of democratic ideals in action. Sucker or succor.
One thing is certain: $1.5 billion doesn’t buy what it used to.