The Case for Democracy

Last updated
The Case for Democracy. The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
The case for democracy bookcover.jpg
Author Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer
Cover artist David Plunkert
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherPublic Affairs
Publication date
2004
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN 1-58648-261-0
OCLC 56367829
321.8 22
LC Class JC423 .S495 2004
Preceded by Fear No Evil  
Followed by Defending Identity  

The Case for Democracy is a foreign policy manifesto written by one-time Soviet political prisoner and former Israeli Member of the Knesset, Natan Sharansky. Sharansky's friend Ron Dermer is the book's co-author. The book achieved the bestsellers lists of the New York Times , Washington Post and Foreign Affairs .

Contents

In the book, Sharansky and Dermer argue that the primary goal of American foreign policy, as well as that of the free world, should be the expansion of democracy. The book advocates a moral foreign policy based on belief in the universality of freedom and human rights. Sharansky and Dermer argue that nations that respect their citizens will also respect their neighbors. The book is sub-titled, The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. The authors express passionate and controversial arguments against any compromise on the road to freedom.

It has been read and famously endorsed by former United States president George W. Bush. [1] Other members of his administration, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have also read the book.

See also

Sources

Related Research Articles

Bush Doctrine US foreign policy principles of President George W. Bush promoting preventive war and unilateralism

The Bush Doctrine refers to multiple interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. These principles include unilateralism and the use of preemptive war.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership." The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world," and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."

Bill Kristol American writer (born 1952)

William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of The Bulwark.

Neoconservatism is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, including peace through strength, and are known for espousing disdain for communism and political radicalism.

<i>Hegemony or Survival</i> Book by Noam Chomsky

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a study of the American empire written by the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was first published in the United States in November 2003 by Metropolitan Books and then in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books.

Natan Sharansky Refusnik, Israeli politician and human rights activist

Natan Sharansky, born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky, is an Israeli politician, human rights activist, and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Sharansky currently serves as chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization.

James Bovard American libertarian author and lecturer

James Bovard is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist and is a frequent contributor to The Hill. He is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and nine other books. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader's Digest, The American Conservative, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.

Ted Honderich Canadian-British philosopher

Ted Honderich is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.

Outposts of tyranny US foreign policy terminology used in the 2000s

"Outposts of tyranny" was a term used in 2005 by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and subsequently by others in the U.S. government to characterize the governments of certain countries as being totalitarian regimes or dictatorships. In addition to specifically identifying Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe as examples of outpost of tyranny, Rice characterized the broader Middle East as a region of tyranny, despair, and anger.

Ron Dermer Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

Ronald Dermer is an American-born Israeli political consultant and diplomat who served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021. He previously served as Israel's economic envoy to the United States from 2005 to 2008, a position requiring him to give up his American citizenship, and subsequently served as senior adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for four years.

Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving from 1977 to 2005. He is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. He was a visiting professor at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012. He is a contributor to The National Interest.

Town square test is a threshold test for a free society proposed by a former Soviet dissident and human rights activist Natan Sharansky, now a notable politician in Israel.

Ronald Reagan Freedom Award

The Ronald Reagan Freedom Award is the highest civilian honor bestowed by the private Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. The award is given to "those who have made monumental and lasting contributions to the cause of freedom worldwide."

Fiamma Nirenstein

Fiamma Nirenstein is an Italian-Israeli journalist, author and politician. In 2008 she was elected to the Italian Parliament for Silvio Berlusconi's The People of Freedom party and she served as Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies for the length of the legislature, ending in March 2013. On 26 May 2013 she went to Israel. In 2015, Nirenstein was nominated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the future ambassador to Italy, but subsequently withdrew for what she stated were personal reasons. She is Senior Fellow of Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and currently works there, at the Israeli-based think-tank of JPCA. She is moreover a leading columnist for the Italian daily Il Giornale and contributes articles in English to the Jewish News Syndicate. She is also on the Board of ISGAP and of the WJC.

<i>Defending Identity</i>

Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy is the third book by Natan Sharansky published on June 1, 2008 by Public Affairs.

Criticism of the United States government encompasses a wide range of sentiments about the actions and policies of the United States.

CyberDissidents.org is a division of Advancing Human Rights, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. CyberDissidents.org focuses on the human rights of online political activists. The group believes that highlighting the plight of individual democratic dissidents in the West affords a measure of protection against government oppression.

<i>Terror and Liberalism</i>

Terror and Liberalism is a non-fiction book by American political philosopher and writer Paul Berman. He published the work through W. W. Norton & Company in April 2003. Berman asserts that modern Islamist groups such as al Qaeda share fundamental ideological elements with fascism and other 20th-century Western totalitarian movements, and he defends an assertive approach to root out this extremist thinking across the world. He details the appeal of violent terror, going back to Albert Camus' work The Rebel, first published in 1951. Berman hypothesizes that the spread of democracy in the Arab world, while highly difficult and involving a long struggle, is a fundamentally just cause, and he writes in support of the George W. Bush administration's foreign policies while also faulting President Bush for credibility problems and incompetence.

<i>Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America</i> 2015 Non-Fiction book by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney

Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America is a 2015 book on American foreign policy co-authored by Dick Cheney, who served as the 46th Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former official of the United States Department of State. The book offers a vehement criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, and an unwavering defense of the virtue of American exceptionalism.

The Oxford University L'Chaim Society was a student society at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 2001. At its peak, it was the second-largest society within the University of Oxford.

References

  1. Ira Stoll, “The Foundation of Democracy: Sharansky's 'Defending Identity,'” New York Sun, May 28, 2008,