Thanks, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It's wonderful to be here with you.
You see why Derek Mitchell is such a terrific colleague for us at IRI. Our teams at NDI and IRI work very closely together, so despite any judgments you may make about American politics, it's working in the democracy space, our bipartisan ethic.
I would like to begin by thanking all of you for Canada's terrific leadership. On Venezuela, on Ukraine, on women's empowerment, on so many issues in the world today, Canada remains a principled voice. We're just very grateful, at a period when the west—and the community of democracies writ large—is under so much pressure from within and without. Really, I would argue that our democratic way of life, the way Canadians and Americans live, is put at risk by a world in which authoritarian forces are on the march and playing offence. There is a strategic value to this discussion that you are having about modernizing democracy assistance for this new world that Derek sketched out.
Let me very quickly set the scene by talking about what has changed since you, this committee, really looked closely at democracy assistance over 10 years ago. I have four quick points.
One is the re-emergence of great power competition, which is real. I don't need to tell you. Russia and China, in different ways, are projecting authoritarian influence. They are trying to build a world that is more safe for authoritarian forms of government and for their leadership, elements of which are highly inimical to western interests and our way of life. That is a big difference from 2007. That includes Russia's disinformation assault on open societies, including the United States, Canada and our European allies. It includes the corruption and other forms of malign influence associated with China's belt and road initiative and other forms of global engagement, not all of which are insidious, but some of which do undercut our alliances and open societies.
Two is we're living in a world of refugees. I'm sorry to tell you, but you know this. There are more refugees in the world today than any time since 1945. It's worth reflecting on that. More than at any time since the end of the Second World War are people displaced by conflict in this world we live in today. Frankly, that's a failure, and we know why these people are trying to flee. They are trying to flee conflict-ridden societies that are not governed by law and institutions. They are driven by desperation. Migrants out of Central America, for instance, are trying to escape gangster societies where they and their families are not safe. This requires a greater level of engagement from all of us.
Three—Derek mentioned this very articulately—is the digital revolution that has done many great things, but has also empowered and amplified extreme voices in our societies, and created new forms of fragmentation. This is something we do need to come to grips with, because it foundationally affects our democratic order.
Four is the hollowing-out of democratic order by strongmen who preserve some forms of democracy but use their standing to concentrate executive power at the expense of other institutions: parliaments, free media, active civil societies, political competition.
That's the quick assessment. What do we need to do? I'm going to be quite brief here, but I do have five ideas, not inclusive.
One is to realize that we actually live in an increasingly middle-class world. When we think about development assistance writ large, the absolute focus on ending poverty was an appropriate target, I would argue, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Today, given what we are working with in terms of this enormous rising middle-class in the world, I would argue that development assistance should focus on democracy, rights, governance, transparency, accountability and anti-corruption. It should focus on helping governments deliver for their citizens, so that we don't need to keep helping desperate people—migrants, refugees—and we don't need to backfill governments that are not meeting basic commitments to their citizens.
I would argue that democracy assistance actually should supersede other forms of assistance, because other forms of assistance are not very effective where you have a kleptocratic strongman in power, or a failed state.
Two is to really embrace a mission—Canada, America, the west—in helping our partners out there in the world build political resiliency to not only be effective democracies but also to avoid succumbing to insidious forms of influence from authoritarian actors, including China and Russia.
We travel a lot, all of us. I've never been anywhere where anybody wanted to be part of a new Russian empire or part of a new Chinese sphere of influence. People everywhere care so much about their sovereign rights and are very anxious about threats to their sovereign independence from authoritarian great powers. So, helping our partners out there build resiliency, including strong civic institutions, effective media, free courts, etc., to help them maintain their independence, should be a strategy.
The third is to expose corruption. Tom Carothers, who is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, has done research showing that over the last five years, 10% of all governments in the world—sometimes through election, sometimes through street revolution—have changed due to civic activism against corruption and that the driving civic force out in the world today is anti-corruption sentiment. You see it today on the streets of Iran, where people are striking. You see it in Venezuela, where Venezuelans are fed up with living in a kleptocratic narco state where the elites live very well and everybody else cannot get enough to eat. This is a powerful force.
I would argue, when we think of Russia's assault on the west and our open societies, that with regard to Vladimir Putin who apparently is worth $95 billion, it's worth investigating, understanding and helping Russian citizens understand where that money came from because, actually, a lot of it was their money before the Kremlin oligarchs consolidated a form of power that made them all very rich.
Innovating in the democracy space to expose and to help partners on the ground expose corruption in their societies is a very powerful tool, including in countries that, frankly, may not be pro-western, pro-American. People care so deeply about this issue.
The fourth is to invest in recreating political balance in societies where politics have become imbalanced through strongman forms of control. That's stronger parliaments. That's more engaged women, youth and other marginalized communities, getting them much more involved in politics in their countries. That's free media. That's legal assistance and other forms of assistance. It's all to try to recreate the balance that has been lost through strongman forms of control.
An important part of this is investing in the next generation. In countries like the Philippines and Turkey, young political leaders, and young leaders writ large, do not want to live in a country that's run by one man in perpetuity. That's also true of young leaders in the ruling parties, leaders who actually want some space to emerge in their own right. Investing in young leaders as part of an effort to create balance is valuable.
Finally, invest in citizen security. Rather than build a wall on the southern border of the United States, I would argue that it would be much more effective to spend that money helping Central American societies govern themselves in just and effective ways so that all these desperate people don't want to leave. The same is true in the Middle East. The conflagration that has been Syria and the conflagration that has been Yemen are driving desperate people away. We've seen it in Southeast Asia in Myanmar: the Rohingya crisis. I could go on and on. Really, at the end of the day, we should be addressing the problem at the source.
The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria told me when I was there that there are going to be 400 million Nigerians by the year 2100. He said that if Nigeria cannot effectively govern itself and provide opportunity, 100 million of those people will leave. Guess where they will want to come? So, this is a big task for us, including in Africa.
Let me wrap up, in 10 seconds, by just arguing that we're in a competition with authoritarians—authoritarians externally and authoritarians within open societies. They're using what the National Endowment for Democracy has called sharp power. They're not using military instruments. They're using sharp power, which is like a malign form of soft power—a set of sharp power tools to erode, hollow out and assault democracies and democratic institutions. It's time for us in the west to modernize and revitalize our democracy assistance tool kit to try to level the playing field.
Thank you.