Foreign Affairs committee  I'll be brief. On the backlash, in the 1990s it was assumed that democracy was the only way. Everybody talked about that. The phrase was “the end of history”, which many of you probably heard, right? There was no other way, apart from democracy. In the last five or six years, a whole group of countries—and in that group, unfortunately, I would put Russia, Venezuela—that started down the path of democracy have re-authoritarianized.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have a division of our labour here. I'll deal with the first question. You've identified the toughest nuts to crack, and these are the especially poor countries. In political science, we have very few findings to report to you. We have two. The first is that democracies don't fight each other.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have to proceed on two fronts in order to deal with it. The countries we're really talking about here are not so much Ukraine and Moldova, but they do include Belarus and essentially all of central Asia, at this point, and Russia itself. Really, you have to proceed on two fronts.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a good question. This is a tough row to hoe. If you look at what was really successful in the long run in the Cold War, it was really the visits of academics, of normal people. When they would come over here and spend a lot of time, especially if they spent over three months here—I think that's actually the crucial period of time—they would go home and become long-term ambassadors for our system, very broadly understood in terms of liberal democracy, not of the particulars of the kind of institutional order we have but of liberal democracy, broadly understood.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for your question. Let me deal with the part about the United Nations, because it's a pretty important question. The United Nations itself was set up not as a democracy-promoting organization; it was set up as an organization after World War II to promote peace.

Foreign Affairs committee  Your question is that if we're actually involved in democracy promotion, the project of democracy is perceived as being something foreign, as being something imposed, as a kind of imperial project. That's how I interpret your question. The best way to proceed is, first of all, at the level of human contact, NGOs.

Foreign Affairs committee  Good afternoon. I want to thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee today. Democracy promotion is a vitally important topic, which deserves the attention of all Canadians. I say this knowing that many Canadians tend to be wary of democracy promotion. Why are they wary?