By Nuru Mohammad
As extensively dealt with in the first part of this article, color revolutions represent a cost effective and less violent way of replacing regimes with others that are more subservient to the interests of western powers. The first part of this article characterized colored revolutions, marked their difference with old model revolutions such as the 1917 Soviet Revolution, dealt with election and revolution and assessed the unwavering external support in such ventures. In explaining color revolution further, the second part starts with the concept of sovereign democracy.
SOVEREIGN DEMOCRACY
Sovereign democracy is a concept to indicate the Kremlin’s attempt to introduce a variant of democracy distinct from Western practice that reflects the concrete conditions of Russia. Democracy promotion bears the earmarks of the cold war heritage. The Putin regime’s conception of Sovereign Democracy allotted a central role to the state as the orchestrator of civil society; the two were complimentary in that the development of civil society was dependent on a strong state. According to Putin, ‘democracy is not a street bazaar.’
The Chinese are equally adamant that Western formulations did not correspond to Chinese needs. The first White Paper on Democracy in China, released in 2005, pointedly noted in its introductory sentences that [the] ‘democracy of a country is generated internally, not imposed by external forces,’ further asserting that China ‘must not copy any model of other countries.’
The Russian and Chinese leadership have responded to the pressures of the western sponsored color revolutions. But they have different stance both in terms of their analysis of its motive, and application of countermeasures to prevent its replication. The Russian and Chinese governments have devised domestic policies that would preclude the western sponsored “color revolution” while they maintain their commitment to market transition—and an accompanying autonomous public sphere—without subjecting the state to the penetration of potentially destabilizing influences from abroad.
While acknowledging the role of domestic factors — poverty, corruption, rising levels of income inequality, etc.— analysts typically directed preponderant attention to the actions of the Western powers—specifically the United States—in instigating events. There are many writers who claimed that “the ability of color revolutions to succeed cannot be separated from the behind the scenes manipulation by the United States.”
These writers considered the Bush administration’s lofty rhetoric on democracy promotion was a sham, a means of disguising its ultimate goal of preserving US global hegemony and the interest of regime transformation leading to the installation of pro-Western political leaders. This measure is aimed at entrenching US influence in those parts of the world where it sees contending powers; as a policy of isolation and containment which is reminiscent of the Cold War era. In the case of “color revolution”, the United States moves beyond containment to seek regime change – be it in the Russian Federation or China – Washington has tried to exert political pressure through Color Revolutions.
The US has been using various means to expand its sphere of influence since the Soviet Union dismembered by supporting pro-West opposition factions in different countries. Many acknowledged that the color revolutions employed new tactics, updated for the post-Cold War era. Instead of the traditional focus on military might as a method of conquest and subordination, the color revolution approach was non-violent, relying on the instruments of soft power. This was imperialism in an updated format, cloaked in the rhetoric of ‘democracy promotion.’ The revised tactics included efforts to infiltrate both from outside and within the designated state, making use of such means as foreign aid, special Western government programs to provide support to democratizing regimes, the Western media (especially the internet), the instigation of what the Chinese referred to as ‘street politics,’ and the mobilization of youth.
TROJAN HORSES
NGOs are identified as a chief catalyst for inciting domestic subversion. The assessment of many revealed that ‘NGOs are an instrument that the Western states like to use as dependable means of bringing states to their subordination and some critics have even gone further to refer NGOs as “Trojan horses” planted by the Western intelligence agencies.” Particularly, countries newly involved in the business of democratizing their governance are highly sensitive to the pivotal role played by NGOs and the elections as a means to regime transformation through the Color Revolutions.
Various western agents were viewed as key in mobilizing oppositional forces to challenge seated officials. This policy of infiltration from within was also well known to these developing countries as a classic Bolshevik tactic used by the Comintern in directing Communist party movements in non-Communist states.
In this regard, third world governments considered that a policy of subversion, which acted to undermine the structural underpinnings of the state, posed in many respects a greater threat to the maintenance of state sovereignty and regime legitimacy, than the more straightforward challenges of conventional military intimidation during the colonial period.
The development of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in November 2004 led to intense speculation, both in international and domestic circles, as to which state would be next to fall victim to regime change. For instance, speaking at a press conference in December 2004, Putin indicated that it was extremely dangerous to try to resolve political problems through unlawful means. Chinese leaders were similarly alarmed. In May 2005, CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao was reported to have issued a report at an internal Party conference that called for ‘vigilance’ against US efforts to launch a Color Revolution in China. Chinese researchers were directed to examine the circumstances surrounding the Color Revolutions; intelligence officials were dispatched to conduct on the ground investigations in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgy and academics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) were told to devote more attention to political events in Russia and the Central Asian states.
Simultaneously, both the Russian and the Chinese authorities hastened to readjust their domestic policies so as to buttress the state against efforts at intrusion from abroad. This was evidenced in a series of measures that are aimed to restrict the inflow of influences and strengthen state controls.
The Color Revolutions heightened the Kremlin’s already manifest anxiety over the potential of NGOs to challenge governmental authority. Putin indicated these concerns in his 2004 State of the Nation Address in which he noted that some NGOs were oriented toward ‘receiving financing from influential foreign foundations,’ rather than ‘standing up for people’s real interests.’
Subsequently, the Putin regime intensified its efforts to enact legislation regulating NGOs. After some modifications, the NGO law (technically a component of a broader set of laws dealing with the activities of non-commercial organizations) was signed by Putin in April 2006. Its net effect was to place NGOs under greater scrutiny. NGOs were now required to register with the FRS, state their aims, present annual accounts of their activities, report sources of funding and provide meticulous records of their spending. The bill also banned foreign funding of Russian organizations that are engaged in political activities. This measure was augmented in March 2007 when Putin signed a law that prohibited members of the government from taking part in any activity associated with the operation of foreign NGOs or their Russian subsidiaries. The Russian NGO law elicited a storm of criticism abroad. Western leaders, including President Bush, expressed their concerns about the bill, and the US Congress passed a resolution denouncing it.
According to some politicians “NGOs are the greatest political weapon of the Twenty-First Century.’ Many authorities shared the apprehension over the potential of NGOs to incite political unrest. The outbreak of the Color Revolutions in different countries has escalated the concerns of the many leaders over NGOs. Hence, many governments have enacted series of measures designed to increase surveillance over their operation.
Simultaneously, in an effort to investigate their financial and political links to “pro-democracy” groups and foreign intelligence forces, government launched audits on NGOs receiving funds from foreign sources. The concern over the infiltration of foreign influence on developing countries led some government and scholars to investigate the matter. They began to emphasize that it is necessary to change the state of affairs in the operation of NGOs funded by foreign organizations.
They are also in hurry to analyze the current trends of NGOs before the research work will be controlled by others with very great unprofessional conduct. In fact, some reports have indicated that academic institutes in developing countries had already received large donations from foreign donors. Anthony Spires, in his investigation of four US based organizations—the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Asia Foundation, and the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), reported that these organizations allocated the majority of their funding (some 280 million dollars from 2002-2005) to government agencies, academic institutions, and GONGOs.
For instance, Beijing University ranked number one in grant funds from US private foundations. In response to the directive issued by Chinese government organizations with close linkages to the US government have came under particular scrutiny. It is believed that the United States is a factor behind the outburst of widespread political unrest. The article published by Xinhua News Agency on December 2007 on a biweekly magazine has discussed four think tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy and labeled them as ‘the Second CIA’. The George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Foundation are collectively identified as ‘soft daggers,’ pointing at targets for regime transformation through Color Revolutions.
Gene Sharp, the founder of the Albert Einstein Institute, was portrayed as an expert at subversion who trained dissidents globally to use civil disobedience as a means of regime change, tactics that were deployed to various countries. The Color Revolutions heightened fears of external penetration into what was already a contentious debate over the potential of NGOs to challenge the boundaries of state control.
The media is one important element of the in the outbreak of color Revolutions. Governments have engaged themselves in a battle to assert their supremacy over the media. Even Russian journalists and political analysts reporting on the Color Revolutions have attributed the political movements to the manipulations of the United States and its allies. The Russia remained sensitive to the potential influence of the West on reporting in Russia. In January 2007, the director of the Educated Media Foundation has indicated one NGO directed to the training of journalists was found with undeclared currency while passing through customs in Moscow. Although normally a minor offence settled with a fine, the government apparently used it as a pretext (and as a warning to other NGOs) to shut down the organization, which was primarily funded by the US Agency for International Development.
This apprehension leads some government to exercise more control over the media, even government like China are forced to undertake far more extensive attempts to regulate the internet. China’s leaders showed more apprehension about the role of the Western media in fostering Color Revolutions. The Western media such as the Voice of America and internet sources had a ‘profound impact’ on the outbreak of Color Revolutions.
In his January 2005 inaugural address, Bush pledged that it was ‘the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’
Although one may be ready to embrace Western support to promote democracy, it may also instigate apprehension pushing skeptics to harbor deep-seated suspicion, if not outright hostility toward the concept of democracy promotion.
Though the Ethiopian government does not refuse any funding for democracy promotion from foreign sources, but it would in fact be skeptic that the funding may be used as a means of wielding political influence on the Ethiopian political scene. The Ethiopian government is overwhelmingly concerned regarding the foreign funding. Here it is wise to note what Putin, in his April 2007 annual address to the Federal Assembly, has said:
There has been an increasing influx of money from abroad being used to intervene directly in our internal affairs. Looking back at the more distant past, we recall the talk about the civilizing role of colonial powers during the colonial era. Today ‘civilization’ has been replaced by democratization, but the aim is the same—to ensure unilateral gains and one’s own advantage, and to pursue one’s own interests.
Echoing this sentiment, the State Duma unanimously passed a resolution in May 2007 condemning what it called ‘unprecedented attempts’ by the United States to influence the 2007 legislative and 2008 presidential elections. The Putin administration’s efforts to combat the infiltration of foreign influences set on democracy promotion eventually came to focus on maintaining tight controls over the electoral process, which was seen as a point of particular vulnerability given the association of the Color Revolutions with elections.
Following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union the Western governments have launched ambitious programs to inculcate organizations of civil society and democratic values all across the globe. The Clinton presidency vigorously has endorsed democracy promotion, but it was George W. Bush administration that elevated it to the status of a cardinal precept (at least in rhetoric) of US foreign policy.
Kremlin strategists were well aware of the relationship between the Color Revolutions and ‘street politics’ and the organized youth protest. In the Kremlin’s view, the work of Western NGOs in organizing seminars and providing training to young people, first in Serbia, and then in the post-Soviet states, had been spectacularly successful, as youth activists had played an influential role in mobilizing opposition to the regime. Moreover, with the support from their NGO sponsors, trained youth activists would be eager to translate their knowledge of organizational techniques and strategy imported from abroad.
Opposition parties are expecting to hold training seminars for the youths aimed at garnering political support particularly from the young Ethiopian population. Establishing pro-opposition youth organizations may be another agenda for the opposition in view of the upcoming election. As we see form the experience the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in November 2004, election is viewed as a pivotal rallying point for the oppositions including those of foreign actors. Hence, elections nowadays become particularly worrying threat to the stability of poor governments. It is providing opportunity for challengers to contest electoral outcomes and mobilize mass support. These concerns and discomfort would be heightened with the presence of foreigners, who are not neutral observers in monitoring elections.
In this regard, it is important to take note of what the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has noted at the height of the Orange Revolution in 2004: ‘Election monitoring is not only ceasing to make sense, but it is also becoming an instrument of political manipulation and a destabilizing factor.’ Therefore the Putin administration had engaged in months of wrangling with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe over the participation of election monitors, which eventually rejected the conditions imposed by the Russian government, and declined to send teams to oversee the 2007 parliamentary or the 2008 presidential elections.
As in Russia, China’s leaders were acutely aware of the potential for Western actors to push democracy promotion as a means of political change. US policy-makers throughout a series of presidential administrations routinely prodded China to undertake democratic reforms that would in the words of Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in a 2005 address, effect ‘a peaceful political transition to make its government responsible and accountable to its people.’ What the United States viewed as “constructive engagement,” China was more likely to see as inappropriate interference in its internal affairs.
In a widely disseminated article, Zhao Xiaoying, the Vice President of the Chinese Institute of Socialism, argued that Western hostile forces were aiming, as always, to installa multi-party political system in China that could be used to build up an opposition to stage a ‘Color Revolution’ and regime transformation.
The previously successful movements have gotten assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other organizations as well as from experts in nonviolent protest such as Gene Sharp. These activities are credited with stimulating transitions in countries that lacked sufficient prerequisites for revolution and where the fall of regimes was “not predicted by most analysts.” In turn, incumbents in countries such as Belarus and Russia have learned to counter this model.
Indeed, each successful revolution generated new cadres of revolutionaries to spread ideas and train opposition movements. It is striking that activists frequently and intentionally linked their revolutions to similar events. Finally, scholars have rightly acknowledged the importance of the considerable U.S. support for opposition movements in organizing color revolution.