The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2010

niew Brzezinski describes a new force in international politics: a massive “global political awakening” with pub- lics who are no longer passive, but will- ing to force governments to deal with their passions. Although this “awaken- ing” carries a potential for violent ex- tremism when fueled by anti-Western and anti-American hatreds, it can also lead to genuine reform. In Iran, the public’s fierce desire was for elections where their vote was fairly and honestly counted. Like it or not, elections are a battleground for the global political awakening. This is an arena in which violent extremism can lose, under the pressure for neu- tral electoral administration and inter- national monitoring. Evidence that this is happening is accumulating. Earlier this year in Togo, the government took steps to in- crease the credibility of the electoral process and reassure the international community that the election would be free and fair. It made it a priority to avert the violence that marred the 2005 election. Toward that end, a mas- sive contingent of foreign monitors ob- served the elections. Following the vote count, opposi- tion parties that had refused to unite behind one candidate, thus lessening their chances of winning, did hold demonstrations, but there was no vio- lence or challenge to the results. Ob- servers characterized the March elec- tions in deeply divided Ukraine as a major improvement over the 2004 pro- cess, even as Viktor Yanukovich won a very narrow victory over Yulia Tymo- shenko. After a tense period, Tymo- shenko dropped her legal challenge, enabling the results to be peacefully accepted. Even though, as of this writing, Kyrgyzstan appears embroiled in tribal violence, political events could yet have a positive outcome in a resetting of the agenda of the coup leaders for a refer- endum on a new constitution and sub- sequent elections, undertaken with expert assistance from the Organiza- tion for Security and Cooperation in Europe. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 The 2009 presidential elections in Afghanistan raised issues, including neutral monitoring and administration of the entire process.